Archive for January 27th, 2008
Transit fares are a real bargain
It is surprising to find a positive opinion piece about Translink – and even more so from this writer and this “newspaper”. (It’s a free sheet with little news and lots of ads just like all of the local papers now.) But on the whole he is right.
What worries me a little is when he moves from the general to the specific. He seems to defeat himself when he admits that he continues to drive and spends more on travel – and his use of “random” examples of parking costs is a bit of an alarm signal. But it does mean he can stay with the simple financial considerations, and not get dragged into the complexities of issues such as service quality and the convenience of the car. Mode choice considerations are much more complicated than just looking at a fare.
But the fact that a journalist that I have always put at the conservative end of the spectrum reaches this conclusion now is, I think, significant.
It is, I believe, as important as the conversion of Pete McMartin into a sceptic on freeway expansion.
Stephen Rees's blog 