Public Transport
20090502, 172922 - 2 commentsPresently people are offered the choice of spending 1/10th of their monthly income on a bus pass to get to work, relying on the whims of the operating companies to ensure that they can actually get to work while the operating companies make vast profits. Or they can for around the same price own their own private transport, freeing them from the whims of the operating companies and allowing them greater freedom. From this it is not hard to see why people would prefer to use private transport, but for the benefit of our communities and the environment we need to make the use of public transport more appealing.
One way of making public transport a more prudent option for motorists is to make all public transport free at the point of need, presently public transport is subsidised to a great degree, whilst non-trivial the additional costs of a 100% subsidies would be proportional to the social and environmental gains.
The problem of the communities, companies and commuters been forced to bend to the whim would also be avoided, as the large operating companies no-longer see public transport as a fast track to vast profits their places would be taken up with community cooperatives able to take account of the needs of the people using the public transport within their communities.
A better idea would be to turn local (town or city) public transportation into a cooperative owned by the municipality, thus by the citizens. They could vote it as much money as necessary to cover their needs, and if they skimped, they would only be hurting themselves. State and national public transit could be managed by state and national governments, as they do with the roads. Ideally, yes, “free” transit should be available to taxpayers, having already paid the taxes funding it.
Sadly, public transportation would not alleviate my need for a car, since I live in a rural area.
Elizabeth, Thank you for your comment.
My initial feeling was that the transport should be managed by a separate cooperative independent of any local government due to my own miss-trust of local government and success within an independent cooperative. I think that in time I will be able to better judge the merits of both ideas and it may be that in different solutions are required in different areas.
I wonder if some who requires a car would feel aggrieved at having to subsidise the public transport, or if in areas where the community has decided that there is no need / practical application for public transport should be rewarded with a lower tax or a greater provision in other services?