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Comment by tomcam | Hacker News Reader

> If people still want to live in large houses in low-density areas, let them pay for it.

Excellent! Same with urban mass transit, then.

Cool, cool, as long as we're moving to user fees for everything, let's also have that apply to roadways which are not remotely covered by the gas tax.

At least on the federal level, considering the federal gas tax hasn't been raised since 1993, it does a pretty good job at covering the costs of roads.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/highwaytrustfund/

That link is only showing the state of the gas tax fund, and shows none of the transfers from the general fund to prop up shortfalls.

Second, local roads (i.e. the majority) are mostly funded through the general fund of municipalities.

Here's an overview of how laughably short gas taxes fall when it comes to paying for the roads: http://frontiergroup.org/reports/fg/do-roads-pay-themselves

I agree that road users should pay for the roads but fuel tax isn't the right way to do it.

First, bicyclists make use of the roads so there should be a congestion free.

Second, diesel taxes are aimed at trucks but also ensnare diesel cars which don't wear the road more than an equivalent passenger car so we need a vehicle specific paradigm. This is probably the appropriate way to price in scarcity - most motorcycles consume more fuel than most hybrids but motorcycles should wear the road less.

Oh yes, totally, the fuel tax is the wrong mechanism.

I also agree that congestion is the key. Congestion isn't a constant throughout the day, yet fuel taxes are. If we want to maximize our investment in all those roads, we should have higher pricing when that resource is most scarce.

At present, bicyclists mostly represent a mode shift away from driving, which represents a net mobility increase for a given congestion equilibrium. I suppose at some point we could have so much mobility being provided by bicycles that we experience significant congestion (I say we, as in the USA, as opposed to places like Amsterdam that have the lovely problem of bicycle congestion today).

That said, I'm not sure I'd ever be a huge fan of pricing bicycle travel the same way I'd price car travel. I guess I'd argue that bicycling is something between a really, really low cost means of providing mobility that benefits society as a whole, and a straight-up virtue good. I'd call bicycling a virtue good in that, the more of it a bicyclist does, the better their health, which has even more positive externalities for society as a whole.

>At present, bicyclists mostly represent a mode shift away from driving, which represents a net mobility increase for a given congestion equilibrium.

I challenge that, bicyclists who do things like run red lights seem to increase congestion.

Are you seriously arguing that people switching from driving to cycling increases congestion? In the face of every bit of research, ever?

Although, once I got past face-palming, I could read your comment as charitably as possible and interpret that what you're saying is "bicyclists who do things like run red lights seem to increase congestion [over bicyclists who don't.]", but I think that's a stretch.

I did find one counter-point, this study [0], but it's key to note that it's a simulation for a non-existent scenario, and IMHO it would be stupid to have a 10% proportion of bicycles and not have appropriate infrastructure.

[0]: http://peopleforbikes.org/blog/real-talk-bikes-cant-reduce-c...

You know that mass transit to/from the suburbs costs far more per boarding than in-city transit, right? More deadhead trips for commuters, longer distances.

Except that when you take into account the externalities, mass transit pays for itself, while suburbs don't.

So mass transit should be partially publicly-funded. Suburbs should not.

Mass transit reduces congestion, reduces land usage, reduces environmental damage, reduces poverty, reduces pollution, increases quality of life and is usable by the vast majority of the population.

Suburbia infrastructure only serves those living in suburbs and has the opposite effect of each metric listed above.

That typically comes from taxes on low-occupancy vehicles, which works out because mass transit also does a little bit to offset the massive emissions toll of those vehicles, as well as all the associated congestion/parking/etc issues.

I mean, we aren't putting the costs of hurricane relief efforts on people's car tabs yet, but give it a few years.

They already do? Last I checked the bus wasn't free . . .

I haven't read of a public transit system where the fares covered the costs of building and operating it. I have read that MTA (NYC), BART(SF), Amtrak, NJTransit, and other US ones definitely are in the red year after year.

It's probably super difficult to exactly quantify how much something costs, but I think it should be provable that public transit is cheaper per person than the maintaining the network of roads we have. Of course, it's also hard to quantify the worth of those roads when we have a natural disaster and public transit stops working...

>I haven't read of a public transit system where the fares covered the costs of building and operating it. I have read that MTA (NYC), BART(SF), Amtrak[1], NJTransit, and other US ones definitely are in the red year after year.

In all of those cases, the fares plus gain in property values far exceed their costs. Indeed, every one of those authorities realizes that it would be net money loser on the sales/property/business taxes generated if they could stop paying maintenance and shut down the transit systems for free.

[1] Edit: except maybe that one.

Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore would very much like to disagree with you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio

Even the London tube does pretty well by this measure.

I agree it is difficult to quantify the costs, but I wanted to get an idea.

A quick analysis shows that while a system like BART may operate at a loss of about one dollar per trip, that is not far off from the costs of operating our car and road network. Based on average fuel economy, and road expenses the state of California subsidies driving at a rate of about 6.2 cents per mile. I didn't find any hard sources, but a few references that the average commute may be about 12 miles. That would make the average subsidy for a commute to be about $0.75.

- BART looses about a dollar per trip: (https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/06/how-much-mone...) - California gas tax covers 22.7% of road costs: (https://taxfoundation.org/gasoline-taxes-and-tolls-pay-only-...) - Average fuel economy is 23.6 miles / gallon in the USA: (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/12/13/cars-...) - The gas tax is 48.6 cents per gallon.

Math: - Total road expense per gallon of gas sold: 0.486/0.227 = $2.14 - Subsidy: 2.14-0.486 = $1.65 - Per mile $1.65/26.6 = $0.062

Why don't we make road construction cheaper? Most of those jobs are unionized and pay a prevailing wage, it'd be much cheaper to pay people less.

King County Metro fares cover a little more than 25% (their target) of (the average) operating cost per boarding.

Nonsense. Mass transit is a necessity of city traffic fluid dynamics. That has zero comparison to fed funded roads and mortgage deductions for nasty white flight perpetrators. Let them suffer. Let kids inherit their parent debts. Speak in big paragraphs of wordy words. Quips are not funny.

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