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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

Isn't most public transit already subsidized?

Very much so. When I was younger I assumed fares were for the cost of the public transport, but after following some local budgeting discussions I was stunned by how little the fares covered operating costs.

Small amounts of cost sharing are a useful technique for incentivizing people to make wise decisions in general, so there’s some value in having token small fares. It’s the same difference that shows up when you list something for $10 in your local classifieds as opposed to listing it as FREE. Most people who use classifieds learn early on that listing things for free is just asking for people to waste your time, but listing for any price at all seems to make people care a little more and put some thought into their decisions. I’ve often given things away for free after listing them for small amounts in classifieds because it filters for people who are less likely to waste your time.

Fares income isn't insubstantial -- just as an example I'm familiar with, King County Metro (Seattle area) was ~33% funded by fares before Covid (which destroyed both ridership and percent non-stealing riders). It is material; not "token."

What was funded? You mean operating costs? That’s only part of what it costs to build the lines and do all of the construction, among other things.

Isn't operating costs what's being discussed here?

You wrote:

> I was stunned by how little the fares covered operating costs.

(And I'm talking about buses -- there's not a ton of construction involved.)

What is the behavior you are trying to filter out?

More or less the same thing as patio11's "pathological customers" premise[0]. People who are unwilling to pay a few dollars to ride the bus tend to be extraordinarily antisocial in other ways. Public transit is for the masses; it's not a homeless shelter.

[0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=patio11+%22pathological+custom...

That ignores the massive amount of parking and highway subsidies that make the car-first model in the US viable at all. The absurd amount of space given away for free (or below value) in the city to support cars is actually insane. Its just not properly account for.

In a sane world you would either not have any public parking spots, or parking spots that cost so much that about 10-20% of them are empty, and you would have a road use tax (like Singapore).

And American transit systems are uniquely bad at fare recovery because they are just uniquely bad at everything.

Yes.

US cars get 1 cent per passenger mile.

US Transit gets $2.39 per passenger mile.

https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=22027

Also look up the Farebox Recovery Ratio.

There are values for many US cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio#United_...

Now add environmental cost.

How do you measure it?

"While private passenger vehicles contribute 90% of the mileage in the U.S. transportation sector, their emissions share is only 58%. The remaining emissions come from public transit (27%) and other modes including airplanes (13%)."

From :

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01660...

Diving in, that research is less against public transport in general, more about how the US is just not very good at it:

   Our measure of environmental performance is a transit agency's average carbon dioxide emissions per passenger-mile or vehicle-mile.

  During the period of analysis, the sector's carbon dioxide emissions declined by 12.8%, while vehicle-miles travelled increased by 7.1% and passenger-miles increased by 10.5%.

  Thus, the emissions intensity of public transit has shrunk since 2002 using both measures.

  Yet, compared with public transit emissions in the United Kingdom and Germany, we document that the U.S. bus fleets had the highest carbon emissions per mile and the smallest efficiency progress.

ie. US public transport was inefficient and polluting to begin with, and while it improved somewhat when a prior administration finally applied some funding to the task, US public transport stills woefully lags in comparison about the glone.

And parking garage costs

Yes, but with fewer dollars than roads.

Not nearly as much as cars and highways are subsidized.

Strong Towns talks quite a bit about how especially suburban roads are not financially sustainable.

strong towns is not honest about it though. Urban areas have been maintaining roads for a long time. They seem to think that if you ammortize a road over 20 year you have to replace it in year 21 but most roads are good for 40+ years

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