Yesterday I read a most interesting article about what Austria is doing to combat climate change. For $3.50 you can buy a ticket that is good for ANY public transportation available in Austria on a given day. As an example, they showed how one could spend 8 hours crossing Austria using public transportation – bus, rail, tram and metro services – all for $3.50! That is pretty remarkable. An annual pass costs just over $1,200. Think about that. For about the daily cost of a latte at Starbucks, you could travel almost anywhere you needed to go in Austria, sans automobile.
And why is Austria doing this? Two simple words – climate change. “Public transport is already popular in Austria. Its combination of reliable, high-quality, integrated services, simple ticketing and attractive pricing have long made it a winner for commuters and leisure travelers.
Yet even though Austrians travel more kilometers by train every year than everyone in Europe except the Swiss, according to official government figures only 16% of journeys in 2018 were made by public transport.”1 The ticket is even named the ‘Klimaticket’.
One of the things that is so innovative is that you just have to buy one ticket that can be used on ANY public transportation. The other thing that stood out in this article is the investment the government made and is making to support this initiative.
No less than $278 million (€240 million) of federal government funding has been agreed to support the new initiative. Ongoing costs are expected to be around $175 million (€150 million) a year. Despite this, the ticket is regarded as central to Austria’s ambition to become climate neutral by 2040 — backed by the European Union’s post-Covid “Green Deal.”
The Austrian government’s 2030 Mobility Master Plan aims to reduce private car use from 70% of total annual kilometers traveled to 54% by 2040, at the same time increasing public transport’s share from 27% to 40% and doubling active travel (walking and cycling) from 3% to 6% of the total.1
Initiatives like this do provide some hope that there are at least some governments that are taking climate change seriously. Here in this country, we have been trying to pass Biden’s infrastructure plan for how many weeks now? And one of the big sticking points for Senator Joe Manchin (D – West Virginia) in Biden’s spending plan was the accelerated change to alternative energy sources. Of course, Manchin is from a big coal producing state and received a lot of money from the fossil fuel industry. That is exactly why the US is so far behind the emission goals originally set in the Paris climate agreement. Unfortunately, we are not alone in not meeting our targets.2
Although Austria is much smaller than the United States, what they are doing with public transportation just shows that some of these problems are solvable if countries can just muster the political will. In this country, short term greed tends to win over long-term strategic thinking and problem solving.
I’ve had the privilege of riding high speed trains in Europe and Japan. They have built and are operating high speed rail lines in China. Where are ours? I’ve had the ‘privilege’ of riding the New York City subway system. It is, in fact, a marvel of engineering but it is old and decrepit. It is not uncommon to see rats scurrying along the track bed when waiting for trains to come. Contrast that with some of the clean and modern subway systems seen all over the world and the word “pathetic” comes to mind.
Unfortunately for the United States, short term greed, corporate profits and political prostitution will be the biggest barriers to climate change innovation and execution – until it’s a crisis. I mean a worse crisis. After all, some of our politicians have much more pressing things to worry about – restricting abortions, restricting voting, restricting what is taught in classrooms, restricting immigration, restricting investigations into abuses of power and insurrections, and lastly, prostituting themselves with wealthy patrons, corporations and lobbyists to facilitate their continued presence at the trough of government largesse.
After all, why worry about tomorrow’s problems today? In the famous words of Doris Day, “Que sera sera” – what will be will be!
P.S. I have included the link to Heather Cox Richardson’s blog because today she presents a very cogent and frightening argument showing just how close we are to losing our democracy3.
Largest contributor to CO2 and such is due to private automobile transportation – and I believe the dominate contribution here in California is for work commuting. Electric vehicles help, but last I looked it only helped by a mere 30 or so percent when accounting for creation and manufacture of the vehicle, it’s use, and disposal. Maybe better now if more electrical generation is renewables. And So Cal we have already exceeded our grid capacity too many times – so I am a little baffled how EVs solve that issue without capacity expansion – something has to give if everyone wants to charge their cars in the peak hours with AC units on.
The best way to help is to simply not drive at all – use public trans – or move close to work – rather than like some we knew at Hughes that would commute in from 120 miles away ( leaving at 3am to get to work, departing at 2pm, and spending 4 or more hours on the road each day – insanity).