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Comment by thanatos519 | Hacker News Reader

Even more: Public transport is a public good which should be funded by fossil fuel taxes and provided to users without cost.

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> Even more: Public transport is a public good which should be funded by fossil fuel taxes and provided to users without cost.

A lot of public transport runs on fossil fuels. Especially, since Germany was so »smart« to shutdown all nuclear reactors so that coal has become the most important source of electricity again.

that is not incompatible with the concept? It's not as though the resaon for public transport is soley to reduce emissions/use less of a limited resource, and even if it were & all public transport used it, its still vastly more efficient to move 50 people with 1.5x the motor that would otherwise be moving 2 people

Actually Germany is on their way to doing this.

They’re about to double the amount of carbon taxes levied on large trucks. That tax used to be used for building new roads but it’s now all being given over to new rail infrastructure.

Why is it a public good? It only benefits the individuals who are travelling. If I take the train to visit my sister, I don't see how that is in the public's interest.

Public parks you don't sit in are still public goods; public litter bins are still public goods even if you never have anything to put into them; public roads are still a public good even if you don't own a vehicle.

Likewise, if you want them to be, so is public transport.

Though, here's a question: I don't think I've ever seen planes classified as public transport — is that just my observations being weird, or is that a true distinction? And if genuine, why?

People usually distinguish between local and long-distance travel, nobody is arguing that bullet trains should be free and planes fall into the same category.

The fact that long-distance highways tend to be free speaks more to politics than logic, and there are a few notable exceptions (eg Japan) where all expressways are tolled.

Highways are also tolled in Italy and I think France, its not that exceptional.

And in Switzerland for example you just pay a really high gas tax that funds the highway, plus you have to pay a one time fee and get a sticker, otherwise you are not allowed to drive on the highway.

>public parks, public litter bins, public roads These examples are permanent things, that only need to be maintained, and it's easier to just let the government handle them instead of letting the individual pay or having a subscription model or something alike. Also: all the public goods you mentioned cannot be managed by any single individual, that's why they are in the public hand, but it only goes so far as your activity is in "public range". You can't pave your own roads, you can't carry a trash can with you wherever you go and you can't play football in your house. That's why the government gives you roads, parks and trash cans. But: it is not allowed to put your house trash into a public bin. Or have a barbecue in the public park, or block the roads for a protest.

I think using the train is more like using the car. I can agree that the tracks are a public good, but actually using the train is clearly different from that. Just like the government provides me roads, but not with rides.

> I don't think I've ever seen planes classified as public transport I guess my framework fits that, because while you may need to maintain the air and the airport, the individual flights only help the individual person.

> I don't think I've ever seen planes classified as public transport

In remote parts of the world, planes absolutely should be classified as public transport. Remote towns in Alaska, for example, are essentially inaccessible without bush planes.

However, planes are expensive to operate on a per-passenger basis, and in most places there are cheaper ways to facilitate helping people move around, especially since most trips from most people are short-distance.

Most public goods don't benefit everyone equally; that's never the case, and that's fine.

My house has never been on fire (knock on wood), but I'm perfectly happy that my taxes pay for a fire department. I don't often use the park up the street that's currently undergoing a massive renovation/rebuild, but I'm happy that my taxes are paying for the renovation. I don't drive on every single road in the city, but I'm glad my tax dollars make it possible for people to get around even in places where I don't need to go. I don't have kids (and don't plan to), but I'm happy that the taxes I pay go toward educating the kids who live here.

Many public transit agencies are run at a loss; I'm absolutely fine with my tax dollars making up the difference. From there it's just a matter of degree: is it fully funded by taxes, or still partially funded by fare revenue? I'd be fine with the former, too.

If you take the train and not the car, you cause a lot less externalities.

It may be the case that I cause a lot less externalities, but I don't think that affects the definition of a public good. If I visited my friend by using a motorcycle, I'd cause less externalities too, but I don't think motorcycles are public goods. Same with scooters, e-bikes and normal bikes.

> but I don't think that affects the definition of a public good

You happen to be misconstruing the two definitions of "public good":

> a commodity or service that is provided without profit to all members of a society, either by the government or a private individual or organization.

> the benefit or well-being of the public.

As such, something can be a "public good" without being "a benefit".

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=public+goods&si=AMnBZoHHbOut...

I don't think I'm misconstruing these two definitions, because I didn't talk about the definitions you just brought up. I also think it is quite clear that I'm talking about what the government should or shouldn't provide, not what some specific government currently is providing.

Because reality requires these things of us but we should minimize the impact.

You’re just stringing words together to look smart; physical reality calls the shots. Your attempt to conjure some immutable truth in Anglo gibberish is banal

Why should we all pay for roads and bridges? I don’t have a car. Why should the government pay for hospitals? I’m not sick.

By that logic, why is anything a public good? If I drink water from a public water fountain why is that in the public's interest?

> If I drink water from a public water fountain why is that in the public's interest?

If there were no fountain, then many people would get water bottles and that's too big of a hassle.

Defining a public good is quite hard, and any definition will most likely other controversial terms like "reasonably" or "foreseeable" in them. However, I think a public good is something that can be shared by many people in reasonable amounts, and that cannot reasonably be attained by the average individual. It is usually characterized by its scale.

So for example, you can't build your own park, but you can use the public park without blasting your music on max volume.

> If there were no fountain, then many people would get water bottles and that's too big of a hassle.

Right, and if there was no public transit, then many more people would need to buy and drive cars, and that's not great for the public's interest either.

But a fountain is something that naturally occurs. It is used in that way because it gives more water than anyone can use, but enough water for everyone in reasonable amounts. It's not just some kind of lesser evil. Trains and railroads must first be built and maintained, they are on the same level as roads and busses.

I think there is a difference between providing the opportunity and giving things out for free.

You're saying public transport is on the same level as roads. Most roads are free to use because they're maintained with tax money, just like free public transport would be, because they're both in the public's interest.

I'm saying the tracks are on the same level as roads. Not riding the trains.

Roads are explicitly set up to be directly operated upon by members of the general public – railways on the other hand, not so much. [1] So a railway without a corresponding service isn't of much use to me as an end-user.

[1] Both because there are higher safety expectations for railways than for roads and because one of the inherent working principles of railways is to bundle individual demand into larger units (a.k.a. trains) that can be moved across the network en bloc. If everybody tried to operate their own individual little train across the network the way you do with driving your car, things wouldn't work out.

Only if you assume a road network of infinite size which goods and various services can traverse without any interference from private car owners. Which a short look at any given city during peak hours should disprove and those roads are not free either.

This is a very individualistic and American view of what a "public good" should be.

I'm neither an individualist nor an American. I'm actually from Germany and experienced how the 3 months of Deutschlandticket affected the people around me.

If you're a business it will help you if you can select employees or receive customers from a large geographical region. As the economy and all public services depend on businesses, that's the public interest.

It’s in the public interest because we want you to choose a greener more sustainable transport option, such as the train.

Public transit gets the workers to where they need to go to serve you at your Starbucks, your Target, your luxury hotels, you name it.

Public transit gets consumers to the mall and other shopping areas where they can circulate their hard-earned cash in a capitalist economic system.

Public transit gets individual cars off the road, increases safety of those roads, and makes everybody's transportation more efficient.

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