Hacker News Reader

Comment by danielrpa | Hacker News Reader

I like cars and don't want to ride trains or buses. I prefer the freedom and isolation of driving my own large car. I'm willing to spend less on other things than to let go of my car.

When cars are illegal, I'll stop driving, so if you want that to happen you should try writing to your representative.

View on HN

I think that’s perfectly reasonable and fine for 99% of the US.

For certain extremely central streets in places like NYC, there’s no realistic amount of money that you could pay that would outweigh the benefits of closing those streets during the day and turning them into mini parks.

Similarly, on other streets in the same kinds of dense cities, it makes a ton more sense to turn the outmost parts of streets into dedicated bike lines over using it for parking, even paid parking.

But in general, at least for me personally, I’m not trying to tell you to stop driving altogether.

That's fine, but only if you agree that the current market failure should be fixed and all the negative externalities of personal car driving should be internalized. The society must cease subsidizing unsustainable means of transport.

Let's do it and while at it also remove externalities for the alternative modes of transportation - including removing the subsides for trains/buses in American cities.

why? those modes of transportation are far more efficient, and the economic benefits are obvious?

How about we just make the subsidies equitable? Let’s start with removing all free, on street parking and charge market rates. You want to store your private car on the street? That will be $1,000/month please.

That makes no sense. They are subsidized exactly because the cost to society is vastly lower than having even more people drive their own cars. Every single person who takes the bus or train rather than adding one more car to the roads is making the society a favor. The point is not to make transportation purely market-driven – the market cannot efficiently solve that problem due to infrastructure being a) really expensive and b) a natural monopoly – the point is to balance the social and ecological costs of transport with the demand for mobility.

That’s great. Then you should keep enjoying your car. I just hope you don’t stop people from trying to enjoy a subway by supporting politicians that are anti-train.

Same goes for HSR. You can drive or fly between cities if you want, just don’t try to stop HSR development please. Lots of people want it.

I'd never do that, I'm not against subways and buses at all. Let's then ensure that the city pays for that through city taxes (sales, property) and bus/subway tickets, instead of the Federal or State governments.

And let’s pay for all highways via tolls. No subsidies, right?

I don't own a car but I use to think it is worth paying for roads since I benefit from postal services, busses and stuff being delivered to stores.

But I have no idea how road consumption is distributed. (they don't last forever)

I could in theory just as easily pay for that though the normal channels. It can just be included in the price of goods.

Parking spaces consume a very expensive amount of space in cities. If someone hardly ever drives their car(s) sould they have to pay the same?

I'm not a fan of capitalism but if you want such a system to work it should be allowed to scale prices with cost? It would have to be regulated to avoid driving up the prices to what people can afford.

Bicycles and pedestrians use roads too. Billing everyone doesn't seem very challenging. Many highly used areas could really use maintenance and cleaning.

I honestly have no idea which products and services would get more expensive but the benefits and cost are distributed weirdly.

That would be okay with me if we could actually get to this level of granularity. Same thing for the streets used by public transportation? Subways alone won't work everywhere, so we'll need buses, and these will need highways too and pay for them in the fare.

I think most governments decided that it's not practical to get to this level of granularity, instead trying to get the cost closer to the user. For instance, having vehicle licensing and gas taxes paying for streets and highways in general based on usage statistics. For electric vehicles, governments are studying approaches like charging by mile driven using tracking devices (has its own problems).

But in my earlier proposal, getting the costs closer to the user would mean for trains and subways to pay for their own tracks and energy, and buses to pay for their streets and highways through licensing and gas (and for special bus lanes directly through tickets)

Even in the cities that are touted as most walkable, cars have access to almost all destinations. It may be more expensive to own a vehicle, but it’s not impossible. Feel free to keep driving, but you can reduce congestion for yourself by supporting high quality transit and walkable initiatives, because they will encourage more people to choose those modes of travel.

The notion of "I want mine and screw everyone else" ignores the part of the problem that's 'socialized' - all the infrastructure that's necessary to support you and your car. You're not really arguing that you should be able to drive your car. You're arguing that you should be able to drive your car and that society should pay to maintain all the roads, bridges, tunnels, parking lots, etc that you rely on.

Owning a car is a fundamentally socialist dream (like most things that require public infrastructure really). I can absolutely assure you that you won't be able to afford to drive if a lot of other people decide to stop. Maintaining roads, building new ones, making sure bridges don't fall down, etc is really expensive.

It’s not fundamentally socialist or capitalist. Driving a car assumes that there are people paid to do jobs that support it. From drilling oil, to making breaks and tires, and supporting the vehicles, to paving roads and building bridges. Roads and bridges can be privatized, and there are plenty of privately owned roads in the USA.

The real issue with cars imho isn’t the support. The real problem to me is the highway system encouraging sprawl, which then forces many to own a vehicle whether or not they want really one.

But don't their taxes and other associated costs (road, vehicle registration, fuel, etc.) pay that?

Do you know what else is expensive? Travelling long distances and crossing bodies of water with more cargo than can reasonably be carried, without a vehicle and somewhere to drive it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com