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I am baffled at urban planners/NIMBYs/urban enthusiasts, etc. who want to increase PUBLIC transit. Public transit is a burden to taxpayers with people who don't even think about using transit subsidizing people who do. Why is this okay to people? It's a form of socialistic boondoggle and I don't like it.
There are transit systems in places where the demand does not exist, but yet you have crazed transit addicts doing anything they can to expand taxpayer funded and maintained systems.
If the demand was there, the private sector should be able to step in to run and expand these systems.
I am tired of paying for bus repairs and new bus shelters. This must end. We are not Europe.
Roads are a form of public transit as well...you just have to have your own car to use them. The over extensive road network of the U.S isn't profitable at all either. It cost billions of dollars to maintain our road networks, which is crumbling at an alarming rate anyway. It would cost so much to improve our infrastructure that there is virtually no point in doing so. We should be looking at less extensive and more efficient forms of mass transit.
I am baffled at urban planners/NIMBYs/urban enthusiasts, etc. who want to increase PUBLIC transit. Public transit is a burden to taxpayers with people who don't even think about using transit subsidizing people who do. Why is this okay to people? It's a form of socialistic boondoggle and I don't like it.
There are transit systems in places where the demand does not exist, but yet you have crazed transit addicts doing anything they can to expand taxpayer funded and maintained systems.
If the demand was there, the private sector should be able to step in to run and expand these systems.
I am tired of paying for bus repairs and new bus shelters. This must end. We are not Europe.
I live in SoCal. Land of the worst public transit in the country, maybe the entire world considering the amount of people here. Its a very very small amount of people who can take the metro to work and taking the bus takes hours.
I went up to Edmonton earlier this month and took the train there. I was planning on renting a car but didn't. Sure, it was a bit longer than if I drove to my destination but it was safe and I just sat there instead of worrying about driving in a strange place. My family there said they pay 50 bucks a month for the pass. FIFTY BUCKS A MONTH IS NOTHING!!! Car payment, insurance, gas, and maintenance will easily exceed that even if you take away the car payment amount.
I WISH there was decent public transit here but there is not. I'm sure it gets old waiting for a late bus or train. And its a grind being smashed into random people on a train. However, I guarantee you its better than getting stuck in over an hour of traffic twice a day and paying $15 a day worth of gas to get to work.
Depends on the part of SoCal, I guess. I stayed in Los Angeles for a few days earlier this year, didn't bring a car and didn't miss it although I jetted all over the place on public transit. And they are going full-tilt to do 30 years of transit infrastructure in 10 years--rebuilding what was once the most extensive system of streetcars and interurban railroads in the country--the Los Angeles Railway and the Pacific Electric.
Both companies, by the way, were privately owned and built by private capital. But they couldn't compete with government-funded roads and highways.
If you live in the right part of LA, then thats an option. However, most people don't and you can't get to much of LA with the current layout. Also, I don't buy anything being built on time in LA. LA is one of the most inefficient cities in the country.
I am baffled at urban planners/NIMBYs/urban enthusiasts, etc. who want to increase PUBLIC transit. Public transit is a burden to taxpayers with people who don't even think about using transit subsidizing people who do. Why is this okay to people? It's a form of socialistic boondoggle and I don't like it.
There are transit systems in places where the demand does not exist, but yet you have crazed transit addicts doing anything they can to expand taxpayer funded and maintained systems.
If the demand was there, the private sector should be able to step in to run and expand these systems.
I am tired of paying for bus repairs and new bus shelters. This must end. We are not Europe.
In many respects, this is a ridiculous post. It's like saying, "If the demand was there, private companies would be able to build and maintain roads".
Nobody expects roads to be anything but publicly funded, but when it comes to transit, people like yourself scream about the money spent.
Now, I'll grant you, there are a lot of public transit boondoggles. But the same could be said for roads (think of Boston's "Big Dig", among others).
Believe it or not, some of us LIKE not needing to get in our cars for every errand. Some of us would actually like to NOT OWN cars in the first place (and still be able to have decent lives doing it). And we'd like to be able to do that in normal sized cities of say, 500,000 people instead of only in a handful of mega-cities.
Now, I'll grant you, transit isn't as economical when you have cities with low population density, as you have in the US. But, over time, if you build up the urban core in the inner cities, you have a potential win/win situation, where downtowns and adjascent areas (often areas in decay, anyway) get redeveloped and get more population, while other people can still live the suburban lifestyle...and then you have transit to go along with that.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,087,446 times
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Seriously, why on earth isn't public transit totally free? This is the example of the selfish 'why should I do this because it doesn't affect me?' mentality that is KILLING the planet. The VERY LEAST motorists can do for destroying the environment is to balance it out by helping out public transport.
Because nothing is free, we pay for everything. Making transit "free" actually makes it less useful in some ways, although it is useful in others--some places have "free zones" of transit where people don't have to pay, to encourage mobility in a city center. In other situations, people feel less comfortable using transit where there is no barrier to entry. When streetcars were first introduced (the horse-drawn kind), they were considered middle-class transit because a nickel was a lot of money for a common laborer. When cities insisted that fares remain at a nickel and inflation caught up with the price, more people could afford to ride the (now electric) streetcars, which made them more crowded and less comfortable, and streetcar companies often couldn't raise prices to keep up with demand. Middle-class people were less comfortable in a public transit vehicle with poorer people, and since cars were becoming less expensive and public-subsidized roads made them more convenient, they switched modes.
There might be ways to more comfortably subsidize public transit, the way we subsidize roads, but generally it isn't the need to pay a fare that discourages people from taking transit. Utility, access and convenience are more important factors, as well as perceptions of safety. People are ALWAYS driven by self-interest, the important thing is to make transit a decision that appeals to self-interest rather than self-sacrifice.
The typical mass tranist system only gets about 20% of revenue from rider fares. So we're talking about a system that is already heavily, heavily subsidized by general tax revenue sources, and where people are going to have an inherently distorted view of the true cost of ridership.
Well let's see the 3.9 mile Las Vegas monorail is the only privately owned public transportation system in the United States. A one way ticket on the monorail is $5 yet even at that price the company filed for bankruptcy in January of this year. So much for private companies being able to make transit profitable.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,087,446 times
Reputation: 11862
Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg
Because nothing is free, we pay for everything. Making transit "free" actually makes it less useful in some ways, although it is useful in others--some places have "free zones" of transit where people don't have to pay, to encourage mobility in a city center. In other situations, people feel less comfortable using transit where there is no barrier to entry. When streetcars were first introduced (the horse-drawn kind), they were considered middle-class transit because a nickel was a lot of money for a common laborer. When cities insisted that fares remain at a nickel and inflation caught up with the price, more people could afford to ride the (now electric) streetcars, which made them more crowded and less comfortable, and streetcar companies often couldn't raise prices to keep up with demand. Middle-class people were less comfortable in a public transit vehicle with poorer people, and since cars were becoming less expensive and public-subsidized roads made them more convenient, they switched modes.
There might be ways to more comfortably subsidize public transit, the way we subsidize roads, but generally it isn't the need to pay a fare that discourages people from taking transit. Utility, access and convenience are more important factors, as well as perceptions of safety. People are ALWAYS driven by self-interest, the important thing is to make transit a decision that appeals to self-interest rather than self-sacrifice.
So it comes down to one class thinking they're too good to be in close proximity with another class?
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