"On July 1, the entire country of Estonia will create the largest 24/7 free public transit zone in the world."

Tallinn, 2016.

During the three decades I've traveled in Europe, it has been understood that $8-per-gallon petrol discourages excessive auto use, and that subsidies for public transportation achieve more than one purpose.

"Like roads, mass transit is not self-sustaining: both roads and mass transit require a combination of user fees and other government funding to pay for operations, maintenance, and expansion," The Hamilton Project authors wrote in a May 2015 paper titled, "Racing Ahead or Falling Behind: Six Economic Facts About Transportation Infrastructure in the United States."

Dare we mention quality of life?

Liberating all transit would cost the Paris region an extra €6 billion annually, according to one estimate. But the potential upsides are equally enormous: cleaner air, reduced healthcare costs, plummeting carbon emissions. There’s also the possibility that free-transit-for-all would make Paris so pleasant and easy to live in that it becomes irresistible to investors.

As usual, Estonia explores the periphery of the sensible. If it weren't for the complexity of the language, we'd retire there. Are tutors available?

Estonia Will Roll Out Free Public Transit Nationwide, by Feargus O'Sullivan (CityLab)

... On July 1, the entire country of Estonia will create the largest 24/7 free public transit zone in the world, one that will stretch across its entire territory. That will make it feasibly possible (if complicated) to travel by bus from one end of this 1.3 million-strong Baltic nation to the other without paying a cent.

snip

The implications of such a model are vast. Free buses for all could lead to a massive democratization of mobility for Estonians, meaning that travel costs paid at point of use need no longer be factored into many people’s monthly budgeting. And while outsiders might assume the government’s costs to be prohibitive, it won’t actually be that expensive to implement.

That’s because Estonia’s public transit already gets extremely generous subsidies. The state-owned railway operator Elron, for example, will get a €31 million boost from taxpayers next year. The rural bus routes due to go free, meanwhile, are already subsidized to up to 80 percent of cost as it is. Making them entirely fare-less should only cost around €12.9 million ($15.2 million) more—not a vast amount for even a small country such as Estonia.

Getting rid of ticket sales and inspections, meanwhile, will eliminate some overhead—and also cut down on delays. I couldn’t turn up any figures on the actual cost of charging for Estonian bus travel, but on larger, more complex networks such as New York’s MTA, it can reach 6 percent of all budget. When only 20 percent of the bus network’s costs are being recouped from fares, it’s easy to see how maintaining a ticket sale and inspection system can come to seem like a burden worth shedding.

But why is Estonia going so big on free transit now? At its root, this is a form of fiscal redistribution. Rural Estonians, who comprise 32.5 percent of the country’s total population, are generally older and less affluent than their urban counterparts; younger country-born Estonians have increasingly moved to cities and to other countries. The rural parts of this former Soviet state, which joined the E.U. in 2003, thus rely heavily on decent functioning public buses. Making this system free to use for all might help slow this rural population drain.

Wake up, Bob: Two-way street conversions for 400K ... now get the hell out of the way.

Jeff penned this yesterday as a Facebook comment, after someone asked (paraphrased), "What’s the price tag for two-way street conversions, and how much is the city’s share?"

The answer has been repeated numerous times already, most often by Jeff, but periodically by city officials standing in front of real-life, dozing council members.

It bears a 41st hearing today owing to the predictable reluctance of New Albany’s Unreconstructed Caesarites to pay attention when it was said the first 40 times.

How’d they ever make it through school?

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New Albany currently has access to an approximately $2 million federal grant specifically earmarked for two-way reclamation. To capture those funds we need a 20% local match, about $400K. That's roughly what we've been spending on sidewalk repair each year. Noteworthy is that the entire two-way project would occur in the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) eligible area. Those are the funds we usually use for sidewalk repair each year and street projects are an eligible use of those federal funds as well. They are replenished by the feds every year. In other words, there's at least a chance we could pay for the whole two-way thing without spending local money at all.

As was also mentioned, several of us were told for years that upgrading the traffic signal electronics would be the single largest expense within a two-way project. Via the federal stimulus a few years ago, though, New Albany received about $900K to upgrade them and did. Those new metal boxes at a lot of the intersections? That's what those are-- the upgraded electronics already in place. There may still be some signal expense in terms of programming them, but I was told by city planners that the $900K covered the bulk of what was needed.

From there, we have to figure out exactly how to create the lanes themselves. Before the City decided to spend a lot more on a median and extras, there was a low build, low cost option pitched for Main Street a few years ago that included exactly what you'd expect: paint. Two auto lanes, two bike lanes, and two parking lanes for the whole length of the street between Vincennes and State. Estimated cost: $5,500.

That's not a typo.

The short answer is $400,000. That will get us an additional $2 million which should be more than enough to cover the whole thing. Since the $2 mil is federal transportation money, it can't be used for jobs creation or other activities, although it's certainly arguable that creating a more business/neighborhood friendly street grid is related to that. If anyone wants to go down the spending comparison road, it might be helpful to look at the $9 million aquatics center, which will impact far fewer people only during limited parts of the year and is being paid for with local money we actually could use for multiple purposes.

But, then, we've already said that 30 or 40 times.