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Ted Kheel on Green Transportation in NYC
"The most devastating damage humans have done to the environment
has arisen from the heedless burning of fossil fuels, a category
in which New Yorkers are practically prehistoric," writes David
Owen in The New Yorker (October 19, 2004). "An obvious way to
reduce consumption of fossil fuels is to shift more people out
of cars and into public transit," adds Owen.
On that score, New York has done exactly the opposite, says
Ted Kheel. "By repeatedly raising bus and subway fares - and
threatening to raise them once again - while simultaneously
spending billions to accommodate automobile users, we have shifted
people out of public transit and into cars," he adds.
In a letter to the New Yorker, Kheel writes.
I was Mayor O'Dwyer's advisor on labor matters in 1947, when
Mike Quill of the Transport Workers Union threatened to strike
for a post war raise and advocated a fare increase to support
his demand. While waiting for the Public Service Commission
to approve the fare increase from five to ten cents, the bus
rates, which were not subject to PSC approval, were increased
by one cent, to 6 cents. The experts told us at the time that
there would be a 4% drop in riding. I ridiculed the prediction.
Surely, I said, 4% of the bus riders are not going to stop using
the buses for a one cent increase. But I was wrong. Riding dropped
by exactly 4%. That was the beginning of a series of fare increases
from 5 cents to $2 at present with further increases in fares
sure to come with corresponding decreases in ridership.
These counter productive measures have taken place under a measure
Governor Thomas E. Dewey persuaded the State Legislature to
adopt. Popularly characterized as the Self-Sustaining Fare,
the law requires the Transit Authority to increase the fare
whenever expenses exceed revenues. As a direct result of that
law, subway riding is now down by over 50% from the high point
of subway usage in 1949. And, correspondingly, automobile riding
has gone way up, clogging our streets with traffic, delaying
the transfer of goods and people, polluting the air, and imposing
a cost on the city's dwellers of monumental proportions.
What is also self evident is that the cost of serving automobile
users is far greater than the cost of serving subway riders.
Created by Congress in 1954, The Highway Trust Fund alone has
poured billions into Interstate Highways. And New York has added
millions more.
Simply as a matter of equity, we should charge automobile users
for the infrastructure they are provided at public expense and
reduce the cost of riding the subways. Just as raising the fare
has caused riders to switch to automobiles, reducing the fare
will surely shift more people out of cars and into public transit,
as Mr. Owens proposed for a solution. The Self-Sustaining Fare
that has increased the fare by forty times, reduced subway riding
and switched people to cars should be repealed as self defeating.
Simply advocating mass transit won't do the trick. In a free
society, people should have the right to choose. But if they
do, they should pay the price their choice imposes on the public.
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