Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Transit - Good for the environment?

We have heard much, particularly in the Triangle, recently about transit. The NC General Assembly has passed legislation that will allow the Triangle counties (Wake, Durham, and Orange) to increase sales tax by one/half cent per dollar to provide for light rail and bus service. Many of us in the environmental community were in favor of the enabling legislation. The next step is for the county commission to place a transit and tax proposal on the ballot (during a regular election) and for the people to approve the proposal. Many people assume that all of us in the environmental community will support the adoption of the tax and the transit enhancements. Maybe… but maybe not.

Public transportation does offer advantages over cars. The light rail and even the bus will produce far less pollution and green house gases than cars (per passenger mile). Less oil will be imported.

However, the savings from public transportation only works if people use it. To clean the air people must stop driving their car and start using the transportation for at least some of their travel. Will they?

If there were no cost to the proposal, it would be a no-brainer. But it does cost money. Would it be better to use this money to provide incentives for other forms of energy conservation?

In coming posts on Conserve NC we will look at some of the details of the transit options and how they will benefit the environment.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I would have thought that you would be a strong advocate for the proposed transit. Didn't the Sierra Club endorse it? Didn't you support the bill in the legislature?

I would expect that public transportation would save many gallons of gas and reduce CO2 emmissions.

I will be interested in your explaination!

John Shaw said...

Yes, I worked with the Sierra Club to lobby for the bill in the NCGA to enable the counties, with approval of their voters, to impose the tax and use the money for transit.

In general, I support transit and believe that transit will be good for the environment. See the post that I just added. However, it will depend upon two things.

The transit system must be designed to serve as many people possible. This is a matter of fairness (all must pay the tax, most if not all should receive the benefit. Also, we need to be able to give as many people as possible a way to leave the car at home and save energy and pollution.

Secondly,we need to persuade people to use the transit. If they don't use it, it won't do us any good.