EAP: The Magazine Archive

by Rustin Wright.

The money question.

There is a central part of all of this which I have not mentioned at all. A defining part. Funding.

The Daviesville Transit Citizens, in their research, discover a few things which shock them. And one is that fare collection is as much as a third of the cost of a transit system. And they found that in recent decades more and more people have brought up an interesting point. Drivers cost a large city billions to get their infrastructure. Frequently even including cheap or free parking downtown for residents, which can tie up as much as eight thousand dollars worth of real estate for one person to have one parking space. And school buses are large part of city budgets. And one drunk driving accident may cost fifty thousand dollars or more in city funds. While hundreds or even thousands of those would have been prevented if there had been safe, reliable, frequent service mass transit then and there.

So they made a decision. The fare on the Daviesville mass transit system would be…nothing. Riding is free. For anybody. A tax, which was fiercely unpopular in some quarters, was instituted on hotel rooms. Two dollars a day. Of which almost all would go to fund the estimated use of the system by visitors.

The classic argument against a no fee transit system is that this will encourage “excess” usage. After all, what if somebody were to just decide to ride the bus all day, back and forth, just because they have nothing better to do? But the same people who say that don’t ever seem to demand sanctions against people who aimlessly drive around a city all night when, say, recovering from a breakup. In fact, such behavior has long been considered romantic. Sexy.

Yes, when conventional systems have withdrawn fees ridership has not only increased but, in fact changed in character. When you’ve got an unlimited use pass taking the bus just two stops because there might be a rain shower or because those shopping bags are feeling a bit heavy suddenly look entirely reasonable.

Which, they realized, in fact was a form of accommodation to the disabled. And the simply fatigued.

Transit is a fundamental part of a city. Like streetlights, fire fighting, or schools. And as such, it shall be free.

by Rustin Wright. Getting more from less. As the system started to get built, the DTC found that once it was going all around the city doing so much research and building all of this infrastructure, perhaps there were other things that these same tasks could assist in as well. After all, a modern bus […]

by Tamra Spivey and Ronnie Pontiac. Perhaps some among my readers a few may have seen a group of old buildings of Mayan inspired architecture surrounding a small but elegant old library in the neighborhood of Los Feliz, California, not far from Griffith Park. I say few because the precious books on those shelves were […]

by David D. Horowitz.   “How’s it going today, David?” “Fine.” “Just ‘fine’? Normally, you say ‘fabulous’ or ‘marvelous.’ Is anything wrong?” “I’m fine—but not with fanatics bombing dozens of families picnicking in a park on Easter. My weekend was fine, but I’m not feeling totally fabulous.” “You’re referring to the bombings in Pakistan,” observed […]

by Marvin Bruce. Some towns are best seen through the bottom of a glass. No greater shame than when your hometown’s one of them. The stranger holding down a barstool at Bud’s and shaking his head, wondering why he’d come to Oil Heritage Days is one thing. The hometown girl herself is quite another. I’m […]

by Rustin Wright. Daviesville begins to build. As they begin to experiment they realize that some of how mass transit is built is artifacts of decades old problems which have long had solutions or presumptions of conditions which don’t always apply. For example, mass transit vehichles have massive, heavy, complicated roof designs. After all, back […]

by Rustin Wright. The Daviesville Transit Commission now knows, at least, that they don’t know. So step one is to start to learn. Every high school is asked to devote three classes to designing mass transit. One a day of a physics class. Another a day of a social studies class. A third a day […]

by Rustin Wright. Daviesville is a midsized city surrounded by small towns and farmland. It’s about a hundred years old. Cold winters. Hot summers. Pretty much middle class enough. Back in the late 1800’s it had a cute little trolley but nobody really thinks of that as anything but a curiosity. Like barber shop quartets […]