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People don't have to all run out at once and buy a new car right away. They'll just replace their current car whenever they were going to anyway. Prices will co
by imgabe 4y ago
People don't have to all run out at once and buy a new car right away. They'll just replace their current car whenever they were going to anyway. Prices will come down over time. Taxi services that don't have to pay drivers will be far more abundant and affordable in the meantime.
Spending that $10-$20 trillion by the government would mean collecting it all at once from people via taxes, not them spending it at their own discretion. That's a big difference.
- arcticbull 4y agoI didn't propose investing $10T at once in transit, I'm saying people are currently spending about $1T/yr on cars and that could be spent on a stellar public transit system yielding much more livable cities. Remember, America is spending money hand over fist on the socialized roads, freeways and interstate all so people can then spend a ton of private money on a car averaging 1.5 person occupancy that spends 95% of its time sitting still not doing anything.
- imgabe 4y agoBut every person who is buying a new car in a given year (usually via a loan they pay off over 3-5 years) is not going to just give that money to the government to build a train line that might be finished in 10 years instead (and they have no transportation in the meantime). That makes no sense. These things are not interchangeable.
- arcticbull 4y agoThis is a well-trodden path. The government finances the projects over a number of years through the capital markets and then levees a tax to cover the payments. They are quite interchangeable. 30% of New Yorkers and 35% of DC residents don't even have access to cars. 90% of Hong Kongers don't have cars. Yet they manage to thrive.
- imgabe 4y agoIt's not replacing the money that gets spent on cars. People buying a new car are buying it because they need it now, they need to get around today, not in 10 years when the new train gets built. They're still going to buy the car and then have to pay the tax to build the transit on top of that.
- arcticbull 4y agoSo you've identified the chicken and the egg, I agree, which is why we finance these things. By the time its built that money won't need to be spent on cars anymore on an ongoing basis.
- imgabe 4y agoI'm all for public transport, but lying to people and saying it's going to be zero cost because it will completely supplant what they spend on cars is not the way to get support for it. A train or bus line that goes to 20 specific places and nowhere else is not a substitute for a car that can go directly to any place, whether across town or across the country. We should absolutely invest in public transport, but let's not pretend it isn't going to take making spending money on it a priority. It doesn't come for free and it doesn't completely eliminate the need for cars. It also requires the entire development to shift to be much, much denser. It's not like "oh we just issue some bonds to build a rail line and then nobody ever has to buy a car again".
- s1artibartfast 4y agoPublic transportation is not a complete substitute for cars. You still need roads. Self driving has the potential to provide a middle path. Vehicles with 95% up time instead of down time.
- arcticbull 4y agoThe reason that cars spent 95% of their time unoccupied is because most people only need to travel during certain times - the same times for everyone. That’s really all there is to it. As a result you need capacity for peak at all times. It can’t be made more efficient except by train, bike and bus. This is what Uber and Lyft claimed they could solve over the last 10 years and made zero progress.