The World Is Not Flat

By Jocelyn Geboy in Miscellaneous on Jun 8, 2007 4:45PM

Remember how some people thought the world was flat? That was their reality, and they believed in it with their hearts and souls. Now we can look back and know with certainty they were dead wrong. Well, today Chicagoist heard about an idea that sounds positively revolutionary, one that seems practically incomprehensible. But maybe it's just because we think we are so used to thinking the earth is flat, we can't possibly imagine a round planet.

You know how we keep talking about the CTA and fare hikes and budget woes and service cuts and what the hell are we going to do about this there thing that is our public transit system? Eric Zorn was kind enough to send us a link to his post from today that suggests that maybe we can just forget about all the minutia. What if the whole damned thing were free? Every part of it, all the time!? Wouldn't that rock?

It sounds kind of crazy to us, but apparently it has been done before. Definitely on a much smaller scale, but the thought that it's been attempted somewhere makes us happy. Free Public Transit offers up some ideas about why it will be better for the city in the long run, and Zorn breaks down the pros and cons pretty concisely.

The long and short of the idea is that since everyone in the metropolitan area is joined by public transportation (Metra, Pace and CTA), we all should have to pay for it. A tax on the whole area could take care of this and make the whole thing free, allowing for more money for maintenance and security. Again, we can't quite get our mind around it, but wouldn't that be positively amazing?

"Are we really free?" by photovox