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posted by takyon on Tuesday February 13 2018, @11:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the right-tool-for-the-job dept.

An article over at Motherboard covers the growing inequities in the US resulting from the cultivation of individualized transport options.

Carsharing, ridesharing, ride-hailing, public transit, and cycling—"all of those things are needed to replace personal cars," said [Robin Chase, co-founder of Zipcar].

It's a nice idea, but to actually kill car ownership, we're first going to need to have some very uncomfortable conversations about class and equity in the United States. Public transit used to be the great equalizer, but affordable private rides have become the new favorite of the middle class. When richer people give their money to private ride-hailing or carsharing companies, public transit loses money—and that's not good for cities, societies, or the environment.

[...] This dependence on ride-hailing is having the adverse effect of increasing traffic congestion, which in turn makes bus service slower and more frustrating. Besides, until cities change dramatically—i.e. more parks, fewer parking lots, less sprawl, better accommodations for active and public transit—decreased rates of car ownership likely won't benefit the environment if we're still travelling the same distances in cars.

Those living in countries that still have good or remnants of good mass transit will have different insights. It is unlikely that without good, reliable, vast public transit networks, there will be social and economic equity, assuming that is a goal. While public transit can suck, especially in the US, it is sometimes necessary to take one for the team and vote with your wallet. Unfortunately the situation is often framed as a false dilemma, that there can only be private cars or only mass transit, but not both coexisting and used for different ends at different times by the same people.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Wednesday February 14 2018, @12:02PM

    by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday February 14 2018, @12:02PM (#637562) Journal

    Paris has experimented with making the metro free when their pollution levels get too high, to encourage people to use it instead of driving. I wonder what would happen if a city like Paris made the Velib and Metro free at point of use (maybe keep a refundable deposit for the Velib) for an extended period. Would the reduction in traffic have a sufficient impact on the air quality and economy to cover the cost of operating it?

    When I was a student, in my first year I was living somewhere that was about 45 minutes walk from campus and was right at the top of a hill so not particularly fun to access by bicycle, but I could get a bus pass for around £200 that let me take busses anywhere in the city for the entire academic year (in my second year, I moved within easy walking distance of campus and the city centre, so took the bus a lot less and didn't bother with the pass). While I was living in the same city, the bus prices went up to the point where it was cheaper get a taxi for 2-3 people for most trips. When I went back last year, it was cheaper to get a taxi than to take the bus for anything other than really long trips by a single person. They'd tried deploying bendy busses and spent millions remodelling the city centre so that they could fit, and then three years later had cancelled the entire project and gone back to smaller busses because not enough people were riding the busses to make it worth having the larger ones.

    London gets good use of the tube by capping the total cost per day. Once you've made a couple of trips, the additional cost of extra ones is zero, which means that if you're using the tube or bus to get to work then the cost of using it to go out in the evening is zero. If you're using the tube a lot, then an annual travelcard has a lower cap than the pre-pay version, so it's an even better deal. This is coupled with a congestion charge that increases the cost of driving a car into the city and makes public transport a much more attractive option most of the time.

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