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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

Public parking benefits car owners, and does nothing for non-owners. Do you dispute this?

Yes. You're working from an overly reductive perspective. Transportation, government subsidy, and population density are way too complex to cover with a simple "I don't use it, so why should I pay for it" argument.

I understand that with transportation in general. For example, roads are difficult to charge for and it's hard to draw a direct line between use and costs, so it often makes sense to subsidize those. Public transportation is worth subsidizing to free up space on the (subsidized) roads, help poor people get around, and other such things.

But parking at home? There's a straight line connection between the car owner who uses the space and the cost of the space. I shouldn't expect the government to pay for my parking any more than I should expect the government to pay for my house. In fact, paying for people's houses would be a lot more reasonable, since people need housing, but don't need parking.

Well, car owners can use the same argument: public transportation benefits only people without cars, why car owners should pay maintenance of train stations, buses, trolleys, repair shops for those etc?

Public transportation benefits drivers by taking traffic off the roads, and benefits everybody by reducing pollution. It also helps poor people get around, and they could use some help.

I can't come up with any such counterarguments for public parking. It doesn't benefit non-drivers in any way, and the people it does benefit mostly don't need public assistance.

Is public transportation more efficient per mile/person? Yes. Does it solves all the transportation problems? No: it's not covering even half of our needs. Just for reference: only 30% of NY population is using mass transit for commutes. SF is just 15% [1]. And in most areas in the country you can't go and buy some food if you have no car: there is not even a sidewalk, not to mention public transportation. So what you are proposing is to additional burden for the majory of the population for "storing their property" without providing any alternative.

Edit: who pays majority of taxes for road use? It's car owners. You have cheap buses only because car owners paid majority of the bills for road network maintenance and development.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_transit_in_the_United_Sta... [2] https://taxfoundation.org/state-gasoline-tax-rates-2017/

I am providing an alternative: pay for what you use. That's how most things work. Why should cars get special treatment?

Gas taxes don't cover all road expenses. I looked at Virginia's data (since that's where I live) and nearly as much road construction/maintenance money comes from normal sales taxes as comes from gas taxes. Another substantial chunk comes from the Federal government, and the Feds pay out substantially more than they receive from the Federal gas tax.

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