People Places Transit Reform

This page is about supporting transit policies that help people live healthier, happier, and wealthier lives.

Recognize that the laws of economics cannot be revoked and thus realize that giving away free parking, free highways, and free roads subsidizes automobile travel over other forms.

• See The High Cost of Free Parking to grasp how scientific research shows how giving away free parking leads to high costs. Quite simply, the idea that there is even something called "free parking" is a lie--a lie that harms poor people the most, who have to pay for the parking of fairly wealthy people in the cost of goods, services, and in many cases housing costs.
• See Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier to understand how policies that restrict the supply of housing actually drive the price of that housing up when there is great demand. In many cases, current property owners do not want competition and use their political influence to thwart the construction of more housing supply at every turn. Who suffers? The poorer people in society, whose budgets are often strained to get even basic housing. Quite simply, the idea that many well-meaning "historic preservationsts" and "environmentalists" devestate cities by opposing development everywhere. (See also David Owen's Green Metropolis.)
• Support mandatory pricing of automobile travel through simple, in-place mechanisms (like the gas tax) that require drivers of automobiles to pay their way--to pay the massive costs of road construction and upkeep as well as the massive health costs due to massive death and injuries due to automobile traffic and wars. To think that higher driving costs would "hurt the poor" is absolutely foolish--many poor people don't own cars at all, but are billed for the costs of roads through higher costs for goods and services. Further, many poor or even middle-class people are actually much better ahead economically by not owning a car at all. Simply put, make drivers' pay the cost of their driving and a bit more to support public transit. Many suburbanites are ignorant of this economic reality: in their irrational devotion to the car, they use any means to justify massive subsidies and pretend to "care for the poor" by giving away massive subsidies to automobile travel (and free parking)--when in truth, these suburbanites only want to support themselves.

  FACT: Drivers Pay Less Than Half the Cost of Roads.

• Support the idea of The Option of Urbanism--the choice that people can have to walk to frequent destinations and to live in a way that doesn't require automobile dependence.
• Stop the lethal war on pedestrians and bicyclists that literally kills people for choosing another form of transit instead of cars. This criminal behavior goes unpunished, unfortunately, in many states.
• Help people understand the deadly effects of living in rural areas.

Your idea? Please email johndecember@gmail.com with the subject line places-people.