Free Transit Toronto member Stefan Kipfer has written an important piece about free transit during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read the article on the Socialst Project’s website here.
“Demands for free transit in Toronto, Oshawa, Edmonton, and Ottawa might generate such demands elsewhere. And calls for fare freedom may yield other calls for freedom, with regards to mobility and much beyond. This is exactly the point! Demanding fare freedom raises the question: why not make other vital services (from public housing to childcare and post-secondary education) free? Also: why not consider public transit a genuine public space free from harassment, from segregation, from racialized policing? Why not put public services such as transit at the centre of economic development strategies that are both egalitarian and ecologically sustainable? Why not introduce free public services to reorganize the way in which we plan our towns, our cities, our lives? Why, in fact, should we pit one just and green demand against another? Why not work together to build a broader vision for a different city, a different world, in which human and other lives are affirmed and enriched? If free transit is one entry point to start building a new world, why not bring mobilizations for transit and mobility into conversation instead of competition with other critical political campaigns?”