Start Decongestion Pricing For Transit, Too
So says Peter Smith, bicycle and transit blogger from San Francisco - but mostly a bicycle blogger. There are lots of reasons it makes perfect sense. Get it done.
Horse puckey!
Listen, there is a lot we can do with pricing to try to make our transit systems better. The rationale for charging decongestion pricing for transit is different in some ways than charging for decongesting our roads, but the end result is the same - better transit with more people riding transit.
Of course, that depends on getting the pricing correct. We have two world class universities in the area - at least - and though they both do a lot of worthless work for the government, they might be able to help us do something useful, too. I’m more than confident that profs and students from these institutions can help us get pricing right. And the Bay Area has lots of residents who I’m sure are more than capable of figuring out a decongestion pricing scheme for transit - even the non-econ-inclined among us.
Cynics might suggest that just because I generally abhor the idea of motorized transport that this scheme is just a way to get more people on their bikes. Not so - though, that is a distinct possibility. I’m rather a more long-term thinker, so I don’t fit in well with the majority of planners — I’m actually concerned with what things look like 50 and 100 years from now — this means that I’m not so concerned with short-term marginal shifts in traffic mode shares, I’m more interested in the overall health of our city, which includes the health of our transportation systems.
We need to improve the transit experience drastically. Those who claim that people will stop taking transit due to small fare increases fail to account for all the people who have already stopped taking transit because the overcrowded conditions are unpleasant or unbearable.
Technology can, and often has been, a disaster. Case in point: the car. But technology can be used for good, too. Here in Silicon Valley we have these things called computers - we should use them to do the heavy lifting to figure out what pricing schemes will work. We have some of the top transit and transportation experts in the world right here in our own backyard - we should talk to them.
Don’t be afraid of change. Don’t be afraid of technology. Embrace change as the only constant in life, and use technology as a tool — and push towards a better future - with decongestion pricing for transit.
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