To the editor:

I do not ride the T, despite being lucky enough to live on a bus line. But when I was a teenager I relied on the local public transit system, and today so do many young people, old people, people of limited means and people of strong environmental principles.

Good public transit costs very little compared to the benefits it creates: It reduces pollution, traffic and parking congestion, allows students and employees to get to work, and allows seniors to get to social and medical appointments. Good buses, like good schools, are some of the things that make a city livable and keep property values high.

With its vigorous commercial sector, wealthy golf course developments and thriving university, Lawrence is a rich community, capable of giving tax abatements totaling millions of dollars to individual corporations. Surely a community that has been so blessed can afford to provide the $1.4 million for an absolutely critical public service that benefits the “least” of our fellow citizens the most. Saving and expanding public transit in Lawrence is not only sound public policy, it is the right thing to do.

If the public coffers really are too modest to provide for public transit, then please, City Commission, raise my taxes and the taxes of Lawrence’s corporations to pay for this absolutely crucial public service.

Jacob S. Dorman,

Lawrence