Comment by sundaeofshock | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sundaeofshock | Hacker News Reader

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I rely on mass transit or walking for most of my transportation, so it is very rare for me to be driven in a car. Maybe 2 - 4 trips/month in a Waymo, and a monthly trip to Costco. Everything else is done on foot or transit, including thrice weekly commute and weekly grocery shopping.

I have no problem with roads in the abstract for public services, including for fire protection and buses. I do have a problem with using my taxes to subsidize private car ownership. Again, why should I help pay for someone to store their private vehicle on city streets? I also have a problem with all the externalities of private car ownership that make me less safe.

Yes, transit is subsidized in the US. However, I won’t ignore the fact that private car-ownership is just as heavily subsidized - if not more so — as mass transit. If we are having a conversation about the efficiency of one form of transportation over another, we need to look at them both through the same lens.

It's true that there is tax money that is spent on infrastructure to support cars, but taxes are also collected from the use of cars through gas taxes and annual registration fees. If you include those taxes and fees it's not obvious how much other taxes are used to subsidize cars.

It will be different in each state, since each state imposes different levels of gas taxes and has different registration fees.

Fuel tax and registration only covers half the cost of roads. Then there’s the cost of all the land for parking. In many cities half of downtown is parking.

>In many cities half of downtown is parking.

Sure but it's rarely free parking, and when it is, it's generally because the property owners are essentially paying for it.

>private car-ownership is just as heavily subsidized - if not more so — as mass transit.

I don't believe that's true.

It's likely correct that mass transit is directly subsidized at a greater percentage than any specific aspect of private car ownership. However, there are significant indirect subsidies due to the centrality of private cars that not only dwarf transit subsidies, but simultaneously make transit less economical.

A simple example is minimum requirements for parking. Almost every home and business is paying more for additional space that cars take up. This means less people in catchment areas for different types of transit.

>Almost every home and business is paying more for additional space that cars take up.

Sure but that's not a subsidy being borne by tax payers, that's being paid by people that want cars to be at their house or business. I suppose you have some argument that the legally required minimums might be more than necessary but generally they reflect the need as it exists, not what we want it to bed. Allowing businesses to not have to supply parking wouldn't force people to use mass transit, it'd just force them to park further away in a space not paid for by the business they are frequenting.

No - it is a subsidy to make life more convenient than either the purchaser or shop is willing to pay for. If the shop needs people to arrive in cars, then it’s worth it to them to put in parking.

And parking minimums are constantly criticized for being higher than necessary. How could they possibly not be higher than necessary in a significant percentage of use cases, when they don’t allow anyone to say “we don’t serve people who arrive at my locavore socialist workers co-op by car so we don’t need parking” - instead they get the same amount of parking as any other restaurant, which is too much.

> Sure but that's not a subsidy being borne by tax payers

When the cost is being borne by every single tax payer, then it's functionally equivalent.

Cars are easily one of the most subsidies goods in America. It's absolutely absurd how many trillions of dollars we dump into making automobiles work, even if they make no sense.

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