Free and accessible transit now

..yes lagatta. cars seem to rule today (privatisation). with transit (socialisation) on the chopping block.

Petition to Support Emergency Funding to #KeepTransitMoving!

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the safety of every person depends on safe, accessible public transit. Frontline workers in essential services, from health care to grocery stores, are relying on transit to get to work. But transit systems are running out of money because they depend on fares for most of their operating funding. We urge you to implement a transit stimulus plan that includes: 

1. Emergency funding now, so that transit agencies can continue to operate enough service for transit workers and riders to practice physical distancing and purchase adequate PPE and cleaning supplies. 

2. Permanent federal and provincial transit operations funding. 

3. Public ownership of transit, so that infrastructure investment is cost-effective and benefits the public, not private firms.

..here's a link that lists free public transit around the world.

Free Public Transport

..under canada there's this:

Locations with #freepublictransit due to Corona Virus in Canada

Cities that have rear door loading for buses during COVID19:
Vancouver
Calgary
Montreal
Toronto
Regina
Ottawa
Brandon
Victoria
Saskatoon
Edmonton
Kingston
Peterborough
St. John’s
Halifax
Hamilton
Mississauga
Guelph
ALL of BC Transit

Cities that have refused to do it:

Winnipeg

— ATU Local 1505 (@ATU1505) March 24, 2020

The battle in Edmonton for a new kind of transit

In March, cities across Canada implemented fare-free public transit and back door boarding to encourage social distancing and curb the spread of COVID-19. On March 20, the City of Edmonton moved to temporarily suspend fare collection on all Edmonton Transit Service (ETS) buses, LRT and DATS services. Now, as many cities ‘relaunch’ their economies, municipalities are starting to bring fares back, leaving the workers that have relied on transit throughout the pandemic behind.

Fighting layoffs and privatization

Since the pandemic began in March, Edmonton transit workers have faced layoffs, redeployment and high levels of anxiety on the job. Scheduling has also undergone major changes; with schools no longer being in session, ridership has decreased drastically. The City of Edmonton has argued that the decrease in ridership has created less of a need for transit workers, laying off 300 transit workers in Edmonton. At least 3,800 transit workers have been laid off nationally.

There have been major workplace changes for transit operators since fares were made free in March. Changes in the protocols and frequency of cleaning, overcrowding, and safety issues between riders and operators.

The need for cleaning services has drastically increased, with many workers being redeployed to cleaning services for buses and transit centres. At the beginning of the pandemic, the City of Edmonton briefly contracted out cleaning services. ATU Local 569 organized and won Mayor Don Iveson and city councillors to agreeing to train laid off union members to do the cleaning work of private contractors.

Overcrowding has been another main issue for transit riders and operators. As of June 9, ridership on ETS was up approximately 50 percent from pre-COVID levels from its low of 28 percent since the pandemic began in March.

In a letter to City Council, Steve Bradshaw, President of ATU Local 569, expressed deep concern about increased ridership, stating, “The simple, obvious solution the Union sees to this problem is to ramp up service levels co-incident with the increase of ridership.”

Symptoms of poverty and homelessness

In the absence of a provincial housing strategy, zero-fare transit has also allowed many people facing homelessness to find shelter on buses and in transit stations. In Calgary, the municipality planned on housing people in hotels during the pandemic, but that plan was rejected by the province in April. Many who have used Edmonton’s Expo Centre drop-in space have stated that they were unable to access services like showers and laundry and didn’t feel safe utilizing the services.

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Union support

ATU Canada has endorsed the movement for free transit and supports the move towards a fare-free system. In an interview with RankandFile.ca, Di Nino stated that making transit free is possible if governments are willing to invest in it.

“We need to be cautious of what fare-free transit is going to look like. We can’t call for it if governments are not willing, as part of a National Transit strategy, to invest money into the concept.”

In a national poll commissioned by ATU Canada, 91 percent of Canadians agree that governments have a responsibility to ensure that people everywhere can access safe, reliable and affordable transit.

“Governments have a responsibility to move to fare-free transit, and this is how we deal with mobility rights, climate change issues and so on,” says De Nino. “When we say affordable public transit, we also mean fare-free public transit.”

Local 569 president Steve Bradshaw is also in support of the concept.

“It’s an equity issue. Nobody expects you to pay for fire services or a library card – these are things that ought to be paid for out of the tax base. People ought to be able to transport themselves on our public transportation system. That’s our job as taxpayers and citizens; to provide for one another.”

ACT NOW: Ford must fully match federal transit funding

Transit agencies across Ontario have been cutting service and laying off workers because they have lost up to 100 percent of their fare revenue since March. Ontario’s largest transit agency, the TTC, is projecting a $700-million budget shortfall by the end of 2020. 

The federal government has announced it will chip in up to $1.8 billion for public transit, but will only match dollar-for-dollar what provinces put in.

This means Ontario could receive between $600 and $900 million federal dollars, with the TTC receiving between $300 and $450 million.

While the federal money is a step in the right direction, if the TTC is to avoid drastic layoffs, fare hikes and service cuts the province must step in and match the federal governemnt's commitment.

We cannot afford to leave any money on the table.

Fill out the form below to demand the Ford government fully match the federal government’s commitment to fund transit operations. This funding is the only way to ensure transit systems can recover from the pandemic without mass layoffs and painful service cuts. 

The provincial government used to fund 50 per cent of the operating costs of transit. If this government is truly committed to helping Ontario recover and helping commuters, it needs to take this opportunity to step-up and permanently fund transit operating costs. People who count on transit in Ontario deserve accessible, fast, and reliable service at an affordable price.

ACT NOW:

Please fill out the form below to send a message to the Minister of Transportation, Premier Doug Ford, and your local MPP to demand the government fund transit in Ontario.....

The 35 Jane

What a bus route reveals about race, class, and social vulnerability during a pandemic.​

At the height of stay-at-home orders in late March, when public transit ridership had dropped to as low as 14 percent of pre-pandemic levels, some residents in Toronto’s northwest took to social media to complain about overcrowding at TTC stops and on vehicles. Buses which were supposed to carry no more than 15 passengers were packed elbow-to-elbow with 50, 60, sometimes 70 people, mostly visible minorities. One of those buses, the 35 Jane, was the busiest in all of Toronto. In a heat map produced by the TTC showing overcrowded surface routes, the 35 Jane lit up like a glow stick.

When urban planner André Darmanin took the route in May, it was the first time he’d taken transit since before the pandemic. “It was standing room only, even with the seat spacing,” he recalls. Even though it was a Saturday, the visible signs of people commuting to and from work were all around him—a person in a No Frills shirt, others in work boots and construction gear. “There was a lot of yelling, complaining to the driver about the lack of social distancing on the bus.” 

With the city’s recent release of COVID-19 neighbourhood-level data, we now know that the 35 Jane cuts through many of the hardest hit areas in the city. Setting aside the outbreaks in health care institutions and looking at only community cases (the city calls them “sporadic” cases), a cluster of racialized, working class neighbourhoods in Toronto’s northwest has become the city’s COVID-19 epicentre.

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The story of COVID-19 in Toronto is actually the story of two pandemics laid atop one another. The first pandemic feels a lot like SARS. The tragic situation in long-term care homes, in particular, bears resemblance to the 2003 outbreak, when the majority of deaths in Toronto were confined to health care institutions. The second pandemic, on the other hand, feels more like a natural disaster, rapidly engulfing an entire region but only devastating areas where race and class divisions are most pronounced.

We’ve seen this familiar story before—during Hurricane Katrina, Andrew, the Chicago heat wave of 1995, and just about every natural disaster that comes into contact with racial and economic inequality. In the Miami area during Hurricane Andrew, Black residents were two-thirds less likely to evacuate than whites. When Katrina slammed into New Orleans in the early hours of August 29, 2005, most of the city’s 460,000 inhabitants had already evacuated. After the levees broke, we saw desperate people clinging to whatever personal belongings they still had, stranded on rooftops in the Lower Ninth Ward. Analysis later confirmed what we all saw on the rolling news coverage: 80 percent of people stranded on rooftops were Black. “Didn’t these residents get the same warning to evacuate as everybody else?” the line of enquiry usually went. 

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In Toronto during this pandemic, just as in New Orleans, we’ve seen that public health instructions are only as successful as citizens’ ability to follow them. Two full weeks into the pandemic, the TTC sent out the following tweet on March 31: “35 Jane: Your route has been identified as very busy before 7 a.m. on weekdays. Unless your trip is essential, please consider travelling after 7:30 a.m. to encourage physical distancing.” They also requested riders to practise physical distancing at bus stops and on vehicles. Of course, no one listened. How could they? If you’re a shift worker who leaves for work between five and seven in the morning, which a third of people in these neighbourhoods do on a regular basis, you don’t have a choice in the same way that people in the Lower Ninth Ward didn’t have a choice to evacuate to a safer location. The TTC, to its credit, announced the very next day that six extra buses would be added to the route.

But this second pandemic isn’t about public transit, per se. Once you solve the bus problem, you quickly realize that people still have to congregate in warehouses, work the cash registers, and clean emergency rooms while the rest of us work from the safety of our bubbles. People who study natural disasters call this social vulnerability—the conditions that make certain communities more susceptible to disasters than others. And it has everything to do with race, class, and economic opportunity.

INTERVIEW: THE RELEVANCE OF PEOPLE’S BUSES IN TIMES OF ECONOMIC CRISIS, MUNICIPALITY OF QAMISHLO

This report was published by the Rojava Information Center on 13 August, 2020.

Why did you decide to create the Basên Gel?

During different public meetings with the inhabitants of Qamishlo, the people had brought up which problems they faced in their daily mobility. One important problem was that the owners of the foxes (privately run minibus service, 100-200 pounds per trip), and the taxis were asking for a lot of money (1,000-2,000 pounds per trip), also due to the inflation of the Syrian pound. Once we had decided to develop a public transport system, we figured out what the route should be: it was important to connect the souke (market) in the city center with the outer parts of the city. The project started 2019, we bought 7 buses to begin with, as a first step. To promote the new bus service, we offered one week free travel, so people could get to know and understand it. Then, we introduced the ticket price of 25 Syrian pounds per person, which is very very cheap (as of today the price is 50). For children and old people the ride is free. We bought more buses, now they are 18 which serve four lines that run through the city. And we made bus shelters, to protect the passengers from rain. The people are happy about the new buses, most importantly because they can travel cheaply.

lagatta4 wrote:

Lovely to hear about such a people's initiative.

..i feel the same way

..this piece is from dec/19. will keep an eye out for updates.

Kansas City becomes first major U.S. city to make public transit free​

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This week, Kansas City, Missouri’s City Council voted unanimously to make the city’s bus system fare-free. The plan was a priority of recently elected Mayor Quinton Lucas, whose “Zero Fare Transit” proposal was touted to increase transportation equity in the region, and endorsed by the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, which services multiple cities in Kansas and Missouri.

Bus fares are currently $1.50 per ride or $50 for a monthly pass. Kansas City’s very successful streetcar, which opened in 2016, is already free.

Many U.S. cities offer free travel on certain transit lines or within certain zones, and there are entire ski towns and college towns with free bus systems, but this is the first large U.S. city to implement a universal, systemwide fare-free scheme. Several European cities have experimented with eliminating fares, and at least one country, Luxembourg, is moving forward with a nationwide free transit plan.

In the U.S., several cities including Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and Denver have floated the idea, but haven’t put forth formalized proposals.

..i have concerns about the la funding. the revenue comes from car owners only. i see working people getting to and from work. gro shopping, getting kids to school..etc. corporations, factories and businesses benefit a lot but aren't part of the funding from what i understand.    

..the author is from ottawa so i believe so.

Free bus travel for under-22s

All residents in Scotland under the age of 22 will be eligible for free bus travel from 31 January 2022.

The Scottish Government has confirmed the timetable for the roll out of the scheme, delivered in partnership with the Improvement Service, the National Entitlement Card Programme Office and Young Scot.

Legislative changes to allow the scheme to be extended from its original commitment to provide free travel for under-19s will be introduced to the Scottish Parliament this summer.

Approximately 930,000 young people will join the third of Scotland’s population who already benefit from free bus travel through the Older and Disabled Persons Free Bus scheme.

Minister for Transport, Graeme Dey said:

“It’s crucial to embed more sustainable travel behaviour from a young age if we are to achieve our world-leading goal of reducing the number of kilometres travelled by car by 20% by 2030 and reaching net zero emissions by 2045.

“We also know that young people have been disproportionately impacted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, so it’s never been more important that we support them to achieve their fullest potential. Reducing barriers created by transport costs is one really positive action we can take.....

..yes i was impressed with the amont of "free" service being offered. here in wpg they dumped the free bus.

eta: while running on a raise no tax agenda. nothing for the almost poor let alone the poor.

..the future is now! time for free transit!

Refinery that supplies estimated one-third of Lower Mainland gas runs out of crude oil

A refinery that supplies an estimated one-third of the gas to the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island said Tuesday it has stopped processing operations because it had run out of crude oil due to the Trans Mountain pipeline shutdown after last week’s catastrophic flooding.....

Try our buses for free: Delivering cost of living relief with free bus travel

The Tasmanian Liberal Government remains focussed on matters Tasmanians really care about.

To alleviate the impact of current higher fuel prices, all public bus travel across the state will be free for five weeks – starting on Monday March 28.

The Tasmanian Government will foot the bill for this initiative, which has the dual purpose of supporting family budgets and encouraging commuters to switch from private car travel to public transport.

While higher fuel prices are due to global fuel market uncertainty, we understand the impact it is causing on cost of living pressures.

The Tasmanian Government heavily subsidises Metro and other private providers of public transport around the state. At this point, we see a temporary, highly attractive measure such as free bus travel as one option the Tasmanian Government can activate to ease cost of living pressures.

Importantly, it also encourages Tasmanians who aren’t already in the habit of catching buses to give them a try and enjoy the convenience and price advantage.  Congestion is assisted by this type of successful public transport “mode shift”.

Fares will be free across all operators – school buses and general access buses – and across all fare types (adult, concession and students). The incentive starts on Monday 28 March and runs until the end of April.

Our heavily subsidised fares are already attractive when compared to the cost of running, insuring, maintaining and parking cars. However with this special incentive, this means an adult travelling on a Metro urban zone 1 trip will save $5.60 a day. Travellers from Sorell to Hobart can save $15.20 on a return trip, those travelling from Westbury to Launceston will pocket a benefit worth $22.80 and from Port Sorell to Devonport $27.80 for return trips.

Better still, bus passengers can read a book or do some work while travelling, and not have to worry about finding a place to park at the end of journey.

The Government will ask Public Transport operators to monitor and assess services during this special initiative due to the potential for significant new demand. We also thank passengers in advance for their patience if their preferred service becomes busy, particularly during peak periods.

All's fare?

Public transit budgets deserve better than farebox recovery revenue.

We need to break up with our current fare-based transit model and the pandemic has made this abundantly clear. 

Farebox recovery revenues, also called cost recovery revenues, represent the amount of a transit system’s operating costs that are downloaded to the rider through the fares they pay. As government funding for transit systems is clawed back, the reliance on farebox recovery revenues increases.

However, this reliance is itself not without impacts. The oft cited Simpson-Curtin rule provides the rough guideline that for every 3% increase in fares, ridership drops 1%. Critics of this rule argue that it is too imprecise to capture the myriad factors that influence ridership. When the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) increased cash fares by 54% in a single year in 1992,1 this move contributed to the loss of 15 million riders.2 However, it wasn’t the only factor influencing the decline. The TTC’s attempt to close their fiscal gap by putting increased financial pressure on its ridership exacerbated financial pressure that their riders were already experiencing due to the recession and made taking transit less accessible.

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Perhaps the most notable example of this risk is the Go Transit bus and rail system, operated by Metrolinx, which serves the Greater Golden Horseshoe region of Ontario. In the 2019–20 fiscal year, Metrolinx reported a cost recovery ratio of 64.3%. After the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the ratio fell to 10.1%.5 Go Transit lost 90.2% of its fare revenue in 2020–21, totalling a drop of $517.9 million from the previous year. While not all systems were hit as hard as Metrolinx, many faced significant ridership drop offs following the start of Canada’s pandemic experience. And though there have been some improvements in ridership numbers, they have not returned to pre-pandemic levels.

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But to achieve that goal we need a different funding model. Without permanent operational funding support, transit systems remain locked in a funding ratio that leaves their budgets open to significant risk and unable to provide the low- to no- barrier access to public transit that allows Canada to reach its climate targets. It’s time for Canadian municipalities to rethink their transit funding models, but they can’t do it without the support of all levels of government.

'Free public transport works': a Q&A with Boston mayor Michelle Wu

Nine months ago, Boston voters voted in a history-making mayor. The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, Michelle Wu became the first woman, first person of color, first mother and first millennial elected to run the city of Boston.

Now she is making headlines for another reason: championing free public transportation as part of a broader focus on affordability and tackling carbon emissions. This March, the city dropped the $1.70 fare for three bus lines that serve predominantly low-income areas and people of color. Amid budgetary concerns, the city will use a Covid-19 relief fund to make up for $8m of lost revenue. Ridership on the first free bus line has soared by 48%, from 47,000 to 70,000 weekly riders.

Ever since Wu entered city politics as an at-large city councilor in 2013, she has stood out as someone invested in the nitty-gritty of policy. The Harvard Law grad spearheaded policies like six weeks of paid parental leave for city employees, a plastic bag ban and restricting short-term rentals, which made Wu a target of Airbnb.

Wu’s personal experiences have made her deeply aware of gaps in civic services. At 22, Wu put her consultancy job in Boston on hold and moved to Illinois to take care of her mother, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and her two younger sisters. Barely out of college herself, she became head of the family, moving her loved ones to Boston and enrolling her sibling in the public school system.

In an interview at Boston City Hall, Wu, 37, outlined a vision for the city that centers on addressing the climate crisis......

The Transit Equity Movement Wins Their Biggest Zero Fare Victory Yet

It’s happening: the city of Albuquerque (population 1 million) is permanently eliminating public bus fares, becoming the largest US city to embrace this critical step toward racial and economic equity. A coalition headed by Together for Brothers – a community-organizing and power-building group led by and for young men of color – made the victory possible.

In an interview with Inequality.org, the group’s Co-Founder and Executive Director, Christopher Ramirez, explained that it all started in 2017 when Together for Brothers applied for a Health Impact Assessment grant.

“When we were applying for the grant, we had a couple sessions with the young men of color we were working with,” Ramirez said. “We were going through different issues, asking, ‘What are some of the biggest problems and root causes in our community?’ Without a doubt, in all the sessions, it was access to transportation.”

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Fare-free pilots and policies have been gaining traction in various other cities across the US, including Kansas City, Missouri, and the Virginia cities of Richmond and Alexandria.

In fact, this past September, NYC’s Metropolitan Transit Authority – which runs North America’s largest public transportation network – announced that they are launching a fare-free pilot program of their own.

The logic is simple: if most roads are toll-free, shouldn’t public transit be fare-free too?

Labor unions and racial, economic, and environmental justice groups have been driving this momentum. These advocates argue that transit equity is a race-and-class equity issue – and Albuquerque bus-rider demographics substantiate that.

Most bus riders are people of color, 74 percent are low-income, and 73 percent don’t have access to a car. Before the “Zero Fare” pilot, 90 percent of riders surveyed reported not being able to afford the fare at least once in the past month.

“Zero Fares has helped me save and put my money on food. Worrying less about budgeting for my weekly commute is a big stress reliever,” explained González, a lifelong bus rider who participated in a Together for Brothers survey.

Public Transit Workers

Zero Fares is also popular with bus drivers. “I want to implore you to do what you can to keep the free-fare program going,” wrote one long-time bus driver in a survey by the city’s transit agency. “To eliminate it would affect the most vulnerable in our beautiful city. To end it would put the bus drivers in harm’s way, as they are the ones on the front lines, dealing with the frustrated folks that will take out their frustration on the drivers and buses. Possibly on other passengers.”

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Eliminating fares can also reduce racial discrimination. When Albuquerque rolled out free fares for students, Ramirez said young Black men were often told they couldn’t ride the bus without paying because they “looked too old to be in high school.” He told the story of one Together for Brothers organizer, a high-school senior who was denied bus entry more than a dozen times.

Of course, the free-fare initiative faced opposition from groups like the National Taxpayers Union, which fights to slash public services across the country. But those who claimed the free-fare program would be too costly lost all credibility when a government analysis found that the initiative would actually save money.....

NYPD overtime pay in the subway went from $4 million to $155 million this year

NYPD overtime pay for extra officers in the subway went from $4 million in 2022 to $155 million this year, according to city records obtained by Gothamist.

The new spending was part of a push by Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul to reduce crime and crack down on New Yorkers sleeping in the transit system – in part by flooding the subways with uniformed NYPD officers working overtime shifts.

The influx of officers corresponded to a 2% drop in what police call “major” crimes in the subway, including robbery, rape and murder. But the most marked effect of adding officers was a skyrocketing number of tickets and arrests for fare evasion. Police officials said they count that as a success.

NYPD Chief of Transit Michael Kemper said targeting fare jumpers saves the MTA money and brings “order” to the underground.

“It’s about correcting behavior,” Kemper said “Stopping fare evaders sets the tone of law and order.”.....

..it's not the murders that brought droves of cops into the subways. 

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 But the most marked effect of adding officers was a skyrocketing number of tickets and arrests for fare evasion. Police officials said they count that as a success.

Adams, Hochul roll out subway safety plan to crack down on homeless people on trains and in stations