Imagine there's no cars... well, there aren't, at the Autumn Festival

People take over the street in Philadelphia for the Autumn Festival

1,000 Protesters Hit Streets of Philly to Express Shale Gas Outrage « EcoWatch: Uniting the Voice of the Grassroots Environmental Movement

1,000 Protesters Hit Streets of Philly to Express Shale Gas Outrage « EcoWatch: Uniting the Voice of the Grassroots Environmental Movement: "More than 1,000 people from Pennsylvania and the shale regions of neighboring New York, Ohio, West Virginia and beyond, along with downstreamers from Maryland and Delaware, joined together to protest the Marcellus Shale Coalition’s industry convention in downtown Philadelphia on Sept. 20, making a unified statement to “Stop Fracking Now.”"

'via Blog this'

All over the U.S. street car rails are waiting under the asphalt

Let's make the buses fare-free. Then when the critical mass of the auto is broken in the city, the auto costs will be seen as the burden that they are, and we can gradually go back to streetcars.

Polls consistently show that people want more public transit

Survey: Americans want more public transit - but not higher taxes to fund it - Philly.com: The support was even higher in the Philadelphia suburbs: Pollsters found Bucks and Montgomery County respondents favored more local spending on transit by a ratio of 82 percent to 13 percent.
...Respondents there were split 49-48 on a five-cent-a-gallon gas-tax hike. They also supported a one-half-cent increase in the sales tax for transportation improvements, by a ratio of 55 percent to 41 percent.

Hidden tax! Hidden tax!

Where are the right wing nut jobs when it is time to complain about hidden taxes that subsidize private profit? The city spends over 190 million dollars a year managing parking. Parking management is necessary because there are too many cars. This creates parking hell, which then must managed through taxes--an externality of the industries that profit from the auto system--the oil industry, the auto industry, the coal industry, and the sprawl industry, to name a few. This money is collected by way of tickets, mostly. Parking tickets are a tax on delivery companies and messengers. These taxes hurt business!

 tax collection

expensive equipment to manage parking

Here is an idea. Take the 190 million and make public transit fare-free. Then the delivery companies and small businesses can have some room to work.

Imagine there's no cars... wonder if you can

Street resurfacing. If there were no cars, every other street could be a park. A lot of money would be saved.