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Comment by danjayh | Hacker News Reader

Why should public transit be paid for by automobiles? Let the users of each service pay for what they consume. Cars pay for roads, maintenance, highway patrol, etc. Public transit users pay for rail, buses, dedicated lanes, etc. Forcing automobile users to pay for public transit obscures the true societal cost of implementing public transit just as much as using tax revenues outside of gas/license taxes for roads obscures the true cost of driving private cars.

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>Why should public transit be paid for by automobiles? Let the users of each service pay for what they consume.

Why should anyone pay for anything they don't use? I understand this is a fairly common position to take in general, but this situation is not unique to public transit.

Regardless, true cost of driving private cars is already obscured beyond just for road construction and maintenance. Free or subsidized municipal on-street parking, below market rates, is one big example.

I am in general in favor of nearly all services being based on user fees, except in cases of people who have handicaps that prevent them from otherwise functioning normally in society (physical disability, mental health issues, developmental issues, etc.) or have had a recent extraordinary event that temporarily impacted their ability to care for themselves (loss of a job, loss of a family member, birth of a child, severe illness, etc.). In cases where it is desired to subsidize services for less well off users, raise fees on more financially capable users. To achieve this, I prefer the airline model - offer a couple of classes of marginally better service at an order of magnitude higher cost. The people who truly have the means will pay it, and those who don't will not. For instance, someone with 150k income and $15k/year medical costs,$25k/year childcare costs, and $25k/year in student debt payments might not be as well off as their income suggests. The airline model allows people with means to self-select in a way that income-based taxation does not.

> Cars pay for roads, maintenance, highway patrol, etc.

That's not accurate.

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/05/debunking-the...

I must apologize for my lack of clarity. The intent of my statement was to say that "Cars should pay for..." and "Public transit users should pay for", not to imply that the users of these services cover their costs now. Cars are obviously subsidized by general tax revenue, and public transit is also subsidized by general tax revenue. Ideally general taxes would be reduced by the amount spent on these services, and the costs for these services would be increased accordingly.

My bad. I read it as "since cars pay... transit should pay too".

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