4 ms·

What do you mean "unable to make it work". Why should buses/train/subway have to be profitable? Roads for your car sure aren't. Every dollar we subsidize publi

What do you mean "unable to make it work". Why should buses/train/subway have to be profitable? Roads for your car sure aren't. Every dollar we subsidize public transit, is far more than a dollar saved on road repair & upgrades. Just think of buses. Two to three axles. If all the riders took cars instead, that's one hundred axles. Road wear is a function of weight, for which axles is a proxy, and obviously one hundred axles is a lot more traffic demanding road upgrades as well.

yardie 9y ago
I'm referring to the US as this is specifically a US problem. Our best system New York's MTA has frequent outages. While the trains are new the tracks and switches are decaying at an incredible rate. My current city, Miami, the city is looking at reducing mass transit service [0]. After already approving a 1-cent tax to expand service MDTA reneged and used the increase to pay for existing issues (fair enough, it needed fixing). Now, we're all paying slight more for a still terrible system. At this point I think the solution just may have to come from the open market, obviously the govt run entity is unable/unwilling to do the job. [0] http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article178592976.html http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/a...
- acdha 9y ago
  > While the trains are new the tracks and switches are decaying at an incredible rate. This is a key misunderstanding: the systems are performing as designed but the normal maintenance was skimped on for years and now we're seeing the consequences of years of fiscal “conservatism” punting the problem down the road for future generations to deal with. If we were to use that logic to say we should stop doing things, we'd also be shutting down most roads, bridges, water systems, schools, etc. because those have the same problems due to the large number of people who don't want to pay for the things they use. Every year, https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org will have a low rating for most U.S. infrastructure and every year a key part of the political system will shrug, say “starve the beast”, and plan on being dead / elsewhere before things break down too much more. Privatization often makes this problem worse because all of those costs remain unmodified and there's a need to generate profits which requires either increasing prices or reducing service. That can be acceptable for many businesses but cutting infrastructure tends to have significant economic ripple effects since it affects your ability to participate in the economy.
- tigershark 9y ago
  Am I misunderstanding something or are you really complaining about a 1 cent tax? I wish I could have any service paying as little as 1 cent over my current taxes. Hell, I'll happily pay 10£ even for a shitty service probably..
  - yardie 9y ago
    This is one cent (as in 1%) sales tax. And it is being applied to 1 city service, transit. If all other city services did this you can expect your taxes to be in the 30-50 percent range.

yardie 9y ago

I'm referring to the US as this is specifically a US problem. Our best system New York's MTA has frequent outages. While the trains are new the tracks and switches are decaying at an incredible rate. My current city, Miami, the city is looking at reducing mass transit service [0]. After already approving a 1-cent tax to expand service MDTA reneged and used the increase to pay for existing issues (fair enough, it needed fixing). Now, we're all paying slight more for a still terrible system. At this point I think the solution just may have to come from the open market, obviously the govt run entity is unable/unwilling to do the job. [0] http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article178592976.html http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/a...

acdha 9y ago
> While the trains are new the tracks and switches are decaying at an incredible rate. This is a key misunderstanding: the systems are performing as designed but the normal maintenance was skimped on for years and now we're seeing the consequences of years of fiscal “conservatism” punting the problem down the road for future generations to deal with. If we were to use that logic to say we should stop doing things, we'd also be shutting down most roads, bridges, water systems, schools, etc. because those have the same problems due to the large number of people who don't want to pay for the things they use. Every year, https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org will have a low rating for most U.S. infrastructure and every year a key part of the political system will shrug, say “starve the beast”, and plan on being dead / elsewhere before things break down too much more. Privatization often makes this problem worse because all of those costs remain unmodified and there's a need to generate profits which requires either increasing prices or reducing service. That can be acceptable for many businesses but cutting infrastructure tends to have significant economic ripple effects since it affects your ability to participate in the economy.
tigershark 9y ago
Am I misunderstanding something or are you really complaining about a 1 cent tax? I wish I could have any service paying as little as 1 cent over my current taxes. Hell, I'll happily pay 10£ even for a shitty service probably..
- yardie 9y ago
  This is one cent (as in 1%) sales tax. And it is being applied to 1 city service, transit. If all other city services did this you can expect your taxes to be in the 30-50 percent range.