The new fare
policy that took effect March 1, 2015 has great intentions. By offering low-income public transit riders in Seattle the opportunity to pay $1 less per ride, King County Metro hopes to help people connect and ocntinue to access goods, services and eisure activities. However, if this policy is an effort to acknowledge the rapidly
vanishing middle class in Seattle, they are dangerously misguided.
They have fallen into what I am calling the fallacy of selective benefits. If the goal is to reduce inequality, the shortsighted and insultingly small contribution actually divides us and our interests.
Let me explain: it is shortsighted and divisive because the benefits are only for a portion of the population. The program is only for people who make less than double the federal poverty guidelines, about
one in four. Because the other 75% of the population has to pay more for their tickets, a raise that was implemented to cover the costs oif the low-income program, using public transit becomes less likely for a large majority. Putting poor people onto buses and wealthy poeple into cars is a terrible and predictable outcome of this policy.
From a
relationl poverty perspective, we can see clearly the dangers of the fallacy of selected benefits. Victoria Lawson and Sarah Elwood of the UNiversity of Washington have written of the importance of
inter-class contact zones as a source of empathy and re-working of class dynamics. De facto and explicit segregation of housing, schools and transportation by definiteion reduce these beautiful interactions. For the sake of poverty politics, the environment and the freedom that comes with quality public space, we should be rencouraging public transportation across the board!
Additionally, as the ridership gets poorer, the crowd of people invested in the success of public transit becomes smaller and less powerful. I wholeheartedly believe in the power of the people, but I also understand the difficulties of struggling for rights; including as many people as possible in the coalition is a winning strategy.
The fallacy of selected benefits claims to be reducing inequality, while actually creating tiered systems that only serve to divide us and make future gains more difficult. We can see it in the debate about whether to provide need-based financial aid, or eliminate college tuition, or the debate between Obamacare and a single-payer system. In each of these cases, the fallacy of selected benefits supposedly seeks to level the playing field, but actually leaves poeple stranded, saddled with medical, student or car debt and inefficient systems, traffic jams and sky-rocketing costs. For decades, Portland offered FREE public transportation. What we spend on reducing fares, we can more than make up for in reducing costs associated with accidents, asthma, road construction and car ownership.
It is important that public services are public, free-of-charge, for everyone. WHile the low-income fare policy probably has the best of intentions, the program will increase inequality and social stigma.
Can we just tear down the highways already? Please?
Luckily, highways are their own destruction's propaganda. Walking along Seattle's waterfront, one is stuck under a two story highway ina tunnel of cement and noise. When I poster, I like to use the direct, emotive experience of the space to drive home the poster. The poster below, which I also posted in Spanish underneath the Alaska Viaduct, argues that public transportation for all is more "advanced" than cars for the poor. While advanced and modern are often problematic concepts, the point of it being better, more humane and less polluting still stands. Nothing helps convince the poster reader more than the hideous cement block of a highway that she is standing under. Place-baced politicking!
