Public transit is the answer

Re: Hume: Controlling car use the key to public transit, March 4


The issue is mobility. There are private solutions (e.g. car) and public solutions to mobility (e.g. bus, subway, LRT). The question is: where should we allocate our resources?

Private solutions are incredibly costly. The average industrial income for a Canadian is about $46,000. A typical car will cost $11,000 per year (lease payments, insurance, gas, parking, repairs, etc.). With the private solution, this means that a quarter of your income is allocated towards mobility.

Put another way, if you work 9 to 5, the first two hours spent sitting at your desk are used to pay for the 4,000 pounds of steel sitting in a parking lot.

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But imagine if we aggregated our individual mobility expenditures and spent just one-tenth of these resources on building a world-class public transportation system instead? Imagine if what we built was so good, you wouldn’t even need the expense of owning a car?

What would you spend your money on instead? Or maybe you would decide to work less and spend more time with your family?

Politicians of Toronto: Please save us money. Invest in public transit.

Robert Shirkey, Executive Director, Our Horizon, Toronto