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Car/van pools beat out light rail or busing, which I didn't know. They are just a lot harder to implement and set up (esp. via fed transportation funds).
Also, the gas tax covers road costs (highways - only) by barely 50% and that needs to include tolls to make it that high (fed gas tax hasn't increased since the 90s?). Also, you can debate if the gas tax is a user tax because all gas purchases are included which includes gas for small motorized items (like lawnmowers - not being driven on the highway) and gas for cars that aren't driven on the highway (probably older adults?).
Last edited by dravogadro; 03-16-2013 at 05:01 PM..
Car/van pools beat out light rail or busing, which I didn't know. They are just a lot harder to implement and set up (esp. via fed transportation funds).
Also, the gas tax covers road costs (highways - only) by barely 50% and that needs to include tolls to make it that high (fed gas tax hasn't increased since the 90s?). Also, you can debate if the gas tax is a user tax because all gas purchases are included which includes gas for small motorized items (like lawnmowers - not being driven on the highway) and gas for cars that aren't driven on the highway (probably older adults?).
Seriously, lawn mowers?? We use probably 10-15 gallons in our mower in the summer....less than one tank of gas. It's insignificant. There are also local taxes for roads.
My mower is cordless electric. No gasoline used for years. I think the biggest chunks of road change must be the incessant huge freight trucks that run night and day. But over the years, governments have muddled the picture with all sorts of financing NOT from the trust fund. So this argument of "its a user tax" is kind of mythological. No one really has any more than an estimate of how much money comes from where in building and maintaining transport infrastructure.
Here's what I think the deal is. Suburbs took advantage of the defense-justified highway laws to develop and sell off real estate outside cities. Their subdividing and building related to what they thought they could sell to the most people for the most money. For decade after decade, they just assumed somehow the highway programs would be a cow that would be there to milk forever. I don't think they ever imagined a future in which that would not be the case.
Now the future is here. People try to optimize a lot of things when they choose residence. But since the suburbs that appeal to them are products of the industry trying to maximize revenue and profit, they just don't provide the kind of low-emission, cheap transportation some would like. Some suburbs are far better than others. Richfield or Crystal are many times more advantageous than Lakeville or Woodbury. But it seems like people shopping for residence just can't understand why some places have more mobility options. They just don't have the long view. I'm betting Jay Leno could ask ANY question about suburban development on Jay Walks and get blank stares. Unfortunately, that's what our real estate shoppers bring to their search nowadays, lack of basic knowledge. I'd say as a broad statement that Americans are dumb consumers in most things that affect them financially. People with surething investment deals find a rich soil when approaching people with savings.
So there are a million different ways to say it, but transit is not and never has been crucial in creating suburbs. It will take Herculean efforts to make up for decades of neglect.
The answer to the OP's question is that suburbanites have a bizarre expectation for an urban amenity in a suburban setting. It's like asking why you can't expect to walk to stores,restaurants, and bars just a block or so from where you live: it's suburbia. Suburbia is built by design to be unwalkable, unbikeable, and anti-public transit. If you want to ride the bus or rail and have at least decent service you need to live in an urban area where that's a viable option. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Not to mention expect to have easy, free parking at work, yet at the same time have it have door-to-door public transportation for those days when you don't feel like driving!
That said, I do think that suburbs need better transportation. This is going to be especially important as our suburbs become poorer and more residents can't afford to own a car. This is one of those indirect costs of historic development patterns that have made the car a necessity to fully participate in society. I feel much more sympathy for lower-income people stuck living in a car-dependent suburb than I do some middle-to upper-class person in Apple Valley who complains because they can't take light rail to their corporate job in Eden Prairie.
Not to mention expect to have easy, free parking at work, yet at the same time have it have door-to-door public transportation for those days when you don't feel like driving!
That said, I do think that suburbs need better transportation. This is going to be especially important as our suburbs become poorer and more residents can't afford to own a car. This is one of those indirect costs of historic development patterns that have made the car a necessity to fully participate in society. I feel much more sympathy for lower-income people stuck living in a car-dependent suburb than I do some middle-to upper-class person in Apple Valley who complains because they can't take light rail to their corporate job in Eden Prairie.
Right.....and that same upper class person in Minneapolis ???? Get over it already. Why should bus transportation be by "class"? How many of these "poor" people have jobs to begin with?? YOu do realize that ridership in your beloved Minneapolis is dismal at best, right.
It is very true. Live in a suburb, work in it or another suburb, you drive to work and probably walk a block or less to the door of your workplace. I have lived in Minneapolis and worked in several suburbs. Same things in common in all places. Versus take transit ANYWHERE, and the chances are even or better your walking in rain, snow, on ice, etc just to get from where you get off to the door of your work. The big deterrent in downtown locations is that parking is tantamount to highway robbery. I think two kinds of businesses mainly locate in the middle of the cities. Headquarters, service, and retail. The latter two there to extract money from the white collar staff of the first. For anybody else, a location outside of town makes ultimate sense. And staff can mostly be assumed to drive to work, since parking is so accommodating. Frankly, it could be everyone if suburbanites could learn the virtue of carpooling. Minnesota Rideshare is like Match.com for suburbanites. Matching people like that is about 99 percent cheaper than running mostly-empty transit.
Interesting....ridership in the Minneapolis local routes dropped in 2012 while the suburban and Express buses both saw gains.....
Um... the release says "urban local routes...remained essentially flat." They did go down slightly, but not dramatically. I'm not sure what your point is here. I think it's great that more people in the suburbs are taking public transportation, but if you're trying to insinuate that people in the city are not, well, those numbers don't suggest any such thing.
Just to put things into perspective, these suburban local bus routes had 1.6 million riders, which is why an increase of about 100k rides is a significant change. For urban local routes you have nearly 59 million rides, so a drop of 117,000 rides does not have the same impact (hence the "essentially flat" description). And also worth pointing out, during this same period LRT (which primarily, but not exclusively, runs through the city) had an increase of nearly 100k, so it's entirely possible that at least some of those lost city riders may have switched to LRT (or to express routes, which Metro Transit also runs in the city).
In any case, I think it's great that more people in the suburbs are riding the bus. Maybe that will make it easier to offer expanded or more frequent service. But 1.66 million rides for local rides is still pretty small potatoes, unfortunately.
Right.....and that same upper class person in Minneapolis ???? Get over it already. Why should bus transportation be by "class"? How many of these "poor" people have jobs to begin with?? YOu do realize that ridership in your beloved Minneapolis is dismal at best, right.
I don't understand your points here -- not much makes sense.
What do you mean "dismal at best"? Hey, I know that public transportation in the Twin Cities is lousy. It's still a whole lot better within city limits than it is in the suburbs. I know that because, unlike you, I ride the bus. I have been on buses in both the city and in the suburbs, and while there are some routes that run frequently in the suburbs, overall in most Twin Cities suburbs the bus service is more limited than what you find in the city. Some neighborhoods are better served than others, of course, but I think calling it "dismal at best" is an overstatement. (and with more than 58 million rides on local bus routes alone last year, I don't ridership is all that low! No, it's no NYC, and yes, there's room for improvements, but it's not as though the buses and light rail are rolling around empty!)
I don't think bus transportation should be limited by class. I think in an ideal world people of all classes would take public transportation. But I DO think that we can't discuss public transportation without discussing money. People who are middle- or upper-class have options. They have choices. They can choose to buy a car, or have more flexibility in where they live. If you don't make much money life is tougher. Housing options are more limited, and you may not be able to buy a car, or get your car fixed if it breaks down. I suppose that we, as a society, could just say "screw it -- too bad people can't afford to buy a car, or are too old to drive, or are physically unable to drive. That's their problem, not ours." But that's not the kind of society I want to live in. I think people should be able to access schools and workplaces and shopping, and ideally they can do so in a way that doesn't mandate buying a car. And ideally that would be true of every location in the Twin Cities, but realistically the areas that have higher poverty are going to have more potential bus riders. If we have limited transportation dollars I'd rather throw some of it towards the locations where more people are dependent on public transportation rather than wealthy neighborhoods that have low public transportation ridership. That doesn't mean that I don't think the wealthy areas should be totally overlooked -- just that I think we have to make choices about where we spend our transportation dollars, and spending huge subsidies to fund underused routes in neighborhoods where most people don't want or use it is not the best use of our public money.
And are you seriously suggesting that poor people don't have jobs? Take a look around sometime. Ever heard of the working poor? There are a LOT of individuals and families in the Twin Cities who are struggling financially. I think people of all income levels deserve access to public transportation, but the person making six figures certainly has a lot more flexibility and options than does, say, the single mom making 30k. And given that households making less than $25,000/yr are the most likely to not own cars, it's also a whole lot more likely that if you run a local bus route through neighborhoods with higher poverty that more people will actually RIDE them, compared to running a local route through, say, Orono. And it's tougher to tell people who don't make much money to just "move to a neighborhood with good public transportation," as not having much money can limit your housing options or make it difficult to move. That's where my sympathy comes into play; if you're making a good household income you really have only yourself to blame if you actively choose to live in a neighborhood with lousy bus service or that is a long commute from work. Now if that neighborhood can support greater bus service (as can some wealthier neighborhoods, such as East Isles in Minneapolis) then great, let's get those buses running. But as the other poster said, some people seem to want to have their cake and eat it, too. It's unrealistic to live in a car-dependent, low-density suburban neighborhood and expect a public transportation system that will deliver you quickly and easily to your suburban job in a similarly low-density, car-dependent neighborhood. I feel more sympathy for people with less money and who therefore have less choice who get stuck in that situation than I do for people with means who just make bad choices.
Last edited by uptown_urbanist; 03-16-2013 at 10:01 PM..
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