[seadan83]

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)

[1] https://lacrossetribune.com/what-causes-roads-to-wear-out/ar...

[cyberax]

> 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.

If you want to learn more, feel free to check: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law and click the links about pavement engineering.

[Jcowell]

Couple do things since I actually live in New York

> 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.

If you buy anything anywhere in NY you’re paying taxes.

> 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

In NY this wouldn’t suffice for the income level (6 figures bracket) we’re talking about. it’s infeasible for a majority chunk of residents living in Chelsea , Hell’s kitchen, Upper East Side , FIDI, etc, to own a car since the cost to have it , pay the insurance, and store it working make economical sense. Especially so since if you’re affording to live there you’re job is also on the island.

It a bell curve where the beginning are the low income residents living in Harlem and the outer boroughs that necessitate having a car (with the space to accommodate for it and wouldn’t be hit by congestion pricing), the middle curve of 6 figures+ making residents that would be in the best position to not have a car, and then the rich or dual income families that has the ability to pay this congestion tax anyway.

[joshuaissac]

> 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.

To the contrary, those in the highest income brackets are the ones most likely to walk to work,[1] and also the most likely to be paying more in taxes.

1. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0739456X18796652 page 9, figure 'Work Trip Walking by Income and Density'

[PM_me_your_math]

70% of the tax burden is carried by people making $120k/year or more. The argument that the poor pay more taxes than the rich is mental gymnastics with back injury. Similar to how some believe the rich get richer taking something the poor didn't have in the first place. It is all just class warfare used to divide and conquer.

[seadan83]

"Low-income Americans face higher payroll tax rates than rich Americans. Americans with less than five-figure incomes pay an effective payroll tax rate of 14.1 percent, while those making seven-figure incomes or more pay just 1.9 percent.Low-income Americans face higher payroll tax rates than rich Americans. Americans with less than five-figure incomes pay an effective payroll tax rate of 14.1 percent, while those making seven-figure incomes or more pay just 1.9 percent."

> https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-little-known-fact...

While the absolute numbers for the rich paying a lot more in taxes is true, when looking at effective tax rates, the rich are not actually being taxed enough for there to be equity in taxation.

"Billionaires in the US pay a smaller tax rate than most teachers and retail workers. "

"According to a 2021 White House study, the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the US paid an average federal individual tax rate of just 8.2 percent. For comparison, the average American taxpayer in the same year paid 13 percent."

> https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/do-the-rich-pay....

Indeed, that 8.2 percent is a whole heck of a lot of money; far more than the 13 percent coming from the average taxpayer.

[cyberax]

> To the contrary, those in the highest income brackets are the ones most likely to walk to work

Stop misrepresenting the data. High incomes are still most likely to DRIVE to work.

They are _more_ _likely_ to walk to work than lower incomes, but:

1. The difference is slight.

2. The absolute numbers are around 5% of trips.

[seadan83]

> 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.

Doesn't this directly contradict your point that car commuters are subsidized?

[seadan83]

One more thing that occurred to me, most US retirees still own cars, and still pay car tabs! That is kinda the issue, payment for driving is spread across US society rather than being the burden of those that use cars.

A strict counter-example, myself, I pay a _lot_ in property taxes and put almost zero wear on the roads. When I did last own a car, I was averaging about 500 miles per year.

This is really the point. Drivers must be subsidized because the cost of driving does not go up linearly with miles driven. For example, if someone just spent 24 hours driving rather than say 4 hours, their payments for driving upkeep does not go up 6 fold (they do not pay 6 times on car tabs, 6 times on car tax, 6 times on property taxes, etc.. they only pay gas tax as extra).

Now, this is kinda a tired argument, because it then goes to, "well, even if you don't use the roads, you still benefit." I sure do. Though, the issue is that the way things are incentivized, by spreading costs across everyone, we are put in a situation where otherwise unsustainably low density areas become incentivized.

Which goes exactly to the point of charging people to drive through downtown. Seemingly it is a very rare example of a disincentives to car culture. The argument that mass transit is subsidized seems a bit obvious (and is it is true that mass transit is very subsidized), though.. given all the incentives to drive, not having to pay the full cost per mile traveled as those costs are spread out - why the hell not drive everywhere? Why at all would anyone take mass transit when the cost to drive 5000 miles compared to 500 miles are so similar.

Let's look at the math: Driving 5000 miles (my last car got about 400 miles to the tank, at about 13 gallons), requires about 130 gallons of gas. At about $0.50 per gallon for tax, that is a payment of just $65 dollars in tax to go 10 times further. Car tabs alone are over $100 in WA state.

This hopefully illustrates really easily that users of the road are not paying proportionate to their usage of the road. This is a mixed bag, as I would very much not want farmers to have to pay the full cost of the roads connecting them to the overall transit grid. Yet, because how costs are shared, driving in a lot of ways is "too cheap" and the overwhelming incentive is to (unsustainably) drive everywhere. Further, because everything in the US is built with driving in mind, it makes it so everyone has to drive, whether they would want to or not. This is compounded in city policy with zoning laws that force there to be parking, force residential to be segregated from commercial that would otherwise for walkable neighborhoods. All that is to say, it's the second order effects of how we pay for driving that creates quite a number of sustainability issues and really diminish the quality of life we could have (quieter, less polluted, less time spent in commute, less time spent in traffic jams).

[seadan83]

> 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.

The argument that either everyone was already a tax-paying driver or will soon be one is hard to believe. Without data, I won't take that at face value.

Even that 'margin of error,' I think needs some examination. Any 'margin of error' means there is a subsidy. Notably, drivers are simply not paying the full cost of their road usage. If so, it would not matter at all whether there were retirees or not, the costs would be payed for entirely by drivers. That is not the case, ergo, drivers are subsidized. Now, let's argue about what that percentage is.

> So in practice, car owners don't get substantially subsidized by transit users.

This is moving the goal posts as far as I can tell. The statement is that car owners get subsidized by everyone else, not just transit users.

> 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 is simply incorrect.

Per the reference: https://lacrossetribune.com/what-causes-roads-to-wear-out/ar...

“Cars usually do not have that much loading impact on the road,” said John Mueller, a DOT Highway Mainten-ance Engineer. “The main source is the water that sits in the joint that freezes and thaws.”

"It is once concrete deteriorates that traffic loads pack a punch. Large trucks can accelerate the process."

Thus, you have it the other way round. Weather deteriorates roads, then it is traffic that amplifies that damage.

We can still make the example more extreme, let's say that group of 300 are 1 mile away, and half take light rail. At this point, it's very clear that the 30 people living 10 miles away (perhaps even 50 miles!), are being subsidized considerably.

Regarding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law, I think I understand what you are trying to get at. In my example, I was trying to keep things about equal and was assuming that both groups of people were driving similar cars. I would suspect in most realistic examples that are similar, that group that is 10 or 50 miles away are probably driving larger vehicles (and maybe farm equipment & logging trucks are more frequently on those roads).

Cutting to the chase though, we don't have to argue to what extent drivers are subsidized, there are numbers for that:

> A report published in the April of 2022 issue of Ecological Economics teased out the lifetime cost of driving a small car to be roughly $641,000, with society subsidizing about 41% of that cost. [1][2]

[1] https://stacker.com/society/how-driving-subsidized-america#:.... [2] https://www.thetelegraph.com/news/slideshow/How-driving-is-s...

Then there are more subsidies at play to keep oil cheap and gasoline artifically low in price, as well as the cost of purchasing cars, and the cost of parking is amortized to property owners [3]

[3] https://medium.com/radical-urbanist/cars-gets-billions-in-hi...