From My Bottom Step

One of my spies tipped me off. What can I say? They’re everywhere!

In this instance, it was to let me know that a local talk-show personality had been going on about public transit in reaction to a London Free Press editorial by Paul Berton. So I browsed over to the ‘archive’ of the Chapman program that’s on the AM980 website and listened to the 2009/03/10 segment.
“There’s an interesting editorial in the London Free Press today, London’s largest English-language daily newspaper by Paul Berton… It’s called ‘Point Of View.’ And the headline says ‘Lavishing TLC On LTC would benefit our city’ and Paul talks about the need to put more money into public transit…”

You can read Mr. Berton’s editorial by clicking on the graphic (for now; don’t blame me if they re-point the URL to an ad after a few short days).

Chapman doesn’t take issue with Paul Berton’s claim that the LTC is “very efficient” because Larry Ducharme says that it’s “one of the best-run operations of it’s kind in the province” and Chapman thinks that “Larry Ducharme’s a pretty smart guy.”

Referring to the Berton editorial, Chapman says: “You’re saying to me on the one hand is that public transit is a good idea because it saves the price of… you don’t have to buy a car… saves the cost of parking, repairs and insurance. Never mind the roads because the buses are tough on the roads too. But, I guess one bus is probably less harmful to the road than the 20-30 cars… I don’t know about that. Take roads out of the equation for a second.”

Let’s not. Because extending roads and building new roads and maintaining the current roads are hugely expensive to the taxpayer. A lot more expensive than most people can even begin to realize, and a lot more expensive than most automobile drivers want to admit. A public transit vehicle may be tougher on a roadway than a single automobile, but it has the potential of carrying a lot more people. On a per-capita basis, they have much less of an impact on the infrastructure.

Chapman says: “The LTC and Mr. Berton here are calling for serious increases in the amount of money that the city gives to subsidize the service. In other words, to pay part of your ticket to get on the bus.”

As Chapman has often pointed out, the government is us. It’s not some foreign entity. We are paying for public transit whether it’s by putting coin into a fare box or because some of the taxes that we’re paying to all three levels of government are transferred to LTC. The crux of the matter is whether or not all taxpayers should financially support public transit (whether they use it or not) and by how much. 58% of the cost of providing public transit in London currently comes from tax revenues. For many years it was less than that because the City of London provided much less of a share than most other municipalities.

He then claims: “They don’t subsidize your car. If you want to drive your car you pay the full pot. And that’s okay, I understand that. I’m prepared to pay the full pot to drive my car. I’m prepared to do that.”

What nonsense! Every time that a driver uses a public roadway they’re being subsidized. Every time that they park that car on a public roadway or in a municipal parking lot or parking garage, they’re being subsidized. Every time that a driver operates their vehicle that spews pollution into our atmosphere and creates untold costs to our health (and subsequently impacts our health system negatively) without ever getting a bill for doing so, they’re being subsidized.

Chapman thinks that those of us who use public transit should have to put more into the fare box to pay for a growing demand for the service. Presumably so that people like him who don’t use the service (“I haven’t been on it in years”) can pay less for it out of their taxes at the same time that their automobile use is being greatly subsidized. And how much does he think a user should have to put into the fare box for each bus trip?

“Make it 5 bucks. Five dollars to take the bus. Is that too much money? Well, stop and think about it. If that’s what it costs… and let’s say for the sake of arguement… we’re going to do a little pretend math here because we don’t have the numbers… but we’re going to assume that it’s $2 to take the bus… and if that’s 58% so that’s 60% for the sake of arguement… so that means you divide 6 into that and that gives you 12… so, what’s the actual cost? 3 bucks, for the sake of arguement. 3 bucks. So why isn’t the fare 3 bucks?”

Having to dip into your pocket every time that you get onto a bus is a disincentive, for many reasons. And it’s inequitable. Did you know that many people who live on a sub-poverty disability pension don’t get any allowance for transportation? Those disabled adult users pay $81/monthly for a pass if they can afford it, else they must use $1.90 single-trip tickets and restrict the amount that they travel; whereas an able-bodied young UWO student gets unlimited LTC travel for only $13.64 monthly.

“Public transit supporters say we all should be taking public transit, we all should be on that bus. Leaving our cars at home or, better than that, selling our cars, not having a car at all.”

Anybody can spout off about anything they want to, but that doesn’t make it true. I’m as big a public transit supporter as you’ll ever meet, but Chapman’s description doesn’t accurately describe me.

Sure, in an ideal world nobody would need to own their own private gas guzzler. But that’s not going to happen in my lifetime. For now I’d be happy to see a cashless public transit system that was adequately funded from tax revenues (returned to the municipality from the senior levels of government) and meaningful disincentives to reduce the use of cars by people who really could do without them if only they’d be willing to try.

“The thing that troubles me about calls for funding for public transit … There seems to be a lack of a clear picture of who the customer is. Is the customer the individual who cannot afford personal transportation? Or is the customer someone who for other reasons are trying for other reasons to get out of their personal transportation?”

Actually, Mr. Chapman, the picture is very clear. The customer is as many of us who can possibly use public transit. It’s in all of our best interest to make it work as well as it possibly can. Unless you have a vested interest in seeing that not happen.

“And here’s another thing. There’s a number of people at City Hall who don’t want to see any more parking available downtown… they think it will push people into public transit… It’s the lefties again, it’s their mantra. We should … public transit … we should be putting more money into public transit, people shouldn’t be driving their cars downtown. That solves the problem and we don’t need more parking.”

So it’s a massive left-wing conspiracy coming to get us? Or maybe Mr. Chapman is just shilling for the developers who buy advertising spots on his talk show.