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>> Uber isn't perfect, but banning it doesn't magically fix the subway. There's no doubt there are issues with public transit, but letting the rideshare servic

>> Uber isn't perfect, but banning it doesn't magically fix the subway. There's no doubt there are issues with public transit, but letting the rideshare services run rampant, while being effectively subsidized by the taxpayers roads, etc is no solution either. >> U.S. ridership is surging, he said — up 37% last year, to 2.6 billion passengers, from 2016. >> It found that, in U.S. cities, 49% to 61% of ride-hailing trips would have not been made at all — or by walking, biking, or public transit. Given these two notes from the article, Thats alot of extra demand added to road infrastructure. A medallion system makes the ride-share services contribute their share for the increase in wear & tear on infrastructure. Its not perfect, but letting them run wild isnt working either.

smileysteve 8y ago
> A medallion system makes the ride-share services contribute their share for the increase in wear & tear on infrastructure. Medallion revenue doesn't go to infrastructure though; Gas Tax does though and is an existing way to tax on use. And to counter your point, it's rarely the rider oriented cars, suvs, and minivans that actually wear and tear the streets; it's more likely that they are subsidizing the roads for delivery trucks.
- thatswrong0 8y ago
  To clarify the last point, damage to roads increases exponentially as weight increases. A big-rig will do hundreds of times more damage to a road than a, say, Prius. https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weight-vs-road-damage-levels/ https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh... http://archive.gao.gov/f0302/109884.pdf http://archive.gao.gov/f0302/109884.pdf
pwned1 8y ago
Ubers and Lyfts pay the $0.25 per gallon New York gas tax, plus sales tax on top of both state and federal gas taxes (tax on a tax), so they are paying for road infrastructure, just like everyone else. It's important to note that public transit agencies don't pay gas tax, and a large portion of the federal highway fund is diverted to public transit agencies.
- vkou 8y ago
  Gas tax does not go nearly enough of the way to paying for infrastructure. Most road maintenance is paid for by property and income taxes. $0.25/gallon is peanuts. New York (State) consumed ~135 million barrels of gas last year. That's 1.35 billion dollars of gas taxes. (Less in reality, because some commercial uses are exempt from these taxes, or can deduct them as expenses.) The NY DOT's maintenance budget, alone is ~$4.5 billion USD. Not to mention another $7 billion earmarked for new construction. Increase the gas taxes to $2.5/gallon, and then I'll agree that road users, in aggregate, are paying their way, instead of freeriding.
  - pwned1 8y ago
    Can you point to a budget for the NY DoT? I cant seem to find anything. The DoT web site is devoid of budgets and the state's web site doesn't help either.
    - vkou 8y ago
      I may be grossly misunderstanding the budget, but this is what I looked at. [1] > The FY 2018 Executive Budget recommends nearly $11.6 billion for the Department, an increase of $749.1 million over the FY 2017 budget. This year-to-year change primarily reflects new capital investments in transportation infrastructure. > Preventive Maintenance - Capital Projects Funds - Other $4,428 (million) [1] https://www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/archive/fy18archive/exec/agencyPresentations/appropData/TransportationDepartmentof.html https://www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/archive/fy18archive/exec/agen...
      - pwned1 8y ago
        I'm looking for the revenue side. I can't find that. How is the department funded?
        vkou 8y ago
        Since the expenses of the department greatly exceed the revenue collected by the tax, arithmetic indicates that it has to be funded by some combination of the general state, and federal tax pools.
rhino369 8y ago
Road funding should be raised by using gasoline, tolls, and/or mileage taxes. That would force uber to pay for their usage of roads. Many/most jurisdictions already do this.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Why stop there? Why not put tolls on the sidewalks and park benches and charge per usage? We as a society have decided that it's best for all of us is we collectively eat the cost of letting people use certain resources as much as they want at low/no cost or at a cost not proportional to usage. Roads are one of these resources. Increasing the cost of transportation basically increases the cost of physical distance. That's a needless drag on the economy in every way and at every level. It's better to just keep filling potholes and ignore the people who grumble about it than it is to enact any sort of pay-per-use system that actually results in the roads being approximately self sustaining. Transportation infrastructure is publicly funded/subsidized for a reason.
  - sharkmerry 8y ago
    >> We as a society have decided that it's best for all of us is we collectively eat the cost of letting people use certain resources as much as they want at low/no cost or at a cost not proportional to usage. Roads are one of these resources. But we decided this based on the idea that those that use the roads for profit will pay extra as they are making income off a public resource
  - megaremote 8y ago
    Because cars are horrible, produce pollution, over a million deaths a year, a huge waster of resources, cars are 20x the size of a person, cause lots of damage, and a 100 other reasons.
kazinator 8y ago
> while being effectively subsidized by the taxpayers roads Uber driver pays taxes including whatever is in the gasoline and vehicle insurance and whatnot. The proper "get off my lawn" way to complain about non-payers of road taxes is to focus on cyclists.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  And the proper way to argue with such a person is to write the fourth-power rule on a large sheet of paper, roll it up into a small, tight cone, and stab them in the eye with it. Road wear is proportional to axle weight to the fourth power. Gas tax is proportional to total weight to the first power. In collisions, the more massive vehicle sustains proportionally less damage. A large truck could completely pulverize an economy car while barely even denting its own grill. Clearly, collision liability insurance should be proportional to a vehicle's mass and its top speed, while own-vehicle insurance should be proportional to speed and inversely proportional to mass. Uber is not a threat from a road maintenance perspective. It's a question of road capacity used per passenger trip distance. If you measure a road's capacity by vehicle throughput per unit time, a hailed ride can transport 0 to 5 passengers in one vehicle-plus-buffer 60m long. A bus is a longer vehicle, but it still needs a traffic buffer for safe stopping distance much longer than its own length. That bus can transport dozens of passengers with nearly the same road capacity utilization as the car. What's needed to reduce congestion in car-heavy traffic is robovehicle-to-robovehicle communication, that can automatically negotiate multiple robocars into a train, to reduce the length of empty roadway needed ahead of each one for collision-free travel. The robocars have to agree to brake and accelerate at the same times, in the same amounts. Buses can already accomplish this easily, just by putting all the riders in the same box, and using one driver to control the speed of everyone in it. So the problem really is the ride-hailing driver. Their reflexes are too poor to drive at 60 mph with their front bumper touching the rear bumper of the car ahead.
  - sharkmerry 8y ago
    >> And the proper way to argue with such a person is to write the fourth-power rule on a large sheet of paper, roll it up into a small, tight cone, and stab them in the eye with it. What a nice reasonable start to a discussion. >> Road wear is proportional to axle weight to the fourth power. Gas tax is proportional to total weight to the first power. Great, I didnt argue for a gas tax. You are arguing about road capacity which my original point about 49%-61% more rides out there is in line with. and which is what the much-maligned medallion system aimed to work on (it has its own issues but thats due to not raising the limit with population/demand vs the idea being wrong).
paulgb 8y ago
> [...] letting the rideshare services run rampant, while being effectively subsidized by the taxpayers roads, etc is no solution either. Given that any additional taxes will be passed on to ride share users, why should taxpayers subsidize private car ownership but not use of the roads by ride share users? A blanket congestion tax feels more fair to me.
- jimmaswell 8y ago
  Congestion taxes seem like such a lazy cop out to me - instead of working towards improving infrastructure to support more people getting around the way they want or make car commuters naturally want to choose transit instead, just beat them with the tax stick until they go away? We can do better.
  - paulgb 8y ago
    100% agree. In NYC the serious congestion pricing proposals that I'm aware of have a big part of the revenue going to subway/transit improvements.
scythe 8y ago
>while being effectively subsidized by the taxpayers roads, etc Every time someone wants to argue against anything involving a road, they pull out this "roads are subsidized" canard. The state actually recovers most of the costs through gas taxes, registration fees, insurance requirements, and tolls, all of which rideshare drivers (and therefore riders) pay for -- and don't forget the income tax. If someone's activities are costing the state money (which I doubt) the correct response is to tax them -- not ban what they're doing or introduce artificial limitations on supply.
henryfjordan 8y ago
I don't know about elsewhere, but in CA a lot of the road money comes from (or at least is supposed to come from) taxes on gasoline/diesel. https://taxfoundation.org/state-road-funding-2017/ https://taxfoundation.org/state-road-funding-2017/ That means that Rideshare drivers are largely paying their fair share.
- brewdad 8y ago
  Your own link tells you exactly how it is elsewhere. Did you read it? It also shows that 38% of CA's road funding comes from sources not tied to motor vehicle use (meaning sales taxes, income taxes, etc). The median US state (NH at 25 and ID at 26 derive only 48% of their road budget from road user fees. IMO, that means rideshare drivers are far from paying their fair share.
manigandham 8y ago
As the other comments have said, gas tax pays for the roads already so it's not unfair. The biggest issue is that there is plenty of taxpayer money but it's not being used well at all, hence the strong demand for these other transport options. Ask why the local government cant manage some proper rail and bus lines instead.

smileysteve 8y ago

> A medallion system makes the ride-share services contribute their share for the increase in wear & tear on infrastructure. Medallion revenue doesn't go to infrastructure though; Gas Tax does though and is an existing way to tax on use. And to counter your point, it's rarely the rider oriented cars, suvs, and minivans that actually wear and tear the streets; it's more likely that they are subsidizing the roads for delivery trucks.

thatswrong0 8y ago
To clarify the last point, damage to roads increases exponentially as weight increases. A big-rig will do hundreds of times more damage to a road than a, say, Prius. https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weight-vs-road-damage-levels/ https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh... http://archive.gao.gov/f0302/109884.pdf http://archive.gao.gov/f0302/109884.pdf

pwned1 8y ago

Ubers and Lyfts pay the $0.25 per gallon New York gas tax, plus sales tax on top of both state and federal gas taxes (tax on a tax), so they are paying for road infrastructure, just like everyone else. It's important to note that public transit agencies don't pay gas tax, and a large portion of the federal highway fund is diverted to public transit agencies.

vkou 8y ago
Gas tax does not go nearly enough of the way to paying for infrastructure. Most road maintenance is paid for by property and income taxes. $0.25/gallon is peanuts. New York (State) consumed ~135 million barrels of gas last year. That's 1.35 billion dollars of gas taxes. (Less in reality, because some commercial uses are exempt from these taxes, or can deduct them as expenses.) The NY DOT's maintenance budget, alone is ~$4.5 billion USD. Not to mention another $7 billion earmarked for new construction. Increase the gas taxes to $2.5/gallon, and then I'll agree that road users, in aggregate, are paying their way, instead of freeriding.
- pwned1 8y ago
  Can you point to a budget for the NY DoT? I cant seem to find anything. The DoT web site is devoid of budgets and the state's web site doesn't help either.
  - vkou 8y ago
    I may be grossly misunderstanding the budget, but this is what I looked at. [1] > The FY 2018 Executive Budget recommends nearly $11.6 billion for the Department, an increase of $749.1 million over the FY 2017 budget. This year-to-year change primarily reflects new capital investments in transportation infrastructure. > Preventive Maintenance - Capital Projects Funds - Other $4,428 (million) [1] https://www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/archive/fy18archive/exec/agencyPresentations/appropData/TransportationDepartmentof.html https://www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/archive/fy18archive/exec/agen...
    - pwned1 8y ago
      I'm looking for the revenue side. I can't find that. How is the department funded?
      - vkou 8y ago
        Since the expenses of the department greatly exceed the revenue collected by the tax, arithmetic indicates that it has to be funded by some combination of the general state, and federal tax pools.

rhino369 8y ago

Road funding should be raised by using gasoline, tolls, and/or mileage taxes. That would force uber to pay for their usage of roads. Many/most jurisdictions already do this.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Why stop there? Why not put tolls on the sidewalks and park benches and charge per usage? We as a society have decided that it's best for all of us is we collectively eat the cost of letting people use certain resources as much as they want at low/no cost or at a cost not proportional to usage. Roads are one of these resources. Increasing the cost of transportation basically increases the cost of physical distance. That's a needless drag on the economy in every way and at every level. It's better to just keep filling potholes and ignore the people who grumble about it than it is to enact any sort of pay-per-use system that actually results in the roads being approximately self sustaining. Transportation infrastructure is publicly funded/subsidized for a reason.
- sharkmerry 8y ago
  >> We as a society have decided that it's best for all of us is we collectively eat the cost of letting people use certain resources as much as they want at low/no cost or at a cost not proportional to usage. Roads are one of these resources. But we decided this based on the idea that those that use the roads for profit will pay extra as they are making income off a public resource
- megaremote 8y ago
  Because cars are horrible, produce pollution, over a million deaths a year, a huge waster of resources, cars are 20x the size of a person, cause lots of damage, and a 100 other reasons.

kazinator 8y ago

> while being effectively subsidized by the taxpayers roads Uber driver pays taxes including whatever is in the gasoline and vehicle insurance and whatnot. The proper "get off my lawn" way to complain about non-payers of road taxes is to focus on cyclists.

logfromblammo 8y ago
And the proper way to argue with such a person is to write the fourth-power rule on a large sheet of paper, roll it up into a small, tight cone, and stab them in the eye with it. Road wear is proportional to axle weight to the fourth power. Gas tax is proportional to total weight to the first power. In collisions, the more massive vehicle sustains proportionally less damage. A large truck could completely pulverize an economy car while barely even denting its own grill. Clearly, collision liability insurance should be proportional to a vehicle's mass and its top speed, while own-vehicle insurance should be proportional to speed and inversely proportional to mass. Uber is not a threat from a road maintenance perspective. It's a question of road capacity used per passenger trip distance. If you measure a road's capacity by vehicle throughput per unit time, a hailed ride can transport 0 to 5 passengers in one vehicle-plus-buffer 60m long. A bus is a longer vehicle, but it still needs a traffic buffer for safe stopping distance much longer than its own length. That bus can transport dozens of passengers with nearly the same road capacity utilization as the car. What's needed to reduce congestion in car-heavy traffic is robovehicle-to-robovehicle communication, that can automatically negotiate multiple robocars into a train, to reduce the length of empty roadway needed ahead of each one for collision-free travel. The robocars have to agree to brake and accelerate at the same times, in the same amounts. Buses can already accomplish this easily, just by putting all the riders in the same box, and using one driver to control the speed of everyone in it. So the problem really is the ride-hailing driver. Their reflexes are too poor to drive at 60 mph with their front bumper touching the rear bumper of the car ahead.
- sharkmerry 8y ago
  >> And the proper way to argue with such a person is to write the fourth-power rule on a large sheet of paper, roll it up into a small, tight cone, and stab them in the eye with it. What a nice reasonable start to a discussion. >> Road wear is proportional to axle weight to the fourth power. Gas tax is proportional to total weight to the first power. Great, I didnt argue for a gas tax. You are arguing about road capacity which my original point about 49%-61% more rides out there is in line with. and which is what the much-maligned medallion system aimed to work on (it has its own issues but thats due to not raising the limit with population/demand vs the idea being wrong).

paulgb 8y ago

> [...] letting the rideshare services run rampant, while being effectively subsidized by the taxpayers roads, etc is no solution either. Given that any additional taxes will be passed on to ride share users, why should taxpayers subsidize private car ownership but not use of the roads by ride share users? A blanket congestion tax feels more fair to me.

jimmaswell 8y ago
Congestion taxes seem like such a lazy cop out to me - instead of working towards improving infrastructure to support more people getting around the way they want or make car commuters naturally want to choose transit instead, just beat them with the tax stick until they go away? We can do better.
- paulgb 8y ago
  100% agree. In NYC the serious congestion pricing proposals that I'm aware of have a big part of the revenue going to subway/transit improvements.

scythe 8y ago

>while being effectively subsidized by the taxpayers roads, etc Every time someone wants to argue against anything involving a road, they pull out this "roads are subsidized" canard. The state actually recovers most of the costs through gas taxes, registration fees, insurance requirements, and tolls, all of which rideshare drivers (and therefore riders) pay for -- and don't forget the income tax. If someone's activities are costing the state money (which I doubt) the correct response is to tax them -- not ban what they're doing or introduce artificial limitations on supply.

henryfjordan 8y ago

I don't know about elsewhere, but in CA a lot of the road money comes from (or at least is supposed to come from) taxes on gasoline/diesel. https://taxfoundation.org/state-road-funding-2017/ https://taxfoundation.org/state-road-funding-2017/ That means that Rideshare drivers are largely paying their fair share.

brewdad 8y ago
Your own link tells you exactly how it is elsewhere. Did you read it? It also shows that 38% of CA's road funding comes from sources not tied to motor vehicle use (meaning sales taxes, income taxes, etc). The median US state (NH at 25 and ID at 26 derive only 48% of their road budget from road user fees. IMO, that means rideshare drivers are far from paying their fair share.

manigandham 8y ago

As the other comments have said, gas tax pays for the roads already so it's not unfair. The biggest issue is that there is plenty of taxpayer money but it's not being used well at all, hence the strong demand for these other transport options. Ask why the local government cant manage some proper rail and bus lines instead.