“We don’t pay for elevators, do we? And rightly so. The very idea is preposterous. Yet the public transit system plays the same role in the city, only sideways,” says James Prince, co-editor of Free Public Transit. Urban transit, Prince argues, is a “fundamental human right and public good.”
No, actually, it isn’t either a human right or a public good. A public good is something from whose benefits no one can be excluded. National defense is the classic example; arguably, storm sewers are a public good as well. But it is easy to exclude people from transit. Continue reading
