>"Less than 50% of households in NYC have a car."
How is that relevant? NYC has its own issues, and is very far from Vancouver.
edit: comment above was originally only the eight words in my quote when I commented.
How is that relevant? NYC has its own issues, and is very far from Vancouver.
edit: comment above was originally only the eight words in my quote when I commented.
It’s amazing how much energy goes into making excuses for why a city can’t get better.
Although I’ve heard great passion for better city-making here in Perth this week while working with the Heart Foundation, I’ve also heard some of those excuses, while working with stakeholders, politicians and State planning and transport staff.
“Perth is different,” I’ve been told, in various ways.
It’s true, Perth is different. Every city is. But you’re not THAT different. You’re really not.'
At the end of the day there's one reason why most cities in the US won't have decent transit any time soon - that the people who would build the transit do so on the grounds that it is Virtuous and Glorious and Green. Beyond that, they make projections that everyone will ride it and that it'll reinvigorate the economy and reduce traffic. (And if you're against it that's probably because you're an evil Republican which means you probably voted for Trump which means you're probably a Nazi, but I digress.)
And then, instead, you get something that goes from nowhere to nowhere, and covers maybe 25% of its operating costs off ticket revenue... before the cost of capital expenditures.
And if you think this is exaggeration (including the Trump bits) try reading several articles about the Virginia Beach TIDE light rail project ... which, to sum it up in one number, gets roughly a $8000/rider/year subsidy from the city.
But the unionized public transport employees will vote for you and campaign for you and your causes forever.
Almost every highway and road and most parking spaces have a revenue recovery ratio of 0%
http://www.mercurynews.com/2012/12/26/25-years-later-vta-lig...
> Almost every highway and road and most parking spaces have a revenue recovery ratio of 0%
Theoretically, that's what the fuel tax is for. At the federal level, the highway trust fund raised $35 billion in fuel tax and spend $39 billion on highways (and $8b on transit - the deficit here being covered by the general fund). If we wanted to be generous we'd say that's an 89% recovery ratio, which probably is totally unfair and ignores some important capex somewhere (recent "stimulus" spending, for example) but is substantially more than zero.
(State and municipal numbers are quite variable, I'm sure.)
I see your BART, and
raise you Santa Clara
VTA Rail.
Theoretically, that's
what the fuel tax is
for.
* That's federal spending on interstates only. State and local recovery ratios are lower. The road in front of your driveway is often the worst, it is an amazing outlay of public service to serve relatively few people.
* If you include fuel taxes as part of the recovery ratio for car infrastructure, you should include dedicated sales taxes and other funds as part of the recovery ratio for public transit infrastructure. (Remember, public infrastructure makes things better for car users too. Building an extra parking space helps one car, building a train helps everyone who rides that train and all the car users who no longer have to fight with those people for space on the road or for parking spaces.)
This is almost in line with my initial premise, that politicians putting together public transportation systems are the reason we can't have nice public transportation systems here in the US.
There is one reasonably good public transportation system (the NYC subway - much of it being privately built ages ago in a different sort of era) and several sorta-quasi-nice public transportation systems in the US. BART is one of the latter. We don't even make them like that anymore, though.
> * If you include fuel taxes as part of the recovery ratio for car infrastructure, you should include dedicated sales taxes and other funds as part of the recovery ratio for public transit infrastructure.
No way. Most gasoline and diesel that is sold is sold for the purpose of driving a vehicle on a public road, and it is roughly proportional to the use of that road. It could be closer to a fee-for-use provision if one added a separate tax on square-of-vehicle-axle-weight times distance - the real thing that wears down highways - but it is a lot more practical to enforce with a fuel tax and without computerized surveillance on all automobiles.
A sales tax on all transactions is completely different and drains unrelated economic activity to maintain and operate transport: the most common use of public transportation by volume is to commute to work, an activity that's pretty poorly connected with shopping at the store.
A dedicated fund covering a portion of taxpayer expenses does nothing to improve it, either (the money is fungible).
Are you saying this 8mile light rail requires opex of $16bn, more than the entire NY subway system?
That's a hell of an assumption. I know people who live in NYC, making very good money, and they're all crammed into tiny apartments with multiple roommates because the congestion and rent are so ridiculous. That's fine for people in their early 20s, but do you really think these same people are still going to live in NYC once they get married and have kids? A small percent will buy a place in NYC, and the rest will move out to the suburbs.
If anything, I'd predict that small and walkable urban areas, interspersed inside large suburbs, are more likely to be the future growth areas.
I also know a lot of people that had kids and moved to the burbs - but they all commute via public transport (either train or bus).
I guess my point is that anecdotes don't really mean anything?