Sunday, January 28, 2018

Oil trolls terrified of #freepublictransport #freetransit

Cities are turning to fare-free public transit to fight pollution. Capitalists are panicked. What if it catches on? In Paris they managed to stop it. But in Korea, they are having trouble. They dug out this old canard about free buses reducing walking.
Can Free Public Transit Fix South Korea's Smog Problem? - The Atlantic: "The lure of “free,” the report implied, attracted the “wrong” crowd—the “right” crowd, of course, being wealthier people with cars, who aren’t very sensitive to price changes … Free subway rides entice people who would otherwise walk, not people who would otherwise drive."
Studies consistently show that this is false. That public transit users actually walk more.