>Don't forget the subsidies on the other side of the equation: As the poster above mentioned, building larger roads to handle increased traffic is very expensive
And the users of those roads pay tens of billions of dollars per year by paying or the Federal Gas Tax on every gallon of gas they buy:
They also pay local and state tax that pay for the maintenance of local and state roads. They also pay tolls which make so much money that they pay for roads, bridges and a sizable portion of many state's general funds.
Car drivers are more than self-sufficient. Bus riders rely on subsidies or they wouldn't be able to afford bus travel.
I'm not passing a value judgement on this, but let's at least acknowledge reality.
> Highways are heavily, heavily subsidized by state and federal dollars. That's why their true cost isn't born on drivers
These aren't contradictory if you look where most of those state and federal dollars come from (i.e. fuel taxes, which is borne by the driver). Mass transit more fits the description of transportation subsidized by non-users.
>* Users of the highway passenger transportation system paid significantly greater amounts of money to the federal government than their allocated costs in 1994-2000. <https://web.archive.org/web/20170628114204/http://www.rita.d...> This was a result of the increase in the deficit reduction motor fuel tax rates between October 1993 and September 1997, and the increase in Highway Trust Fund fuel tax rates starting in October 1997.
>* School and transit buses received positive net federal subsidies over the 1990-2002 period, but autos, motorcycles, pickups and vans, and intercity buses paid more than their allocated cost to the federal government.
>* On average, highway users paid $1.91 per thousand passenger-miles to the federal government over their highway allocated cost during 1990-2002.)
>* Users of the highway passenger transportation system paid significantly greater amounts of money to the federal government than their allocated costs in 1994-2000.(http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...) This was a result of the increase in the deficit reduction motor fuel tax rates between October 1993 and September 1997, and the increase in Highway Trust Fund fuel tax rates starting in October 1997.
>* School and transit buses received positive net federal subsidies over the 1990-2002 period, but autos, motorcycles, pickups and vans, and intercity buses paid more than their allocated cost to the federal government.
>* On average, highway users paid $1.91 per thousand passenger-miles to the federal government over their highway allocated cost during 1990-2002.)
For every mile of interstate in the US, there are over 100 miles of local roads that are poorly covered by the gas tax. Paying for a majority of the highway system shouldnt be much harder than graduating from kindergarten. Its pretty pathetic that the entire highway system can't be funded by the gas tax, given how little it contributes to car oriented infrstructure. 2x gas taxes still wouldn't come close to covering the costs of the infrastructure provisioned. Gas taxes in the UK are 8x what we pay, and even that doesnt cover the full cost of their infrastructure. Transit, in comparison, is magnificently cost efficient...only by deceptive means like yours can you appear to make the opposite case.
Regardless, the effect of even a tiny subsidy for cars affects the cost recovery of transit. By subsidizing cars, you actually force larger subsidies for transit. The operating and maintenance costs of car use scale linearly with vehicle miles travelled, whereas the costs of transit scale as a step function (you don't need a new bus for every user, you need a new bus for every 60 users...riders 2 through 60 ride for free) on the scale of an individual transit vehicle, and roughly log linear in aggregate. Therefore, every transit user you subsidize into a car increases the per user cost of all the rest of the transit users. If car users paid even a tiny fraction more than the pittance they currently do, it could push enough users onto transit to make it sustainable. And if they acctually paid their true costs, almost nobody would drive at all.
You missed the point of the comment. The relative price increase for car drivers to pay for 100% of their infrastructure cost is far lower than for transit riders. In my area, which is one of the most pro-density and transit-oriented cities in America, it would take a small increase in gas tax, and we've already had a large gas price increase from the market, so returning to normal prices with a small tax increase wouldn't hurt too much. Meanwhile, a bus ride costs the taxpayer ~$7 and the rider pays ~$3. That number does not include the cost of the roads the buses drive on, as government owned vehicles are exempt from gas tax and the transit system does not contribute anything towards road maintenance. A train ticket costs ~$3 but costs the taxpayer ~$30, not including capital costs. Most of the fare revenue also comes from unlimited use passes that all businesses are forced to buy for their employees if they are over a certain size, even if the employees never use them. Meanwhile, drivers in my state pay a ~-70 cents per mile subsidy (that's a negative in front) for the highways. Local roads are more complex, as nearly every arterial has a bus or bike lane these days and every building needs a road to run up to for a variety of reasons. These numbers are taken directly from my state government and my local transit agency's reports, not from some YouTube editorial or blog post. I find those personalities just speculate on what the "true" cost of infrastructure is instead of actually looking it up.
Going from $3 train tickets to over $30 tickets hurts a lot more than going from a 50 cents a gallon gas tax to a 60 cent one. In my particular case, moving to a user-pays system would mean that I would save $500 a year in car registration taxes that are used exclusively to fund the transit system, which would more than cover a fair increase in the gas tax.
Roads are certainly "subsidized" in the U.S., but given how much economic and civic activity they enable relative to the general revenue required, I don't think it's fair to call that subsidy "heavy". I doubt it's outrageous when considered per passenger-mile relative to, say, the non-fee general revenue that goes to the TSA, FAA, airport improvement, etc.
The federal highways that represented the majority of that Boltbus' trip could easily be funded by gas taxes and other essentially user fees if you raised them marginally and removed the requirement that something like 1/6 of that funding be redirected to subsidize public transit. With a few regional exceptions, Amtrak absolutely could not exist without general revenue: As you raised fares, passengers would vanish. And I'm skeptical that Northeast Regional fares really do cover any more than the operating expenses. Are they sufficient to cover capital expenses as well?
State and local road funding is trickier, because it's inefficient to build toll booths along small roads and local gas taxes can be evaded in border areas by driving to another locality. But almost everyone uses local roads, so paying for them out of local taxes isn't a terrible solution. Regardless, if we could switch to GPS-based taxation without too much of a row, I am quite sure that state and local roads would continue to exist and grow without any "subsidy".
You can't argue that drivers are self-sufficient because they pay taxes and turn around and argue that bus riders aren't because they're tax subsidized. Neither are paying the true cost of their transportation in direct fees.
Roads are vastly more expensive than transit per trip. If having the busses and trains full avoids yet another widening then taxes go down, and the rural + urban areas stop subsidizing the suburbs.
In NYC, people with $10M+ ride mass transit and want to see it funded but unfortunately, the cost is too high to simply increase taxes on the wealthy.
To address your concern, Uber drivers and construction workers will pass their increased costs onto their lower Manhattan customers, just like they do for their time sitting in traffic, tolls, parking, traffic and parking tickets, meals, insurance, etc. Simple repairs in lower Manhattan can be hundreds of dollars. Already, for cost, time and traffic reasons, commuters of all types batch their Manhattan trips. Congestion pricing is once per day and therefore a nominal percentage in top of everything else.
What roads would public busses use if the ones created by those subsidies didn't exist exactly? Do you propose some sort of all terrain bus? Or shall we build train tracks to everyone's home? Won't that be lovely in the dead of night.
FYI: a great deal of the funds for highways come in the form of tolls or gasoline taxes. A great deal of the cost of public transit on the other hand is subsidized by state and local sales taxes and income taxes. It is public transit that is subsidized in the real world not the other way around.
No, it's completely illogical from every aspect. Even if the person is going to drive no matter what, and only wants to improve their own experience for least cost, the dollar for transit improves their road experience more than a dollar for more road infrastructure. And even those roads are mostly funded by general funds, not through gas taxes. Gas taxes and user fares fund roughly equivalent amounts of roads and public transit, respectively. And 80% of federal transportation money goes to roads.
The only explanation that's possible is extremely short-sighted and self-defeating selfishness: seeing something that's not for them and instinctively opposing it, without thinking of the bigger picture. It's just childish.
>How is bus fare different from a road fee?
A bus fare covers the cost of paying the bus driver, paying for the bus itself, it's fuel and insurance, and any maintenance needed, plus some profit. With a car, there is no driver to be payed. The car, fuel , and insurance are already being payed for by the operator, and the cost of the road has already been subsidized by vehicle taxes, gas taxes, registration fees, excise taxes, etc
The increased taxes would be cheaper than the effects of traffic, the deaths caused by cars, the cost of building and maintaining more roads for cars, etc.
Public transit will never be a profitable enterprise. It must be subsidized. But we already subsidize roads for cars, but somehow the car-lovers just ignore that.
In the US gas taxes are very low and don't even cover the costs of our highways. Local roads are paid for mostly with local taxes. It's hard to quantify exactly the subsidy per passenger mile while driving, whereas it's very easy to do the same for transit.
The system we have makes drivers feel as though they are paying their fair share while transit riders are not. They don't see the share of their local taxes going to roads.
Ancient argument long settled. Those don't come close to meeting the cost of maintaining this stuff. Even roads (e.g. the pike) which are expressly mandated by law to support themselves via usage fees fail to break even.
It's a hypocrisy argument: government subsidies on transportation are bad, except for the method of transportation you use. Some people actually take those buses and subways and have different perspective.
> 25 cent tax on gas would do it. If even 2 people average rode each bus, it'd break even on traffic density as well?
Busses accelerate, decelerate, and turn differently than cars, so even if in terms of steady-state flow the two-riders = break-even argument is correct, it's not in city traffic.
Moreover, I'd like to see your work on operating and capital costs, especially accounting for road wear for which the usual approximate rule of thumb is that it varies with the fourth power of vehicle weight.
And the users of those roads pay tens of billions of dollars per year by paying or the Federal Gas Tax on every gallon of gas they buy:
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/00gastax.pdf
They also pay local and state tax that pay for the maintenance of local and state roads. They also pay tolls which make so much money that they pay for roads, bridges and a sizable portion of many state's general funds.
Car drivers are more than self-sufficient. Bus riders rely on subsidies or they wouldn't be able to afford bus travel.
I'm not passing a value judgement on this, but let's at least acknowledge reality.
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