There is a way to save our future that doesn’t require everyone to become amazing cyclists or make their whole life about saving the earth. People just need to ride the bus more. However in today’s society you have to give people an incentive to ride the bus. Our proposition means making buses free, unfortunately we can’t just do that all at once so instead I believe we should start by making all transit free for people under 18. That way kids will grow up taking transit for granted so in the future they’ll continue to take it more and respect it more.

 

Now obviously you can’t just make something free, you need to increase costs elsewhere to balance out the budget. So in our plan we would raise taxes on gas so it gives two reasons to take transit. Reason one being free transit and if that wasn’t enough for you, reason two taking your own vehicle and buying gas will be more expensive.

 

Most cities offer reduce fares for youth, so this is just extending that idea further to really change behaviour. Now you might be wondering “well if everyone rides the bus that’s still lots of buses on the road how does that help?”. While it doesn’t completely wipe out the air pollution problem it would be a huge step. Also in the future cities like Vancouver will start using more electric buses and maybe even try buses with a battery (like a Tesla).

 

Although having everyone on buses isn’t a solution for the really long term, it would be a huge step in the right direction right now and is a simple change to implement. Allowing youth to ride transit for free and will result in a distinct spike in transit ridership. Our city's goal for the future is to see journeys by car reduced from the current 40% share to less than a third of all journeys. Increasing the reliance on using transit will be a major part of achieving that goal.