They would be if the negative externalities of autos were priced in; trains aren't viable in America because autos are subsidized via substantial non-internalized negative externalities.
Trains are far more heavily subsidized than autos, for example, on a per-passenger mile basis. Studies that account for the full bore of taxes which apply to personal vehicles (sales tax, excise tax, gas tax, registration fees) show that cars provide significant net income to government far exceeding infrastructure outlays.
I think that trains being less fuel efficient than cars with 2 occupants also is a good reason why “non-internalized negative externalities” have a hard time helping trains catch up in the final accounting.
If you can cite a study which supports your claim I would be very interested to read it. However, I don’t think the science of accounting for PM2.5 tire and brake dust is at the point where we can calculate the economic cost.
Meanwhile, are you including in your thought process any of the following?
- Public land permanently dedicated to roads, highways, parking lots, etc
- Parking minimums in zoning codes
- Police resources dedicated to traffic enforcement
- Wars of aggression fought to preserve oil prices
- Oil industry subsidies
- Innocent deaths and crippling lifetime injuries caused by automobiles
- Massive declining public health due to sedentary lifestyles (sitting on your butt in a driver's seat)
Public land will be permanently dedicated to rails and stations and things, if you want to cover the same area with transit access, you'll need similar, if not the same public land.
Parking minimums are not about being pro-car so much as being about anti-poor. This is a subsidy to entrenched interests, not to cars.
Police make money from traffic enforcement. Many departments get their whole budget from that. Many towns get their whole budget, above and beyond the PD, from it. Eliminate cars tomorrow and you bankrupt a huge percentage of non-major cities and all small towns.
Wars of aggression over oil are likely over due to fracking and oil sands, but I'll grant that they were bad while they were happening. Now, how are your predominantly diesel trains going to be powered without oil?
Oil subsidies are a problem. I would love to see congestion pricing and an end to all subsidies for transit, trains, buses, cars, bikes and pedestrian behaviors. We do not and never will again live in that world.
Deaths due to automobiles are at a record low per passenger mile and continuing to fall. Every time we make roads and cars and esp new cars more expensive, these rise as people limp their dangerous old clunker along a bit more. Weirdly, the requirements for safety technology cause people to drive older, less fuel efficient cars and the requirements for better emissions cause people to drive older, less safe cars all due to rising prices. Perhaps we should subsidize the removal of old cars (cash for clunkers)?
I don't think you can blame sedentary lifestyles on driving. That's a step too far -- it's a factor, but it's by no means the biggest or the most consistent. I doubt that we'd be able to attribute anywhere near enough health problem to only and specifically long commutes to even really price this externality.
2) Phrase it as you may, parking minimums raise cost of housing and/or disperse the cities increasing distances traveled, turning cheap options of walking or cycling into requisite car travel, which again widens roads, increasing distances...
3) No idea if true. Even so, less cars and less oil should leave more available resources for more useful things. Bad funding schemes are an argument, but I would consider it a sufficient one.
4) Yes they were bad. Probably still are. Trains can be electrified and no idea how that relates to wars.
5) I agree car subsidies are bad. Not sure about feasibility or seriousness of proposed end on pedestrian subsidies. Would you stop building sidewalks? Roads?
6) I will deflect to a more pressing concern and argue car travel inflicted pollution collectively does significantly more harm to health and quality of life of most residents, than the few, yet no less tragic traffic accidents.
How about we don't incentivize car usage, including all the reasons that make it convenient, useful and often almost unavoidable, like zoning, parking, wide roads, cheap fuel etc? Car is a car, and in this instance, newer cars may be even worse polluters with their tire particulate.
7) Sedentary life style is not about length of commute. If you don't own a powered personal transporter, you will almost certainly either walk more or cycle more or at least stand on your motorized scooter as you do want to get somewhere.
$66 billion a year in use taxes including fuel, excise, and registration.
That’s just the direct revenue. If you want to include externalities, you also have to include economic activity enabled by these investments, and the taxes on those activities.
Just the auto sector alone produces $60 billion of income tax revenue for state and Federal governments.
But that’s not even scratching the surface of total economic activity supported by the national highway infrastructure, or state and local infrastructure, which arguably holds up double digits percentages of GDP. State income taxes rise and fall based on their infrastructure investments.
Even the Big Dig (at $14 billion in cost I assume due to massive fraud) eventually not only pays for itself but is massively profitable from a combination of vehicle cost savings and in future revenue streams from increased economic activity enabled by the new infrastructure and added prime real estate. [1]
A lot of people die or are injured on the highways. Did you also attempt to measure the lives bettered and saved because of those same highways?
An informed discussion balances positives and negatives of any activity, along with the positives and negatives of a proposed substitute.
There’s a reason why infrastructure spending is one of the very few things which garners almost universal support from all political parties.
[1] - https://www.edrgroup.com/library/highways/economic-impact-ce...
There’s a difference between direct revenue & expenses and second-order effects.
As a second order effect, roads are necessary for something on the order of $10 trillion of economic activity in the US.
It’s a high price to pay to be sure, for the modern world. I look forward to self driving technology significantly reducing that number over the next 10-15 years.
[1] - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/motor-vehicle-crashes-u-...
I'm not talking infrastructure externalities, I'm talking about environmental externalities, especially (but not exclusively) tailpipe emissions.