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Comment by jcranmer | Hacker News Reader

> The reason there's not more public transit is because the economics are terrible.

The reason we don't have roads is because the economics are terrible. The government gets $0 per trip [1], but it costs billions of dollars a year in operating expenses.

Wait, that's not how it works.

[1] Federal gas taxes don't count, because those go to the Highway Trust Fund which funds road construction, which is not an operating expense. State gas taxes may vary. Although toll roads also properly charge people user fees, although for some reason, lots of drivers complain about how expensive tolls are...

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> Federal gas taxes don't count, because those go to the Highway Trust Fund which funds road construction, which is not an operating expense.

Doesn't the Highway Trust Fund pay for road maintenance as well?

No.

The Highway Trust Fund pays primarily for highway capital expenditure projects. It's not just highway construction; things like replacing a bridge or widening a highway are also covered, but these are also capital expenses, not operational expenses. A portion of it goes to funding mass transit capital expenditures.

The economics of roads are actually pretty good which is why basically every country has them, even the poorest.

if they are, the equivalent effort of analysis done on public transit also doesnt show it.

instead you need to find the overall economic benefit and related government revenues from each transit trip, not just the cost of the trip alone

But you can't ignore the financials. SF Muni's $3.62 cost per passenger mile is atrocious. At that price point, it's cheaper to charter a helicopter. I'm not kidding. You could literally charter a 20-seat Airbus H175 helicopter to fly people around for $2.50 per passenger mile. And you'd get there faster.

If public transit is less cost-effective than taking a helicopter, then something is clearly broken.

Good luck scaling that “solution!”

Perhaps what’s broken is your financial analysis.

Please show his error.

The error is completely ignoring the negative economic externalities of NOT having public transportation and the positive economic and environmental externalities of having public transportation.

Doesn’t account for the cost of helicopter landing platforms at every station, for one. Or the cost of building additional helicopters to meet current BART scale, or the cost of the number of accidents you’d have once it scaled, or the cost of having all transit halt whenever there’s an air incident, or literally anything about reality. Like, are you people being serious or just smirking about your spherical helicopters?

His point was that Bart's current cost are HIGHER per passenger mile than the current cost of a helicopter, which is a notoriously expensive form of transportation (and also one of the most convenient).

Note that a 12 seat private jet also costs less per passenger mile than BART does. That's not beacuse jets are cheap, but because BART is currently absurdly expensive.

Is it just because of an artificial low denominator?

It's circular:

* Few take it because it doesn't meet their need [low denominator]

* Let's spend money to make it meet people's need [numerator goes up]

...

Of course, this is what happens when there's no profit motive. If we weren't making the marginal cost of using a road zero, and they had to compete with each other, and the people running transit wanted to make money rather than satisfy the requirements of a law, transit would be cheaper. That's how it is in all the places in the world where transit is really good.

Or it wouldn’t exist at all in in this form…

It would look like NYC or Tokyo. Both built privately.

NYC's subway system is an amalgamation of three systems, two of them built privately (but both of whom subsequently went bankrupt) and the third built by the city.

Of course they went bankrupt. We built free to use roads to compete with them.

They went bankrupt in part because although privately owned, they depended on a city charter to operate, and the City used that charter to force them to keep fares unsustainably low (I believe it was a nickel).

Same as Seattle! And thank god Japan and Hong Kong don't do that to theirs.

Dude. Public transit can carry hundreds of thousands (millions even). How many helicopters you planning on having? How many landing pads? Where are they going to go? You going to spin up a municipal ATC? This is silly.

I'm not advocating for helicopters at all - it's an analogy that clearly went over your head.

It's about cost comparison: SF Muni's operating costs (in terms of costs per passenger mile) are so bloated they're comparable to chartering a helicopter.

This should not be possible, and it's a strong signal of poor fiscal management. SF Muni operates at $3.62 per passenger mile. For comparison, Transport for London (TfL) operates at around $0.50/passenger mile and Shanghai Metro operates at $0.11/passenger mile.

Roads are fully paid for by road users (i.e. everyone).

Not really. That’s a tautology anyway.

huh? Public transportation is fully paid for by everyone too.

Yes, but most people don't use public transit.

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