Should Calgary have free-fare transit?

After successful reports from countries around the world about the positive effects of congestion pricing, New York City looks to charge drivers in the most congested areas of the city in order to reduce traffic and environmental impact. The revenue from congestion pricing, which acts as a barrier for drivers in crowded city limits, is funneled back into the city's public transportation budget.

Los Angeles has faced deepening issues of severe traffic and extreme smog pollution in the past several decades, but for years intentions and promises to broadly improve transportation have fallen flat. At long last, the most congested city in the world - once home to the most extensive urban rail network on the planet - is reviving rail lines and trains as a solution to both issues. Robust public transport has proven to have multi-layered economic, cultural, environmental, and social benefits to communities.

New York City suffered from fires that erupted in overcrowded, run-down apartments. Then the city sleuthed through residential records and found that landlords who foreclosed let their properties fall apart and ignored safety-code violations. Greater Toronto wants to expand upon New York City’s method by using transportation surveys, census data and computer data to build transit lines.

With rural areas and mountain towns increasingly facing traffic issues during peak outdoor season or other temporary population growth periods, some have modeled responses after urban transit plans. Park City, the host of the Sundance Film Festival offers free buses throughout the weekend to cut back on commuter traffic; other towns have planned shuttle services between towns and dedicated e-bike routes to reduce car usage in their communities.

Although Paris public transportation ridership is booming - a goal of the city's to make a positive impact on "green" development - city officials are now looking to expand the metro lines to be able to fit the demand of residents and tourists. Developers have broken ground on a metro project that aims to encircle the city, making it easier for suburb dwellers to get around the region without having to enter Paris itself.

Mushroom farms are popping up in underground parking lots in Paris. The city, facing a surplus of lots as car ownership declines, has been holding competitions to find creative, new purposes for them. Urban farmers, Cycloponics, won one of these competitions and now operates three of these mushroom farms, selling their crops to local organic grocery stores in the area.

In Zurich, Switzerland, urban planners designed streets that put pedestrians and streetcar riders first as an effort to cut back on car usage and promote sustainable transportation. While cars are limited to one lane and often wait in lines to get through the city, the tram carries nearly seven as many passengers as cars in a given hour, making the layout sustainable and efficient for urban travel.

In Salt Lake City, a bipartisan coalition of public and private actors, including members of the business, industrial, religious, political, and civic communities voluntarily came together to pass an ambitious twenty year land use plan. The plan, which conserves water, promotes clean air, and imposes new taxes for new rail lines, was made possible by Envision Utah, a public-private partnership that capitalizes on many Utahns' cultural and religious heritage.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, necessity has bred an interesting kind of financial invention for the New York MTA: the world’s first “catastrophe” bond - a reinsurance for the insurer - designed to protect public transportation infrastructure, specifically against storm surge. These bonds privatize risk for public gain, creating a kind of tool that may protect economic development against all kinds of natural and man-made disasters around the world.

To address issues with the city’s old, slow subway system, Boston's MBTA implemented an aggressive repair and staffing strategy that included replacing 250,000 feet of aging track and expanding the workforce from 5,700 to 8,000 employees through increased wages and sign-on bonuses. As a result, on-time performance soared from 25% to 92%, rider satisfaction nearly doubled, and the system now runs 278 more trains daily.