“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.
Elevators aren’t a public good either, but they differ from transit in several crucial ways. Most importantly, elevators are provided by building owners to attract potential tenants. The only alternative to elevators would be stairs, and since most people won’t climb several floors of stairs, tall buildings without elevators would be mostly empty. A landlord who charged for each elevator ride would lose tenants to building owners who offered them for free.
Transit serves cities with multiple owners in competition with automobiles, bicycles, and other forms of travel. Over just about any length of trip, at least one of those other forms of travel is superior to transit in terms of time and cost.
In short, while skyscrapers couldn’t exist without elevators, cities can and do exist without transit. The elevator analogy would work only if entire cities each had one owner, those cities competed with one another for residents and businesses and if there were no alternative means of travel, other than walking, in those cities.
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Nor is transit a “fundamental human right,” which is akin to saying “transit riders have a right to take money from everyone else so they can get around.” Normally, a “human right” such as free speech and freedom of religion means a right not to be interfered with by government. Too many people like Prince want to twist it into a right of the government to take from some people on behalf of others.
It would be reasonable to argue that freedom of mobility is a fundamental human right. But automobiles provide far greater mobility at a far lower cost than transit. While no one has the right to take an automobile from someone else, we should have a right to travel in our mode of choice provided we are willing to pay the full cost of that choice, just as the religious pay for their choice of church, synagogue, mosque, or other house of worship.
Why should transit riders be held up above all other travelers? In the United States, only 5 percent of workers commute by transit, and only about 1 percent of all passenger travel is by transit. And apparently, it is only transit riders who are clamoring that their rides should be free.
Most of this book is devoted to fifteen case studies of free or discounted transit in cities around the world. But the reality is that transit ridership is declining, and not just in the United States. It’s declining partly because the low-income people who Prince and his co-authors say need free transit have found better ways of getting around.
If transit agencies need to give away their services just to attract riders, that’s a signal their services aren’t worth anything. If it is low-income travelers who are of concern, then it would be better to give them transportation vouchers that they can use on any form of travel than to spend more billions on a dying industry.
Might as well say it before the resident tard does:
Roads aren’t subjected to existing on a profit or loss basis.
Your agenda is political, not economic :$
“Elevators aren’t a public good either, but they differ from transit in several crucial ways. Most importantly, elevators are provided by building owners to attract potential tenants. The only alternative to elevators would be stairs, and since most people won’t climb several floors of stairs, tall buildings without elevators would be mostly empty. A landlord who charged for each elevator ride would lose tenants to building owners who offered them for free.”
This has been historically true of many rail services, which were provided in order to create access to land for building houses. The classic example in the UK was the Northern metro line in London.
Governments maintain upkeep of public goods, often the charge nominal additional fees, national parks do it.
Why isnt’ transit viewed with similar outlook. The problem is transit may be essential in some places. But the agency with a little sense wouldn’t employ technology so prone to break down and constant maintenance demand.
The funny thing is, by Prince’s logic parking should also be considered a “public good”.
Also, contrary to Prince’s analogy, elevators are in most cases club goods. That is, they are excludable but generally non-rivalrous — at least in the absence of congestion.
In practice, most buildings that contain elevators are privately owned. The elevators are maintained as a service to tenants (or their clients, in the case of commercial buildings). And there are often mechanisms for recovering the costs of the elevators from tenants — for example through rents, which in part reflect the value of the services provided by the elevators.
“Fundamental human rights” are negative rights, meaning they only requires others to abstain from interfering with your actions. Positive rights cannot be fundamental human rights because they require others to provide you with a good or service. This requirement involves the initiation of force against another and the violation of their individual liberty and private property rights. It’s clear to see that an expensive government choo choo train is not a fundamental human right.
I don’t know…..If we took half the elevators out of commission we’d probably lose a lot of weight.
JTA’s elevators and escalators are free. They’re also broken down and unavailable for long periods of time.
”
The funny thing is, by Prince’s logic parking should also be considered a “public good”.
” ~MJ
Or gasoline?
So….in their attempt to get higher income people out of their cars; they’ve shifted transits focus away from what used to be their primary customer base. The chief demographic transit was originally meant for, the Poor, the Handicapped, the elderly and children. Paratransit services have largely outmoded collectivist transit approaches of taking care of the elderly and handicapped by offering essentially door to door service. Vans can carry children to their afterschool destinations and back. And programs aimed at helping poor people buy a car or get around using automotive means are statistically shown to better alleviate poverty, because once you have an [access] automobile you’re no longer locally geographically bound to a career and are free to pursue work or even a new residence elsewhere….which is what municipalities fear most; people fleeing. The automotive revolution and the building of the interstate allowed people to leave the geographic constraints of cities and their tight political control for better places. Transit is merely the methodology of urban planners to re-acclamate people back to urban appreciation. They failed. So their next option is to hire more planners and this time around, use the power of the law to craft the next “Liveability” standards.
Attracting high income earners to take transit is meaningless, for one even if more of them rode transit there aren’t enough of them to patron the system in a financially sound manner and they cant discriminate the fares be higher just because that person just so happens to be a wealthier person. Second, Attracting high income people means building transit infrastructure out in high income areas where population density tends to be smaller, patronage size is spread over a vaster geographic area and cost of consolidating such a huge area is far too much for what patrons they obtain….ALL OF WHICH again overlooks the individuals mentioned above. Which only alienates the people further, makes the transit agency look more incompetent, devises political regimes to formulate even greater ways to milk the taxpayer for expanding the program that they said would be a positive thing.
Case example of the Law of Unintended consequences.
Thanks Metrosucks, you’re very lucky that you don’t have to work for living :$
Positive rights cannot be fundamental human rights because they require others to provide you with a good or service. This requirement involves the initiation of force against another and the violation of their individual liberty and private property rights.
This. Positive rights necessarily require part-time slavery.