From advocate to nag

One of the hardest parts about supporting transit is traveling to a destination with other people. With one companion who knows me well, it doesn't feel like nagging to suggest taking transit over driving. Once the number in the party reaches three, though, or another variable like transporting a potluck contribution comes into play, I inevitably get the "let's just drive" interjection. When the trip obviously favors transit, such as a destination downtown, I can often dismiss the suggestion. It's the trickier ones like tonight--subway downtown and commuter train beyond that, where I really have a tough time defeating the loathsome auto. I can't say transit is faster, or more convenient, and the argument that we'll spend more quality face-to-face time together and do something in line with my most impassioned beliefs seems trite. The biggest problem isn't carrying the potluck food or making part of the journey a walk, it's the poor experience of taking the Boston subway, and spending about $8 dollars each each way for a trip that takes twice or thrice as long as a traffic free drive. We will rather drive and likely pay about 40 miles * $.50 / mile (where really only the $.10 mile gas price is obvious) for a total of $20 instead of $8 * 6 for three people, totaling $48 or $80 if you include the two other people now riding with us instead of taking trains. Should I be concerned that we're traveling as a 5 person carpool instead of using transit? In terms of pure CO2, probably not, but in terms of the transportation economic model I'm very concerned.

Transit needs group discounts just as you get by carpooling. Using commuter trains for regional transit should allow discounts when combining modes--here subway with train. But the system expects commuters, and thus only rewards those that buy a monthly pass and use subway and train twenty times a month. Why don't we start comparing car trips to multi-modal transit trips between the same points and ensuring that the transit is less than the car? Create a system that pulls tolls from cars and funds transit so we can manipulate the costs to favor the transit. Then see what happens with a level playing field.

Next time you drive somewhere, or take transit, calculate how much more expensive transit is than the cost per mile in gas (or use the true cost per mile if you are more inclined to think that way, which most people aren't.) If the one-way transit trip is $2 more than the one-way auto trip, ask if it would be better to pay a $2 auto toll to even it out or reduce the transit cost by $2 and funded by a progressive tax, like income tax, or a pollution tax--namely a carbon tax. I would love to start with a carbon tax at the gas pump that would make the auto trip $1 dollar more expensive and fund the transit to make it $1 dollar less expensive. From there we could keep increasing the tax until the transit was clearly less than the fuel costs of driving. You can call this tax regressive and unfair to the poor, but making the poor take transit isn't unfair if you fund your transit adequately. We have to start reducing car use somehow, and the best shot will always be going after people's wallets. I wish none of my friends could afford to drive, and that they preferred a transit system well-funded by the tax dollars of wealthy drivers, who increasingly found driving a luxury tax they wished to avoid.