For sure, let's charge methods of transportation based on negative externalities such as how much space they take, safety, and noise/particulate pollution.
I'm all for it! It would suck for transit, though:
1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs.
2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions.
3. Buses in particular result in excessive road wear&tear.
It's really amazing that people say things like "car owners should not get subsidized" (by whom?), while talking about transit that is literally infeasible without massive subsidies.
> 1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs.
This is too misleading to be unintentional. I don't know if you're comparing buses to small/medium EVs 1:1, but even if you aren't, the environmental footprint of replacing all bus services with EVs would be extraordinary.
> 2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions.
Transit doesn't force people into housing. It creates new housing options that previously were not tenable. Rivers don't create port congestion, rivers create ports. Not having enough ports, or enough rivers, creates port congestion.
> 3. Buses in particular result in excessive road wear&tear.
In proportion to human-miles, or is this a 1:1 comparison?
It's not misleading. On average, buses in the US carry around 15 people. A car carries around 1.5, so the raw multiplier is just 10.
But wait, there's more!
ALL buses have an incredibly polluting component that is fundamental to their functionality: the driver. You need around 3 drivers to cover the useful service time (from 5am to midnight). And drivers are POLLUTING AS HELL.
> I don't know if you're comparing buses to small/medium EVs 1:1
> It creates new housing options that previously were not tenable.
No. It _destroys_ affordable housing to pack people into smaller and smaller footprints. Tokyo is a _great_ example of that.
> In proportion to human-miles, or is this a 1:1 comparison?
In proportion to passenger-miles. Road wear scales approximately as the 4-th power of the axle weight, and under-loaded buses still have to haul around their massive bulks even if there's just one passenger inside.
Honestly, it's amazing how bad public transit turns out to be when you actually start looking at its negative sides.
Let's be honest, it's far from factual that dense housing is problematic in any way. It's just your opinion, and you're mad about it because you stand to lose the most in a world where you have to pay cash for your externalities. The sewer and water system to your house is subsidized. Snow removal from your cul-de-sac is subsidized. Most people couldn't afford the suburbs if someone else wasn't paying for those things (usually future generations).
Many people enjoy living in a dense environment, as evidenced by how much they'll pay to do so. It's objectively better for the Earth, and pretty enjoyable for the people that choose that path.
> Let's be honest, it's far from factual that dense housing is problematic in any way
Densificatoin causes enshittification spiral. Each successive generation lives in worse conditions. This is an inherent property of densification.
> The sewer and water system to your house is subsidized.
It isn't. I'm paying for it from my taxes (that's why in Seattle my water is more costly than in the middle of a freaking desert).
> Snow removal from your cul-de-sac is subsidized.
It isn't. I'm responsible for keeping it clean, and I was once fined when I failed to do that.
> Many people enjoy living in a dense environment
The vast majority of people want to live in single family houses (90% or so - https://www.redfin.com/news/millennial-homebuyers-prefer-sin... ). They simply can't afford that. And of course, the psychological defense mechanism is: "I never wanted it anyway".
It's very misleading because you're starting from the supposition of EVs rather than the actual mix of personal cars. If you choose EVs for the cars, why not choose ZEV buses that are starting to enter the market as well?
> And drivers are POLLUTING AS HELL.
What? I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say here.
> No. It _destroys_ affordable housing to pack people into smaller and smaller footprints. Tokyo is a _great_ example of that.
It doesn't destroy affordable housing, though, it shifts it to other areas while increasing density near stations. You need to show why that's a bad thing. Most urban planners and economists would say that increased density is a good thing and that Tokyo is an excellent example of a city done right.
You seem to have a personal bone to pick with high-density cities that's just not shared by most other people.
> It's very misleading because you're starting from the supposition of EVs rather than the actual mix of personal cars.
If we're talking about planning, then we should look at least 10 years ahead. By that time, most of new vehicles are going to be EVs.
Mind you, the subway construction around here is planned 20 _years_ in advance. All the current proposed projects are going to be finished some time in 2040-s.
> If you choose EVs for the cars, why not choose ZEV buses that are starting to enter the market as well?
ZEV buses still retain the most polluting part of regular buses: the driver.
> What? I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say here.
One average US citizen produces around 20 tons of CO2 per year. A bus needs 3 of them working full-time. This completely dwarfs the emissions due to fuel use.
> It doesn't destroy affordable housing, though, it shifts it to other areas while increasing density near stations.
Bullshit. New density does NOT create ANY affordable housing. Never has, never will. And dense housing near stations is certainly not cheap.
> Most urban planners and economists would say that increased density is a good thing and that Tokyo is an excellent example of a city done right.
Most oil executives say that oil is great and that the large trucks are good!
Tokyo is a great example of young people forced to live in "microapartments" while just a couple of hours away, beautiful old houses sit empty.
> You seem to have a personal bone to pick with high-density cities that's just not shared by most other people.
Most other people haven't heard ANY opposing opinion in their lives. And neither have they researched it themselves. Thus, I routinely hear utterly risible nonsense like "we need more density to allow affordable housing" going unopposed.
Do you have citations for those numbers? They don’t match what I’ve heard in the past so I’m curious to learn more.
Also, everything about density in relation to quality of life is pretty subjective. Luckily, we have cities for both! You’re free to live in Houston while those of us that prefer dense urban environments can live in New York and take transit.
Nothing I'm saying is controversial. Heck, even urbanists admit that, they just try to avoid talking about it.
> Also, everything about density in relation to quality of life is pretty subjective. Luckily, we have cities for both!
My problem is with people that try to remake wonderful cities like Seattle into Manhattan-style hellscapes. And this is a result of market forces, that need to be counteracted via political regulation.
I'd love to live in Houston, but I just can't tolerate its weather. I tried.
> On average, buses in the US carry around 15 people. A car carries around 1.5, so the raw multiplier is just 10.
Buses in the US are largely avoided due to the last century spent prioritizing suburban car commuting over everything else. What you should be looking at are the averages on bus routes where the buses run regularly and aren’t blocked by solo drivers. That means that the floor for a bus is 10:1 but it can easily rise to 50-70:1 with cheap policy changes (e.g. put a $500 camera on the bus to ticket drivers and suddenly headways improve by 50%). In contrast, the large EVs people are actually buying will never become more efficient over the lifetime of the vehicle.
> What you should be looking at are the averages on bus routes where the buses run regularly and aren’t blocked by solo drivers
Le sigh. If you want more bus passengers in each bus, you either need to run buses with longer intervals (making them completely useless) or you need to pack people together. Packing people together densely enough to make buses work inevitably requires living in small apartments.
The US in the last century decided to focus on comfortable human-oriented housing, and not on building Soviet-style human anthills.
> In contrast, the large EVs people are actually buying will never become more efficient over the lifetime of the vehicle.
Large EVs have lifecycle CO2 footprint of about 70g/km. Buses are ~100g/km, and EV buses (trolleys) are 60 g/km.
Moving to mid-sized EVs, such as Tesla Model 3/Y, cuts that to about 35 g/km (it depends on the US state). This is definitely something that we should encourage. The US addiction to huge barn-sized SUVs is unhealthy.
> It's really amazing that people say things like "car owners should not get subsidized" (by whom?), while talking about transit that is literally infeasible without massive subsidies.
If road usage fees cover less than half the cost of roads then clearly someone is subsidizing roads.
Sounds like roads should be paid for only by their users, and proportionally to their use. Then it would be irrelevant whether it’s a sedan or bus since everyone pays their fair share. But of course, such solutions are not acceptable to those that do not intend to pay their fair share.
Transit is completely feasible without subsidies if the transit company owns the land near the stations, which generate generous rents.
Of course if the land is owned by other people, the increase in value provided by transit should be recaptured through a Land Value Tax which is then used to fund the transit.
> Transit is completely feasible without subsidies if the transit company owns the land near the stations, which generate generous rents.
So basically, you want to subsidize transit by making the transport authority be a slumlord. Got it.
There are no unsubsidized urban transit services in the US. Even operating costs are not paid from fares. And new transit construction is COMPLETELY subsidized.
I live in Seattle and I will have paid around $20k in car tab fees alone by the time the choo-choo subway train expansion here is done. It won't go anywhere near me and it will make my life worse, by inducing even more traffic.
There are also no unsubsidized fire departments, police departments, public schools, public parks, etc. Analyzing only the first order costs/benefits is really not a good way of analyzing any infrastructure project.
Car owners are already hugely subsidized. Toll roads cover only a tiny fraction of road maintenance. The rest is paid by taxpayers, even those who do not drive.
The “farebox recovery ratio” of a road is usually zero. Roads are funded through taxes (with the exception of some toll highways). Why can’t transit be the same?
There's not only the gas tax to think about, but also that every road also enables the truck that inevitably delivers goods to your grocery store to get there.
The subway system is only possibly used by those who live near a station and are traveling near another station, and tourists.
Only a fraction of the US population work and thus commute. Of those that commute, that 80% do not have equal road usage. Even within that community, there is a subsidy going on. So, yes, there is a ton of subsidization going on (and this is not always bad)
> Drivers simply pay for their road use through various taxes, and not directly.
I think this is the point, notably because those 'indirect' payments are also payed by non-drivers as well. Hence, the subsidy.
Even within drivers, some are subsidized by others (let alone non-drivers). To illustrate, first: most road wear is from weather [1]. This means any two lengths of similar roads will have about the same upkeep cost regardless of usage (not quite true, but if taking 30 people vs 300, it's about true).
Let's consider 10 miles of road to suburb A with 30 drives, and 10 miles of different but similar road to suburb B with 300 drivers. The city will pay for upkeep of 20 miles, collecting various taxes from 330 people, and those taxes are then spent evenly across those 20 miles. To do this proportionately, without any subsidies, the group of 300 could arguably have those various taxes reduced for them only by 90% and increase the taxes of the 30 people 9 fold. That would be an equitable upkeep system.
The fact the road upkeep payment per person is not equitable, means there is a subsidy (and this situation is not always a bad thing)
> Only a fraction of the US population work and thus commute.
The fraction that doesn't work is either too young to pay taxes anyway, or they had used road commutes before they retired. Everybody else are within the margin of error.
Additionally, if you are not using a car for commute, you're likely to be in the lower tax brackets and thus not paying (much) in taxes anyway. I had a paper looking at exact numbers bookmarked, but I lost it somehow.
So in practice, car owners don't get substantially subsidized by transit users. While the inverse is overwhelmingly true, transit users are massively subsidized by car users.
> This means any two lengths of similar roads will have about the same upkeep cost
This is simply incorrect. Vehicles cause stresses in the concrete, allowing fractures to accumulate, and they also directly wear down the pavement. The weather then amplifies the damage, especially in areas that experience frequent zero crossings.
You certainly can subsidize large populations because taxes cover all income but are being used specifically to encourage just one more of transportation. If driving wasn’t so heavily subsidized, people would use other options because the true cost is much higher than what people see directly – it’s not just roads but also things like below market rate storage, zoning rules requiring owners to build more car storage than they necessarily want, and especially not requiring drivers to carry insurance sufficient to cover the full cost of their mistakes and decisions.
> You certainly can subsidize large populations because taxes cover all income but are being used specifically to encourage just one more of transportation.
It can be argued that rich people subsidize poor, since they pay more taxes. However, that's pretty much it.
Transit users in the US overwhelmingly do NOT subsidize car users. While the inverse is true, transit users on average don't pay even half of the true cost of transit. The rest is born by everyone.
> 1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs.
If mass transit _and_ also EVs are incentivized over petrol cars, that is not bad [1]
> 2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions.
My anecdotal experience is that areas around light rail stations gentrify and luxery style condominiums pop up like mushrooms around them. A 10 minute and consistent train ride into dowtown is compelling when that same journey can take 30 to 120 minutes by car (this is Seattle, it can take 20 minutes to just cross the U bridge and travel a quarter mile).
> 3. Buses in particular result in excessive road wear&tear.
If a bus is actually taking 50 cars off the road, and is traveling on lanes that are built for the excessive wear; then it is still a net benefit.
> "car owners should not get subsidized (by whom?)"
Point 3 discusses the wear and tear of roads. Drivers do not pay fully for the wear and tear of roads (and road construction, etc). Road funds come from many funds and car traffic does not generate enough in fuel and car-tab taxes to fully pay for roads. Hence, it is subsidized by other people that pay those taxes.
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The comparison perhaps should not be also strictly of just buses against EVs.
Sure, as long as you consider externalities like congestion. That would suggest charging for passage through congested areas (the subject of this thread), and subsidizing mass transit in congested areas.
To be fair, that is how commuter trains in the NYC metropolitan area work. The fares are higher during rush hour to discourage people who can shift their schedule from traveling during rush hour.
Sure. Let's make sure we account for all the negative follow-on effects from personal car ownership including wasted space from parking, pollution, etc etc. Also account all the positive effects from transit - less wasted space for parking, less pollution, etc etc.