THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 3, 1995 TAG: 9508030003
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 38 lines
When I look at the daily paper, I sometimes reflect on how the automobile seems to drive the pages. Advertising and stories about cars take up lots of space every day. We are so into a culture of individual autos, we hardly know it's here. I was somewhat pleased, then, to see a small article about public transportation (``TRT plans to increase fare, end zone surcharge,'' MetroNews, July 20).
As a boy in New York City, I prided myself in knowing my way around New York's massive urban-transportation system. For a nickel I could get from Manhattan to the Bronx or Queens or Flatbush.
Thus, it was sad to see in the article that passengers will be paying $1.50 for a fare starting Oct. 1. Who is hurt by a rise in mass-transportation fares? Ultimately, all of us. But those hurt most directly are the poor, the elderly, the disabled, the unemployed and the underemployed.
My older sister moved to Sweden. Recently, I visited her in Stockholm and found that mass transportation and other human services are taken for granted. Quick, clean, efficient, inexpensive public transportation is everywhere. The obsession with the car does not dominate the culture as it does here.
It seems to me that a healthy society provides urban mass transportation that is reliable, convenient, ecologically sound and cheap (or free) to all of its citizens as a ``public good.''
We need more Tidewater regional transit - not less. And we need more public support and more public funding for services.
ROBERT E. YOUNG
Virginia Beach, July 21, 1995 by CNB