A narrow four lane highway is scarcely better than a wide four lane highway.
Get rid of the highways downtown if your goal is better cities. Don't just make the lanes look less safe to slow people slightly.
Get rid of the highways downtown if your goal is better cities. Don't just make the lanes look less safe to slow people slightly.
From my experience, few cities have four lane highways running through them - and if they do, they are grade-separated from pedestrians. In cities where the four lane highways are at grade with sidewalks along them, this is a different case. Those roads are hopeless and should be subject to complete removal.
But we should get rid of highways downtown. We should make all streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists (which will in turn make them safer for motorists).
Yet they continue to charge for something they want people to use, if they want to change behavior tax the people in the city and the businesses downtown for it. If they are truly economic benefits they will prove it
In Sydney, IPART (Independant Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal) recently reported that revenue from Sydney's public transport captures about 30% of the cost associated with running it.
The determined that it doesn't make sense to make PT free (fully subsidised by tax) because public transport is doesn't provide significantly enough value for all tax payers. http://www.ipart.nsw.gov.au/Home/Industries/Transport/Review...
The argument for eliminating fares is that the revenue more or less covers the cost of administration.
Also, for future, distinguish between capital and operating expenses.
That's also ignoring the different ways people would use public transport (and non-public transport) if it were free.
Granted as delays reduce people my decide to simply take more trips, but a combination of a car congestion tax, free public transit, and walk-able / bike-able city's are far more efficient say trying to stack highways.
The more people using PT, the greater the operating and capital expenses are
That does not, of course, mean you're not entitled to your opinions about the relative economic and social values of the things you're required to subsidize.
Threads like this always end up full of people who are absolutely convinced that there is only one truth, one valid perspective, one "right" thing to do. The irony inherent in that point of view goes completely unnoticed.
That's impossible. We could stop charging per use and just charge through general income taxation or maybe special taxation like car registrations or maybe sales tax. All those methods might work, but there's no way to "stop charging".