Ted Kheel: Make Subways and Buses Free
Theodore W. Kheel, the labor arbitrator extraordinaire who negotiated on behalf of Mayors O’Dwyer, Wagner and Lindsay, is spending close to $200,000 on a study to show how to make New York’s subway and bus systems free. It is expected to come out in early January, just as the state’s commission on congestion mitigation is preparing its final recommendation.
“Congestion pricing is fine,” Mr. Kheel, 93, told The Observer by telephone today. “But it should be accompanied by inducements for people to use mass transportation and to that end, we will be recommending that mass transportation be free, and we believe the numbers will show that free mass transportation will lead to a balanced system of moving people around this great city.”
He said that the study will show how to pay for the free fare but that he would not give the secret away beforehand. If his April op-ed from The New York Times is any indication, it sounds like he wants to devote congestion-pricing revenues to run the transit system, and maybe even throw Port Authority tolls into the mix.
He said that a foundation that he established and currently heads, the Nurture Nature Foundation, initially awarded the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility a $100,000 grant to conduct the study, and since then has spent almost another $100,000 on additional work undertaken by Community Consulting Services. Fenton Communications will do the publicity.
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At last! San Francisco is on the verge of making it's Muni free also. (The use of chokepoints at the entry to mass transit systems, necessitated by the fare collection mechanism, is beyond lunacy. Muni buses roll for thirty seconds, then load for two hundred seconds.)
Anyone (even the rich) who doesn't understand the personal savings he will accrue when his ambulance makes the hospital half an hour sooner because the traffic that would have choked the streets is being diverted to free mass transit, is suffering from a failure of imagination.