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We aren’t Europe though. Many Americans have no interest in paying even more taxes. Glad I avoided working and living in NY.

by Vaslo 3y ago

snakeyjake 3y ago
Do you have any evidence that those schemes have resulted in lower sale tax revenue for those locations?
srndsnd 3y ago
If you are living in a place that forces you into car ownership as a means of transportation, then you are receiving a subsidy in the form of the infrastructure that enables car dependent city planning. You're also compelled to own a car, which is enormously expensive, getting even more expensive, and is probably the thing you do on a regular basis which is most likely to kill you. Sprawl is expensive, and so is car ownership.
- smileysteve 3y ago
  Upvote; People complain about a congestion tax -- or traffic -- or bad roads. But they don't think about policy when when a car costs ~30% of a median salary, when insurance is "required", expensive (and part is because some choose not to afford insurance while driving a car). Beyond that car / driving enforcement is a drain on police preventing more dangerous crime, a top entry point of harassment and escalation by police, a drain on District Attorneys and the courts from enforcing other crime.
- Spivak 3y ago
  What are you talking about? The roads in my city are paid for my taxes remitted to the city. I guess you could call that a subsidy but that's also just known as being paid for by taxes. And if you're in an area where everyone needs a car to get around then there's no argument that drivers are mooching off the tax revenue of non-drivers. I swear people are so salty about roads when they don't drive but nobody complains about public schools when they went to private. Owning a car isn't enormously expensive except in online discussions where people quote the MSRP of $year+1 models and act like folks making minimum wage are actually paying that. My primary car is a 2012 Honda Fit that was $6000 when I bought it at 30k miles and is now pushing 120k. I bought it in cash, but the monthly payment with insurance would have been 15% of my rent.
  - verall 3y ago
    Most Americans do not drive solely on city/town roads, we rather frequently take highways and interstates which are federally subsidized - not mostly paid for by city taxes. You or your city may be exceptions, you might drive only on city roads, but the parent comment's point about subsidies is broadly correct.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Federal taxes come from ... citizens. Even the fuel taxes come from ... citizens. There's not some magical source of funding that doesn't eventually come from taxes.
      - kube-system 3y ago
        I don't think anyone here is under the impression that government subsidies don't come from taxes. The criticism above is that subsidies skew the observed relative prices of transport at the point of use.
        bombcar 3y ago
        If I am reading https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2022-03/FHWA_Budget_Estimates_FY23.pdf https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2022-03/F... correctly (and I'm almost certainly not) the budget in 2023 was $60 billion (which to be fair includes more than just highways) and if this is correct (which it may be biased) https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-highway-trust-fund-and-how-it-financed https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-highway-t... then federal fuel taxes raised $43 billion of that. It's within 2/3rds (and frankly lower than I thought, $60 billion doesn't get you @#@^ these days).
      - verall 3y ago
        Yes, but I think the poster's point was that their locality maintained the roads using tax dollars collected from the locality - i.e. their local roads are sustainable system. All US dollars are created by the US government, the ability of the US government to create valuable dollars comes from the tax base, so of course everything eventually goes back to taxes. But it's not really relevant to the point.
- toast0 3y ago
  > If you are living in a place that forces you into car ownership as a means of transportation, then you are receiving a subsidy in the form of the infrastructure that enables car dependent city planning. It costs more to build a road that supports a bus than it does to build a road that only supports cars. OTOH, the roads also need to support fire engines, so there's that. Certainly stores devote more real estate to parking than they would if I didn't live in a car dependent infrastructure, but I'm paying for that in some way or another. Otherwise, what infrastructure do you think I'm getting subsidized? I don't have muni water or sewer, and the power and telco utilities certainly pass along their costs to me.
  - acdha 3y ago
    > It costs more to build a road that supports a bus than it does to build a road that only supports cars. This isn’t true and it’s also missing a bigger point: you need many more lanes for cars than buses. That space is not providing economic value and has to be subsidized using general fund revenue when it could be used by businesses or for housing.
    - toast0 3y ago
      Busses weigh a lot more than most cars, and require a better prepared road bed if you want the road to last. If it's just private light duty vehicles, you can build to a much lower standard; gravel roads are perfectly servicable for cars, but will suffer heavy wear from frequent busses. Road preparation is especially important where many busses are expected to stop and wait for long periods of time, bus stops are often built to an even higher standard. In the city I live in, nearly all roads are one lane in each direction. Even if we had a lot more busses, I don't see how we would have fewer lanes. If we had a lot less traffic, one lane roads could work. The minimum infrastructure for busses is more than the minimum infrastructure for cars. Although, if you're getting municipal roads, it makes sense to build them to standards so you can use busses.
      - acdha 3y ago
        This thread is about one of the largest cities in North America and that’s the context of my comment: if gravel roads are an alternative you’re not looking at congestion tolls, and you already need to build the roads to handle things like trucks. Re: lanes, yes, rural areas are different but if you look around suburban or urban environments there are a ton of 4-8 lane roads, complex interchange ramps, etc. which exist only because people drive solo and the resulting congestion leads to a massive amount of dedicated space. If you count the number of people on a given block, it’s usually an amount which will fit on a single bus. This is really eye-opening if you’ve ever driven in New Jersey where there are these huge congested roads full of cars and a single train goes by with more people than every car in eyesight.
lxgr 3y ago
Adopting or rejecting a policy based on it being "European" or "American" rather than by its actual projected effects and merits seems like weird decisionmaking to me. American exceptionalism, as well as its inverse, are usually pretty poor guidance for anything. > Glad I avoided working and living in NY. Seems like an unequivocal win-win :)

We aren’t Europe though. Many Americans have no interest in paying even more taxes. Glad I avoided working and living in NY.

by Vaslo 3y ago

We aren’t Europe though. Many Americans have no interest in paying even more taxes. Glad I avoided working and living in NY.

snakeyjake 3y ago

Do you have any evidence that those schemes have resulted in lower sale tax revenue for those locations?

srndsnd 3y ago

If you are living in a place that forces you into car ownership as a means of transportation, then you are receiving a subsidy in the form of the infrastructure that enables car dependent city planning. You're also compelled to own a car, which is enormously expensive, getting even more expensive, and is probably the thing you do on a regular basis which is most likely to kill you. Sprawl is expensive, and so is car ownership.

smileysteve 3y ago
Upvote; People complain about a congestion tax -- or traffic -- or bad roads. But they don't think about policy when when a car costs ~30% of a median salary, when insurance is "required", expensive (and part is because some choose not to afford insurance while driving a car). Beyond that car / driving enforcement is a drain on police preventing more dangerous crime, a top entry point of harassment and escalation by police, a drain on District Attorneys and the courts from enforcing other crime.
Spivak 3y ago
What are you talking about? The roads in my city are paid for my taxes remitted to the city. I guess you could call that a subsidy but that's also just known as being paid for by taxes. And if you're in an area where everyone needs a car to get around then there's no argument that drivers are mooching off the tax revenue of non-drivers. I swear people are so salty about roads when they don't drive but nobody complains about public schools when they went to private. Owning a car isn't enormously expensive except in online discussions where people quote the MSRP of $year+1 models and act like folks making minimum wage are actually paying that. My primary car is a 2012 Honda Fit that was $6000 when I bought it at 30k miles and is now pushing 120k. I bought it in cash, but the monthly payment with insurance would have been 15% of my rent.
- verall 3y ago
  Most Americans do not drive solely on city/town roads, we rather frequently take highways and interstates which are federally subsidized - not mostly paid for by city taxes. You or your city may be exceptions, you might drive only on city roads, but the parent comment's point about subsidies is broadly correct.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Federal taxes come from ... citizens. Even the fuel taxes come from ... citizens. There's not some magical source of funding that doesn't eventually come from taxes.
    - kube-system 3y ago
      I don't think anyone here is under the impression that government subsidies don't come from taxes. The criticism above is that subsidies skew the observed relative prices of transport at the point of use.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        If I am reading https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2022-03/FHWA_Budget_Estimates_FY23.pdf https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2022-03/F... correctly (and I'm almost certainly not) the budget in 2023 was $60 billion (which to be fair includes more than just highways) and if this is correct (which it may be biased) https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-highway-trust-fund-and-how-it-financed https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-highway-t... then federal fuel taxes raised $43 billion of that. It's within 2/3rds (and frankly lower than I thought, $60 billion doesn't get you @#@^ these days).
    - verall 3y ago
      Yes, but I think the poster's point was that their locality maintained the roads using tax dollars collected from the locality - i.e. their local roads are sustainable system. All US dollars are created by the US government, the ability of the US government to create valuable dollars comes from the tax base, so of course everything eventually goes back to taxes. But it's not really relevant to the point.
toast0 3y ago
> If you are living in a place that forces you into car ownership as a means of transportation, then you are receiving a subsidy in the form of the infrastructure that enables car dependent city planning. It costs more to build a road that supports a bus than it does to build a road that only supports cars. OTOH, the roads also need to support fire engines, so there's that. Certainly stores devote more real estate to parking than they would if I didn't live in a car dependent infrastructure, but I'm paying for that in some way or another. Otherwise, what infrastructure do you think I'm getting subsidized? I don't have muni water or sewer, and the power and telco utilities certainly pass along their costs to me.
- acdha 3y ago
  > It costs more to build a road that supports a bus than it does to build a road that only supports cars. This isn’t true and it’s also missing a bigger point: you need many more lanes for cars than buses. That space is not providing economic value and has to be subsidized using general fund revenue when it could be used by businesses or for housing.
  - toast0 3y ago
    Busses weigh a lot more than most cars, and require a better prepared road bed if you want the road to last. If it's just private light duty vehicles, you can build to a much lower standard; gravel roads are perfectly servicable for cars, but will suffer heavy wear from frequent busses. Road preparation is especially important where many busses are expected to stop and wait for long periods of time, bus stops are often built to an even higher standard. In the city I live in, nearly all roads are one lane in each direction. Even if we had a lot more busses, I don't see how we would have fewer lanes. If we had a lot less traffic, one lane roads could work. The minimum infrastructure for busses is more than the minimum infrastructure for cars. Although, if you're getting municipal roads, it makes sense to build them to standards so you can use busses.
    - acdha 3y ago
      This thread is about one of the largest cities in North America and that’s the context of my comment: if gravel roads are an alternative you’re not looking at congestion tolls, and you already need to build the roads to handle things like trucks. Re: lanes, yes, rural areas are different but if you look around suburban or urban environments there are a ton of 4-8 lane roads, complex interchange ramps, etc. which exist only because people drive solo and the resulting congestion leads to a massive amount of dedicated space. If you count the number of people on a given block, it’s usually an amount which will fit on a single bus. This is really eye-opening if you’ve ever driven in New Jersey where there are these huge congested roads full of cars and a single train goes by with more people than every car in eyesight.

lxgr 3y ago

Adopting or rejecting a policy based on it being "European" or "American" rather than by its actual projected effects and merits seems like weird decisionmaking to me. American exceptionalism, as well as its inverse, are usually pretty poor guidance for anything. > Glad I avoided working and living in NY. Seems like an unequivocal win-win :)