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I'm indifferent and glad I don't live there but why not just charge what it should cost to use Public Transportation/Subways? Why look for ways to subsidize it

I'm indifferent and glad I don't live there but why not just charge what it should cost to use Public Transportation/Subways? Why look for ways to subsidize it by taxing everything else but the people who use it?

mc32 8y ago
It suffers from systemic issues. This is a fiscal patch over a corrupt system. The feds should go in there and clean it up, kick out all the unnecessary fat and install an efficient management anc restructure all their deals with everyone who abuses the system to line their pockets.
jchanimal 8y ago
Generally you want to tax things you want less of and subsidize what you want more of. Hence taxing car traffic and subsidizing transit.
- baddox 8y ago
  I don’t know if I like your model. I would say tax things in order to remove negative externalities, then people will decide what they want more of.
  - dymk 8y ago
    People elect leaders to pass laws to incentivize things they want more of, and disincentivize things they want less of.
    - baddox 8y ago
      That might be true, but what people actually want may not be the same as the most proximate cause of what they want. For instance, if all carbon emissions were required to be carbon-neutral, then carbon emission on its own isn’t so bad. If the cost of every gallon of gas includes the cost of sequestering the same amount of carbon that the gas will emit, then who really cares how much gas is burned?
      - dymk 8y ago
        I don't think we're disagreeing on anything quite yet - if gas included the cost to offset all externalities from burning (not just carbon cost), but nox, ecological damage from drilling, transportation impact, sequestering airborne carbon near where it's burned, we'd probably be fine. But gas isn't priced that way, because we don't do all of the above to offset its effect on our cities and the environment. So we're continuing to impose more disincentives to burn gas.
        baddox 8y ago
        I’m in agreement. I just also approve of moving the externality adjustment closer and closer to its direct source as technology and processes make it efficient to do so.
  - fabianhjr 8y ago
    Good thing incentivizing walking, biking, and transit line up with removing negative externalities: https://www.thediscourse.ca/scarborough/full-cost-commute https://www.thediscourse.ca/scarborough/full-cost-commute
    - baddox 8y ago
      Absolutely. I have no trouble with indirectly charging for negative externalities. As technology and processes improve that enable charging more directly for negative externalities, I approve of that.
  - ip26 8y ago
    Accurately & precisely pricing the externalities of driving vs public transit vs walking vs biking is currently impossibly difficult, so you could say this is just a really crude swing at exactly what you're asking.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    These models are pretty much the same, just phrased a little bit differently. The reason you tax things you want less of is usually because of their negative externalities (and definitely is so in this circumstance).
    - baddox 8y ago
      I mean, the difference is that you don't actually want less of the thing, or even less of the externality, you just want the person buying the thing to pay for the entire cost of the thing.
      - CydeWeys 8y ago
        You often do want less of a thing, in addition to the person buying the thing paying the cost for the entire thing. As one example, we do actually want less CO2 being released into the atmosphere, full stop. Or alternatively phrased, it's impossible to pay the true cost of the thing, as the true cost of everyone doing unrestricted emissions is that the human species goes extinct (which has effectively infinite cost). Or, similarly, imagine an industrial plant releasing waste that spreads through groundwater and poisons adjacent properties. We don't just want the industrial plant to pay the entire cost of the thing; we actually want them to not do that at all, because it infringes upon the properties of others, who do not want it to occur. So there's room for multiple times of frameworks that operate simultaneously -- Pay for the entire costs of some things, but also have less of or do not allow at all some things.
ses1984 8y ago
Isn't congestion pricing taxing people who use the roads? An Uber driver uses the roads a lot more than your average New Yorker, what taxes exist to cover that imbalance? (asking in earnest) Earmarking tax dollars for projects is kind of meaningless. Subsidizing public transportation is a good idea anyway. High costs of transportation disproportionately hurt poorer people. If you're not for public transportation then I'm not sure we'd see eye to eye on much of anything.
- acton10 8y ago
  Gasoline/Petrol taxes are probably your best analog if you want people to pay in proportion to how much they're driving.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    Not with the strides we've been making in fuel efficiency. An EV pays no gasoline taxes, but has similar impact on the roads to any other car. Now, EVs are a good thing... but they do expose issues with paying for transport via gas taxes.
    - ams6110 8y ago
      Electric usage taxes or separate metering and rates for EV charging will be coming. That or much higher registration fees to offset the lost fuel tax revenue, which has already started happening.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - acton10 8y ago
      That's fair I didn't think about EVs. For now their adoption rate is low enough that Gas Taxes are still a decent stand in (~2-4% it sounds like with quick googling). https://bnef.turtl.co/story/evo2018?teaser=true https://bnef.turtl.co/story/evo2018?teaser=true In the future though it probably will be a bigger problem. I suppose you could add similar sales taxes to public paid charging stations, but without separately metering home charging you'll probably still miss the bulk of EV users. Either the separate metering or a mileage reporting/road tax seem like they could fairly account for EV usage though.
CydeWeys 8y ago
The primary purpose of the congestion tax is to dissuade people from driving into the busiest part of the city. The transportation funding earmark is just sugar to help get it passed.
viscanti 8y ago
This is a good point. People don't drive in Manhattan because it's cheaper (or less tax) than Public Transportation. There's a reason people aren't taking the Subway and the best way to fix the problem is to make that better instead of trying to make the currently better options less appealing.
- roywiggins 8y ago
  Part of the problem is the NYC transit is frantically doggy paddling to keep its head above water. Decades of underfunding tunnel maintenance is coming due.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    More like decades of incompetence and corruption.
    - roywiggins 8y ago
      Very likely, but you can chart the actual funding over time, whereas a sudden spike in incompetence and corruption seems somewhat unlikely. There has to be some causal reason why everything is hitting the fan now, not ten years ago or ten years from now.
      - viscanti 8y ago
        > Very likely, but you can chart the actual funding over time, whereas a sudden spike in incompetence and corruption seems somewhat unlikely. Sure. There are likely many reasons why it's so bad. But the solution is to fix it, not penalize people because they use the obvious alternatives that are much better.
crazygringo 8y ago
Why not tax people directly per meter of sidewalk they walk on? Why not tax them for each call they make to 911, or charge them each time they walk into a public park? Because certain things are considered to be public goods, to greater or lesser extent, and therefore to follow the principle behind progressive taxation: that people aren't taxed by how much they use them, but that the rich pay far more in absolute terms than the poor. The subway is the primary means of transportation that makes so much of the rest of the city possible, that it's certainly a public good to some extent. But it's also still so expensive to run, and people with cars have their own separate costs on top of it, that people don't generally feel it's fair for it to be 100% subsidized either.
- baddox 8y ago
  If there’s an efficient and reliable way to tax usage directly, I think that’s always the better alternative. Social benefits like police, firefighting, 911 service, etc. are intended to be paid for with wealth distribution, at least to cover the least fortunate members of society (whether ones agrees with that policy is another matter). But roads don’t really work like that. There’s no “social benefit” that wouldn’t already be priced into everything that derived benefit from the roads. If government road subsidies make road freight cheaper, charging those freight companies for their own usage would make prices reflect actual costs. We could still have redistributive social benefits for things like the road wear caused by police cars, but again, that’s a separate issue.
Nasrudith 8y ago
Because not doing so is more expensive and effectively subsidized in itself because road costs aren't factored into transit but track costs are. While tolls offer scalability (more users = more funding) shifting from cars to transit still saves money and reduces traffic.

mc32 8y ago

It suffers from systemic issues. This is a fiscal patch over a corrupt system. The feds should go in there and clean it up, kick out all the unnecessary fat and install an efficient management anc restructure all their deals with everyone who abuses the system to line their pockets.

jchanimal 8y ago

Generally you want to tax things you want less of and subsidize what you want more of. Hence taxing car traffic and subsidizing transit.

baddox 8y ago
I don’t know if I like your model. I would say tax things in order to remove negative externalities, then people will decide what they want more of.
- dymk 8y ago
  People elect leaders to pass laws to incentivize things they want more of, and disincentivize things they want less of.
  - baddox 8y ago
    That might be true, but what people actually want may not be the same as the most proximate cause of what they want. For instance, if all carbon emissions were required to be carbon-neutral, then carbon emission on its own isn’t so bad. If the cost of every gallon of gas includes the cost of sequestering the same amount of carbon that the gas will emit, then who really cares how much gas is burned?
    - dymk 8y ago
      I don't think we're disagreeing on anything quite yet - if gas included the cost to offset all externalities from burning (not just carbon cost), but nox, ecological damage from drilling, transportation impact, sequestering airborne carbon near where it's burned, we'd probably be fine. But gas isn't priced that way, because we don't do all of the above to offset its effect on our cities and the environment. So we're continuing to impose more disincentives to burn gas.
      - baddox 8y ago
        I’m in agreement. I just also approve of moving the externality adjustment closer and closer to its direct source as technology and processes make it efficient to do so.
- fabianhjr 8y ago
  Good thing incentivizing walking, biking, and transit line up with removing negative externalities: https://www.thediscourse.ca/scarborough/full-cost-commute https://www.thediscourse.ca/scarborough/full-cost-commute
  - baddox 8y ago
    Absolutely. I have no trouble with indirectly charging for negative externalities. As technology and processes improve that enable charging more directly for negative externalities, I approve of that.
- ip26 8y ago
  Accurately & precisely pricing the externalities of driving vs public transit vs walking vs biking is currently impossibly difficult, so you could say this is just a really crude swing at exactly what you're asking.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  These models are pretty much the same, just phrased a little bit differently. The reason you tax things you want less of is usually because of their negative externalities (and definitely is so in this circumstance).
  - baddox 8y ago
    I mean, the difference is that you don't actually want less of the thing, or even less of the externality, you just want the person buying the thing to pay for the entire cost of the thing.
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      You often do want less of a thing, in addition to the person buying the thing paying the cost for the entire thing. As one example, we do actually want less CO2 being released into the atmosphere, full stop. Or alternatively phrased, it's impossible to pay the true cost of the thing, as the true cost of everyone doing unrestricted emissions is that the human species goes extinct (which has effectively infinite cost). Or, similarly, imagine an industrial plant releasing waste that spreads through groundwater and poisons adjacent properties. We don't just want the industrial plant to pay the entire cost of the thing; we actually want them to not do that at all, because it infringes upon the properties of others, who do not want it to occur. So there's room for multiple times of frameworks that operate simultaneously -- Pay for the entire costs of some things, but also have less of or do not allow at all some things.

ses1984 8y ago

Isn't congestion pricing taxing people who use the roads? An Uber driver uses the roads a lot more than your average New Yorker, what taxes exist to cover that imbalance? (asking in earnest) Earmarking tax dollars for projects is kind of meaningless. Subsidizing public transportation is a good idea anyway. High costs of transportation disproportionately hurt poorer people. If you're not for public transportation then I'm not sure we'd see eye to eye on much of anything.

acton10 8y ago
Gasoline/Petrol taxes are probably your best analog if you want people to pay in proportion to how much they're driving.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  Not with the strides we've been making in fuel efficiency. An EV pays no gasoline taxes, but has similar impact on the roads to any other car. Now, EVs are a good thing... but they do expose issues with paying for transport via gas taxes.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    Electric usage taxes or separate metering and rates for EV charging will be coming. That or much higher registration fees to offset the lost fuel tax revenue, which has already started happening.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - acton10 8y ago
    That's fair I didn't think about EVs. For now their adoption rate is low enough that Gas Taxes are still a decent stand in (~2-4% it sounds like with quick googling). https://bnef.turtl.co/story/evo2018?teaser=true https://bnef.turtl.co/story/evo2018?teaser=true In the future though it probably will be a bigger problem. I suppose you could add similar sales taxes to public paid charging stations, but without separately metering home charging you'll probably still miss the bulk of EV users. Either the separate metering or a mileage reporting/road tax seem like they could fairly account for EV usage though.

CydeWeys 8y ago

The primary purpose of the congestion tax is to dissuade people from driving into the busiest part of the city. The transportation funding earmark is just sugar to help get it passed.

viscanti 8y ago

This is a good point. People don't drive in Manhattan because it's cheaper (or less tax) than Public Transportation. There's a reason people aren't taking the Subway and the best way to fix the problem is to make that better instead of trying to make the currently better options less appealing.

roywiggins 8y ago
Part of the problem is the NYC transit is frantically doggy paddling to keep its head above water. Decades of underfunding tunnel maintenance is coming due.
- ams6110 8y ago
  More like decades of incompetence and corruption.
  - roywiggins 8y ago
    Very likely, but you can chart the actual funding over time, whereas a sudden spike in incompetence and corruption seems somewhat unlikely. There has to be some causal reason why everything is hitting the fan now, not ten years ago or ten years from now.
    - viscanti 8y ago
      > Very likely, but you can chart the actual funding over time, whereas a sudden spike in incompetence and corruption seems somewhat unlikely. Sure. There are likely many reasons why it's so bad. But the solution is to fix it, not penalize people because they use the obvious alternatives that are much better.

crazygringo 8y ago

Why not tax people directly per meter of sidewalk they walk on? Why not tax them for each call they make to 911, or charge them each time they walk into a public park? Because certain things are considered to be public goods, to greater or lesser extent, and therefore to follow the principle behind progressive taxation: that people aren't taxed by how much they use them, but that the rich pay far more in absolute terms than the poor. The subway is the primary means of transportation that makes so much of the rest of the city possible, that it's certainly a public good to some extent. But it's also still so expensive to run, and people with cars have their own separate costs on top of it, that people don't generally feel it's fair for it to be 100% subsidized either.

baddox 8y ago
If there’s an efficient and reliable way to tax usage directly, I think that’s always the better alternative. Social benefits like police, firefighting, 911 service, etc. are intended to be paid for with wealth distribution, at least to cover the least fortunate members of society (whether ones agrees with that policy is another matter). But roads don’t really work like that. There’s no “social benefit” that wouldn’t already be priced into everything that derived benefit from the roads. If government road subsidies make road freight cheaper, charging those freight companies for their own usage would make prices reflect actual costs. We could still have redistributive social benefits for things like the road wear caused by police cars, but again, that’s a separate issue.

Nasrudith 8y ago

Because not doing so is more expensive and effectively subsidized in itself because road costs aren't factored into transit but track costs are. While tolls offer scalability (more users = more funding) shifting from cars to transit still saves money and reduces traffic.