Why not make mass transit always free?

In the wee-small hours of the morning of Sunday, April 29, 2007, one small event has rocked the San Francisco Bay Area and has given mass transit activists and those wishing to fight the human-made causes of global warming a golden opportunity, if they'd only recognize it.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle,

"A tanker truck carrying 8,600 gallons of gasoline had overturned at 3:41 a.m. and burst into flames on the 50-foot-high ramp connecting westbound Interstate 80 to southbound Interstate 880. Within minutes, the ramp above it -- connecting eastbound I-80 to eastbound I-580 -- collapsed in the 3,000-degree cauldron."

. . .

"The overpass was a critical component of one of the Bay Area's busiest highway interchanges, the MacArthur Maze. The network of connector ramps merges the East Bay's three major highways: Interstates 80, 580 and 880."

"The severed highway is a three-lane artery that served about 45,000 vehicles each day, and the damaged two-lane highway below it was used by about 35,000 vehicles, said Caltrans Director Will Kempton. Not since the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 has any other incident caused such major damage to a Bay Area freeway."

Source - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/30/TANKER.TMP

In response, mass transit agencies around the bay, including BART, AC Transit, San Francisco's MUNI, various ferry agencies, and even commuter rail services are planning to add service to handle the displaced auto commuters. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared the scene "a state of emergency" and committed the State of California to pay an as yet unspecified amount of money to subsidize free rides on all Bay Area public transit agencies, at least for one day (Monday, April 30, 2007).

This makes perfect sense. On the surface, the damage to the MacArthur maze only directly inhibits traveling from San Francisco, eastbound to destinations along I-580 east and State Highway 24 east for as long as the connector is damaged and needs repair. The fallen roadway blocking the southbound I-880 approach will take less time to clear, and the damage to that section is mostly superficial. Automobiles traveling southbound from destinations in the North Bay area and northwest parts of Alameda and Contra Costa counties to destinations south of Oakland will be directly inhibited for a shorter, though significant period.

These problems are magnified by the following facts that are not always as obvious:

(1) Commuters commute to their work places in one direction and return in the opposite direction. Their commute patterns will be disrupted by the damaged interchange.

(2) If some of these commuters choose not to take public transit, as many will inevitably do in our autocentric culture with mass transit being as disorganized as it is in the United States of America, they will have to choose alternate routes. Those alternate routes are already congested under normal conditions.

(3) Even without free mass transit, the current systems tend to be operating at or near capacity during rush hour. These systems will be overflowing with disrupted auto commuters.

To make matters worse, public transportation in the Bay Area is a mess, compounded by the fact that there are at least three dozen transit agencies, including BART, the Golden Gate Transit District (which operates ferries and buses in San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino, and (believe it or not) Del Norte Counties), three additional ferry services, San Francisco MUNI, AC Transit, SamTrans, Three commuter rail services (Caltrain, Altamont Commuter Express, the Capitol Corridor), VTA, WestCat, and more. Most of these services operate as separate little fiefdoms, do little, if anything, to cooperate and coordinate with each other, do not have a universal transfer system, or provide very good transfer points where riders can easily switch from one service to another or one mode to another.

The reasons why this is so are long, complex, and cumbersome. It would require several volumes of detailed historical and political analysis to thoroughly explain how things came to be the way they are now, so I won't attempt it. Needless to say, the current situation is a huge quagmire, and that is unacceptable.

In the age of global warming, increasing gasoline prices, and (though I am personally a skeptic) the concerns about "peak oil", the supposedly progressive San Francisco Bay Area is living in the virtual mass transit dark ages. The damage to the MacArthur Maze in west Oakland will only make that more obvious to everyone.

How do we fix the problem?

Listing all of the competing ideas and their political implications would also be a Herculean task, so I will limit this essay to a few ideas of my own. Of course, these ideas are not universally accepted by everyone. No doubt many will disagree with them, because they will seem to be "too radical", "too utopian", or even (*gasp*) "COMMUNISTIC" (horrors!) I am therefore going to offer them anyway, along with my rationale for each of them.

(1) Make all public transportation in the Bay Area /permanently/ free, i.e. 100% subsidized. Doing so will encourage increased use of public transit, encourage expansion of currently existing transit services, and greatly reduce automobile usage, one of the primary cause of global warming causing carbon emissions.

(2) Fund public transit through one or more of the following methods:

(a) tax corporations a public transit assessment (they couldn't operate if the workers who use transit and/or roads to commute to their place of employment didn't travel in the first place, so the choice is entirely relevant);

(b) charge a tariff on all containers entering the Bay Area / Sacramento River Delta ports (they rely heavily on our roads for the transportation of freight after it reaches the shore). I would even go so far as to suggest nationalizing all port operations anyway, but that is another discussion;

(c) raise bridge tolls and use the extra money to fund public transit. Offset the regressiveness of this proposal by allowing lower income people additional standard or itemized annual income tax deductions based on their increased costs;

(d) raise gasoline taxes and use the extra money to fund public transit (ditto the income tax offsets for lower income taxpayers). This idea was recently discussed in the San Francisco Chronicle by David Lazarus

Part 1 - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2007/04/25/BUGF3PEIUQ1.DTL

Part 2 - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2007/04/27/BUGPFPG36M1.DTL

Part 3 - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/04/29/BUGPFPG4T61.DTL&type=business

(e) Allow everyone to deduct 100% of their mass transit costs on their annual income taxes;

(f) charge all commercial parking garages and parking lots an assessment fee and use the revenue to fund public transit. Enact price controls so that commercial parking facility owners do not pass along excessive costs to the users.

Each of these suggestions is designed to accomplish two things:

(1) Discourage driving unnecessarily, and
(2) Fund public transit.

Additionally, money saved by commuters will undoubtedly be spent by those same commuters on other goods and services thus stimulating the local economy.