3 ms·
Do you have any data on the difference in cost between the two paradigms you mention? I'd be curious. I think there are a few additional problems. One is an ed
by lumb63 3y ago
Do you have any data on the difference in cost between the two paradigms you mention? I'd be curious.
I think there are a few additional problems. One is an education problem that I discovered while writing this post. I was taught that tolls and taxes paid for road construction and maintenance. Seems fair to me; those who use the roads more pay more toward their maintenance - they will incur more tolls, and spend more on gas taxes (a little outdated, but still mostly holds). Apparently, that's not true [1]. Driver-related fees cover less than half the cost of road creation and maintenance. The rest is covered by general taxes. So, one big barrier to public transit is stopping the misconception that roads pay for themselves, since people then hold public transit to that standard. Or, public transit proponents could insist that the road system is held to the same standard they are: it must be net-neutral.
I will say, though, roads cover much more of their own expenses than public transit do. At least in my own Massachusetts, the MBTA's fees cover only 10.6% of expense [2].
The other financial issue that public transit faces (and financials are what cause most people not to support public transit, IME) is, who pays for it? Again, using Massachusetts as an example, a lot of the general taxpayer revenue that supports the MBTA comes at the state level. The MBTA has lines that cover less than half the state. Why should someone who receives none of the benefit have to pay as much as someone who receives some benefit? If I lived in a rural area, I'd be very opposed to public transit, because I would get negligible benefit and pay the same as someone who gets substantial benefit. So, if urban areas want to have urban projects with taxpayer dollars, it should be their taxpayer dollars. It's unfair of folks to complain that others who would not benefit from their public transit plan don't want to pay for it.
1: https://pirg.org/massachusetts/resources/who-pays-for-roads/ https://pirg.org/massachusetts/resources/who-pays-for-roads/
2: https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2022-06/FY23%20Itemized%20Budget.pdf https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2022-06/FY23%20Item...
- opportune 3y agoI posted another comment that did some analysis on fuel taxes and road spending (in the US). One thing I’d like to point out is that a true comparison is very hard because heavy public vs private transit result in qualitatively different systemic outcomes that are hard to fully account for monetarily (one results in denser development with its own pros and cons vs dispersed development). And you definitely need to account for the personal costs of car ownership (the car, financing, depreciation, insurance, parking, gas) rather than just the government spending on roads when comparing against public transit. Private transit taxes in aggregate do pay for most private transit spending but to me that is not as big of a deal as some make out. For starters those taxes are disproportionately coming from things like freight. Considering private transit costs + government spending vs public transit fares + government spending I don’t think the proportion coming from taxes vs OOP changes much, it’s just a different cost structure where some people (freight, gas guzzler drivers vs heavy transit users and high income people) pay proportionately more. The payment problem is indeed a challenge. I think a big problem with public transit is that it’s really expensive and wasteful to halfass it; you’re better off in a lot of cases accepting a local optimum of little/no public transit than a small or medium amount that ends up being cost-ineffective. In a lot of countries like Germany, granted they are denser than the US (but comparable to Mass) even small towns have good rail or bus connections to transit hubs. That’d help a lot more than forcing someone in the boonies to pay for something they won’t benefit from (though I take issue with that framing as rural areas typically consume more spending than they receive unless they are wealthy suburbs (with wealth coming from the cities) vs urban areas, so if the project truly benefits the urban area economically, it will still help the rural folks).
- newaccount74 3y ago> If I lived in a rural area, I'd be very opposed to public transit, because I would get negligible benefit and pay the same as someone who gets substantial benefit. So, if urban areas want to have urban projects with taxpayer dollars, it should be their taxpayer dollars. Here in Austria most people either live or they commute into urban areas for work. So even if public transport was only available in urban areas, it would still benefit most of the people.
- distances 3y ago> It's unfair of folks to complain that others who would not benefit from their public transit plan don't want to pay for it. I don't know if it's the same in the US, but where I'm from rural areas depend entirely on urban tax revenues. If state support was cut and local expenses would have to be covered with local taxes, all rural areas would die overnight as basic services couldn't be funded any more. But it's of course an unfair idea to start with.
- Rexxar 3y ago> If I lived in a rural area, I'd be very opposed to public transit Why ? Do you have to benefit personally to a policy to support them ?