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The regressiveness issue of tolls is effectively a nitpick compared to the broader more comprehensive issue of how to we create an affordable transportation sys

The regressiveness issue of tolls is effectively a nitpick compared to the broader more comprehensive issue of how to we create an affordable transportation system for the working class and how do we raise the revenue to fund that through taxes. The dominant automobile oriented transportation system is very unaffordable and requires high costs of entry. The best thing we can do to make transportation more affordable in general is giving people more options aside from the car. Taxing the wealthy in order to raise revenue for public transportation and active transportation options dominates any sort of regressiveness issues around road tolls and less traffic makes buses more effective.

cyberax 10mo ago
> The dominant automobile oriented transportation system is very unaffordable and requires high costs of entry. Wait until you hear about the true costs of transit. A transit ride in a large city is typically MORE expensive than a car ride. Even when you take into account the cost of depreciation, insurance, financing and other related expenses. The transit ticket price in the US is typically covers just around 15-20% of the _operational_ _cost_ ("farebox recovery rate"). And the capital costs for transit are off the charts. Seattle is going to pay $180B (yes, that's "B" for "billion") for about 20 miles of new lines. And for one mile of subways in Manhattan, you can build 1500 miles of 6-lane freeway. It's THE real reason we have a failing democracy. Thoughtless social experiments with subsidizing transit have led to distorted housing and job markets. You can't just subsidize one facet of life and hope for it to work.
- bc569a80a344f9c 10mo ago
  “Democracy in the US is failing because of the resources invested into public transit” might be the hottest take I’ve read in 2025. Nice.
  - cyberax 10mo ago
    Yep. Increased over-centralization in the US wouldn't have been possible without transit. And it's the main reason for polarization. You have large cities (SF, Seattle, Chicago, NYC) that are the centers of economic growth, and you have thousands of small cities that are slowly dying. These large cities and their satellites are growing at an unsustainable rate, even though the _overall_ population is flat. And then the cities themselves, they have a huge population of low-income workers who can't afford to live there without some form of subsidies. It started with transit, but now the freaking NYC mayor is talking about subsidized grocery stores. This is another source of polarization. Want to see an even starker example? Look at Japan. Tokyo is in a literal housing price bubble in a country with a _shrinking_ population.
    - throwaway2037 10mo ago
      > Tokyo is in a literal housing price bubble in a country with a _shrinking_ population. No, this is wrong. (1) There is no housing price bubble in Tokyo. Yes, some very central "ku's" (Shibuya-ku and Minato-ku) are seeing a rise in home prices, but it is nothing ridiculous. It is no where near a repeat of the late 1980s. You can easily select a neighborhood just ten minutes away and it will have sharply lower prices. Also, Japan effectively has zero NIMBYism due to a national building code. New housing is constantly being built in Tokyo. (2) Yes, overall, the population is shrinking in Japan. However, the population of Tokyo continues to rise.
      - cyberax 10mo ago
        Really? Like, really? Here's the graph: https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/asia/japan/home-price-trends https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/asia/japan/home-price-tr... > Also, Japan effectively has zero NIMBYism due to a national building code. New housing is constantly being built in Tokyo. Yup. It's a great example of why "just build more" leads only to misery. > Yes, overall, the population is shrinking in Japan. However, the population of Tokyo continues to rise. Thank you for making my point.
  - venturecruelty 10mo ago
    Must be why European democracy is in shambles then: it's the damn trains and buses! Who woulda thunk?
    - reop2whiskey 10mo ago
      [dead]
    - cyberax 10mo ago
      Yes. Exactly. I suggest looking at Germany and the rapid ascendance of the AFD. And then looking at real estate prices in Berlin.
- zjuventus14 10mo ago
  Do you have any source for these numbers & the equivalent for auto travel? Would be interested to see - I’m generally aware of the cost vs. fare side of subways, but haven’t seen numbers that support individual car travel being cheaper when you account for subsidies there. Also worth noting that comparing capital costs of underground transit to above ground private travel is pretty apples and oranges. Buses would be fairer comparison IMO.
  - cyberax 10mo ago
    > Do you have any source for these numbers & the equivalent for auto travel? There are several ways you can look at it. The easiest way is to divide the opex budget by the ridership. E.g. MTA ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Transportation_Authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Transportation_Au... ) had a $19B budget in 2023 for 1.15B rides, resulting in about $16 per ride. Assuming conservatively 60 rides a month, that's $960 a month for transit in NYC. Without any capital expenses taken into account. The average total car cost in the US in 2023 was around $1000 a month ( https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-does-it-cost-to-own-a-car/ https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-does-it-cost-to-own-a... ). And this includes _everything_, including the capital cost. > Also worth noting that comparing capital costs of underground transit to above ground private travel is pretty apples and oranges. Buses would be fairer comparison IMO. Buses don't scale for large cities.
    - throwaway2037 10mo ago
      This is interesting analysis. However, the MTA is much more than the New York City subway (and Staten Island railroad) that serves the five boroughs of New York City. The LIRR (Long Island Railroad) is an enormous commuter rail system that serves a huge geographical area (probably the largest in North America).
- venturecruelty 10mo ago
  >Wait until you hear about the true costs of transit. A transit ride in a large city is typically MORE expensive than a car ride. Even when you take into account the cost of depreciation, insurance, financing and other related expenses. Meanwhile, we're barreling toward 2-3 C of warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Oh, sorry, that doesn't have a line item on the toll receipt, silly me. >It's THE real reason we have a failing democracy. Thoughtless social experiments with subsidizing transit have led to distorted housing and job markets. You can't just subsidize one facet of life and hope for it to work. Lol. Lmao, even.
  - cyberax 10mo ago
    > Oh, sorry, that doesn't have a line item on the toll receipt, silly me. Money is a pretty good proxy for CO2. So the carbon footprint of large cities is unsustainable. The most eco-friendly model? Low-density semi-rural areas, with EV-based infrastructure, with sane-sized cars (not SUVs).
    - Tiktaalik 10mo ago
      No the most eco (and financially) friendly model is high density areas where you can walk and bike to school and work. The transportation costs under this model are effectively nil.
      - nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
        Do either of you have citations? I can see it being both ways. Land aside, building a single story house is much cheaper per sq ft than a tower. Medium density streets, like UK terraces can have enough density to support commerce nearby etc. but also low enough density to use a lot of solar to power houses directly. Land may be the constraint given the population of the world.
        Tiktaalik 10mo ago
        I'm essentially parroting the (settled and not at all controversial) consensus view of the urban design profession so there's no real end of citation. Though there are few clear cut real world examples to point to because land use is one of the most highly politicized things and it is rarely exposed to real market forces. It's a great thing to have arguments about because whenever you can point some examples, people will always nitpick at why it's not real (eg. Tokyo is affordable and dense thanks to low regulation and the market, but people will point at the relatively poor Japanese economy etc). But from basic geometric principles it makes sense that automobile oriented infrastructure is ultimately unsustainable and more expensive because of the constraints of the real world. Ultimately the issue one runs into is that a car is a box several feet wide by several feet long (6.7x17.4) for an F150. That's a lot of space both parked and on the road. So if everyone buys one (and largely drives around themselves) it's clear that one quickly fills up the size of the road. The cost of expanding roads is very expensive, disruptive, and occasionally impossible. And then it doesn't even really work in remarkably improving traffic because due to Induced Demand, it reprices driving cheaper, which encourages more people to drive, which refills the road again. Everyone's time is being wasted sitting in these large boxes that cost tens of thousands of dollars. So the core problem is that cars are enormously space inefficient. The system simply doesn't scale and eventually reaches break down. You simply have to give up and can't grow the city any further. So you have to push people out to other cities. But if we think of moving people instead of cars, there's a lot more space efficient opportunities since people are very small. So you look at things like a bicycle, whose costs are relatively near nil, a protected bike lane that is also effectively near nil (put some jersey barriers on an existing road) and you can move that same person for much less. Obviously the problem is that they can't go very far but a combination of different modes for different uses and you have a system that can actually scale. Build compact mixed use neighbourhoods that one can walk and bike to for local needs, buses for inter neighbourhood, and trains for intra and inter city long distance travel. Only with this approach can you can continue to scale a city and continue to have a large city that is functional.
- nfw2 10mo ago
  > A transit ride in a large city is typically MORE expensive than a car ride. Even when you take into account the cost of depreciation, insurance, financing and other related expenses. I don't see this. The cost of a month pass on new york subway is $130 a month. That is less than my monthly parking fee in sf
  - SoftTalker 10mo ago
    He's saying that's only a fraction of the actual cost of providing your rides for a month. Most of the funding for transit systems comes from appropriations, not fares.
- anon7000 10mo ago
  Subsidized transit has legitimately nothing to do with distorted housing costs or labor markets. Housing market is simply supply vs demand. Housing markets like Seattle are incredibly expensive because so many people want to move there, partly because local middle class wages are fairly high. If you’re saying subsidized transit increases local quality of life, leading to higher demand, sure. But the cost itself has nothing to do with housing prices. Property taxes do not make mortgages more expensive. (Wouldn’t it have the opposite effect, high property taxes making houses harder to afford and therefore decreasing demand?) Or is it that subsidized road systems don’t work? The pure miles of a system are completely irrelevant. Transit systems are meant for high density areas, costing more but covering less ground. The cost of tunneling under a mile Seattle for a road is absolutely more expensive than building a mile of highway in the middle of nowhere. What the fuck are you on about re:democracy? “Thoughtless social experiments” are pretty far from the truth there. Democracy gets ruined by political parties unwilling to hold their own members accountable and by allowing corporations to exert more political power than human beings.
  - cyberax 10mo ago
    > Subsidized transit has legitimately nothing to do with distorted housing costs or labor markets. Housing market is simply supply vs demand. Housing markets like Seattle are incredibly expensive because so many people want to move there, partly because local middle class wages are fairly high. Well. Look at your two statements again. Now think about this, what would have happened if Seattle didn't have buses and light rail? And didn't permit new dense office space as a result? > If you’re saying subsidized transit increases local quality of life, leading to higher demand, sure. It DECREASES the quality of life. It promotes crime and inequality. > Or is it that subsidized road systems don’t work? In most states, drivers already pay most of the cost of road maintenance through direct taxes/fees: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-infrastructure-spending/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-infrastructur... Absolutely no state has unsubsidized transit.
    - seanmcdirmid 10mo ago
      Small correction: there is unsubsidized transit, just not unsubsidized public transit. Seattle has Amazon, Microsoft, snd Google buses judt like the Bay Area does. My wife takes the Amazon bus a lot even though the public transit route would work just as well (for safety/hygiene reasons).
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
  I do think the future green transport is a self driving electric bus ultimately powered by solar with adaptive routes. It is why I dont mind lots of roads being built as they can eventually be repurposed for this.
  - cyberax 10mo ago
    If you can do self-driving, then why would you bother with buses?
    - nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
      A bus can take 50 people into the city at once. Much more energy and space efficient and cheap. I imagine a bus/minibus/taxi mix though.
      - cyberax 10mo ago
        > A bus can take 50 people into the city at once. And a bus will waste the time of 49 people while stopping to load/unload just one person. Mild carpooling (think: a van for 3-5 people) can work. Longer term, work from home for most jobs will eliminate the need for high-capacity transit. Outside of special use-cases like sports areans.
        nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
        Yes shared trips of course waste time. For 50 people you dont want 50 stops. But 1 or 2 stops pickups on the way is fine. The algorithm across all this can optimize cost and travel time for each rider. There may be transfers for cheaper prices. E.g. $5 for a 30 min trip and a change or $20 for a 15 min trip direct taxi experience. If the road is a bottleneck optimising for usage it may let buses have a fast lane and the difference is less.
        cyberax 10mo ago
        Yes, I played around with that using the isochrone API from geoapify. That's why I'm thinking that buses are not necessary. > If the road is a bottleneck optimising for usage it may let buses have a fast lane and the difference is less. Ha. The dirty little secret of bus lanes is that they don't work as people think they do. They don't reduce the overall aggregated travel time (the sum of commute time for all the people traveling the route) in most cases. Instead, they force people out of cars by reducing the car throughput. The commute time for each person who is forced out of their car typically becomes longer. As is commutes for the people in cars that now have to navigate more congested roads.

cyberax 10mo ago

> The dominant automobile oriented transportation system is very unaffordable and requires high costs of entry. Wait until you hear about the true costs of transit. A transit ride in a large city is typically MORE expensive than a car ride. Even when you take into account the cost of depreciation, insurance, financing and other related expenses. The transit ticket price in the US is typically covers just around 15-20% of the _operational_ _cost_ ("farebox recovery rate"). And the capital costs for transit are off the charts. Seattle is going to pay $180B (yes, that's "B" for "billion") for about 20 miles of new lines. And for one mile of subways in Manhattan, you can build 1500 miles of 6-lane freeway. It's THE real reason we have a failing democracy. Thoughtless social experiments with subsidizing transit have led to distorted housing and job markets. You can't just subsidize one facet of life and hope for it to work.

bc569a80a344f9c 10mo ago
“Democracy in the US is failing because of the resources invested into public transit” might be the hottest take I’ve read in 2025. Nice.
- cyberax 10mo ago
  Yep. Increased over-centralization in the US wouldn't have been possible without transit. And it's the main reason for polarization. You have large cities (SF, Seattle, Chicago, NYC) that are the centers of economic growth, and you have thousands of small cities that are slowly dying. These large cities and their satellites are growing at an unsustainable rate, even though the _overall_ population is flat. And then the cities themselves, they have a huge population of low-income workers who can't afford to live there without some form of subsidies. It started with transit, but now the freaking NYC mayor is talking about subsidized grocery stores. This is another source of polarization. Want to see an even starker example? Look at Japan. Tokyo is in a literal housing price bubble in a country with a _shrinking_ population.
  - throwaway2037 10mo ago
    > Tokyo is in a literal housing price bubble in a country with a _shrinking_ population. No, this is wrong. (1) There is no housing price bubble in Tokyo. Yes, some very central "ku's" (Shibuya-ku and Minato-ku) are seeing a rise in home prices, but it is nothing ridiculous. It is no where near a repeat of the late 1980s. You can easily select a neighborhood just ten minutes away and it will have sharply lower prices. Also, Japan effectively has zero NIMBYism due to a national building code. New housing is constantly being built in Tokyo. (2) Yes, overall, the population is shrinking in Japan. However, the population of Tokyo continues to rise.
    - cyberax 10mo ago
      Really? Like, really? Here's the graph: https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/asia/japan/home-price-trends https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/asia/japan/home-price-tr... > Also, Japan effectively has zero NIMBYism due to a national building code. New housing is constantly being built in Tokyo. Yup. It's a great example of why "just build more" leads only to misery. > Yes, overall, the population is shrinking in Japan. However, the population of Tokyo continues to rise. Thank you for making my point.
- venturecruelty 10mo ago
  Must be why European democracy is in shambles then: it's the damn trains and buses! Who woulda thunk?
  - reop2whiskey 10mo ago
    [dead]
  - cyberax 10mo ago
    Yes. Exactly. I suggest looking at Germany and the rapid ascendance of the AFD. And then looking at real estate prices in Berlin.
zjuventus14 10mo ago
Do you have any source for these numbers & the equivalent for auto travel? Would be interested to see - I’m generally aware of the cost vs. fare side of subways, but haven’t seen numbers that support individual car travel being cheaper when you account for subsidies there. Also worth noting that comparing capital costs of underground transit to above ground private travel is pretty apples and oranges. Buses would be fairer comparison IMO.
- cyberax 10mo ago
  > Do you have any source for these numbers & the equivalent for auto travel? There are several ways you can look at it. The easiest way is to divide the opex budget by the ridership. E.g. MTA ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Transportation_Authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Transportation_Au... ) had a $19B budget in 2023 for 1.15B rides, resulting in about $16 per ride. Assuming conservatively 60 rides a month, that's $960 a month for transit in NYC. Without any capital expenses taken into account. The average total car cost in the US in 2023 was around $1000 a month ( https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-does-it-cost-to-own-a-car/ https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-does-it-cost-to-own-a... ). And this includes _everything_, including the capital cost. > Also worth noting that comparing capital costs of underground transit to above ground private travel is pretty apples and oranges. Buses would be fairer comparison IMO. Buses don't scale for large cities.
  - throwaway2037 10mo ago
    This is interesting analysis. However, the MTA is much more than the New York City subway (and Staten Island railroad) that serves the five boroughs of New York City. The LIRR (Long Island Railroad) is an enormous commuter rail system that serves a huge geographical area (probably the largest in North America).
venturecruelty 10mo ago
>Wait until you hear about the true costs of transit. A transit ride in a large city is typically MORE expensive than a car ride. Even when you take into account the cost of depreciation, insurance, financing and other related expenses. Meanwhile, we're barreling toward 2-3 C of warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Oh, sorry, that doesn't have a line item on the toll receipt, silly me. >It's THE real reason we have a failing democracy. Thoughtless social experiments with subsidizing transit have led to distorted housing and job markets. You can't just subsidize one facet of life and hope for it to work. Lol. Lmao, even.
- cyberax 10mo ago
  > Oh, sorry, that doesn't have a line item on the toll receipt, silly me. Money is a pretty good proxy for CO2. So the carbon footprint of large cities is unsustainable. The most eco-friendly model? Low-density semi-rural areas, with EV-based infrastructure, with sane-sized cars (not SUVs).
  - Tiktaalik 10mo ago
    No the most eco (and financially) friendly model is high density areas where you can walk and bike to school and work. The transportation costs under this model are effectively nil.
    - nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
      Do either of you have citations? I can see it being both ways. Land aside, building a single story house is much cheaper per sq ft than a tower. Medium density streets, like UK terraces can have enough density to support commerce nearby etc. but also low enough density to use a lot of solar to power houses directly. Land may be the constraint given the population of the world.
      - Tiktaalik 10mo ago
        I'm essentially parroting the (settled and not at all controversial) consensus view of the urban design profession so there's no real end of citation. Though there are few clear cut real world examples to point to because land use is one of the most highly politicized things and it is rarely exposed to real market forces. It's a great thing to have arguments about because whenever you can point some examples, people will always nitpick at why it's not real (eg. Tokyo is affordable and dense thanks to low regulation and the market, but people will point at the relatively poor Japanese economy etc). But from basic geometric principles it makes sense that automobile oriented infrastructure is ultimately unsustainable and more expensive because of the constraints of the real world. Ultimately the issue one runs into is that a car is a box several feet wide by several feet long (6.7x17.4) for an F150. That's a lot of space both parked and on the road. So if everyone buys one (and largely drives around themselves) it's clear that one quickly fills up the size of the road. The cost of expanding roads is very expensive, disruptive, and occasionally impossible. And then it doesn't even really work in remarkably improving traffic because due to Induced Demand, it reprices driving cheaper, which encourages more people to drive, which refills the road again. Everyone's time is being wasted sitting in these large boxes that cost tens of thousands of dollars. So the core problem is that cars are enormously space inefficient. The system simply doesn't scale and eventually reaches break down. You simply have to give up and can't grow the city any further. So you have to push people out to other cities. But if we think of moving people instead of cars, there's a lot more space efficient opportunities since people are very small. So you look at things like a bicycle, whose costs are relatively near nil, a protected bike lane that is also effectively near nil (put some jersey barriers on an existing road) and you can move that same person for much less. Obviously the problem is that they can't go very far but a combination of different modes for different uses and you have a system that can actually scale. Build compact mixed use neighbourhoods that one can walk and bike to for local needs, buses for inter neighbourhood, and trains for intra and inter city long distance travel. Only with this approach can you can continue to scale a city and continue to have a large city that is functional.
nfw2 10mo ago
> A transit ride in a large city is typically MORE expensive than a car ride. Even when you take into account the cost of depreciation, insurance, financing and other related expenses. I don't see this. The cost of a month pass on new york subway is $130 a month. That is less than my monthly parking fee in sf
- SoftTalker 10mo ago
  He's saying that's only a fraction of the actual cost of providing your rides for a month. Most of the funding for transit systems comes from appropriations, not fares.
anon7000 10mo ago
Subsidized transit has legitimately nothing to do with distorted housing costs or labor markets. Housing market is simply supply vs demand. Housing markets like Seattle are incredibly expensive because so many people want to move there, partly because local middle class wages are fairly high. If you’re saying subsidized transit increases local quality of life, leading to higher demand, sure. But the cost itself has nothing to do with housing prices. Property taxes do not make mortgages more expensive. (Wouldn’t it have the opposite effect, high property taxes making houses harder to afford and therefore decreasing demand?) Or is it that subsidized road systems don’t work? The pure miles of a system are completely irrelevant. Transit systems are meant for high density areas, costing more but covering less ground. The cost of tunneling under a mile Seattle for a road is absolutely more expensive than building a mile of highway in the middle of nowhere. What the fuck are you on about re:democracy? “Thoughtless social experiments” are pretty far from the truth there. Democracy gets ruined by political parties unwilling to hold their own members accountable and by allowing corporations to exert more political power than human beings.
- cyberax 10mo ago
  > Subsidized transit has legitimately nothing to do with distorted housing costs or labor markets. Housing market is simply supply vs demand. Housing markets like Seattle are incredibly expensive because so many people want to move there, partly because local middle class wages are fairly high. Well. Look at your two statements again. Now think about this, what would have happened if Seattle didn't have buses and light rail? And didn't permit new dense office space as a result? > If you’re saying subsidized transit increases local quality of life, leading to higher demand, sure. It DECREASES the quality of life. It promotes crime and inequality. > Or is it that subsidized road systems don’t work? In most states, drivers already pay most of the cost of road maintenance through direct taxes/fees: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-infrastructure-spending/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-infrastructur... Absolutely no state has unsubsidized transit.
  - seanmcdirmid 10mo ago
    Small correction: there is unsubsidized transit, just not unsubsidized public transit. Seattle has Amazon, Microsoft, snd Google buses judt like the Bay Area does. My wife takes the Amazon bus a lot even though the public transit route would work just as well (for safety/hygiene reasons).
nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
I do think the future green transport is a self driving electric bus ultimately powered by solar with adaptive routes. It is why I dont mind lots of roads being built as they can eventually be repurposed for this.
- cyberax 10mo ago
  If you can do self-driving, then why would you bother with buses?
  - nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
    A bus can take 50 people into the city at once. Much more energy and space efficient and cheap. I imagine a bus/minibus/taxi mix though.
    - cyberax 10mo ago
      > A bus can take 50 people into the city at once. And a bus will waste the time of 49 people while stopping to load/unload just one person. Mild carpooling (think: a van for 3-5 people) can work. Longer term, work from home for most jobs will eliminate the need for high-capacity transit. Outside of special use-cases like sports areans.
      - nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
        Yes shared trips of course waste time. For 50 people you dont want 50 stops. But 1 or 2 stops pickups on the way is fine. The algorithm across all this can optimize cost and travel time for each rider. There may be transfers for cheaper prices. E.g. $5 for a 30 min trip and a change or $20 for a 15 min trip direct taxi experience. If the road is a bottleneck optimising for usage it may let buses have a fast lane and the difference is less.
        cyberax 10mo ago
        Yes, I played around with that using the isochrone API from geoapify. That's why I'm thinking that buses are not necessary. > If the road is a bottleneck optimising for usage it may let buses have a fast lane and the difference is less. Ha. The dirty little secret of bus lanes is that they don't work as people think they do. They don't reduce the overall aggregated travel time (the sum of commute time for all the people traveling the route) in most cases. Instead, they force people out of cars by reducing the car throughput. The commute time for each person who is forced out of their car typically becomes longer. As is commutes for the people in cars that now have to navigate more congested roads.