A Savings for Taxpayers and an Environmental Boon

The evidence is conclusive: Riding on Mass Transit goes down as fares go up and riders switch to automobiles. That was part of the report that Ted Kheel wrote in 1958.

As part of his "Report on the Inseparably Interlocked Problem of Transit & Traffic, and a Suggested Solution," Kheel wrote:

New York now faces so critical a transit and traffic crisis, that, unless curbed by prompt action, it will drive thousands of businesses into bankruptcy or out of New York and seriously undermine the City's entire economy. A major part of the blame for what has happened and especially for what is yet to come must be placed at the door of the self-sustaining transit fare and its inevitable by-product, traffic congestion.

"I spoke in my report of the traffic strangulation the fare increases were creating.," says Kheel. "There was no consideration at the time of the impact of automobile transportation on the production of carbon dioxide, now likely the main cause of climate change in the New York Metropolitan Area."

The congestion, the pollution and the flight to the suburbs of an affluent middle class are "surely more costly than the revenue fare increases provide," says Kheel. "It is simply a matter of who carries the burden, the bus and subway riders or the taxpayers in our system of progressive taxation."

Kheel believes that a free mass transit would save the taxpayer money. And, even more significantly, might allay some of the problems - environmental and economic --caused by massive traffic congestions.

Says Kheel, "Our subway system is the greatest in the world. It is being grossly under used."




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