Are there no much cheaper monthly/yearly tickets for commuters?
You max out paying $34 a week, or $17 if you qualify for reduced fare.
It's not dumb to not want to be the sucker, the urban yuppies on transit routes are great at squeezing the working class that way.
> shittier transit access areas
Public transit advocates literally want to expand public transit to cover more and more of these areas. We also want to build more housing in dense areas, so it is effectively cheaper to live there.
The answer is not throwing our hands up in the air and forcing the poor to live further and further away from their jobs and economic centers, foisting upon them the exorbitant expense of roads, cars, fuel, and time spent commuting.
Your premise is false to begin with. In NY the roads are 60% funded by use taxes like fuel taxes, not majority property tax. It's hard to take your argument with much weight until it sits on the slightest vestige of factual foundation, which seems missing.
I'm not against mass transit, I'm saying maybe it should be privatized so the users bear the cost rather than shifting it on the poor. To expand on the status quo or make it even more 'public' is insanity.
Even by your own primary source, calling this out as fuel taxes is disingenuous. In New York, fuel taxes are 21% of infrastructure revenue. Tolls and charges—the usage fees you claim to be such a fan of–account for 59% of infrastructure revenues.
Further, you are grossly misreading and misinterpreting this data. These percentages are out of state infrastructure revenue. This definitionally excludes property taxes, which are not infrastructure revenue. You will note that every single state with the exception of Tennessee has a greater amount of highway spending than infrastructure revenue.
Further, your primary source is only considering all infrastructure revenue vs. only highway spending. Infrastructure revenue is allocated to other places than roads, as states have a variety of other transportation-related expenses. California (my state) for example collected $12.0bn in infrastructure revenue for 2021. They spent $12.0bn on highways. Both of these figures are from your primary source. However, the total California transportation budget for that year was $26.5bn[1]. Your claims are tantamount to asserting that 100% of infrastructure revenues collected went to pay roads, which isn't remotely the case.
I've well cleared the bar you set for yourself. Which even were it true, merely points back to my argument of public transit being a regressive welfare program disproportionately burdening the working class.
In California—a state where revenues from user fees approximates 100% of highway expenditures—that only accounts for 45% of the overall transportation budget. Where do you suppose the extra $14.5bn comes from?
Total - infrastructure = non infrastructure.
I have never doubted California might regressively tax the shit out of people for non infrastructure transit spending like metro busses.
This is doubly regressive in California due to their property tax increase capping that is well below inflation, highly benefitting earlier wealthier older entrants at the expense of the younger and less wealthy.
This isn't a very rosy fact for California or for collecting even more on non infrastructure transportation revenue under the current tax regime.
I do take multiple other rides a day and in the weekend though, so I hit 12 rides pretty quickly, probably in around 4 days.
Edit: well if you live in a part of the city that has good coverage - up in the Bronx it's not so great naturally so I wouldn't be surprised if those people didn't get as much value out of a monthly card.
I assume an "unlimited metro card" also includes unlimited buses too?
A 2 zone is $220. I think in size that's roughly comparable?
And in my experience people who mostly take the tube rarely make use of buses. They'll walk or take the tube