5 ms·

What? Cars are what make roads fundamentally useful. Unless we want to force everyone to live in cities, single occupancy cars are a necessity, since covering

What? Cars are what make roads fundamentally useful. Unless we want to force everyone to live in cities, single occupancy cars are a necessity, since covering all destinations with public transportation is impractical, especially suburban/rural environments.

opportune 7y ago
Rather than forcing people to live in cities, we could stop subsidizing transportation for suburban living and start subsidizing public transportation for urban living
- zaroth 7y ago
  Yet in fact, the subsidies for public transit are higher (as both percentage and net dollar amount) than they are for roads.
minikites 7y ago
Suburban/rural environments are only difficult to serve with public transit because we made them that way on purpose: lots of culs-de-sac, winding roads that each only connect to one other road, etc. We could have easily made different choices in the past, but the reason we made these choices (racism via white flight) is the reason many suburbs exist in the first place.
moorhosj 7y ago
Which was invented first roads or cars?
- Groxx 7y ago
  Probably depends on where you draw the line for "road" vs "emergent footpath" and "car" vs "wheeled vehicle". tbh I really don't know, but if you argue for reinforced surface + moving people with wheels and pulled by an animal, you might have "cars" before "roads".
francisofascii 7y ago
Instead we forced people to own a car and live far away from everything. Single occupancy cars need to be drastically reduced, but not eliminated completely. Getting to a rural farm is an example.
- zaroth 7y ago
  This thinking is totally alien to me. The US is a big spread out place that people depend on passenger vehicles almost entirey to get around and go about their life. Over 6 trillion miles were driven in 2017 in the US, the vast majority of that in single occupancy vehicles. Far from being “eliminated completely” or “drastically reduced”, I expect through the power of autonomous driving and EVs designed for 1,000,000 mile lifespans, that passenger-miles number will in fact double by 2030.
shkkmo 7y ago
> Cars are what make roads fundamentally useful. Roads predate cars by more than order of magnitude so that clearly is not true. The issue with single occupancy cars is clearly different in rural vs urban settings and depends heavily on population density. Both of the following are true: Non-car owners in high density areas are subsidizing car owners in those areas. The lack of a need to pay for usage of those roads increases the cost of the transportation infrastructure (via increasing the attractiveness of car ownership and usage). Dwellers in high density areas are subsidizing dwellers in low density areas. The lack of a need to pay for usage increases the attractiveness of dwelling in low density areas. Nobody is suggesting that forcibly moving everyone to cities or taking away their cars is needed. However, perhaps people should pay the full costs of those choices in the interests of encouraging efficiency.
- fromthestart 7y ago
  >Non-car owners in high density areas are subsidizing car owners in those areas. Strongly disagree. First off, car ownership is typically expensive in dense areas, and those with enough income to own vehicles are likely paying more in taxes toward these subsidies. Further, many, if not most subsidies for roads come from costs directly associated with ownership, like registration taxes, gas taxes, and toll fees. Now it may be true that these fees are not enough to cover the full cost of roads in the US[1], but if you consider that both road users and non users derive additional benefits from roads beyond direct use (in the form of cheaper transportation of goods, emergency services, public transportation), and that users pay an additional share of taxes that non users don't, then this subsidy by non users is probably quite small. In any case according to [1] the overall tax burden, not considering offsets by general benefits of roads for non users, is only $597 per household. 1.https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://uspirg.org/sites/pirg/files/reports/Who%2520Pays%2520for%2520Roads%2520vUS.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjGy_yk64ziAhUQS60KHV5KAsQQFjABegQIBRAB&usg=AOvVaw3ecu5h0MHua3I_XtWqKS8b&cshid=1557350008526 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
  - shkkmo 7y ago
    > First off, car ownership is typically expensive in dense areas, and those with enough income to own vehicles are likely paying more in taxes toward these subsidies. I'll grant there is likely a correlation between the amount of taxes paid and car ownership. However, isolating segments based on income means that within each segment, the car owners are being subsidized by the non-car owners. > Further, many, if not most subsidies for roads come from costs directly associated with ownership, like registration taxes, gas taxes, and toll fees. I don't think the numbers support you here, it varies significantly by state (from 5% to 80% with a mean around 50%) [2] 2. https://taxfoundation.org/road-spending-state-funded-user-taxes-and-fees-including-federal-gas-tax-revenues https://taxfoundation.org/road-spending-state-funded-user-ta... > In any case according to [1] the overall tax burden, not considering offsets by general benefits of roads for non users, is only $597 per household. That is just the construction and maintenance cost, that same document gives the following number: "Aside from gas taxes and individuals’ expenditures for their own driving, U.S. households bear on average an additional burden of more than $1,100 per year in taxes and other costs imposed by driving." If you look at my source's prior article (which didn't include federal gas taxes) the average amount paid is closer to 30%. So taken together (which may mix incompatible data), a rough estimate of the subsidy is an average of ~7-800 per household which I would not call "quite small". I suspect this estimate is somewhat low based on my understanding of how those two sources calculate costs.

opportune 7y ago

Rather than forcing people to live in cities, we could stop subsidizing transportation for suburban living and start subsidizing public transportation for urban living

zaroth 7y ago
Yet in fact, the subsidies for public transit are higher (as both percentage and net dollar amount) than they are for roads.

minikites 7y ago

Suburban/rural environments are only difficult to serve with public transit because we made them that way on purpose: lots of culs-de-sac, winding roads that each only connect to one other road, etc. We could have easily made different choices in the past, but the reason we made these choices (racism via white flight) is the reason many suburbs exist in the first place.

moorhosj 7y ago

Which was invented first roads or cars?

Groxx 7y ago
Probably depends on where you draw the line for "road" vs "emergent footpath" and "car" vs "wheeled vehicle". tbh I really don't know, but if you argue for reinforced surface + moving people with wheels and pulled by an animal, you might have "cars" before "roads".

francisofascii 7y ago

Instead we forced people to own a car and live far away from everything. Single occupancy cars need to be drastically reduced, but not eliminated completely. Getting to a rural farm is an example.

zaroth 7y ago
This thinking is totally alien to me. The US is a big spread out place that people depend on passenger vehicles almost entirey to get around and go about their life. Over 6 trillion miles were driven in 2017 in the US, the vast majority of that in single occupancy vehicles. Far from being “eliminated completely” or “drastically reduced”, I expect through the power of autonomous driving and EVs designed for 1,000,000 mile lifespans, that passenger-miles number will in fact double by 2030.

shkkmo 7y ago

> Cars are what make roads fundamentally useful. Roads predate cars by more than order of magnitude so that clearly is not true. The issue with single occupancy cars is clearly different in rural vs urban settings and depends heavily on population density. Both of the following are true: Non-car owners in high density areas are subsidizing car owners in those areas. The lack of a need to pay for usage of those roads increases the cost of the transportation infrastructure (via increasing the attractiveness of car ownership and usage). Dwellers in high density areas are subsidizing dwellers in low density areas. The lack of a need to pay for usage increases the attractiveness of dwelling in low density areas. Nobody is suggesting that forcibly moving everyone to cities or taking away their cars is needed. However, perhaps people should pay the full costs of those choices in the interests of encouraging efficiency.

fromthestart 7y ago
>Non-car owners in high density areas are subsidizing car owners in those areas. Strongly disagree. First off, car ownership is typically expensive in dense areas, and those with enough income to own vehicles are likely paying more in taxes toward these subsidies. Further, many, if not most subsidies for roads come from costs directly associated with ownership, like registration taxes, gas taxes, and toll fees. Now it may be true that these fees are not enough to cover the full cost of roads in the US[1], but if you consider that both road users and non users derive additional benefits from roads beyond direct use (in the form of cheaper transportation of goods, emergency services, public transportation), and that users pay an additional share of taxes that non users don't, then this subsidy by non users is probably quite small. In any case according to [1] the overall tax burden, not considering offsets by general benefits of roads for non users, is only $597 per household. 1.https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://uspirg.org/sites/pirg/files/reports/Who%2520Pays%2520for%2520Roads%2520vUS.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjGy_yk64ziAhUQS60KHV5KAsQQFjABegQIBRAB&usg=AOvVaw3ecu5h0MHua3I_XtWqKS8b&cshid=1557350008526 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
- shkkmo 7y ago
  > First off, car ownership is typically expensive in dense areas, and those with enough income to own vehicles are likely paying more in taxes toward these subsidies. I'll grant there is likely a correlation between the amount of taxes paid and car ownership. However, isolating segments based on income means that within each segment, the car owners are being subsidized by the non-car owners. > Further, many, if not most subsidies for roads come from costs directly associated with ownership, like registration taxes, gas taxes, and toll fees. I don't think the numbers support you here, it varies significantly by state (from 5% to 80% with a mean around 50%) [2] 2. https://taxfoundation.org/road-spending-state-funded-user-taxes-and-fees-including-federal-gas-tax-revenues https://taxfoundation.org/road-spending-state-funded-user-ta... > In any case according to [1] the overall tax burden, not considering offsets by general benefits of roads for non users, is only $597 per household. That is just the construction and maintenance cost, that same document gives the following number: "Aside from gas taxes and individuals’ expenditures for their own driving, U.S. households bear on average an additional burden of more than $1,100 per year in taxes and other costs imposed by driving." If you look at my source's prior article (which didn't include federal gas taxes) the average amount paid is closer to 30%. So taken together (which may mix incompatible data), a rough estimate of the subsidy is an average of ~7-800 per household which I would not call "quite small". I suspect this estimate is somewhat low based on my understanding of how those two sources calculate costs.