Comment by andys627 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andys627 | Hacker News Reader

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They're not excessive - they're more in line with true cost of car dependent society. In the US we shower subsidies on car owners. Some examples: using general fund money to build highways, charging low gas taxes that don't cover cost of maintenance of roads, providing free/underpriced parking in every downtown in the US, undercharging for pollution and other negative externalities of driving, requiring minimum amounts of parking in new developments (instead of capping parking quantity or letting developer choose how much to provide), qualifying infrastructure using car centric metrics like Level-of-Service, federal gov't providing automatic 10-to-1 match for highway projects but 1-to-1 (in good cases) for transit projects to name a few

> using general fund money to build highways

You're forgetting about trucks (and other service vehicles), and though trains are better, you can't have trains everywhere

> providing free/underpriced parking in every downtown in the US

Downtown is predominantly paid parking, and not underpriced either

> Downtown is predominantly paid parking, and not underpriced either

Yes but the vast majority of American cars don't park in downtown.

The message he was replying to included this:

> underpriced parking in every downtown

Many highways could have fewer lanes if there weren't so many commuters taking space away from trucks, etc.

>They're not excessive - they're more in line with true cost of car dependent society.

How did you come by that result? Assuming it wasn't from a magic hat, could you enlighten us a bit?

Bear in mind, that drivers pay much, much more tax for their fuel in Denmark, too, compared to the U.S. Fuel taxes are a major part of many European countries tax income.

I think you should be supporting taxing car usage, not car ownership. 500% gasoline tax instead of 100% car tax.

I thinks is not the best solution, as taxing gasoline will rise the price of all products that must be transported. Like your food from farms to supermarket.

You could have a rebate system for 4/5th of the tax for professional users.

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