[raldi]

An increase in gas taxes and road tolls would make people drive less, requiring less road maintenance, traffic policing, etc, and allow buses to move more efficiently, freeing up funding that can then go into improving transit.

[thx-2718]

If your over all take home is lowering though eventually you don't have money to repair the sidewalks and the bike racks and so forth because no one is driving anymore to pay for it.

Or you raise the cost to ride public transportation or pay for those things from somewhere else (like property taxes).

[raldi]

You seem to think the government makes money when someone drives a mile, but in fact it loses money — significantly more than if that person had taken transit instead.

The fewer miles people drive, the more money the government has available for other things.

[thx-2718]

> The fewer miles people drive, the more money the government has available for other things.

Yes if everything else is kept the same. People's income. Business profits. Etc.

However you're overlooking the point spending on transportation infrastructure which is to get resources from one location to another.

People drive to work where their income is taxed. Businesses have things delivered to them to sell and have ways to get customers to them. So now the business is paying taxes. And people use that income they earned to pay for rent or own a home so there's property taxes.

Now let's just remove the way people get about to doing all those things because that would save the government money from spending money on transportation.

Oh great no one is going in to work. No one is going to business or shop. No one is paying taxes. But hey we saved a bunch of money by not building roads.

Please read that I am not opposed to changing our society to be less car dependent (obviously for the environment it is better)

I am objecting to the notion that you can pay for a carless society by just not paying for roads or by imposing taxes on cars more without raising taxes or fees elsewhere.

[raldi]

> Now let's just remove the way people get about to doing all those things

No, congestion pricing removes the obstacles slowing people down from doing all those things. Take for instance a plumber who still has to drive around. Yes, they have to pay the congestion charge, but they also spend way less time stuck in traffic and can probably bill an extra job or two that day. Same for UPS drivers, etc.

> No one is going to business or shop.

Actually, studies from all over the world consistently show that when you make driving less attractive, it's a net positive for merchants: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-13/every-stu...

[thx-2718]

Except those plumbers are not going to get anywhere faster now because there's pedestrians and bikes everywhere but I digress since it's not relevant.

Regardless what you're saying completely ignores my actual objection here. Which is paying for infrastructure through something that you just eliminated.

[raldi]

It’s paying for infrastructure through cost reduction.