Two recent news articles talk about cities experimenting with free transit. Denver7 talks about Boston, Chapel Hill, Missoula, and Olympia WA implementing fare-free programs. Here and Now talks about Salt Lake City, Boston, Los Angeles, and Kansas City trying some fare-free programs. The fare-free programs aren’t always city-wide, some are just for specific routes.
What are the goals of the programs? There are multiple goals: to help people in lower wealth areas, to help people who have been hit hard by the economic losses of the pandemic, to reduce inequities, to increase ridership, to reduce car traffic and road congestion. Here and Now notes that Salt Lake City had a 20% increase in ridership during fare-free-February.
Not mentioned in the goals of reduced congestion is that traffic-related air pollution has a big effect on health and wellbeing. Traffic-related air pollution includes nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulates, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). NOx and VOCs in the air also increase ozone levels in hot months.
All of these kinds of air pollution are bad for health, leading to more asthma attacks, lung disease, heart attacks, strokes, premature births, and other health problems. Traffic-related air pollution also hurts children’s ability to learn in school and affects their lung growth.
In addition to the decreased air pollution from fewer cars on the road, if there is reduced congestion then the remaining cars will move faster and not be on the road so long, not be stuck in traffic, and will also make less air pollution.
This seems like an interesting idea to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gases, help lower wealth communities, improve health and wellbeing, help students do better in school, and reduce fossil fuel use. Cities and counties could do this, and federal officials could increase funding for transit to help with the costs.
Please share this idea with your city or county leaders, and your federal elected officials and tell them we need clean transportation for our children’s and our health.
Read the Denver7 article here.
Listen to the Here and Now story here.
03/10/2022
