Media Clipping — Thursday, November 30, 2006, The Daily News, Editorial

Public transportation on a roll for the future

By The Daily News

Standing at a bus stop on a snowy day, watching a filled-to-the-doors Metro Transit bus rumble by without stopping ... getting on a bus at rush hour, then standing in the aisle, with other passengers, packed like sardines ... running to catch a bus or ferry, missing it, then waiting an hour for the next one ... needing to transfer three times, and missing one of the connections ...

Those are some of the reasons many people who can afford their own vehicle prefer to drive rather than use public transportation. For them, the independence and convenience of driving one's own car — or SUV — outweighs the expense of gasoline, maintenance and insurance — not to mention the emissions that contribute to global warming.

And when you're caught in traffic gridlock, at least you're alone in your vehicle, and not involuntarily sharing your personal space with strangers.

This is the challenge public transit faces: how to induce drivers to leave their cars at home when commuting to and from work. It's an important challenge — according to a report from Genuine Progress Index (GPI) Atlantic, Nova Scotians' collective cost of driving is $6.4 billion per year.

HRM and Metro Transit are trying to make public transportation more attractive. In April of this year, the utility put out a tender for 75 new buses. And the MetroLink express-bus service, initiated a little more than a year ago, is a success story.

Another innovation, a fast-ferry service between Bedford and downtown Halifax, is under serious consideration, and could become reality within a few more years.

And the province recently received good news from the feds in the form of $37.5 million for buses, terminals and other public-transit infrastructure.

As these efforts become integrated into a transit strategy, the cost of driving will go down, and ridership will go up.

That's the best-case scenario. GPI has already described the worst case.

© The Daily News