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Great idea, but let's rip the bandaid off all at once...roads, transit, gasoline (get ready to pay $8/gallon).
ROTFL. Gasoline itself isn't subsidized, and you wouldn't need to increase gas taxes all that much once you took away transfer payments to other modes.
Amen. Somehow the anti-transit crowd still doesn't realize that roads are socialism too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nybbler
ROTFL. Gasoline itself isn't subsidized, and you wouldn't need to increase gas taxes all that much once you took away transfer payments to other modes.
If you don't think that the USA subsidizes gasoline through geopolitics, war, etc., well, I don't know what to say. It's the biggest subsidy there is. There are plenty of other buyers now, which is very different from a majority of our history with gasoline and it will likely only go upward from here.
Already does, at least trains on Long Island. LIRR from my parent's house (there is no bus) is $10.75 off-peak, $14.75. $325(!) for a monthly. Either transit is expensive or the MTA is run by idiots. Strangely, for one station that has rail, it's $9 off peak for the LIRR, $2.50 for bus + subway.
Already does, at least trains on Long Island. LIRR from my parent's house (there is no bus) is $10.75 off-peak, $14.75. $325(!) for a monthly. Either transit is expensive or the MTA is run by idiots. Strangely, for one station that has rail, it's $9 off peak for the LIRR, $2.50 for bus + subway.
Then it will cost 2-3X that much w/o subsidy.
BTW, I was just being absurd. I get annoyed at people complaining about "subsidies", but ignoring the subsidies for their pet causes.
I will chime in and say no, we have not. Cities/metro areas grow as population expands, and growth for the most part has to go "out". Who exactly is subsidizing this supposed sprawl? People in the city core certainly are not paying for water mains or roads in the suburbs, they are not paying for the land stores use as parking lots. That is paid by those local residents and those municipalities- people in Seattle don't pay anything for what I use up here in the suburb of Lynnwood.
However, the City of L.A. is on the hook for many remote areas within its geographical limits--not only canyon areas like BHPO and Beverly Glen, but also outlying areas like Chatsworth, Canoga Park, and Mission Hills. I suspect many people think these are independent communities, because you can write those names on mail in place of "Los Angeles", and none of them have 900 zip codes. But they are all part of the city proper, subject to its ordinances and entitled to its services.
It is generally true that a growing population has no place to go but out, and this has led to sprawl. But this was almost inevitable given the postwar disdain for the truly urban cityscape. It wasn't just easy home loans for (some) veterans, but also the razing of downtown neighborhoods like L.A.'s Bunker Hill and Boston's West End, where working (and often single) people once found housing and amusement in a pedestrian and transit oriented area. This sort of thing wasn't limited to L.A., and what replaced the razed neighborhoods, aside from the freeways that either obliterated or bisected them was often business, civic, and residential facilities on which a strongly suburban esthetic was imposed--with wide setbacks, few if any stores or businesses that opened to the street, and lots and lots of parking. Notwithstanding initial good intention to provide housing for low and moderate income residents, it often turned out that this housing either didn't get built at all (like Chavez Ravine in L.A.), or it did get built but eventually became luxury housing (Boston). In most of the country, high-rises were generally the home of the poorest (in the form of "the projects"), except for a few exceptional developments here and there for the wealthiest. In postwar America, the middle class was largely excluded from city life, except as a place to work.
Aren't they? Mass transit receives its share of tax support just as roads do; furthermore, tax-supported buses ride on tax-supported roads.
The question is always about the share. Most transit jurisdictions are required to publish farebox ratios nowadays as the tax payer is getting tired of paying out the nose for lousy, ineffective transportation and realize they only way they can force transit agencies to improve is with performance metrics. Our transit system almost doubled in efficiency in a few year when its funding was tied to performance metrics going from 11.8% farebox to 21% farebox. There was a lot of squawking about unmet needs and the like when it first got implemented and how ridership was going to plummet at first, but that's mostly settled down by now.
Realistically, 20-25% is probably about what it could achieve. We're a rural county, so there's no way 90% of the routes are ever going to make economic sense. Welcome to bus service in "sprawl." That said, we've got corridors with pretty topnotch service now. That means that TOD is actually a possibility now as opposed to the OD(D) development where you build so-called TOD where transit is so poor no one will willingly use it. We've already seen some infill development along the corridors. Nothing major yet, but then again we were hit harder than most by the recession -- 20+% unemployment rate, one of the highest foreclosure rates in the county, etc, and TOD only was possible here for the last three years. Before that they just ran a bunch of scatter-shot routes aimless around, which is also why it was so easy to nearly double efficiency.
At some point the farebox recovery is so low, it's not worth the effort of collecting fares. For the many of the routes servicing the local university, the transit agency changed the fares to free, changing the farebox recovery from 20% to 0%, with the university picking up the tab. Paying fares adds time, especially if there are lots of stops. It was decided it was better to have efficient bus service, and perhaps to discourage driving on campus than collect a small portion of the costs from fares.
The LIRR, where the bulk of the ridership is Long Island to the city, considering having free fares in some inter-Long Island routes. The seats wouldn't fill up until near the city anyway, so it could be an easy to lower traffic congestion for trains that would run anyway. It was rejected because free service would be get abused (or really might homeless and very poor people on the trains). Instead the fares were kept low; under $3 for a 20 mile ride within Suffolk County. While the train ridership within Long Island is low, it appears not to have the predominantly poor ridership as the local buses nor any stigma. Helps that the train service is close to the same speed station to station as driving.
The TCAT in Ithaca considered turning some of its buses free, with Cornell picking up the tab. The problem is that Ithaca and Cornell are laid out differently than the bus and university here. Here, most students are taking the bus with a few driving. For Cornell, most are within a long-ish walk of campus. Offering a free bus service would likely overcrowd the buses changing walkers to bus riders.
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