Are you a fan of charging market rates for transit as well?
1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs.
2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions.
3. Buses in particular result in excessive road wear&tear.
It's really amazing that people say things like "car owners should not get subsidized" (by whom?), while talking about transit that is literally infeasible without massive subsidies.
If road usage fees cover less than half the cost of roads then clearly someone is subsidizing roads.
This is too misleading to be unintentional. I don't know if you're comparing buses to small/medium EVs 1:1, but even if you aren't, the environmental footprint of replacing all bus services with EVs would be extraordinary.
> 2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions.
Transit doesn't force people into housing. It creates new housing options that previously were not tenable. Rivers don't create port congestion, rivers create ports. Not having enough ports, or enough rivers, creates port congestion.
> 3. Buses in particular result in excessive road wear&tear.
In proportion to human-miles, or is this a 1:1 comparison?
It's not misleading. On average, buses in the US carry around 15 people. A car carries around 1.5, so the raw multiplier is just 10.
But wait, there's more!
ALL buses have an incredibly polluting component that is fundamental to their functionality: the driver. You need around 3 drivers to cover the useful service time (from 5am to midnight). And drivers are POLLUTING AS HELL.
> I don't know if you're comparing buses to small/medium EVs 1:1
Yes, I do. Here ya go: https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint
> Transit doesn't force people into housing.
It does, via market forces.
> It creates new housing options that previously were not tenable.
No. It _destroys_ affordable housing to pack people into smaller and smaller footprints. Tokyo is a _great_ example of that.
> In proportion to human-miles, or is this a 1:1 comparison?
In proportion to passenger-miles. Road wear scales approximately as the 4-th power of the axle weight, and under-loaded buses still have to haul around their massive bulks even if there's just one passenger inside.
Honestly, it's amazing how bad public transit turns out to be when you actually start looking at its negative sides.
Buses in the US are largely avoided due to the last century spent prioritizing suburban car commuting over everything else. What you should be looking at are the averages on bus routes where the buses run regularly and aren’t blocked by solo drivers. That means that the floor for a bus is 10:1 but it can easily rise to 50-70:1 with cheap policy changes (e.g. put a $500 camera on the bus to ticket drivers and suddenly headways improve by 50%). In contrast, the large EVs people are actually buying will never become more efficient over the lifetime of the vehicle.
Le sigh. If you want more bus passengers in each bus, you either need to run buses with longer intervals (making them completely useless) or you need to pack people together. Packing people together densely enough to make buses work inevitably requires living in small apartments.
The US in the last century decided to focus on comfortable human-oriented housing, and not on building Soviet-style human anthills.
> In contrast, the large EVs people are actually buying will never become more efficient over the lifetime of the vehicle.
Large EVs have lifecycle CO2 footprint of about 70g/km. Buses are ~100g/km, and EV buses (trolleys) are 60 g/km.
Moving to mid-sized EVs, such as Tesla Model 3/Y, cuts that to about 35 g/km (it depends on the US state). This is definitely something that we should encourage. The US addiction to huge barn-sized SUVs is unhealthy.
This is not my experience. Living in a village of around 2000 pop in Sweden with pretty much only single-family houses with gardens. The whole village was within 15 minutes walk or bike within one of 3 bus stops to a bus service that went into the city every 20 minutes during the day, with double-length buses during peak hours. The buses had a very healthy occupancy rate.
You just have to make sure to design towns around the transit instead of around cars. US suburbs are really hard to retrofit transit into, with designs that actively subvert it
Also, everything about density in relation to quality of life is pretty subjective. Luckily, we have cities for both! You’re free to live in Houston while those of us that prefer dense urban environments can live in New York and take transit.
Road wear scales as 4-th power of axle weight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
The average loads: https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/mobility/perso...
The CO2 impact by transport mode: https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint
Nothing I'm saying is controversial. Heck, even urbanists admit that, they just try to avoid talking about it.
> Also, everything about density in relation to quality of life is pretty subjective. Luckily, we have cities for both!
My problem is with people that try to remake wonderful cities like Seattle into Manhattan-style hellscapes. And this is a result of market forces, that need to be counteracted via political regulation.
I'd love to live in Houston, but I just can't tolerate its weather. I tried.
And feel free to argue about keeping Seattle the way it is. I have no interest in changing Seattle. Just leave my Manhattan out of it :)
Many people enjoy living in a dense environment, as evidenced by how much they'll pay to do so. It's objectively better for the Earth, and pretty enjoyable for the people that choose that path.
Densificatoin causes enshittification spiral. Each successive generation lives in worse conditions. This is an inherent property of densification.
> The sewer and water system to your house is subsidized.
It isn't. I'm paying for it from my taxes (that's why in Seattle my water is more costly than in the middle of a freaking desert).
> Snow removal from your cul-de-sac is subsidized.
It isn't. I'm responsible for keeping it clean, and I was once fined when I failed to do that.
> Many people enjoy living in a dense environment
The vast majority of people want to live in single family houses (90% or so - https://www.redfin.com/news/millennial-homebuyers-prefer-sin... ). They simply can't afford that. And of course, the psychological defense mechanism is: "I never wanted it anyway".
Could you uh, explain this a bit more? This doesn't seem to correspond with the desirability of dense cities atm. All of the most desirable places to live seem to either be dense or easily commutable to somewhere dense.
In turn, people want to live close enough to their jobs. So this drives up the price of housing in and around the Downtown. In turn, this incentivizes developers to build new buildings as high as economical, and to make units as small as feasible.
Thus the new construction in Downtowns tends to be smaller than the existing one ( https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/seattle-sma... ). This drives up the price of existing larger apartments even more, making them unavailable for younger people. So if you don't work in tech, you'll have to make do with a small apartment.
But no worries, by the next generation your small apartment will look positively spacious!
Obviously urban centers can be improved on, and many people living in them wish they had more personal space. But there are advantages too.
This is not a real thing. Please refer to factual, verifiable phenomena and not imaginings.
It's very misleading because you're starting from the supposition of EVs rather than the actual mix of personal cars. If you choose EVs for the cars, why not choose ZEV buses that are starting to enter the market as well?
> And drivers are POLLUTING AS HELL.
What? I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say here.
> No. It _destroys_ affordable housing to pack people into smaller and smaller footprints. Tokyo is a _great_ example of that.
It doesn't destroy affordable housing, though, it shifts it to other areas while increasing density near stations. You need to show why that's a bad thing. Most urban planners and economists would say that increased density is a good thing and that Tokyo is an excellent example of a city done right.
You seem to have a personal bone to pick with high-density cities that's just not shared by most other people.
If we're talking about planning, then we should look at least 10 years ahead. By that time, most of new vehicles are going to be EVs.
Mind you, the subway construction around here is planned 20 _years_ in advance. All the current proposed projects are going to be finished some time in 2040-s.
> If you choose EVs for the cars, why not choose ZEV buses that are starting to enter the market as well?
ZEV buses still retain the most polluting part of regular buses: the driver.
> What? I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say here.
One average US citizen produces around 20 tons of CO2 per year. A bus needs 3 of them working full-time. This completely dwarfs the emissions due to fuel use.
> It doesn't destroy affordable housing, though, it shifts it to other areas while increasing density near stations.
Bullshit. New density does NOT create ANY affordable housing. Never has, never will. And dense housing near stations is certainly not cheap.
Heck, here's an article from urbanists that admits that: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/4/26/upzoning-might...
> Most urban planners and economists would say that increased density is a good thing and that Tokyo is an excellent example of a city done right.
Most oil executives say that oil is great and that the large trucks are good!
Tokyo is a great example of young people forced to live in "microapartments" while just a couple of hours away, beautiful old houses sit empty.
> You seem to have a personal bone to pick with high-density cities that's just not shared by most other people.
Most other people haven't heard ANY opposing opinion in their lives. And neither have they researched it themselves. Thus, I routinely hear utterly risible nonsense like "we need more density to allow affordable housing" going unopposed.
Are you trying to say that these people wouldn't already exist without the bus? So everytime we commission a new bus, 3 fully grown licensed drivers appear in a flash of smoke from the storage compartment of the bus?
No. They would be doing other productive things. But right now, they have to spend their productive power on driving buses.
This is simply a huge waste of human potential.
Car commutes are shorter than transit commutes in well-designed cities.
But even otherwise, you don't need a dedicated full-time driver.
First, you want to solve the problem of long bus intervals. It's still not economic to just buy more buses because they require a lot of power to run and do tons of road damage.
But you can make buses smaller! And by making them smaller, you can run them faster without incurring a lot of useless overhead.
Heck, you can just idle, dare I say _park_, these unused small buses when there is no demand. And since it's so easy to manage the fleet this way, you can make personalized buses for every passenger.
Hmm... It really reminds me of something...
Of course if the land is owned by other people, the increase in value provided by transit should be recaptured through a Land Value Tax which is then used to fund the transit.
So basically, you want to subsidize transit by making the transport authority be a slumlord. Got it.
There are no unsubsidized urban transit services in the US. Even operating costs are not paid from fares. And new transit construction is COMPLETELY subsidized.
I live in Seattle and I will have paid around $20k in car tab fees alone by the time the choo-choo subway train expansion here is done. It won't go anywhere near me and it will make my life worse, by inducing even more traffic.
My fire department, police, and parks are certainly not subsidized. I pay for them from my taxes.
Are you saying that if taxes pay for transit then transit isn’t subsidized?
Dictionary definition: "a sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service may remain low or competitive."
What I have is NOT a subsidy. I use the resources, and I pay for them.
I don't have people from New York paying for my fire department in Seattle.
> Are you saying that if taxes pay for transit then transit isn’t subsidized?
I use fire protection, and I pay for it. My neighbors receive equal fire protection. There are no subsidies, we all pay our equal share (based on the house value).
However, I won't benefit from transit that is being built (heck, it will make my life WORSE). Yet I have to pay for it, thus I subsidize it.
Clear?
Do your taxes go towards the public parks even if you don’t use them? (Subsidy)
Do your taxes go towards public schools even if you don’t have kids? (Subsidy)
Fire departments provide protection from fire. I absolutely do use and depend on it.
> Do your taxes go towards the public parks even if you don’t use them?
This is indeed a subsidy. A pay-per-use system would allow to remove the subsidy. However, it's so small around here that it's inconsequential in the face of massive transit subsidies.
> Do your taxes go towards public schools even if you don’t have kids?
Nope. I will eventually have kids who will need schools. So not a subsidy.
Also, if your public schools receive funding from people who do not currently have kids in school (no kids, kids already graduated, kids in private school, etc.) it’s subsidized. To claim otherwise is to redefine words.
In the context of transit, people talk about transit not being able to “pay for itself” and needing subsidies. That money comes from taxes… so people who don’t ride transit end up subsidizing people who do (via taxes) in the same way people who don’t go to parks subsidize people who do (via taxes) and people without kids subsidize public school education of those who do (via taxes).
Fire departments receive federal funding through federal taxes that everyone pays, so yes, you do: https://www.fireandemsfund.com/fire-department-funding-where...
Yes, it's better to have transit company use that money to fund operations than some numbered corp generating profit for wall street investors
Tokyo transit is highly profitable and don't require tax-payer subsidies because they own the land around stations
Is everyone who owns land a "slumlord" now?
It's well studied that transit generates huge economic value, but that value mostly manifests as increased land value near the stations.
So why shouldn't that value - created by transit - be credited to the transit that created it?
The fare recovery rate is absolutely terrible in the US. Expecting 100% isn't exactly necessary, but NYC is at 20%.
The subway system is only possibly used by those who live near a station and are traveling near another station, and tourists.
Around 80% of all commutes in the US are by car. You can't subsidize 80% of the population.
Drivers simply pay for their road use through various taxes, and not directly.
Taxes that are also paid by those who don't drive, yes?
If you want to be strictly true then yes.
In practice, if you are using transit in the US, then you are likely not paying much in taxes. There are exceptions (NYC, SF, DC), of course.
The metro areas of those three cities contain almost 10 percent of the US population.
(Edit: And the vast majority of transit users!)
It can be argued that rich people subsidize poor, since they pay more taxes. However, that's pretty much it.
Transit users in the US overwhelmingly do NOT subsidize car users. While the inverse is true, transit users on average don't pay even half of the true cost of transit. The rest is born by everyone.
> If driving wasn’t so heavily subsidized
BY WHOM?
> BY WHOM?
You’ve had multiple people tell you so at this point I would highly suggest doing some homework before getting angry. Here’s a summary:
* Roads are paid for around 50% by general tax revenue. Thar keeps the upfront price of driving low compared to alternatives and decades of studies have found this creates a massive number of extra car trips. If we used more efficient transportation modes we would also not need the massive highway projects sold to taxpayers as rush hour alleviation but delivering only more traffic thanks to the principle of induced demand. * Most cities subsidize street parking below the cost of providing it, much less market rates. This encourages driving but takes a significant amount of public space and generates a huge amount of congestion and pollution (emissions and noise) as people circle looking for subsidized spots rather than paying for garage parking. * Most cities require minimum amounts of parking to be provided for solo drivers even if the owner of a property doesn’t want it (we require bars to encourage drunk driving!). Everyone pays more for that even if they don’t drive because they’re paying for more construction and maintenance and many businesses have less revenue generating space because, for example, instead of a restaurant having tables for 40 more patrons they have parking for 8 vehicles. Since housing is required to have at least 1-2 spaces per home, a given piece of land will house fewer people and many large projects require expensive garages, which you’re paying for whether or not you want it and traffic is also a common argument against the density which would lower costs. Making housing more expensive causes more people to need longer commutes and the consequent lower quality of life. * Car owners are not charged for the negative health impacts of driving - a leading cause of asthma and all kinds of cardiovascular conditions – or to compensate city residents for the quality of life reductions their commuting causes. * Drivers are not charged for the expensive city infrastructure created to protect pedestrians and bicyclists from unsafe driving. All of that concrete, flexposts and barriers, various pedestrian light systems, etc. are car infrastructure. * Drivers are not required to have sufficient insurance to cover the full cost to anyone they hit. This intersects really badly with our horrific healthcare system and is a common cause of people falling out of the workforce or into substance abuse over chronic pain following collisions. * Last but not least, driving is the most expensive way to commute in common use when it comes to greenhouse gases. EVs promise a 50% reduction but that’s still far higher than any mainstream alternative. There are many other factors in climate change but driving is something like 30% so it’s going to have to go down a lot to reduce the trillions in economic damage we’re facing.
> Drivers simply pay for their road use through various taxes, and not directly.
I think this is the point, notably because those 'indirect' payments are also payed by non-drivers as well. Hence, the subsidy.
Even within drivers, some are subsidized by others (let alone non-drivers). To illustrate, first: most road wear is from weather [1]. This means any two lengths of similar roads will have about the same upkeep cost regardless of usage (not quite true, but if taking 30 people vs 300, it's about true).
Let's consider 10 miles of road to suburb A with 30 drives, and 10 miles of different but similar road to suburb B with 300 drivers. The city will pay for upkeep of 20 miles, collecting various taxes from 330 people, and those taxes are then spent evenly across those 20 miles. To do this proportionately, without any subsidies, the group of 300 could arguably have those various taxes reduced for them only by 90% and increase the taxes of the 30 people 9 fold. That would be an equitable upkeep system.
The fact the road upkeep payment per person is not equitable, means there is a subsidy (and this situation is not always a bad thing)
[1] https://lacrossetribune.com/what-causes-roads-to-wear-out/ar...
The fraction that doesn't work is either too young to pay taxes anyway, or they had used road commutes before they retired. Everybody else are within the margin of error.
Additionally, if you are not using a car for commute, you're likely to be in the lower tax brackets and thus not paying (much) in taxes anyway. I had a paper looking at exact numbers bookmarked, but I lost it somehow.
So in practice, car owners don't get substantially subsidized by transit users. While the inverse is overwhelmingly true, transit users are massively subsidized by car users.
> This means any two lengths of similar roads will have about the same upkeep cost
This is simply incorrect. Vehicles cause stresses in the concrete, allowing fractures to accumulate, and they also directly wear down the pavement. The weather then amplifies the damage, especially in areas that experience frequent zero crossings.
If you want to learn more, feel free to check: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law and click the links about pavement engineering.
To the contrary, those in the highest income brackets are the ones most likely to walk to work,[1] and also the most likely to be paying more in taxes.
1. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0739456X18796652 page 9, figure 'Work Trip Walking by Income and Density'
Stop misrepresenting the data. High incomes are still most likely to DRIVE to work.
They are _more_ _likely_ to walk to work than lower incomes, but:
1. The difference is slight.
2. The absolute numbers are around 5% of trips.
> https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-little-known-fact...
While the absolute numbers for the rich paying a lot more in taxes is true, when looking at effective tax rates, the rich are not actually being taxed enough for there to be equity in taxation.
"Billionaires in the US pay a smaller tax rate than most teachers and retail workers. "
"According to a 2021 White House study, the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the US paid an average federal individual tax rate of just 8.2 percent. For comparison, the average American taxpayer in the same year paid 13 percent."
> https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/do-the-rich-pay....
Indeed, that 8.2 percent is a whole heck of a lot of money; far more than the 13 percent coming from the average taxpayer.
> The fraction that doesn't work is either too young to pay taxes anyway, or they had used road commutes before they retired. Everybody else are within the margin of error.
If you buy anything anywhere in NY you’re paying taxes.
> Additionally, if you are not using a car for commute, you're likely to be in the lower tax brackets and thus not paying (much) in taxes anyway. I had a paper looking at exact numbers bookmarked, but I lost it somehow
In NY this wouldn’t suffice for the income level (6 figures bracket) we’re talking about. it’s infeasible for a majority chunk of residents living in Chelsea , Hell’s kitchen, Upper East Side , FIDI, etc, to own a car since the cost to have it , pay the insurance, and store it working make economical sense. Especially so since if you’re affording to live there you’re job is also on the island.
It a bell curve where the beginning are the low income residents living in Harlem and the outer boroughs that necessitate having a car (with the space to accommodate for it and wouldn’t be hit by congestion pricing), the middle curve of 6 figures+ making residents that would be in the best position to not have a car, and then the rich or dual income families that has the ability to pay this congestion tax anyway.
The argument that either everyone was already a tax-paying driver or will soon be one is hard to believe. Without data, I won't take that at face value.
Even that 'margin of error,' I think needs some examination. Any 'margin of error' means there is a subsidy. Notably, drivers are simply not paying the full cost of their road usage. If so, it would not matter at all whether there were retirees or not, the costs would be payed for entirely by drivers. That is not the case, ergo, drivers are subsidized. Now, let's argue about what that percentage is.
> So in practice, car owners don't get substantially subsidized by transit users.
This is moving the goal posts as far as I can tell. The statement is that car owners get subsidized by everyone else, not just transit users.
> So in practice, car owners don't get substantially subsidized by transit users. While the inverse is overwhelmingly true, transit users are massively subsidized by car users.
>> This is simply incorrect.
Per the reference: https://lacrossetribune.com/what-causes-roads-to-wear-out/ar...
“Cars usually do not have that much loading impact on the road,” said John Mueller, a DOT Highway Mainten-ance Engineer. “The main source is the water that sits in the joint that freezes and thaws.”
"It is once concrete deteriorates that traffic loads pack a punch. Large trucks can accelerate the process."
Thus, you have it the other way round. Weather deteriorates roads, then it is traffic that amplifies that damage.
We can still make the example more extreme, let's say that group of 300 are 1 mile away, and half take light rail. At this point, it's very clear that the 30 people living 10 miles away (perhaps even 50 miles!), are being subsidized considerably.
Regarding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law, I think I understand what you are trying to get at. In my example, I was trying to keep things about equal and was assuming that both groups of people were driving similar cars. I would suspect in most realistic examples that are similar, that group that is 10 or 50 miles away are probably driving larger vehicles (and maybe farm equipment & logging trucks are more frequently on those roads).
Cutting to the chase though, we don't have to argue to what extent drivers are subsidized, there are numbers for that:
> A report published in the April of 2022 issue of Ecological Economics teased out the lifetime cost of driving a small car to be roughly $641,000, with society subsidizing about 41% of that cost. [1][2]
[1] https://stacker.com/society/how-driving-subsidized-america#:.... [2] https://www.thetelegraph.com/news/slideshow/How-driving-is-s...
Then there are more subsidies at play to keep oil cheap and gasoline artifically low in price, as well as the cost of purchasing cars, and the cost of parking is amortized to property owners [3]
[3] https://medium.com/radical-urbanist/cars-gets-billions-in-hi...
Doesn't this directly contradict your point that car commuters are subsidized?
A strict counter-example, myself, I pay a _lot_ in property taxes and put almost zero wear on the roads. When I did last own a car, I was averaging about 500 miles per year.
This is really the point. Drivers must be subsidized because the cost of driving does not go up linearly with miles driven. For example, if someone just spent 24 hours driving rather than say 4 hours, their payments for driving upkeep does not go up 6 fold (they do not pay 6 times on car tabs, 6 times on car tax, 6 times on property taxes, etc.. they only pay gas tax as extra).
Now, this is kinda a tired argument, because it then goes to, "well, even if you don't use the roads, you still benefit." I sure do. Though, the issue is that the way things are incentivized, by spreading costs across everyone, we are put in a situation where otherwise unsustainably low density areas become incentivized.
Which goes exactly to the point of charging people to drive through downtown. Seemingly it is a very rare example of a disincentives to car culture. The argument that mass transit is subsidized seems a bit obvious (and is it is true that mass transit is very subsidized), though.. given all the incentives to drive, not having to pay the full cost per mile traveled as those costs are spread out - why the hell not drive everywhere? Why at all would anyone take mass transit when the cost to drive 5000 miles compared to 500 miles are so similar.
Let's look at the math: Driving 5000 miles (my last car got about 400 miles to the tank, at about 13 gallons), requires about 130 gallons of gas. At about $0.50 per gallon for tax, that is a payment of just $65 dollars in tax to go 10 times further. Car tabs alone are over $100 in WA state.
This hopefully illustrates really easily that users of the road are not paying proportionate to their usage of the road. This is a mixed bag, as I would very much not want farmers to have to pay the full cost of the roads connecting them to the overall transit grid. Yet, because how costs are shared, driving in a lot of ways is "too cheap" and the overwhelming incentive is to (unsustainably) drive everywhere. Further, because everything in the US is built with driving in mind, it makes it so everyone has to drive, whether they would want to or not. This is compounded in city policy with zoning laws that force there to be parking, force residential to be segregated from commercial that would otherwise for walkable neighborhoods. All that is to say, it's the second order effects of how we pay for driving that creates quite a number of sustainability issues and really diminish the quality of life we could have (quieter, less polluted, less time spent in commute, less time spent in traffic jams).
If mass transit _and_ also EVs are incentivized over petrol cars, that is not bad [1]
> 2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions.
My anecdotal experience is that areas around light rail stations gentrify and luxery style condominiums pop up like mushrooms around them. A 10 minute and consistent train ride into dowtown is compelling when that same journey can take 30 to 120 minutes by car (this is Seattle, it can take 20 minutes to just cross the U bridge and travel a quarter mile).
> 3. Buses in particular result in excessive road wear&tear.
If a bus is actually taking 50 cars off the road, and is traveling on lanes that are built for the excessive wear; then it is still a net benefit.
> "car owners should not get subsidized (by whom?)"
Point 3 discusses the wear and tear of roads. Drivers do not pay fully for the wear and tear of roads (and road construction, etc). Road funds come from many funds and car traffic does not generate enough in fuel and car-tab taxes to fully pay for roads. Hence, it is subsidized by other people that pay those taxes.
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The comparison perhaps should not be also strictly of just buses against EVs.
The peasant class belongs on public transport, not on taxpayer-funded roads.
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni*er, ni*er, ni*er.” By 1968 you can’t say “ni*er”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Ni*er, ni*er.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...
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And you also have New York City and the racist/classist bridges. Bridges were built too low for public transit to get out to Long Island. It did a VERY effective job at keeping black people and poor people away from the middle class and higher areas.
" In one of the book's most memorable passages, Caro reveals that Moses ordered his engineers to build the bridges low over the parkway to keep buses from the city away from Jones Beach—buses presumably filled with the poor blacks and Puerto Ricans Moses despised. The story was told to Caro by Sidney M. Shapiro, a close Moses associate and former chief engineer and general manager of the Long Island State Park Commission."
Who would have thought that building a bridge could be racist and classist?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-09/robert-mo...
A congestion charge will fall disproportionately on the wealthy, and allow the buses carrying lower-income folks to move throughout the city faster.
Anecdotally, we are well to do, chose our house location to minimize our commute and make it easy by bus (and ensure we can go to the grocery store by foot). Then I got the opportunity to work from home, my wife has a straight shot from bus to her office downtown, the kid’s schools (even high school) are all within walking distance. There is no way we could have set all that up without money.
Now they're not rich enough to drive, they're become poor enough to use public transportation. Maybe their votes will improve the convenience of public transportation.
To somebody who can afford to live in Manhattan, you'd have to charge $200 a trip to bother them. Just tax them, and use that money to build out public transportation.
Very weird to crusade for the right of people who can barely afford their cars to be better than those who can't afford cars.
And you want to tax these residents more, and dump the money into the black hole of state-run public transportation projects that take 10x the budget and 10x the time of any where else on planet earth? ...and that is with no guarantee that project would a) get finished b) not be a total clusterfuck like all the others.
That sucks more than having a car does by far. Even the last part about "your arms ache but you get used to it" - how is that for disabled people? How is it for the elderly? An extra hour and a half - what about if you have kids at home?
Honestly that... Blows?
If the options are to destroy the environment or to have to take an extra three hours daily to commute, I choose destroy the environment - smart people will probably fix it with science.
I thought about it - why would I rather destroy the environment than reduce cars? Because it's a lie - there's clearly no shared burden. Like as soon as humanity bans all privat jets, the entire cruise industry, etc, then maybe I'd consider it. But as it is, it's just one more "eh the poors will get used to it" - meanwhile we don't ban major contributions from sources that are rich people's enjoyment or profits.
If you want to reduce the relative privileges of wealthy people, tax them and redistribute or do a socialist revolution. Never crusade for the privileges of people with some money while ignoring the situation of the people with less money. In the limit, you'll end up crusading for the privileges of billionaires against the privileges of multi-billionaires. As activism, imo it's silly.
https://bikeportland.org/2016/01/25/low-income-households-dr...
https://medium.com/100-hours/is-congestion-pricing-fair-to-t...
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/3/7/toll-roads-hurt...
The above studies seem to only focus on the poorest of the poor, and not the lower middle class. Congestion charges are going to hit people who are rich enough to drive but not rich enough to live in convenient places the most. There isn’t a binary distinction between rich and poor after all. Those links are pretty embarrassing actually, surely there are better arguments that this will impact rich the most than using the poorest of the poor as an example?
Per the article itself: "But out of a region of 28 million people, just an estimated 16,100 low-income people commute to work via car in Lower Manhattan, according to the MTA."
Probably easier to find a way to meet the needs of 16k exceptions. And having a safe fast public transit system, which the connection charge funds, is part of that.
(Hi, Sean! Hope you're well!)
My comment about poorer people being more affected I believe is still valid even if it’s the right thing to do. The people who are forced to commute by car generally don’t have better options.
It would be much worse if they tried this in Seattle, but we also need it as well, it just won’t be something only the rich are suffering (like in NYC).
Also (adding this a few minutes later), the evidence is clear that public transit is seriously beneficial for people with lower incomes - and the elderly and folks with disabilities that prevent them from driving.
So we may be taking about something that harms 16k people and benefits about three million other low-income New Yorkers.
As for it not encompassing midtown, that sounds a bit weird to me, but ok. I’m not sure it will have much impact on overall region traffic since most trips probably don’t involve that area in the first place.
Oh right it’s because it creates poor incentives and overuse (tragedy of the commons) exactly like we see with roads (and parking). If car drivers had to pay the full cost of the resources they use it would reduce wasteful driving substantially. And we could use money collected in that way to pay for transit (or just give it as a tax rebate to low income people if you prefer).
It’s also one of the few safe bike paths in the city where casual bikers would feel comfortable biking.
Additionally, we already have one Canal St in the area, we don’t need another.
Sorry for this small NIMBY rant.
(Yes, I know Europe and Japan build fancy incinerators with parks and whatnot that are very pleasant, but the odds of that being built in the US by penny-pinching private industry is nil.)
The only sustainable way to increase the supply of trips into lower manhattan is increased public transit.
Buses account for about 73% of people moved in the Lincoln tunnel, but only 10% of vehicles.
Let's get the poors out of safe cars. The peasant class belongs in beaters, while the rich ride safe.
Consider the choices necessary to make that statement untrue.
I drive by many parents taking their kids wherever in old corollas or kias or other small car, and I see many parents at my kids’ daycare dropping their kids off in large suburbans/F150/Sequoia/etc.
At this point in the current regulatory framework, safety and efficiency are in direct competition.
An argument that rests on equality should support the idea that all people deserve the same car irrespective of how much money they have.
People want to move around. Cars are only one way of doing so.
The group this will hit the hardest are those with de facto immunity from parking tickets. Cops, teachers, members of certain trade unions, and so on.
However, lest you worry too much about these folk in light of automated speed and red light cameras they’ve taken to obscuring their license plates or buying fraudulent paper plates on the internet. Of course nothing is done about these effectively untraceable vehicles.