<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/fare-free-bus-transit-alexandria-virginia/>
"Ever since Canek Aguirre got elected to the Alexandria City Council, he wanted
to make the city’s bus transit service, known as DASH, free.
Growing up in Los Angeles, he fondly remembered a local bus service which only
cost a quarter to ride. Going to college in Chapel Hill, the bus was totally
free. Why not do the same in this prosperous city of almost 160,000 in northern
Virginia?
In 2019, when Aguirre first began serving on the council, he didn’t think the
political will was there to go fare free. Instead, he proposed reduced fare or
exemptions for some groups of people.
“I was trying to inch towards it, but in the back of my mind I really wanted to
get to fare free,” says Aguirre. “Given the size of our community here in
Alexandria, it just seemed very doable to have a fare-free system.”
Then Covid-19 hit, and the world changed. Heavy rail ridership on the
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s (WMATA) Metro, whose Yellow
Line runs through Alexandria, fell off a cliff and still hasn’t even recovered
50 percent of its ridership. But the city’s buses were still seeing heavy use,
as so-called essential workers in grocery retail, food service and health care
continued going to work. Today the 11 DASH bus lines are at 95 percent of
pre-pandemic ridership.
In 2020, as the pandemic raged, Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson sent the City
Council an email introducing the idea of eliminating bus fares. At a subsequent
meeting held on Zoom, the measure was introduced with no fuss."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
