Three Assembly bills for various versions of #freepublictransit

• Assembly Bill 1350, Free Youth Transit Passes, authored by Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez: would require transit agencies to offer free youth transit passes to any rider age 18 years or under in order to be eligible for state funding.
• Assembly Bill 2176, Free Student Transit Passes, authored by Assemblymember Chris Holden: would require transit agencies to provide free transit passes for community college and university students of public institutions state-wide in order to be eligible for state funding.
• Assembly Bill 2012, Free Senior Transit Passes, authored by Assemblymember Kansen Chu: would require transit agencies to provide free transit passes to any rider over 65 years of age in order to be eligible for state funding.

https://www.ccair.org/free-transit-for-young-and-old-a-good-idea-is-coming-of-age-in-the-legislature/ 

UCSD -- faculty task force calls for #freepublictransit

• Make public transportation free for UCSD faculty, staff and students, while incentivizing carpooling and bus use.
• Work with the Metropolitan Transit System to create express bus service to and from neighborhoods that are filled with university workers. UCSD is one of the county’s largest employers.

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-03-02/ucsd-faculty-scold-the-university-over-its-climate-change-response 

RainForest Alliance supports #freepublictransit

Well done #Luxembourg!! 👏👏👏 Free public transport is a great way to help people to lower their daily #carbonfootprint. https://t.co/ysiJQae8du

— Rainforest Alliance (@RnfrstAlliance) March 2, 2020

Free public transit for K-12 in LA, passed Assembly unanimously #AB1350

“I live 12 miles from the ocean, and I have young people in my neighborhood who have never been to the beach,” she [Gonzalez] said.

...Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club California, agrees. She says the bill would reduce localized air pollution as well as greenhouse gas emissions because fewer people would drive their kids to school.
“If you’ve ever gone by a school, you know that it can get pretty crowded in the morning — there’s a lot of idling, and idling creates a lot of pollution,” Phillips said. “The (programs) that work the most are when you just do an across the board, every kid, every student gets free transit.”

https://calmatters.org/transportation/2020/02/free-transit-kids-california-climate-change/ 

In the US, there are 8 parking spaces per car, one space can cost over $100,000 to create

In 2015, the city looked at taking over a now-popular restaurant to build a 64-space parking structure in Belmont Shore for $7.4 million, or $115,600‬ per space. Small, expensive structures like this are the kind that would be built in residential neighborhoods. To get 1,000 spaces, you would need 15 structures that size, at a total cost more than $100 million. That’s about a quarter of all the money the city expects from Measure A during its 10-year lifetime. ‬‬‬‬

https://lbpost.com/news/replacing-homes-businesses-parking-hurts-everyone 

How you gonna pay for #freetransit? Oops, first we have another oil bailout

There is a very good chance that California taxpayers will be on the hook for $500 million in future costs of plugging so-called “orphan” oil and gas wells, and a good chance the number could be as high as $5.7 billion, according to a new report. 

The report, released Friday by the California Council on Science and Technology, an independent, state-commissioned body, exposes yet another massive cost the oil, gas, and petrochemical industry is attempting to pass off onto the public — and another risk to investors in the industry should the state act to force industry to internalize these costs, as justice and the existential threat of climate change demands.

https://www.ciel.org/oil-and-gas-gift-to-california-a-5-billion-cleanup-bill/

Bill proposed for #freetransit for students of California community colleges, state universities and the UC campuses

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A proposed California bill would provide free transit passes to students attending state's community colleges, state universities and the UC campuses. 

Assemblymember Chris Holden (D - Pasadena), who proposed the bill, said in a news release the reason why he introduced it was to come up with a solution to tackle climate change.

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/california/california-assembly-bill-offers-free-public-transit-college-students/103-93381a14-cda8-4c39-9bb1-7e0c26cf9564?