The San Francisco Bay area fire that collapsed the Highway 580 interchange onto Highway 880 has renewed calls for making public transportation free of charge. The day after the fire, area mass transit systems cost nothing to use as city officials attempted to lure car commuters away from the highway morass. The Bay area also periodically sponsors “Spare the Air Days,” during the high-pollution warm-weather season in which all public transportation is free. Many in the area believe that free mass transit should be a standing policy.
Anyone who travels on mass transit during these freebie days knows that a new set of commuting nightmares arises: trains are jammed, the homeless turn them into sleeper cars, kids from distant suburbs pour into the city for little or no reason and delays are rife because of squeezed capacity. Transportation of any kind shouldn’t be mindless. Even energy-efficient trains use nonrenewable resources and produce their own carbon footprint. The best ways to lure people out of their cars are with disincentives: higher tolls and registration fees, restricted traffic zones and the like. Mass-transit subsidies for the poor, the elderly and others for whom even modest fares present a hardship make perfect sense. But free transportation only encourages the sense of entitlement that has made the United States the biggest energy pig in the world.
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