Public Transit Helps Make a City Great

The David Suzuki Foundation does a lot to remind people how important the natural world is for all of us, and his 30 X 30 Challenge is going on again this year. Suzuki also addresses issues like climate change and wildlife habitat in his blog, and today I was pleased to read his post called "Transit investments drive positive change."

He starts out by asking what makes a city great and then answers, "Among other things, great cities welcome ethnic diversity, support and foster the arts, have access to venture capital to spur entrepreneurship and innovation and benefit from healthy environments that provide clean air and water." He cites the importance of public transit in great cities from New York to San Francisco, Markham and Toronto in Canada to Curitiba in Brazil. He says that good transit in Toronto helps new immigrants, and he advocates for more transit investment in other Canadian cities.

Here in Tucson we have an uphill struggle to keep our bus system from declining, and it will be interesting to see how things change when the new streetcar begins operation in July. The streetcar line will operate more frequently and later in the day than the buses do, but it will only serve a small part of the city between downtown Tucson and the University of Arizona. Members of the Bus Riders Union fear that the streetcar line will be used as an excuse to force riders from other parts of the city to make time-consuming transfers when routes are cut that duplicate the streetcar’s coverage area. As David Suzuki notes, the greatness of a city depends on its commitment to transit, and Tucson would benefit from strengthening transit for all its citizens, not just a select few.