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We provide an alternative that is better than cars
by wilg 3y ago
We provide an alternative that is better than cars
- dymk 3y agoCar lobby is doing its best to make sure that doesn't happen
- aniforprez 3y agoPublic transport. Easy. Providing avenues for better buses improves not only the health of the people that use it, it provides an incentive to improve the infrastructure to provide that transport which also improves the lives of people who use cars
- dangrossman 3y agoI live in an affluent town. High average income, mostly expensive suburban housing. We've fully funded a variety of public transit, but that hasn't induced people to actually use it. Buses drive around the town all day every day, with useful routes connecting the places studies say public transit should connect... much of the time without a single passenger inside them. My own single-family home is a 2 minute walk from a bus stop, but I've never taken that bus. My car will get me wherever I'm going faster, after all. Did I mention that the buses have been completely free to ride since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic? They still run mostly empty.
- PlunderBunny 3y agoWhen you’re on a bus, you can do other things while someone else drives you. It’s like getting free time.
- huytersd 3y agoDoesn’t make up for the fact that you’re in a shared space and can’t do whatever you want like you can in a car.
- Gud 3y agoWhat exactly do you want to be doing except driving the vehicle? I live in a country where the public transport is excellent (Switzerland). The US sounds like a nightmare to me.
- glimshe 3y agoHaving grown up with excellent public transportation outside the US, I can tell you I'd much rather ride a car than ever enter a bus again. Public transportation is great when it allows me to skip traffic (subway), but buses are just worse versions of cars; in theory I could be reading while in the bus, but in practice there is too much vibration for me to read comfortably. Also, you have to share a seat with a random person, waste time waiting for the bus (and inefficient routes depending on where you're going) and often deal with crowds.
- huytersd 3y agoTurn up the temp, listen to music, stop at a random restaurant or historical site, go car camping on a whim, pick up someone from the airport, buy and get furniture on marketplace, buy a week of groceries for my family, tow my RV etc. It’s an endless list of things and I can’t imagine being hamstrung by walking and using public transport to do things. We have a large country and do way more things than the average European.
- 3y ago
- wilg 3y agoThere's a discrepancy between "Public transport. Easy." and "we need better buses". Almost everywhere has buses. What does it take to make them better? How do we know that will work? How much does it cost and how do we make it happen?
- throwawa14223 3y agoPublic transport is radically worse than a car because I have to share a space with the other passengers.
- pmarreck 3y agogermany does wonders with bikes and public transport they also tax gas heavily, which we don't do (and probably should)
- willcipriano 3y agoHear me out. Put the United States in a dryer on high.
- bsdpufferfish 3y agowe do tax gas heavily
- wilg 3y agoGas tax is $0.40-$1.00/gallon and we have basically the lowest gas taxes in the world. (And some of the lowest prices.)
- eesmith 3y agoTo add, gasoline tax Germany is $2.76/gallon and the EU requires a minimum of $1.55 per gallon. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/gas-taxes-in-europe-2023/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/gas-taxes-in-europe-20...
- bsdpufferfish 3y agoAs you just pointed out the tax alone is still about 100% of the base cost. Not many goods are the US are taxed like that. It works because it's a universal good.
- wilg 3y agoOK, but doesn’t invalidate the comparison is to another country where they tax gas more.
- eesmith 3y agoIt is not about 100% but well less than 30%. "On average, as of April 2019, state and local taxes and fees add 34.24 cents to gasoline and 35.89 cents to diesel, for a total US volume-weighted average fuel tax of 52.64 cents per gallon for gas and 60.29 cents per gallon for diesel" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State... In 2019 gasoline wholesale price was around $1.80 - https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=EMA_EPM0_PWG_NUS_DPG&f=M https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E... 0.5264 /1.8 = 30% New York Harbor Conventional Gasoline Regular Spot Price FOB is US$2.61 per gallon today - https://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=gasoline https://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=gasoline . .5264 /2.61 = 20% Note that the wholesale price does not include the cost to deliver to the gas station or nor storage and dispensing costs at the station, so the percentage at point of sale will be slower than these numbers. Cigarettes are not a universal good. There is a federal excise tax on cigarettes of $1.01 per pack and state taxes from $0.17/pack in Missouri to $5.35/pack in New York, plus possible city taxes. "As of 2011, Phillip Morris lists total government revenue, including federal, state, local, and sales taxes, as 55% of the estimated retail price of a pack of cigarettes in the United States" and "[WHO] estimates that taxes make up 42.5% of the cost of a pack of cigarettes in the U.S." Numbers and quotes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_taxes_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_taxes_in_the_United_.... That is nearly 100% of the base cost. Some cities have an extra tax on sugary drinks. Also not a universal good. "Kaplan and his colleagues found that, on average, prices for sugar-sweetened drinks went up by 33.1%". https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/06/1223243244/cities-with-soda-taxes-saw-sales-of-sugary-drinks-fall-as-prices-rose-study-find https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/06/1223243... Note that the additional 33% is on top of sales tax, meaning the total tax on sugary drinks was more than 33%. So both cigarettes and sugary drinks (in some areas) have a higher tax rate than gasoline. Bear in mind that some of the fuel tax is used defray the high cost of car infrastructure; "defray" because most of the infrastructure cost is paid by sources other than fuel taxes.
- BenFranklin100 3y agoSupport Bus Rapid Transit. That is, dedicated bus lanes. See Mexico City: https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/04/29/mexico-city-bus-rapid-transit-model https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/04/29/mexico-city-bus-rapid-t...
- ZoomerCretin 3y agoIt's not that simple. We rebuilt our cities around the car. Without changing our cities, there is no substitution for cars. We need to rebuild our cities. Eliminating cars and adding sidewalks isn't enough; without density, you have nowhere to walk to, and transit doesn't scale.