Pay attention, local theoretical Democrats: "Public Transportation Is a Human Right."

It's a review of James Wilt's book Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars?: Public Transit in the Age of Google, Uber, and Elon Musk.

Everyone in the upper echelons of municipal government should read it.

They won't, though -- will they?

Imagine how far ahead of the curve we'd be if Jeff Speck's street grid plan for downtown had been implemented in full instead of gutted.

Sad. So very sad.

Public Transportation Is a Human Right, by Paris Marx (Jacobin)

For a century our cities have been transformed by the car industry, making way for drivers at the expense of cyclists and pedestrians. A renewed movement for urban public transport is pushing back.

After decades of building new roads and expanding highways, commuters are still losing more time in traffic and their commutes keep getting longer. The evidence shows that adding more roads doesn’t relieve traffic; it simply encourages people to drive more.

That reality seems to finally be sinking in with a growing segment of the American public. There simply isn’t the room to fit more cars on congested roads, and that’s leading to renewed investments in other forms of mobility.

In recent years, ballot measures have been proposed around the United States to expand public transit and other non-auto transportation — and they’ve been very successful. Los Angeles’ Measure M passed with the support of 70 percent of voters in 2016 and will funnel $120 billion into transport projects over the next forty years. It’s not alone. In 2019, nearly 90 percent of transit ballot measures were successful, continuing a growing trend over the past few years of residents voting to raise their own taxes to fund better transit.

But not everyone’s excited about such a future of public transit projects. For the past decade, the tech industry has been adamantly pushing technological enhancements to cars that they promise will solve the congestion, the carbon emissions, and the deaths that, in the US alone, number in the tens of thousands every year and balloon to 1.35 million around the world. But the electric cars, ride-hailing services, and autonomous vehicles that are proposed as our mobility saviors aren’t the silver bullets they’ve been presented to be. In fact, the Kochs have even been financing opposition to transit ballot measures using the prospect of self-driving cars to position transit as outdated.

With transport volumes much lower than usual as a result of the pandemic and growing calls to open streets to cyclists and pedestrians, we face a rare opportunity to start making major changes to our transportation system. James Wilt’s new book Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars?: Public Transit in the Age of Google, Uber, and Elon Musk was published at the perfect time to give us the tools to challenge tech’s arguments for more cars and imagine a better, collective way of organizing our transportation system.

(Subheadings include: Car Tech Won’t Save Us ... Coronavirus Won’t Kill Transit ... Better Transportation for a Better Future)

During the pandemic, people around the world remarked at the clean air in their cities once most of the cars were off the road. Now, polls show people want new restrictions to keep it that way. Similarly, bike shops in the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, have reported increased sales as cities around the world are planning to build new bike lanes and give more space to pedestrians — some temporary, but many permanent.

There is a serious shift taking place, and we must seize the opportunity to reclaim our cities from the automobile as much as possible. In 1973, André Gorz wrote that, “After killing the city, the car is killing the car.” It wasn’t dead yet, however, because it had successfully arranged “for the alternatives to disappear, thus making the car compulsory.”

The fight for better transportation should be driven not just by getting rid of the automobile, but, as Wilt writes, it must be “one for democratic control over communities” — of which transit is a key part — and “to build a much more beautiful world.” After the death and devastation wrought by the pandemic, especially in the United States, that’s exactly the kind of vision we need.

Luxembourg institutes free public transit. I'm sure the USA would outlaw it.

Granted, Luxembourg is a small country, roughly 1,000 square miles (20% smaller than Rhode Island) with 600,000 inhabitants. Outside of Luxembourg City it's mostly rural, hilly and forested; the Battle of the Bulge occurred here in part.

But it ain't the meat; it's the policy.

Luxembourg is following dozens of cities in making public transit free, by Lila MacLellan (Quartz)

Luxembourg just became the first country in the world to make its entire public transit system free to all.

As of today (March 1), all trams, trains, and buses will cost not a single euro to ride anywhere in the small nation, a steep discount compared to the 440 euros ($485) price tag for an annual pass until now.

Although Luxembourg, home to fewer than a million people, is the first country to institute such a policy, it’s not a new idea. Some 97 cities around the world have introduced free public transit, according to the authors of Free Public Transit: And Why We Don’t Pay to Ride Elevators (Black Rose Books, 2019)

Wait -- what's that book again? This might be the next book JT and I read together.

Free Public Transit: And Why We Don’t Pay to Ride Elevators

Just like we don't pay to use elevators, this book argues that we shouldn't pay to ride public transit. In an age of increasing inequalities and ecological crisis, movements advocating free public transit push us to rethink the status quo and consider urban transit as a fundamental human right. Editors Jason Prince and Judith Dellheim have collected a panorama of case studies from around the world: the United States, Canada, Estonia, Greece, France, Italy, Sweden, Poland, China, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and more. These movements are spread across the world, and they aim to achieve two main outcomes—ecological good and fair wealth distribution. Free public transit—coupled with increased capacity and improving service of public transit—might well be the only viable strategy to eliminating car usage and achieving greenhouse gas targets in industrialized cities within a reasonable time frame. Movements for free mass transit also aim to see public transit treated as a public good, like water and garbage service, that should be paid for out of general tax revenues or a fairer regional tax strategy. This book covers the rapidly changing transport options in cities today, including bike and car share options, Uber and Lyft, and the imminent arrival of driver-less vehicles. The first English-language book ever written on the subject, Free Public Transit is a ground breaking book for those concerned about the future of our cities and an essential resource for those who make, or try to change, urban planning and transport policies.

Loneliness.

Free association rocks.

To me, one hallmark of a well-turned essay is the writer's ability to introduce several themes, then bring them together convincingly for the killer closing punch.

This essay is well-turned. It is not "about" trains and public transportation, which is the passage I've chosen to highlight. However, the dining car reference is a pillar supporting the conclusion.

Take ten minutes and read this essay. Think about it: "Thoreau, no stranger to solitude, posed a helpful question, in Walden: 'what sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?' The answer, these days, is profit maximization."

Why do we tolerate this aberrant condition?

The Visitor: Wizards of Loneliness, by Lucy Schiller (CounterPunch)

... Though breadless, I am not an ingrate or sadsack, particularly when I get out of the house, get moving, get on the S-Bahn. Taking the train here in Germany is a perpetual reminder of how inferior any such system is in the United States. For some time in Iowa, I would take the Amtrak from Fort Madison, a town in what someone once termed to me the “teat of Iowa,” to New Mexico, where my family lives. One of the joys of that experience was the dining car, in which the staff, with deliciously impenetrable logic, assemble groups of strangers at the tables. Amtrak, attempting deference to a new, millennial audience (but mostly cost-cutting), is now phasing the dining car out. Millennials, a Washington Post article went on the subject, are “known to be always on the run, glued to their phones and not particularly keen on breaking bread with strangers at a communal table.” I met some unsettling characters at the communal table, true, but I remember, too, an elderly lady with a wicked laugh, and a man I saw two separate times, on two separate train journeys, with whom I was randomly seated both times. He was returning from taking care of a close friend with multiple sclerosis and was a retired train engineer. We stared out of the panoramic window over our steaming baked potatoes and he talked at length of engine repair.

There’s a current in American letters these days, particularly among millennial writers, of writing in a high literary style about solitude, about loneliness. I’ve attempted it, though it’s never amounted to much and I frustrate myself quickly with how little there is to say. The treatment of loneliness in contemporary literature often feels like how it felt to live in the Spinster’s Cottage—a little obvious, boring, and cramped. Which is not to say the subject itself is unworthy. Much has been written about loneliness and solitude, and the relationship between the two, that has not been boring. (“It might be lonelier without the loneliness,” wrote Emily Dickinson, recognizing that the feeling provides its own company, of a kind.) Vivian Gornick, Banana Yoshimoto, Mark Fisher spring to mind. Some of their lonelinesses are more painful. I do not recommend reading Mark Fisher, who took his own life in 2017, if you’re looking for a salve:

We need to abandon the belief in the autonomous individual that has been at the heart, not only of neoliberalism, but of the whole liberal tradition. In a successful attempt to break with social democratic and socialist collectivism, neoliberalism invested massive ideological effort into reflating this conception of the individual, with its supporting dramaturgy of choice and responsibility.

Head, meet wall: "Zurich shows that effective transportation requires that we widen our focus to see beyond cars."

CityLab is completely free. There's nothing stopping you from following this link and achieving a greater understanding of places where sensible solutions are allowed to exist.

What Does This Street In Zürich Mean?, by Norman Garrick (CityLab)

If you see how cars, streetcars, bikes, and pedestrians use this Swiss street, you can better understand what’s wrong with so many other urban thoroughfares.

Above is a picture of a pretty typical city street in Zürich, Switzerland.

What do you see?

In some ways, this scene represents a kind of Rorschach Test for transportation and urban planning. If you are a passenger on a tram riding on one of the two sets of rails that take up most of the street, this scene represents freedom of movement and a sense that transit is privileged in Zürich. If you’re a pedestrian, this is a relatively comfortable street to be on, with useful services, restaurants, and a few interesting stores (check out the model train store at the corner with Haldenbachstrasse). If you’re on a bike, this, like most other streets in Zürich, is OK, but not great.

But if you’re an American tourist, your first thought might be that these Europeans are real strange: Look at that long line of car traffic on the right, and look at all that road space going to waste. And an engineer or planner trained in the conventional mode will probably agree with you, and see a picture of abject failure. In the parlance of the traffic planner, this is a street operating at Level of Service F.

snip

Let us first deal with the American tourist who sees inefficiency. During the peak hour, the vehicle lanes carry about 400 cars and perhaps 500 people. (I counted!) The two tramlines carry about 3,500 people per hour. So, notwithstanding the fact that at first glance the tram lanes seem empty and remarkably inefficient, the numbers tell a different story—the tram lanes are doing yeoman’s work, carrying 7 times more people than the car lanes, and they could easily carry many more. And this is before we even start to consider the environmental and economic advantages of transit over cars. (People in Zürich have unlimited access to all transit in the city for just $1,000 per year, yet the subsidy from the city, state and the nation is modest, since the fare box returns, and other revenues, pay about two-thirds of the cost of operating the system.)

I'll stop there. I'm too depressed to keep snipping.

This hypothetical Louisville rail map is "so close to civilization it’s making people uncomfortable."

If you've ever visited places where this map is reality, as opposed to conjecture, and returned home without a change of perspective -- well, human beings possess a remarkable capability for self-delusion.

FEATURE, THE FUTURE OF TRANSPORTATION: Imagining a future transit system in Louisville, by Luis Huber-Calvo (LEO Weekly)

This is a part of a package of articles on the future of transportation in Louisville. For more, click here.

This vision for Louisville’s transit future is inspired in part by the streetcar lines that once defined our transportation system. This hypothetical and highly ambitious rail map does not try to reinvent our city. Instead, it strengthens what already works and fills in the transit gap for what could work better.

This vision reimagines our corridors as multimodal arteries that connect our neighborhoods with each other and with our downtown core. This is not a new idea: It’s how much of the city operated in its formative years. Louisville’s transit future could thus end up looking similar to its transit past. Much of our city was built with the streetcar in mind — many of the corridors and neighborhoods in the old urban boundary are suited for this type of transportation. A quick browsing of the map will show that Main Street, Market Street, Broadway, Bardstown Road and Frankfort Avenue are essential to the system’s connectivity. The vision is simple: Imagine a future in which traveling from Shawnee Park to the Mall St. Matthews is practical and convenient without an automobile. Imagine a future where you can go about your daily life without ever having to jump into a car ...

Sense and sensibility: "Free public transport in Estonia."

Estonia is mentioned fairly often in these pages. Our trip there in 2016 was a profound experience, and there'll be a return visit some day. We found Tallinn's trams and buses exemplary. Next time, I hope we make it into the countryside. As tourists, we'll be paying to ride, but the advantages of Estonians having free transit options are clear, and discussed herein.

In myriad ways, America subsidizes cars. It doesn't have to be this way.

In the fast lane: Free public transport in Estonia, at The Economist

Expensive, but worth it

The buses are on time, the trams are shiny and new, and passengers usually get a seat. In many cities that would be remarkable enough. But in Tallinn locals are also not required to buy a ticket. In 2013 it became the world’s first capital city to offer residents free public transport. Estonia as a whole has been following suit, and last year set the ambition of becoming the first country with free public transport nationwide. Buses are now free of charge in 11 of its 15 counties.

If the objective is curtailing ultimately unsustainable car-centrism, then a few eggs are required to be broken.

Free public transport on its own is not enough to stop people driving, though the evidence is that it helps. In Tallinn higher parking fees and reduced space for cars also played a part in cutting city-centre traffic: on-street parking now costs €6 an hour, and some parking spaces and car lanes have been replaced by bus lanes. Officials say providing a free alternative allowed them to avoid a backlash when driving in the capital was made more expensive and less convenient.

Berlin is doing something about public transportation, bicycling safety and housing.

Berlin is a special case; it's a place near and dear to my heart, a capital city, and boasts a population of 3.5 million. By comparison, the entire Louisville metropolitan area has a population of 1.3 million. 

By the way, there no longer is a wall in Berlin. The 30th anniversary of its removal falls later this year.

Here are three reports from Berlin about the city's efforts to improve the lives of its citizens over above cults of personality and "luxury" aquatic centers.

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Berlin Will Spend €2 Billion Per Year to Improve Public Transit, by Feargus O'Sullivan (CityLab)

The German capital plans to make major investments to expand bus and rail networks, boost frequency, and get ahead of population growth. Are you jealous yet?

When it comes to public transit, you can’t accuse Berlin of holding back on cash.

This week, the city announced its transit masterplan for 2019 to 2023 (with a period of focus that actually extends to 2035), and a major overhaul of the city’s transit networks is in the cards. The funds allocated are generous, to say the least: Berlin is committing a remarkable €28.1 billion, or just under $32 billion, to transportation projects.

That huge investment won’t all come in one burst, of course, but will be spread out over the years between now and 2035. That still means a phenomenal €2 billion every year pumped into the system until 2035, a level of consistent investment that would make the average American public transit official weep with envy ...

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Berlin’s brave bikers: The German capital wants drivers to stop killing cyclists (The Economist)

If the streets are safer, more people will pedal

 ... Berlin’s state government, a three-way Social-Democrat, Green and Left Party coalition, is promising a “transport revolution” to reduce the number of road deaths to zero. Last year 45 people died in traffic accidents in Berlin, 11 of them on bikes. (In London, a city nearly three times bigger, 10 cyclists were killed in 2017). In June Berlin passed a law to make driving less attractive. The aim is to turn the city into a sea of Lycra. “Privileging cars has to stop,” says Matthias Tang of Berlin’s department for transport and the environment.

Busy intersections are being redesigned for bikes. Some main roads are getting two-metre-wide cycle-paths that are separated from traffic by bollards, to stop motorists parking on bike-paths, a common outrage. Over 100km of bike-only highways into the city will be built, and secure bicycle storage set up at train stations. Officials say safer roads will encourage people to swap petrol for pedal-power, thereby reducing pollution and congestion ...

 ... Berlin’s population is growing and the economy is doing well. More workers mean that once-quiet streets are getting congested. Rising rents are pushing residents out of the centre, increasing the number of car-commuters and making trains and buses more crowded. More Berliners would no doubt like to get out and feel the breeze in their hair—if they were less worried about being mown down by motorists ...

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Berlin Builds an Arsenal of Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution, by Feargus O'Sullivan (CityLab)

The proposals might seem radical—from banning huge corporate landlords to freezing rents for five years—but polls show the public is ready for something dramatic.

As Berliners grow increasingly frustrated with rising rents, there’s a question making the rounds in local politics that could seriously shake things up: Should there be a limit to how much housing a landlord can own?

Following months of intense debate (and some action), the German capital is considering whether landlords with more than 3,000 units should be barred from operating in the city. Opinion polls show a majority of Berliners favor such a move, and activists are about to start preparations for a referendum on the subject. If voted through, the plan could give citizens the power to make Berlin’s biggest landlords break up their portfolios, in the hope that this could prevent galloping rent rises and provide tenants with better service ...

"The city that gives you free beer for cycling" (spoiler alert: it ain't us).

Watch the video here.

The city that gives you free beer for cycling. (BBC)

This is how the Italian city of Bologna is getting people to leave their cars behind. Video by Amelia Martyn-Hemphill and Nicola Kelly.

An app records sustainable trips -- on foot, by bicycle or with public transportation. Users amass mobility points, redeemable for freebies from participating businesses.

Bella Mossa: Another Reason to Love Bologna, by Irene S. Levine (More Time to Travel)

Like most urban centers around the world, Bologna has its share of traffic congestion. One major initiative to address this problem was the designation of a pedestrian zone in the city’s historic center that strictly limits automobile traffic. (There are special provisions for tourists who need to get to hotels located within the zone.)

But traffic in most areas of Bologna, which fall outside the zone, still remained challenging, often exacerbated by the frequent strikes (scioperi) and political demonstrations that are typical in Italy.

Goals of Bella Mossa

My Facebook friend, Laura Bizzari (a language teacher in Bologna), recently posted a BBC video on Facebook about an innovative project in Bologna, called Bella Mossa, that aims to make a difference in health and quality of life.

The project is funded through European Commission’s Horizon 2020, an EU program to promote sustainable transport. Launched in April 2017, the project uses incentives to reduce vehicular traffic and CO2 emissions by encouraging people to walk, cycle or use public transportation ...

Try to imagine Harvest Homecoming if 95% of visitors DIDN'T drive to it -- or, "Why Public Transportation Works Better Outside the U.S."

Here's something else I've been saying ever since I began visiting Europe regularly. As Jeff Gillenwater notes:

This. Until we have local leadership that recognizes and begins implementing transportation models found elsewhere, the U.S. will fall further and further behind financially, environmentally, and socially. There’s no viable, public serving reason not to do this. It’s a huge, every day social justice issue.

The problem with squeezing tens of thousands of humans into downtown New Albany for Harvest Homecoming is that virtually all of them come by car. Granted, car-pooling is more common during such a festival. But the temporary warehousing of cars is the challenge. Just imagine if there were alternatives.

Jeff mentioned local leadership.

I suppose that's a bigger problem.

Do we have any?

Why Public Transportation Works Better Outside the U.S., by Jonathan English (CityLab)

The widespread failure of American mass transit is usually blamed on cheap gas and suburban sprawl. But the full story of why other countries succeed is more complicated.

... How did transit become such an afterthought in Americans’ transportation habits? I addressed that question in detail in an earlier CityLab piece. But to briefly summarize: Transit everywhere suffered serious declines in the postwar years, the cost of cars dropped and new expressways linked cities and fast-growing suburbs. That article pointed to a key problem: The limited transit service available in most American cities means that demand will never materialize—not without some fundamental changes ...

Because it's relatively simple.

 ... The key to great transit service is not about getting 100 percent of people to ride transit for 100 percent of trips. It’s about giving people a viable choice of getting around without needing to drive.

Figuring out how to improve transit isn’t like curing cancer or inventing a quantum computer, either. There are good, viable models of transit systems that already exist in cities that look a lot like U.S ones. They are successful both at attracting riders and at being financially viable, from places that have more in common with American cities than one might expect.

In conclusion:

In some ways, the story of American transit is not so unique. Europeans and Canadians also like to drive. Their countries have also built big expressway networks. The difference is more basic, yet profound: When transit service isn’t good, few will choose to use it.

Fortunately, improving American transit doesn’t necessarily demand multi-decade, hundred-billion-dollar infrastructure projects: It can be done by better advantage of existing space and existing vehicles, and then deploying them in ways that encourage people to actually use them.

If you're a car-centric progressive, are you really progressive at all? Or, "How American mass transit measures up against the rest of the world’s."

In Porto. It used to be cars only.

I can write a lick or two, but often words fail me -- and others already have done the job.

In this instance, it's longtime blog collaborator Jeff Gillenwater.

"Based on proximity and current population density, there should be a train, tram, or bus from our neighborhood with a fairly direct route to Louisville’s central business district at least every 10 minutes or so. Instead, as the article mentions, we spend limited resources providing too infrequent to be effective service to too many far flung areas. 

"Most people here never see what real transit is and how it works. Because of our screwed up political system, a lot of our transportation dollars come from state and federal sources. Think those candidates are focused on such direct, practical, localized solutions? Nope, usually not a genuine, non-partisan progressive among them. The few that ever display any such pragmatism are shunned as radicals within their own parties. 

"Rare that real transportation even gets a mention, outside of very temporary 'job creation' usually aimed at very expensive road building schemes that don’t actually increase daily mobility and access at all and leave us with ineffectual infrastructure we can’t afford to maintain. 

"Want me to care more about voting? Stop being so damned stupid."

Nail, meet hammer.

Why US public transportation is so bad — and why Americans don’t care, by Aditi Shrikant (Vox)

How American mass transit measures up against the rest of the world’s.

The US has bad public transit, but you probably already know that. While some cities do have impressive webs of efficient rail, for the most part, we are a car-dependent society because Americans largely don’t understand how transit should work and see no need to prioritize it.

So what it would take to bring US transit up to par? To answer that question, you have understand the differences between US transit systems and those in the rest of the world.

"Apparently commuting by public transport makes you happier."

Porto (Portugal) 2018.

I grew up in the periodically bucolic Southern Indiana countryside, then went to Europe for the first time in 1985 and spent nearly all of the inaugural trip exploring cities. I’ll grant that it took a while for these urban lessons to be absorbed, but the conversion was heartfelt and genuine.

These days, it seems to me that I inhabit a neighborhood (New Albany) of a larger city (Louisville), albeit it without all of the amenities in infrastructure that made European city life what it was, and remains.

Shouldn’t I be able to board a bus within a block or two from my home, switch to the subway, and be in downtown Louisville in minutes without once considering the use of my car? Why the wastefulness of our endless sprawl?

Now I've been to Europe 38 times, and only once rented a car (Ireland, 2003). The vast majority of the time, I've used public transport. There have been blips and delays, but in the main, not being compelled to drive everywhere for everything has made me very, very happy.

Then I come home, and the depression sets in. The older I get, the more normal my European interludes appear to me. It’s the daily grind since 1985 that’s been so unremittingly strange.

Why commuting by public transport makes you happy, by Lauren Laverne (The Guardian)

Apparently commuting by public transport makes you happier. It must be the fresh air and fascinating aromas that help Lauren to unwind

I recently learned of a surprising link between commuting by public transport and happiness.

I say surprising because I’m a Londoner who carries out my daily commute by bus and tube. I honestly thought I was the only one who liked it. Obviously up until this point I’d been going by the surly expressions of my fellow travellers. How helpful to now have evidence proving that those who travel to work by bus and train are happier than drivers ...

"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.

30 years ago today: Our sports club beds, glorious Prague and beers at U Fleků.

Castle Hill. Was she aghast? Yawning? Signalling? KGB?

Previously: 30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: The finest restorative Pilsner Urquell ever, upon arrival in Prague.

Tuesday, July 14

I've already mentioned that when we arrived in Prague on Monday morning (July 13), the tourist office's only affordable lodging was located in a neighborhood that looked suspiciously like farmland with a village stuck in the middle. Outskirts is putting it mildly.

It was a suburban sports club facility, intended as something along the lines of a very small, localized YMCA (without the "Christian"), with a soccer team of its own and an emphasis on grassroots physical fitness in the absence of huge capital outlays.

Sportovní klub Dolní Měcholupy (Na Paloučku 223/11, 109 00 Praha-Dolní Měcholupy, Czechoslovakia) was allowed to host tourists, who slept in finished rooms amid a building that remained under construction. The vibe was rather like a hostel, which is the way the tourist office described it.

This exterior view of the unfinished Sportovní klub Dolní Měcholupy was taken on the final night of our stay in 1987. We'd just returned from Plzeň.

And 30 years later, via Google Map.

That's the place, all right, and it proved to be marvelous. The double room was brand new, and an amazing bargain at $7 per person, per night, with a few extra coins required for public transport both ways.

There's the rub, because it was quite distant, and first we had to find it.

Directions and a sparse map had been provided at the tourist office on Monday morning. The sports club was a lengthy commute from the city center, roughly 11 km (7 miles), and required riding a subway to the end of the line, then taking a bus to the final destination.

This valuable information duly was recorded and placed in my shirt pocket, to be examined eight hours later after a hot, taxing day of too little food, too much beer, and unexpectedly, a few glasses of Moravian wine.

In mid-afternoon, reeling from multiple Pilsner Urquells at U Dvou koček (At Two Cats), we encountered a bearded intellectual wearing a beret who had spotted us wandering the streets.

Both definitions of the word "Bohemian" aptly describe him.

1. a native or inhabitant of Bohemia.
2. a person who has informal and unconventional social habits, especially an artist or writer.

In gestures and very slight German, a deal was reached. In return for buying him glasses of Vltava Embankment in his favorite wine cellar, we could listen as he spoke quietly to us in several languages, none of which resembled English, discoursing about ... well, I've never really known, to be honest.

It was fascinating in an incomprehensible but atmospheric literary Prague sort of way -- and we emerged at street level far more intoxicated than before.

It was early evening, and we stumbled back to the train station to liberate our packs. The subway portion of the journey was manageable, and now we only needed to locate the bus stop.

At this point my faculties utterly deserted me. With bus route signs on every corner, written in a Slavic tongue I'd never encountered, all the while experiencing some semblance of fatigue-, hunger- or alcohol-induced delirium, or probably all three, my sanity plain left the building.

Barrie endured my frustrated temper tantrum, which included kicking an unattached garbage can. No doubt aware that we were foreign guests visiting a Cold War police state, he sighed and placed a hand on each of my shoulders, forcibly seating me on a nearby bench, and saying just one word:

"Stay."

I obeyed, watching as he strolled over to a sign that read "Taxi" (hmm, just imagine loanwords), approached the first car he saw parked near this sign -- it amazingly bore a corresponding "Taxi" inscription -- and pressed a five dollar American bill into the driver's palm along with the sports club's address.

The driver nodded. Barrie turned to me and spoke a second word:

"Come."

The driver probably would have taken us all the way to Brno for $5, but point humbly taken and an important lesson learned. Small wonder Barrie became a teacher. Minutes later, we were standing outside the sports club headquarters.

The man on duty was friendly and welcoming, and had inexpensive light snacks and beer for purchase at rock bottom prices. In the three decades since, Prague appears to have expanded outward to meet the facility, but at the time there were fields and a peaceful, easy feeling. I'm forever glad we booked it.

On Tuesday we found the bus stop, and henceforth experienced no problems in the least with taking a series of 25-cent bus and subway rides. First on the priority list was Castle Hill, featuring Prague Castle and sweeping view of the city.

Below, the American flag flies from the United States embassy. On the skyline can be seen the "rabbit hutches" (prefabricated housing blocks) of New Communist Prague, surrounding the historic city center like a wall.

The construction of St. Vitus Cathedral, which sits like a crown atop Castle Hill, began in 1344, but the church wasn't completely finished and consecrated until 1929. The juxtaposition between this symbol of Catholicism and the life of Jan Hus is instructive.

Early in his monastic career, Martin Luther, rummaging through the stacks of a library, happened upon a volume of sermons by John Hus, the Bohemian who had been condemned as a heretic. "I was overwhelmed with astonishment," Luther later wrote. "I could not understand for what cause they had burnt so great a man, who explained the Scriptures with so much gravity and skill."

The Protestant Reformation wasn't simple in the lands comprising a modern Czech Republic, but the cathedral's gargoyle decor was mighty keen, and I had a zoom lens.

Eventually we descended Castle Hill and climbed one of the towers down by the Charles Bridge.

It's amazing how empty the bridge was then, compared with today.

At last, it was time for restorative beers and a square meal at the legendary brewery and restaurant called U Fleků. At the time, only one house beer was available, a rich black lager with more alcohol than most and a higher price tag.

In 1987, U Fleků had the faded ambiance of having seen better days, though the beer was solid -- not so much so in 2006, but seeing as the web site of today depicts a plush interior, let's hope beer and furnishings have been rectified.

30 years ago, U Fleků's higher prices remained a stunning bargain in American terms, but qualified the brewery as a tourist joint by local economic standards, and the waiters (mostly male) were both multi-lingual and comically theatrical in their snobby demeanor.

For instance, the food menu. If you didn't speak Czech, the offerings came down to three items: "Pork, beef, goulash."

Eight years later, revisiting U Fleků with one of my beer tour groups, it finally was revealed that a typical Czech restaurant menu had always been available. Tourists didn't know the system, and the waiters weren't about to reveal it, because it was easier for them to remember three words in a dozen languages than navigate choice.

In 1995, we watched in delight as a stubborn Frenchman refused the Holy Trinity and asked instead for a salad (in English, by the way).

He was exaggeratedly refused, but persisted. Finally he stood and guided his waiter to a menu posted on the wall, pointing to the words for his salad.

The waiter squinted, then dramatically pulled his reading glasses from the depths of a soiled apron. He stooped to read ... and shrugged.

The Frenchman got his salad.

Next: Staroměstské náměstí, Prague's glorious square ... MIA.

Chatting on Fb about the street grid in NA: "The push to start reclaiming some of our streets and spaces for users and uses other than cars isn't a radical change."

My friend and colleague Jeff Gillenwater posted the following to New Albany Indiana, a Facebook group that functions somewhat like the discussion groups of old. Italics are the omniscient narrator (that's Roger), with Jeff's comments in normal font. He begins by explaining a photo we use often at NAC.

This overhead view of Downtown New Albany was created several years ago by Josh Poe, then an urban planning graduate student and New Albany resident. Everything in red is off-street automobile parking. With the exception of the parking garage on the corner of State and Market, it's all surface parking (and, of course, doesn't include all the on-street parking that's readily available.) Given how much more densely developed the city used to be, commercial buildings and/or houses were torn down in most cases to create those parking lots. The next time someone tries to tell you New Albany hasn't done enough to accommodate cars, feel free to share. The push to start reclaiming some of our streets and spaces for users and uses other than cars isn't a radical change. It's a response to and corrective for the past few decades of radical change that has already happened.

Also worth noting, here's what was demolished to create the parking lot that eventually became Bicentennial Park.

And the bank and mostly parking next door.

For good measure, Jeff included parking documentation:

Here is a PDF showing a few hundred parking spots in downtown New Albany; publicly owned and free after 5 pm and on weekends.

Downtown New Albany Public Parking Guide

It seemed to one reader that such comments about auto-centrism were designed to discourage auto use downtown, thus defeating the purpose of revitalization by implementing a "European model" to serve the needs of the few, not the many.

People very invested in defending automobile centric culture are, whether they realize it or not or mean to or not, are speaking from a position of significant privilege. Though New Albany, like a lot of other older U.S. cities, was initially designed for multimodal street usage, most of our infrastructure spending has been aimed squarely at automobiles at the expense of other forms of travel for the past few decades. That's actually a short time in our overall history, but has been true for just long enough now that people don't remember it being any other way. Thus, they tend to see calls for more equity between various forms of transportation and any talk of curtailing automobile dominance as demonizing cars and car drivers. What the posts actually do is point out that it's not always been that way. If we could decide to change it fifty or sixty years ago, we can decide to change it now. Realizing what we've given up, what we've lost and are still losing in the process of converting to automobile dominance, is a first step in deciding to pursue change.

As for the "European model" in a pejorative sense ...

New Albany was built by European immigrants on a European model. That's how it was designed to properly function (and functioned well, for 150 or more years. Over and over again for years people have provided links to research, case studies, and successful approaches that have pointed directly to greater overall public good via what you call a European model. That some folks simply choose to not acknowledge that doesn't make the people sharing that information a narrow interest group. If you can show how automobile centric models have proven to be better for us in terms of fiscal responsibility, public health, and environmental wellbeing, I'm all ears (or eyes, as relevant).

Another reader asked whether it is possible to have a vibrant urban area without "cheap" parking on abundant surface lots. Parking garages like the one we used in Chicago last week weren't mentioned.

One of the more interesting aspects of the "hard to park" scenario has to do with perception. People often walk farther from their parking spots and back to their cars at WalMart than they do downtown, but will still insist that WalMart has close-in parking and downtown doesn't. Try to suggest that the environment in which people are asked to walk has something to do with it, though, and ...

Jeff elaborated.

It really is a trip how quickly downtown parking perceptions changed. When my mom got married, she moved from the west end of New Albany... all the way to Sellersburg. LOL. When I was a kid, we still came to downtown New Albany all the time. In the 70s and early 80s, a lot of the older stores were still here. We never expected, even at that late date, being able to park directly in front of a place most of the time. I mean, you might get lucky and something would open up along the way, but we mostly just went straight to the parking garage (formerly located next to what's now Big Four Burgers) and assumed we'd have to walk a few blocks to the places we were going. Now, to hear some folks talk about it, parking on Bank Street to go to a place on Pearl is some sort of inordinate hardship. Oddly enough, a lot of those same people don't think twice about parking in the middle of the Meijer parking lot and walking quite a bit farther to the department they actually need, to the checkout counter, and then back to the car. It might have something to do with the environment in which the walk is occurring.

I mentioned out having just returned from Chicago, where people regularly pay outlandish prices to park downtown. For the record, we parked the car in a garage for four days ($122) and bought two three-day CTA transit passes for $20 each. One reader rightfully pointed to the absence of these transit options in New Albany.

At one point in their respective histories, the Southern Indiana/Louisville metro area rivaled Chicago in transit development. It's one of the things that gives me a chuckle when some folks refer to New Albany's automobile-centered heritage. It just ain't so.

Jeff posted these three explanatory links.

Passenger Rail The Way It Used To Be

Louisville’s Incredible Elevated Rapid Transit Trains

JEFFERSONVILLE/NEW ALBANY TRANSIT HISTORY

The point in sharing examples from other places and comparative histories isn't to say that those places are the same or should be. More than anything, the idea is that places can change themselves and what they emphasize or value and have many times over, New Albany included. Per the original Chicago reference about parking, people pay a lot to park in Chicago because (Rahm's privatization scheme aside for a moment) they think it's worth it to be there. That's a very scalable concept. Funny aside: I deal with Chicagoans pretty regularly now at work, including getting them parked sometimes. When I tell them all-day parking is $6, they laugh at me like I told them a really good joke.

In advocating two-way streets and other components of urban street grid reform, we've always referenced research and experience. We've pointed to successful reforms in other cities, and not just in Europe. I've come to expect a specific rebuttal, which constitutes a form of exceptionalism: "But New Albany is different. Biology and gravity might work the same here, but not street grids."

For a lot of Americans, merely pointing out that a concept came from elsewhere is the equivalent of saying it's obviously wrong. Beyond that, it's often a matter of insisting that WE have always been one way and THEY have always been another. Like "scalable", that applies to a lot more than parking and cars, too. In all seriousness, privilege and the language and power dynamics of privilege are always a big part of conversations around cars and other street users. You can swap out the "we" and " they" parts and a lot the arguments are so similar to other social issues that involve a majority addressing a minority that they're nearly interchangeable on a linguistic level.

Too much information? 

Unfortunately, no one ever said learning was easy. Ten years ago, I understood very little of this. Now I understand more, and if a slow learner like me can do it -- so can anyone. 

Chicago fact-finding tour, 2017: A serene Chicago Botanic Garden, a bustling Chinatown and the re-delicious Baderbräu (Friday, July 7).

(backdated ... previously, day three)

The Chicago Botanic Garden is situated past even Evanston, roughly 23 miles north of the Loop. For this trip out of the urban area, we purchased tickets on the Metra suburban train, leaving from the Oglivie Transportation Center a couple of blocks from our hotel.

Alighting at Braeside, it was a 15-minute stroll to the Botanic Garden, which is free to enter. It's an impressive park.

The Chicago Botanic Garden opened more than 40 years ago as a beautiful place to visit, and it has matured into one of the world's great living museums and conservation science centers. In 2015, more than one million people visited the Garden's 27 gardens and four natural areas, uniquely situated on 385 acres on and around nine islands, with six miles of lake shoreline. The Garden also has a renowned Bonsai Collection.

For the Fitbitters among you, the fact that 10,000 steps had been recorded by the time we boarded the return train says it all.

Did I mention being with a Brit?

This train back to Chicago was packed with Cubs fans, as there was another afternoon game at Wrigley. It turns out that the Oglivie Transportation Center has a remarkable French Market food court. We bowed to temptation and ate Belgian-style frites with mayonnaise for lunch. I failed to properly examine the Montreal-style pastrami.

It's a trencherman's regret.

Having spent the morning in the north, it was time for a foray to the South Side and Chinatown, via the Red Line. The original plan was to eat there, but we'd already gorged on potatoes.

Still, having devoted a fair amount of time earlier this year reading and writing about Chinese food, it was a pleasure just to read the menus.

BOOK REVIEW: Chop Suey – or how Chinese food came to be taken for granted in America.

Our last visit to Chicago came in 2005. The cheapest hotel we could find was in Chinatown, and it was perfectly acceptable. We flew into Midway, bought public transport tickets, changed from Orange Line to the Red Line somewhere at the Loop, and noticed that the next stop past Cermak/Chinatown was (whatever the stadium that should be called Comiskey Park was named then), where the White Sox play.

Chinese restaurants: “Do you know why Americans don’t like eating meat with bones in it? They’re too lazy!”

The Chinese in Chicago have a long history, stretching to the 1860s grouped downtown, then with the establishment of the present-day Chinatown in 1912. Several blocks of Wentworth might as well be in Asia.

On the other hand, Chinatown is so American that McDonald's sponsors it. But a Chinese company might own McDonald's by now. It's moot.

After cursory shopping, it was determined that beer might restore our appetites. Diana delved into Google, and I was surprised to learn that a brewery was close by: Baderbräu, truly a name out of the past, though now doing business on S. Wabash, a 15-minute walk.

At the dawn of craft beer history in New Albany (that'd be 1992 or thereabouts), I traveled to Chicago for an interview with the State Department -- you don't want to know the sad details -- and while there, visited my first-ever American brewpub: Goose Island, long before it was absorbed by the Great Satan.

Soon I was involved with the Public House, and word came down through the grapevine that the finest beer in Chicago wasn't Goose at all. Rather, it was Baderbräu, which brewed only a Pilsener and a Bock, and was owned by the world's most incredible salesman, a former policeman named Ken Pavichevich.

Someone with connections in Chicago gave me his number, and I called him out of the blue to ask if we could get the Pilsener in Indiana. We had a few nice chats, and eventually he got some of his beer into the state, but unfortunately the brewery didn't last long.

For more on this story, old and new, go here. It's fascinating.

In any event, Baderbräu is back, with new owners, a few old recipes, and many new ones. The old/new Chicago Pilsener is just grand. After two of them, I was hungry; at this point, there was no use walking back to Chinatown, so our final Chicago meal became Reuben sandwiches and soft pretzels appetizers.

The best conceivable ending would have been a White Sox game, but the team was on the road.

If any loyal readers go to Chicago and drop by Baderbräu, please pick up some Chicago Pilsener for Papa. I'll happily pay cash for a couple six packs of cans, or even a case. 

On Friday, I didn't want to carry beer on the bus. So, we stopped at a bar on Randolph for a final Chicago drink, and motored out of town on Saturday morning ... with me probably ten pounds heavier, and with at least one of us craving steak & kidney pie, Marmite and a shandy.

As "Berlin's Streetcars Go West," we've been going south.

Photo credit.

It's what we're missing in this desolate, auto-centric idiocracy. Except that once upon a time, we had it.

Enjoy driving to Derby, suckers.

Berlin's Streetcars Go West, by Feargus O'Sullivan (CityLab)

While East Berlin's streetcars soldiered on under communist rule, West Berlin tore up the tracks. Now, the city is correcting its mistake.

This spring, Berlin agreed to correct a 50-year-old mistake.

Back in 1967, in a city divided between the powers of the Cold War, West Berlin canceled its last streetcar services, focusing its transit network on trains, subways, and buses. Meanwhile, East Berlin’s streetcars soldiered on, resulting in a tram system that today is largely nonexistent in the city’s former western sector.

But 28 years after reunification, the city has realized its error. Between now and 2026, the German capital is set to greatly expand its streetcar network, with the western region receiving most (if not all) of the new connections. Starting in 2021, streetcars will roll back out along the western streets, with officials hopeful that they will streamline the local transit, and maybe even reduce crime in some areas.

One Southern Indiana seeks roadside assistance as "Indianapolis Voters Overwhelmingly Pass Nation's First Income Tax for Transit."

Think back to One Southern Indiana's epochal masterwork, the plan to leverage potential Regional Cities Initiative (RCI) monies by diverting the vast bulk of them to River Ridge, already the beneficiary of largess on a colossal and game-changing scale, rather than seeking to answer the most obvious prevailing question:

If all the jobs are to be in River Ridge, and if the aim of the RCI is regional cooperation, then is there a way to get workers back and forth between their region-wide homes and their jobs by public transit?

1Si's plan sank like the proverbial stone, although it surely would have amply wetted beaks among the organization's targeted corporate enrichment classes.

Now read the following, and contemplate Indy's chamber of commerce actually helping in this mass transit taxation initiative.

Imperfect? Of course it is, but it's a convenient way of illustrating yet again that when it comes to greater goods and modern ways of thinking, Wendy Dant Chesser's 1Si isn't just behind the curve.

It has nailed a deer, thrown a rod, blown two tires and currently awaits a tow truck, circa 1986.

Might as well break out the Champale while you're waiting, guys.

Indianapolis Voters Overwhelmingly Pass Nation's First Income Tax for Transit, by Irvin Dawid (Planetizen)

 ... Marion County may soon have the nation's most progressive tax dedicated to public transit, and only bus transit at that. In addition to the faith and business communities that backed the measure, Gov. (now V.P.-elect) Mike Pence deserves credit.
November 13, 2016, 7am PST |

"Proponents of a public transit ballot referendum to increase bus service in Indianapolis declared victory Tuesday night, hailing the income tax hike approved by voters as a long-term solution for the city's transportation woes and a benefit to workers and employers, alike," writes John Tuohy, Indystar transportation reporter.

"With 99 percent of precincts in the county reporting, voters favored the measure 59 percent to 41 percent," reports Susan Orr for The Indianapolis Business Journal (IBJ).

The transit question, which was included on all Marion County ballots, asked voters whether they wanted to give the City-County Council the authority to impose an income tax of up to 0.25 percent—25 cents per $100 of income—to help fund the Marion County Transit Plan. For a resident earning $50,000 a year, that 0.25 percent equals an additional $125 in annual income taxes.

The plan calls for $390 million in improvements aimed at strengthening IndyGo’s bus service—extending hours of operation, increasing the number of bus routes that run at 15-minute frequencies, and running every route seven days a week. The transit tax also would fund the operational costs of three rapid-transit lines, which feature buses that run more often and make fewer stops

As Planetizen editor James Brasuell detailed in August 2016, the public transit referendum, Public Question 2 on the November Marion County ballot was backed by the "ministers, priests and pastors in the Indianapolis Congregation Action Network (IndyCAN), who view "public transit [as] a social justice issue for low-income residents," writes Tuohy. But they also had powerful allies in the effort.

"We've spent 10 years working on this. I think its time has come," Mark Fisher, Indy Chamber's vice president of government relations and policy development, told IBJ.