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Keeping Track - there is always more to discuss

With two years and 17 columns under my belt, my term as a member of the Guelph Mercury's Community Editorial Board is up. I will, however, be continuing as a monthly columnist in the paper starting in January under the title "Keeping Track".

My final editorial board column was written very casually and personally, though the published form is a bit more prim and proper, with my favourite line "I use vi to write these columns -- ten points to anyone who knows what that is" removed. So, um, who'll get the ten points?

There's always room for more discussion

This is my final column as a Community Editorial Board member, but I will continue to opine in this paper.

The last two years as a part of the editorial board have been eventful. From my first column, prodding this city to embrace the Lafarge property as the logical place for a park-and-ride transit station, to my last, prodding this city to embrace the Lafarge property as the logical place for a park-and-ride transit station, I have covered many aspects of transit and policy issues at all levels of government. My personal life, not usually the topic of my columns, has been a roller coaster of its own as my career took a dramatic change in direction while my marriage quietly ended.

Through it all, I have kept my focus on how I see the world and how I would like to see it improve. I have developed many new perspectives on the world that I may not ever have had, or expanded on to the same extent, without the opportunity to share them with you.

There is, of course, always more to discuss. Transit is my focus but far from my only concern. The computer keyboard and a word processor are among the deadliest weapons in the world and there are many issues I have yet to address.

Through subsequent column offerings, I intend to cover many of the issues I did not get to in the past two years. I expect to comment on why Linux should be your computer operating system of choice, why properly made poutine is the tastiest food ever made as well as being the only way to eat a potato, and why there is no such thing as sustainable growth.

There is, of course, also more to be said on my favourite topic. For example, because of a proposal to council, university students have been asking me recently if their universal bus pass is in danger.

And I answer: I doubt it. Nobody in his or her right mind would terminate the University of Guelph student bus pass outright, in spite of the idea being floated. The risk of 60 per cent of our transit system's ridership having to choose between buying passes and tickets or simply resorting to driving on our already overcrowded streets should make even the most anti-transit decision-makers reject any such notion.

I use transit regularly, but not exclusively. I take the bus downtown two, sometimes three, days per week and always use our city's paper tickets. I would rather use a pass, and would no doubt use the bus more if I had one. But the economics are not there for me to spend that kind of money.

To me, there is a more obvious solution, and while the appropriate venue to present solutions is the new Transit Growth Strategy Project Advisory Committee, there is no harm in presenting it here: Rather than having university students pay four times what they do now, I believe everybody in the city should have access to a university-style bus pass, good for a year instead of a month, and economical to buy. It should cost dramatically less than it does to buy passes by the month, and there should be strong incentives for everyone in the city to buy one.

So I ask the vast majority of you who are not regular transit users: what would it take for you to take the bus at least sometimes? I have made it clear in the past that I believe transit should be free and parking should always cost, though I'm enough of a realist to know that that is a bit of a pipe dream so long as even I feel a need to own a car. But that's just it, isn't it? It is all a chicken and egg problem. Nobody will use transit until it can compete with the car, and it won't be able to compete with the car until everybody uses it.

Nor will this conundrum even be addressed until we, collectively, understand the danger of continuing to focus on the car, no matter how green the fuel we put in it becomes over time. Until we learn to build our cities around the infrastructure we have rather than always trying to build infrastructure to keep up with the cities we have, sprawl will remain a vicious cycle and sustainable growth will increasingly be shown to be the myth that it is.

But all of that is a matter for a future column.

Posted at 16:10 on December 15, 2009

This entry has been archived. Comments can no longer be posted.

Transportation planning leaves a lot to be desired | columns | Keeping Track - Rethinking the commute


colin (grog.araska.org) writes at Tue Dec 15 10:56:39 EST 2009...

10 points to me, anyways.


M. Laplante (reversezone.blogdns.com/) writes at Tue Dec 15 10:56:51 EST 2009...

Vi? Luxury! I use edlin.

I think monthly bus passes and monthly parking passes should be as interchangeable as possible, either by giving bus pass holders a discount on parking and vice-versa, or making it completely free a certain number of times per month. Cities control both and it's a great TDM method, why does no city ever integrate the two and figure out the best exchange rate?


David Graham (cdlu.net) writes at Tue Dec 15 10:59:33 EST 2009...

colin, woot. :)

M,

I love this idea... I touched on it briefly two years ago in a presentation to council, but only as "bus tickets should be parking tokens". The idea of bus passes and parking passes being interchangeable is a fascinating one and I think I will dedicate an entire column to the idea early in the new year.

Thank you.


Steve Host (hostovsky.com) writes at Wed Dec 16 22:54:12 EST 2009...

David, a great final column. What's a point worth in your world? Where do I redeem? (Do I want to?).

As mentioned on Facebook, the notion of a parking pass and a transit pass as equals and interchangeable is a great idea. The idea of lowering transit pass prices is also good, but in principal, could be very revenue disruptive. It would be devastating if a lower priced transit pass and parking pass were to be used interchangeably. Questions to ponder:

a) What is the proportion of out of town commuters that use our parking garages? Would there be any incentive to use a transit pass while their car is in the lot for the day? (Unlikely given work day and commuting schedules but a spin off benefit of equal parking and transit pass)

b) Similarly, what is the proportion of consumption of our parking pass spots used by locals? If locals switch to transit, due to lower pass pricing this may have the net effect of increasing parking spot availability downtown (and reduce demand to build more garages) as more use transit, but it would be a few years before this transition would complete as people don't easily get rid of a car.

A lower (such as $15) transit pass for any users would probably be very disruptive, and in this economy it's probably not going to fly. While there may be some smart people who would see the economics of getting rid of a car, or those who are on such low income levels a $15 bus pass is no longer a luxury, both of whom may switch, in order to make up for the $45 of lost revenue per month per rider you need to double or triple bus pass users without reducing the cash fare users. As well, as this would likely increase demand, there may be capital spending requirements which would be more difficult with the reduced revenue.

A good idea may be to analyze other transit systems, those that operate with little subsidy to see if any exist with cheap pass options, and what service levels are required to get the masses to use transit.

Then we need to come up with a plan to transition Guelph's systems to these service levels.

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