Comment by gottorf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gottorf | Hacker News Reader

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> due to long years of underfunding and neglect

I'm not sure how much more funding it could possibly get? Even before the pandemic, the T was only pulling in roughly a third of its operating expenses in revenue[0], meaning the other two thirds was paid for by other sources. Notably, operating income wasn't even enough to pay wages and benefits for MBTA employees.

The majority of those "other sources" was transfers from the state sales tax[1], meaning people living in Worcester, Springfield, Pittsfield, and Chatham were contributing to a system they don't use. Since the pandemic, public transit systems all across the country took a huge hit in ridership, and received federal funding as well, so now you have people living in California, Kansas, and Mississippi all chipping in, too.

Now I understand that taxation provides for the common welfare, and everyone subsidizes everybody else at some point, but with Greater Boston having the fifth-highest per capita income of all metros[2], I find it a little strange that the T requires such a great subsidy.

[0]: https://www.mbta.com/financials/audited-financials

[1]: https://www.mbta.com/financials/mbta-budget

[2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/610026/us-metropolitan-a...

> the T was only pulling in roughly a third of its operating expenses in revenue

This is not a great argument, in that public transit is a public good and should not be expected to fully pay for itself. Public transit enables other economic behavior. Similarly, we don't expect roads to pay for themselves -- they're a public utility that enables other revenue producing behavior.

> people living in Worcester, Springfield, Pittsfield, and Chatham were contributing to a system they don't use

I don't have children but I'm happy to pay taxes that support public schools because I reap the benefits of an educated populace.

Boston produces the plurality of state revenue[0], far more than Worcester, Springfield, Pittsfield, or Chatham. The residents of those towns are happy to take revenue generated in and by Boston to pay for their services, but consistently vote against properly funding the T. Which is shortsighted, because cities with public transportation produce $1.5B more revenue per year[1], meaning those cities would have _lower_ taxes if they supported the T.

[0]: http://www.bostonplans.org/getattachment/cb7ed639-177c-43f0-... [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-08-14/public-tr...

> we don't expect roads to pay for themselves

Taxes are included in fuel price at the pump, and some States are finally beginning to charge EV owners for road usage. States around east coast collect ~50 cents per gallon. It's wasted funding and lack of accountability, not lack of funding that roads are not better maintained.

Gas taxes pay for less than half of what's required for road maintenance[0].

Again, we don't expect roads to make a profit, but somehow mass transit has to play by other rules.

Cars are far, far more subsidized than public transit[1]. (Even these analyses tend to ignore externalities like "free" parking. In what other realm would you ever expect to permanently store your private property on public land without paying and have it protected by the police?)

Driving is so incredibly heavily subsidized in the US that people genuinely _believe_ things like paying a miniscule tax at the pump covers the actual cost of driving.

[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-13/debunking...

[1]: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/17/in-transportat...

The Blomberg link you provided was a useful read because it highlights how tax thinking is partisan. For example, "You might think both would pay the same sales tax ... while the driver would pay an additional gas tax, with that money going toward roads. In 37 states you'd be wrong—that's how many places have a fuel exemption for sales tax."

No, I would not think fuel should have two sales taxes.

The article concludes by advocating for fuel taxes to be added to the general fund instead of being siloed for roads. That sounds like a great way to take what is a specific use tax and spend it on everything, instead of the thing being used.

If you propose raising the fuel tax, well maybe that is needed.

Also, please help me understand where I have access to free parking on public land. Cettainly not at the airport or downtown streets in large cities.

> Also, please help me understand where I have access to free parking on public land. Cettainly not at the airport or downtown streets in large cities.

... Are you seriously trying to claim that you've never seen free street parking anywhere? The vast majority of parking everywhere in the country is unmetered. That's tax money paying for car storage. Cherry picking an airport is absolutely disingenuous and a bad faith argument.

> disingenuous and a bad faith argument.

Whoaaa assumptions!

Picking the airport and downtown are the only places on government property I occasionally park, and I pay per use for those. I rarely park on small roads because I have nothing to do there.

Roads can be private - owned by the person with the adjoining house. I live in a town in which the "roads" are private property with reciprocal easements to all other property owners in the town. It's awesome. There are no problems from people storing their RVs and trailers and junk on the street, because it gets towed for trespass. The town top budget item for our taxes is to hire companies to maintain what appear to be roads. This keeps the town answering to the people, because if they don't maintain the "roads" the people will reduce the taxes to about zero.

I'm serious, on what government property do I park for free?

You are not everyone in the country; indeed, you are a minority in that respect. Refuting a general argument through anecdote is not fair to what you’re discussing.

The vast majority of roads in cities are public property, not private. You’re making a disingenuous argument using your small town as an example.

Maybe govt owning transport infrastructure is not working or is not affordable. We grow up with what is around us, and that is what we know.

The Walmart parking lot is private and not paid by my taxes. There are solutions other than govt ownership, and some lead to more private property with allowances for public use.

If a coffee shop wants parking, maybe they should have their own parking spots rather than relying on govt to pave and maintain the parking spots on the street in front of the coffee shop.

Your Bloomberg source reports that as of 2011, users of highways paid for 40-50% of the money spent on highways. The T's fare recovery ratio (the ratio of operating revenue to operating expenses) was in the low 40% range in the years up to 2019, the last normal year for transit systems. So it would appear that the amount of "subsidization" is comparable between road and transit.

I certainly don't expect mass transit to make a profit, either, to be clear. I understand the concept of a public good that generates positive externalities. But I don't want anything, whether it be cars or transit, to be a categorical imperative that must be enabled at any cost, since we live in a world constrained by limited resources.

Your second source puts up some figures from another source that says driving is effectively subsidized 10x, but unfortunately that source's website no longer functions, so I cannot evaluate what their methodology is. Regardless, it's obvious that automobiles are less efficient at moving people than mass transit. Perhaps a little less obvious is that efficiency isn't the end-all be-all goal of public policy.

The more interesting point it raises is the question:

> "What kind of place do you really want to live in?" with all factors considered.

With all factors considered, the greatest internal migration of the past few decades has been the post-Covid outflow of people from the few cities with transit systems that exist in the US to much more sprawling, car-dependent, suburban places.

> I don't have children but I'm happy to pay taxes that support public schools because I reap the benefits of an educated populace.

This is actually a pretty apt comparison, since the original article of the thread was about the dysfunction of the Green Line Extension. Suppose you lived in Baltimore, where zero students passed grade-level math proficiency in 40% of public schools, and yet the school system CEO is paid half a million dollars a year. Would you be as keen on paying those taxes? After all, you really aren't getting the benefits of an educated populace in that case.

If the T cost a lot of money and provided great service, we wouldn't be having this discussion. It's the fact that it costs a lot of money and is still bad, and the proposed solution is yet more public funding for it, which is generating the discussion.

The funding for the T has to come from the state due to how it's structured, meaning the only possible way for funding to increase is for it to come out of the state budget. I agree that it should be handled at a city/local level.

This is, in fact, a huge part of the problem with the T. A the majority of people that benefit from it -- those outside of Boston who get the gains of its economic benefit without being dependent on it for transit -- are in a position to defund it. It's a microscopic repeat of the US as a whole, where the geographically larger but empty regressive areas can reap the benefits of the more concentrated and productive areas while simultaneously contributing far less but convincing themselves that they're somehow being victimized.

Without Boston, Massachusetts would be significantly poorer. But without the rest of Massachusetts, Boston would be significantly richer.

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