An idea for free public transit within DC

Alan sends a link to this article, Fare-Free Public Transit Could Be Headed to a City Near You. He writes:

Why can't a variation of this be done here in the nation's capital? The loss in revenue could be offset with either (a) an increase in thesales tax (b) re-routing a sizable portion of parking fine and parking meter revenue to the public transit system (thereby allowing drivers to subsidize riders) (c) increasing parking meter costs (either by decreasing the time that money can buy or increasing the cost per "x number of minutes" (15?) increment). I'm sure alternate financing schemes could also be discussed but these seem least likely to run afoul of Congress.

My response:

This idea is in my big transportation paper, which I have to rewrite before I am willing to send it around. There are a couple issues. First I propose a transit withholding tax as done in certain parts of Oregon. Depending on the rate, that could generate about $200 million/year.

Second, the cost of providing free surface transportation within DC (for various reasons it's too difficult to try to do this underground, not mechanically, but because how the system is funded) would be about $80 million/year more beyond the current subsidy (that is based on my estimate of revenue from farebox). It will go up as streetcar service is added.

Third, you have to figure out if you get that much value for the $80 mil. I say no. That it is more important to spend that kind of money on creating the separate blue line subway from Arlington through Georgetown and the center city, to provide redundancy and added capacity.

Four, however, and this is for the revision because I only figured this out the next day after I finished the paper, the thing to do is make intra-neighborhood transit free.

I propose three service levels of public transit (and this is merely an extension of the structure laid out in Arlington's Transportation Plan, Transit Element 2nd Draft, plus thinking about BART versus and vis-a-vis the intra-San Francisco MUNI system), primary, railroad, subway, major bus lines that are intra-regional, secondary, high capacity transit that is primarily intra-city with regional connectivity, and tertiary, which could be high-utility intra-neighborhood transit services which could take people to and from commercial districts and shopping places, and include delivery, and take people to bus, streetcar, and subway transfer points, and would be more jitney like, at night would drop people off anywhere within the route area, etc. This would also get people to subway stations without their having to drive.

I think that this kind of transit service is worth providing for free. I haven't estimated the cost, but it would be a lot, could be up to $30 mil./year or even more. But it would allow for car-free living, or at least vastly reduce the need for a car for intra-city mobilty.
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Rob Goodspeed writes about jitney-like bus service in Cape Town, South Africa in the blog entry "The Minibus Solution," and he mentions a tome which looks to be pretty interesting. Rob writes:

Like a train system (which Cape Town also has), the buses run along fixed routes named after their final destination. Each bus is a small Toyota van with customized seats designed to maximize the vehicle’s occupancy.... The vans will stop to pick up or let off passengers at any point on their route, although bus stops and major landmarks like the supermarket are common points. The routes terminate at government-built transit depots. ...

Two South African urban scholars have recently examined urban transport in that country in a text titled Rethinking Urban Transport After Modernism: Lessons from South Africa. Although the book is expensive to purchase in the states, Google Books has a preview with many pages from it. They conclude that current public transportation systems are not sustainable and urge a paradigm shift in the way transport is conceived, including:

- creating a decentralized pattern of accessibility to decentralize opportunity in the city (versus the modern, radial model centered on a downtown)
- create pedestrian friendly environments
- link transport to high densities of housing and land use- design complete streets with a full range of uses in mind, not simply roads for cars
- and link transportation planning with urban design and urban planning.
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Whereas I am not sure that I fully agree that it is sustainable to have "1,000 flowers bloom," with a focus on decentralization, especially given the arguments for recentralization of housing, commerce, and transit is proposed in Cities in Full, the ideas dovetail with this idea of creating high-value transit service within neighborhoods, recognizing the need for a rebalancing between the center of the city and neighborhoods, just as we propose a rebalancing towards walkability, bikability, and transit whereas the mobility system today is overfocused on serving automobility.

Rob writes about the cost structure in South Africa being much lower (and this is true of South America too, where many public transit systems have buses run by the driver-operators), but the idea of that kind of intra-neighborhood transit can work in DC neighborhoods as most places within neighborhoods are located within one mile of major transit service, either high-frequency and high-use bus lines or the subway, and eventually the streetcar.

NOTE THAT EVEN I GET BORED WRITING ABOUT TRANSIT ALL THE TIME, it's just that urban form, healthy neighborhoods, successful commercial districts, and efficient transit are intertwined.

Such are the "technologies" that make center cities successful, vibrant, and competitive for the 21st century.