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Comment by spicykraken | Hacker News Reader

I think it's fair to say a lot of people bought "too much car" but I completely agree we need better public infrastructure and not be forced to pay the US car tax.

Having experienced the public transit systems in Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, and the midwest US. It's entirely obvious who is failing.

Though, despite our short comings, in a lot of cities it _is_ possible to use public transit, I did for years and it sucked and I had to compensate with Uber more often then I would have liked but at least I didn't have a car payment (in hindsight I should have just bought a car, but it was a humbling experience that I don't regret.)

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> and not be forced to pay the US car tax

> Having experienced the public transit systems in Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore

The Seoul Metro, widely considered to be one of the best in the world, also lost like a billion dollars a year for the past decade or so, with the shortfall made up for by taxes. The story is similar for many transit systems around the world as well as around the US.

Now, you could argue that it's worth it, but let's at least make sure we know that there is also a public transit tax, as well.

And public roads are free? The streets inside a city and highways connecting them are massively expensive and no one bats an eye. Even toll highways often don't really pay for themselves.

Transportation infrastructure of any mode is massively expensive and is undertaken to facilitate all sorts of economic activity. Public transportation being held to a standard of direct profit is something no other public infrastructure is expected to achieve.

It was in response to GP's comment about the "US car tax"; I'm pointing out that no matter how someone gets around, there is going to be some kind of tax. I don't mean to imply that public roads are free.

But I do mean to imply that often times comparisons are made between car-centric cities and public transit-centric cities without any close attention to the actual costs involved, nor a sober cost-benefit analysis. It seems like it's usually categorical statements like "public transit is better and cars shouldn't exist" or "you'll pry the steering wheel from my cold, dead fingers".

> Public transportation being held to a standard of direct profit is something no other public infrastructure is expected to achieve.

Perhaps most people don't think about it, but even roads and bridges need to be profitable one way or another. There are many famous examples of "bridges to nowhere"-type public works projects throughout history where some massive infrastructure work was done in a place that won't use that level of infrastructure, usually through corruption. Everyone loses when that happens.

I guess public transit systems seem to be unfairly targeted for (as you said) "a standard of direct profit" because it's usually built and maintained by a centralized authority, vs. roads which are built and maintained by many different layers of government, with more diffuse paths of revenues and expenditures.

California, with a population 4x that of Seoul, recieved 25 billion dollars in federal highway funding (plus 2 billion dollars of its own money) for a single year (2021). Highway funding. Not counting roads.

That figure, of course, does not include the amount of money that we spent on our cars to drive on those highways. Maintenance. Insurance. Fees.

It does not capture deaths from car accidents (over 4,000, children among them) life changing injuries and maimings (many more than 4,000), choking air pollution, the thousands of tons of tire plastic that washed into the Pacific that year, and obviously the carbon emissions, which probably approached a hundred million tons. Smaller things as well; the stress, the noise, billions of hours spent sitting in traffic. The natural environment that was destroyed to build roads and highways.

If you spent 4 billion to cut that incomprehensible number by just 10 percent you would come out ahead -- not by a little but by a monstrous lot.

Sorry that came off very heated. I really do hate cars, it's not really directed at you.

> California, with a population 4x that of Seoul

The Seoul Capital Region is 26 million people crammed in a 4,500 square mile metropolitan area.

California is 40 million spread across 156,000 square miles.

It makes sense that CA gets more funding for roads and highways given that the population is much less dense.

Even when you factor in Metropolitan areas in CA, the distances are much larger - the Bay Area has the same population and area as the state of Massachusetts (9,000 square miles and 9 million people), yet I don't see subway connecting Boston to Worcester or Springfield.

That's functionally the same ask that a lot of Public transit supporters (which I am btw) are pushing for, and it doesn't make sense. The area is way too large for a system like the Boston T or the NYC Subway to be created, and the Bay's current setup of local subways (Muni/VTA) mixed with commuter rails (BART/Caltrain/ACE) makes more sense given the size.

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