Free is cheaper

http://www.wzz.org.pl/files/files/kz%20406.pdf

Calculating the benefits of #publictransit - APTA

Investment in public transportation expands service and improves mobility,  and if sustained over time can potentially affect the economy by providing:

• travel and vehicle ownership cost savings for public transportation passengers and those switching from automobiles, leading to shifts in consumer spending;
• reduced traffic congestion for those traveling by automobile and truck, leading to further direct travel cost savings for businesses and households;
• business operating cost savings associated with worker wage and reliability effects of reduced congestion;
• business productivity gained from access to broader labor markets with more diverse skills, enabled by expanded public transit service areas and reduced traffic congestion; and 
• additional regional business growth enabled by indirect impacts of business growth on suppliers and induced impacts on spending of worker wages. At a national level, cost savings and other productivity impacts can affect competitiveness in international markets.

Global Warming - what must be done - Lokayat

...Gore focuses on individual actions, makes few serious demands on big business and endorses the largely voluntary market-based measures, such as emissions trading, that are contained in Kyoto. He, like most

mainstream environmental groups and the major Green parties, places the onus of solving global warming onto individuals, while relying on the capitalist market, nudged along by so-called “green” taxes and legislative regulations.

Such views reflect a well-meaning but utopian belief that if enough of us decide to drastically reduce our demand on the world’s resources, big business and governments will respond to “market signals” and adapt to a slow-growth or no-growth economy. It is a good thing to organise our lives to live more ecologically. But that alone will not be enough to halt the crisis.

http://lokayat.org.in/content/english-booklets/Crisis-of-Global-Warming-second-edition-2011.pdf

Taking apart the arguments of opponents of #freetransit

Les opposants à la gratuité: "C’est une grande victoire pour la gratuité des transports en commun! En effet, deux associations majeures dans le domaine des transports en commun, à savoir la FNAUT « représentant les voyageurs » et l’UTP « représentant les entreprises de transport« , viennent de se réunir pour dénoncer dans un communiqué commun la gratuité. Si ces deux associations éprouvent le besoin de conjuguer leurs efforts pour attaquer la gratuité, c’est très probablement qu’il y a le feu au lac!"

Free-Public-Transport advocates meet in Berlin - ten documents

Click here to read up on Free Public Transport

#Publictransit ten times safer than cars

Taiwan Bus

Public transportation is overall a relatively safe (low crash risk) and secure (low crime risk) transport mode. Transit travel has about a tenth the traffic casualty (death or injury) rate as automobile travel, and residents of transit-oriented communities have about a fifth the per capita crash casualty rate as in automobile-oriented communities. Transit also tends to have lower overall crime rates than automobile travel...

Real Estate numbers show demand for #publictransit is strong

Across the study regions, the transit shed outperformed the region as a whole by 41.6 percent. In all of the regions the drop in average residential sales prices within the transit shed was smaller than in the region as a whole or the non-transit area. Boston station areas outperformed the region the most (129%), followed by Minneapolis-St. Paul (48%), San Francisco and Phoenix (37%), and Chicago (30%).

#Freetransit causes cost per rider to fall

Bus Riders Union of Austin, Texas: "The primary benefit of a fare-free system is maximum system efficiency. The cost per rider, or "Subsidy per Rider," is defined as an indicator of the effectiveness with which public monies are used in achieving the system's ridership. This figure is computed by subtracting the operating (farebox) revenue from the system operating cost, then dividing by the total boardings[18]. Under a fare-free system, the cost per rider will be reduced to an all time low and possibly a future national standard.

Both the Hodge Report and the 2000 Performance Plan identify the "farebox recovery ratio" as an outdated method for judging system efficiency:

"The most commonly used measure of system effectiveness is the fare box recovery rate, a measure that cannot be computed for a fare-free system. We conclude, however, that the measure's usefulness is limited in any case and that other measures, which are more appropriate (e.g., cost per rider), provide evidence that overall system effectiveness is improved with fare-free transit. An over-emphasis on fare box recovery rates is likely to be counterproductive. Focusing on fare policy is likely to decrease transit ridership and undermine efforts to meet other system goals related to mobility and environmental concerns that rely heavily on ridership totals."[19]
"For a transit system with a dedicated tax subsidy, however, the Farebox Recovery Ratio is simply a measure of the degree to which the system is maximizing revenue, and for any public agency, maximizing revenue is equivalent to maximizing cost. Note that unproductive increases in operating costs, as long as they are recovered from the farebox, will produce an increase in the Recovery Ratio but an increase in the Subsidy per Rider as well."[20]

During the fare-free period, the cost per rider substantially dropped[21]:

Cost per Rider, April-June: 1990 vs 1989 Cost per Rider, July-Sept: 1990 vs 1989"

University of Michigan Reports That Cars are the Most Inefficient Form of Transportation

(Inhabitat) | A post-automobile world: "Sivak found that the entire fleet of light-duty vehicles would have to improve from the current 21.5 mpg to at least 33.8 mpg to match the efficiency of planes. Either that, or the vehicle load would have to increase from the current 1.38 persons to at least 2.3 persons."

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