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As I pointed out, eliminating bus transit in my area means you have to increase the road area by about 100%. The cost of that is unsustainable. You'd also need to double the amount of downtown parking. Your grasp of basic transportation finance is appalling.
More cars on the road means more taxes. All we need is appropriate road taxes to cover just the cost of road construction and maintenance, nothing more and nothing less. If it's too expensive the public will use the now much more expensive mass transit on their own.
FYI part of those bailouts goes into the mass transit account. The point is that 53 billion figure you are citing is going to be significantly lower when you subtract the appropriations and funds shifted to the mass transit account.
Here's my idea, call me crazy. Get rid of the mass transit fund, raise the road tax to an appropriate level to keep the fund solvent. Let mass transit hang out to dry with their own appropriations instead of playing this shell game. Just saying.....
I understand why they use some of the gas tax to fund public transportation; the gas tax is regressive, and spending some of the gas tax on PT helps support an alternative option for the poor. But I agree with you (I think) that we should just use the gas tax for roads and highways, and increase it as necessary, so that roads need a much smaller subsidy from the general fund. (i.e. the same dollar figure given to PT)
so that roads need a much smaller subsidy from the general fund. (i.e. the same dollar figure given to PT)
They don't need any subsidy at all. The issue is falling revenue and it hasn't seen a tax increase since 1993. Had we'd not shifted funds to mass transit for decades we'd either have A)a surplus or b)better roads requiring less of a tax increase if any.
They don't need any subsidy at all. The issue is falling revenue and it hasn't seen a tax increase since 1993. Had we'd not shifted funds to mass transit for decades we'd either have A)a surplus or b)better roads requiring less of a tax increase if any.
The numbers I quoted don't appear to bear that out.
Yes, 56 cents per vehicle mile, which translates to 36 per passenger mile, since the average number of car passengers (including the driver) is about 1.5. As I pointed out maybe 20 posts ago.
Again, from your own numbers, cost per passenger mile is nearly 3 times for buses as for cars. The AAA figures do not appear to include parking costs, so that's a fair point. But I doubt that parking costs are going go overcome a 3-1 differential. By the same token bus costs do not account for various items, such as damage to roads due to weight. Look at the road around any bus stop and you're going to see major damage. A road is not supposed to resemble a sine wave.
Parking here is at least $8 a day and to eliminate buses, you'll have to double the number of lanes on major streets. Easily overcomes you proposed 3 to 1 advantage. Your area is building sub standard roads if the buses and trucks are causing damage.
Please link to the study that car occupancy of commuter vehicles is 1.5. That's not my experience but perhaps other cities have greater density.
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