Well, here's some counter-intuitive thinking to challenge TTAC's Best and Brightest and/or infuriate The New York Times' Editorial Board (sorry, Wilkinson, it's true): new highways are less environmentally damaging than new mass transit. "Each mile of urban highway typically provides far more passenger miles of travel than a mile of light-rail transit line. The average mile of U.S. light-rail line, for instance, [provides] only 15 per cent as many passenger miles as the average lane mile of urban freeway.” This startling conclusion comes to us from U.S. environmental economist Randal O'Toole [via Canada's Globe and Mail]. Needless to say, O'Toole's crunched the numbers: "A 1-per-cent increase in new-model cars on the road produces more benefits – in energy efficiency and in greenhouse gas reductions – than any light-rail system can produce." He also points out that mass transit systems are a 40 to 50 year investment that can't take advantage of ongoing technological improvements like… cars. That said, O'Toole favors a range of government interventions to keep things moving: tolls, toll lanes on expressways, peak-hour tolls and the "smartest traffic-light technology that money can buy."
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That’s all a complete load of crap – light rail lines provide peak capacity; who cares how many people use per day – what matters is how many people can crowd onto each facility during rush hour when the capacity is most needed. And light rail kicks highways’ ass up and down and all around the town at those times.
The main issue, as I see it, is that the infrastructure we put in creates its own environment. That is, roads create strip malls, rail (for example, in Japan and Europe) creates shopping centers around train stations. Once one or the other becomes the norm, switching is near impossible because the urban environment has already grow naturally around the assumption that a certain type exists.
I have no doubt that in America the average mile of highway does more people more good than the average mile of rail. However, that is the fault of the natural growth of American cities around the needs of a public that uses cars. Urban planning ultimately is subservient to the natural reality of existing transport. This is what the author does not see.
If we look to Europe and Japan, we can see the results of urban environments built around rail in much lower use of energy resources per capita than the US.
So Japan and Europe should remove their inefficient rail systems and put in highways?
In Europe we have highways, trams, metros, trains and buses co-existing with each other. The idea of building just one type of transportation (highways OR rails) is stupid, as all of the systems have their own uses and they supplement each other.
Also, I’d like to hear why “mass transit can’t take advantage of ongoing technological improvements like cars.”
Unions are the problem. You can’t have a mass transit system without the unions holding you hostage and raping the public.
The rail vs. road question really comes down to population density. Very dense population areas like Manhattan and Tokyo can make excellent use of rail, but more spread out cities like all of those which have built up post WWII do not make good use of rail. There just aren’t enough people and businesses per square mile for the high fixed cost of rail and it’s inflexibility to pan out.
By the way, O’Toole is a notorious hack who’s been debunked and discredited for years. A bit of google on this guy would go a long way.
Two further important questions that go unanswered in Mr. Tooles analysis, in addition to the points made about the peak hour capacity problem:
1. To what extent does an additional mile of “urban freeway” require the construction of additional miles of feeder roads — suburban freeways, feeder boulevards, and neighborhood roads in lower density or autocentric suburbs — and additional off-ramps and parking facilities downtown? This construction should be counted in somehow, and might change the balance. To be fair, one would also have to try to estimate the amount of feeder service (walking and bike paths, bus lines, park & ride) a mass transit line would require — but all numbers in, the balance might still look different.
2. To what extent does a mode switch away from transit to cars increase the number of miles in a person’s average commute? If this number goes up, you claw back some of the benefits achieved by increasing the number of passenger miles put through the system — capacity (in terms of pax.mi.) goes up, but so does demand (measured in the same terms, even if the number of commuters is the same), so what’s the point? This is similar to the problem encountered when looking at airline safety: While airplanes cause fewer fatalities per passenger mile than do cars, they also (potentially) encourage people to travel longer distances (over a year, a decade, a lifetime) than they would if they stuck to cars. If cars kill 1 person for every 1,000,000 passenger miles traveled, and airplanes kill 1 in 10,000,000 — but induce people to travel 10x more than they otherwise would, you’re simply breaking even, and making no gains.
King Algore has spoken the peasants should do what they are told. Of course like the good old days with King George(before the rebellion)Algore will live with great luxury and a huge carbon footprint while the peasants live like, well peasants.
Notorious hack = someone I disagree with and because I’m good and noble, it follows that that hack is also evil…….
But I have to disagree on principle with the conclusion that light rail is less efficient in the US as a people mover. Thats not proven.There are some boutique LR systems. But you need a comprehensive network in an urban/suburban area to get to a point where its conveniently possible to get from where you are to where you want to be. You’re still going to need more parking lots because you’ll never get complete coverage, unlike road systems.
Dredging up an earlier example, the single $300M Minneapolis light rail line doesn’t do much for most of the 3 million people in the Twin Cities. You’d need many such lines in a ring and spoke pattern and the cost would be in the billions. The Twin Cities would need a fairy god-Senator like Kennedy of the Big Dig to deliver the loot necessary. You’d probably knock down a lot of homes by eminent domain, which somebody previously moaned about highways doing. I have no problem with a state choosing to try LR with its cut of the transportation money, as long as they first maintain the roads with the gas taxes and also level with the voters on cost – and get the voters’ approval. If a state/city implements a comprehensive network of LR, then you can determine if its worthwhile. Could be an expensive experiment.
One thing I can agree with is that Dollar for Dollar, it is more effective to improve automotive traffic management than to install a new, badly-run light-rail system. Truism dat. Odd however, that a guy from Cato says more government intervention is needed. Wait — it’s not odd at all.
The rest of the article is nonsense. (And the headline is hyperbole). He says it’s not possible to plan for 50-70 years — thus public transport is a bad idea? Tell that to people who have been using the Subway in NYC, the Metro in Paris or the Underground in London, for the past 100 or so years.
What about parking? Oh, that’s conveniently overlooked.
One of his main premises is that public transport uses too much energy per person, because buses and light trains are too big and often run pretty empty. In which case one would assume that a right solution would be more on-demand, more smaller-capacity public transport. The idea that cars could fill the gap is totally unpractical — typical for a true ideologue.
The Minneapolis line does a great deal for the corridor on which it operates – where adding any highway capacity would cost a lot _more_. That’s typically how this works – light rail is built in a corridor where it makes sense; and carries a ton of people, and hacks like O’Toole still call it a failure even though it carries far more people far more cheaply than could a freeway expansion in the same place.
What Martin Schwoerer said.
I glanced at the article on the Cato website, and I found it to be fairly weak (which is probably why it is written as a libertarian rant rather than as a scientific paper subject to peer review.)
Admittedly, I just skimmed it quickly, so I’m may have missed some points here. But one of his main flaws is to compare transportation methods strictly in terms of BTU’s per passenger mile, as if all BTU’s are created equal.
That’s a bit like arguing that consuming 800 calories’ worth of chocolate cake has the same value as does eating 800 calories of whole grains, fresh fruit and vegetables. There seemed to be no attempt to compare the various sources of energy used by these vehicles, or to determine what costs, inefficiencies and externalities may come into play.
Also, he goes to some effort to consider how to improve the capacity utilization of highways, but then seems to assume the capacity utilization for transit is a constant that can only get worse. That’s a huge leap of logic to make, and results in apples-and-oranges comparisons.
I think O’Toole is right that the investment required for light rail is huge and the system inflexible. The same investment in dedicated bus lanes, clean buses, road pricing/ tolling systems and taffic management provides a lot more flexibility and value for money.
The article doesn’t mention some of the benefits and value people attach to not seeing the urban environment consumed by more highways and parking lots. The rise in property prices and tax values is just one of the benefits that accompanies new public transport investment. That should be easy to calculate and shouldn’t be ignored in any fair cost benefit analysis.
Sure ideally from a convenience point of view everyone would have a car and the road space and parking space necessary to use it cheaply and easily and you can have that if you want to live somewhere like Fort Wayne. Many (most?) people don’t want to live somewhere that requires the use of a car every time you want to go to the store or a bar.
btw the constant NYT baiting is tedious.
When I asked a question about editorial policies on TTAC a while ago part of RFs defense was “TTAC is not the NYT”.
Whatever the NYT’s faults it at least attempts rigorous accuracy and accountibility.
By no means are new highways “less environmentally damaging than new mass transit” as stated above and nothing in the G&M article supports that statement either.
Balderdash!
I first met Randal O’Toole ten years ago when he was about the only person In Portland, Ore., who specialized in bitching about that city’s light rail system. It seems they’d rejiggered the bus schedules when rail arrived, and that made his personal commute on the bus a little slower. Since then, he’s hooked up with right-wing think tanks, where he’s carved out a niche by cherry-picking stats to support his anti-rail crusade.
Yes, you can make light rail expenses look horrible if you compare its huge start-up costs with the lower but never-ending expenses of operating a rubber-tired bus fleet, while ignoring the uncounted external costs of urban bus pollution.
Urban expressways already are used to their capacity and beyond, while light rail utilization is still building from scratch in the few cities where’s it’s available. The light rail tracks under construction near my Denver home will see 15-minute service at first, and 30-minutes off peak, but I see no reason why that can’t be expanded with longer and more frequent trains, powered by renewable electricity. There’s room for improvement with this system- do you see room to expand our urban highways? And at what cost?
It might be O’Toole’s vision of bliss to commute on packed highways, or in buses that get ensnarled in auto traffic, but it’s not mine. I’m sure he likes “Lexus lanes,” the tolled expressway lanes that will help his well-heeled patrons escape the traffic that bedevils the rest of us, but I don’t. And his emphasis on private transportation is going to little good for 50 million Baby Boomers, who in a couple of decades will be faced with declining health, the eventual loss of driving privileges, and, I dunno, gas at $10 a gallon?
Name me any modern industrialized nation that relies exclusively on the passenger car (or passenger truck) for urban transportation. Oh, the USA, Well, name me another. This sense of American exceptionalism is getting us nowhere and making us the laughingstocks of the world.
It makes sense that highways provide more passenger miles than public transit, when you think about it. Highways are long distance conveyances, while public transit is short distance urban hops. A bus ride is likely never more than maybe 20 miles for an average passenger, while those who drive on highways generally live farther away from work, school, whatever. However, the important thing to look at it, is how many people are crammed onto one unit of public transit at 5pm. It’s congested enough as is – if all those people were in a car, it’d be worse.
Also, how much exhaust does one unit of public transit emit per mile, and how much comes from 40 cars in the same mile?
Financially, too, public transit makes sense. It’s cheaper to pay $50, or even $100/month for a transit pass than to pay for gas, insurance, maintenance, repairs, parking, and, of course, the car itself.
MN Hiawatha LR line – 10000 trips per day at $1.50 to $2.00 per trip; 3 million trips per year. Operating costs of $15 million. I don’t know whether that includes debt retirement, if any, for building it. It therefore operates at a 60% loss, at least. Three million people in the Twin Cities; 5000 round trip riders per day.
LA’s 405 handles an average of 15000 vehicles per hour; I expect peaks are much higher. Assume 12 lanes and single occupancy, thats still 1250 trips per hour, every hour, per lane. I’ve not experienced an LA traffic jam, but I have experienced a Tokyo rush hour (actually a few and for more than an hour), which they have even with micro cars, subways, the JR lines and taxis. There is no magic solution.
hal – what is this rigorously accurate “NYT” you speak of? It certainly can’t be the New York Times.
Wheatridger – yes indeed, I too am ready for renewable energy powering light and heavy rail and cars. All’s we gotta do is pull the control rods out a little further.
Chuck, your figures on the Hiawatha line are way low. And a freeway lane’s MAXIMUM capacity is about 2000 vehicles per hour, if those vehicles are well-behaved cars.
http://www.lightrailnow.org/news/n_newslog2006q3.htm#MIN_20060821
(note, this is from 2006):
Today, MetroRail carries an average of 40,000 boardings each weekday – a ridership level the agency didn’t expect to achieve until 2020.
The assertions that O’Toole makes are so preposterous and so fly in the face of the success of many public transport systems that you really have to wonder whose payroll he is on. In areas on medium and high density housing a public transport system will always be better than individual automotive transport – just like rail is more efficient than trucks to carry cargo. Public transport has served thousand of cities well across the world and to propose that say Paris, London or New York should scrap it and go back to cars is bordering on insanity.
There is a case to be made that for the type of lower density suburban housing more common here in the US public transportation is not practical but to assert that it is less efficient is simply not true.
And for those who think that public transportation is a lefty union idea; that is much more a commentary on how some cities have chosen to implement it rather than the idea of public transit. In that way it is very much like a public road system – you can do it well or you can mess it up – it all comes down to planning, implementation and administration.
M1EK – I stand corrected. I googled some more recent numbers than the ones I had, but it still looks like 15000 roundtrippers per day out of 3M people in the Twin Cities. It would be interesting to get recent month on month gains w/ $4 gas. Houston would be 20000 roundtrippers out of 2M people. Who’da thunk those Texas cowboys would outperform the communitarian Minnesotans? Its possible the Texans were more sensible than the Minnesotans in locating the line. One end of the Hiawatha line is someplace people want to go – the airport or Mall of America, but the other end is the center of Minneapolis – not where most people live.
Still, its a long way to go to have effective systems in either city. If I were a taxpayer in either place, I’d demand transparency and honesty in selling the benefits and costs. For example, you will knock down neighborhoods for LR and cause noise pollution nearby. You will pay $25M per mile and even if its mostly from the Feds, that’s real money. You will need more parking lots – a major feature of Amtrak stations here on the East Coast. You will need to reassure people that you will maintain what you already have – the roadways – while you reduce the load and wear and tear on them – some offsetting avoided costs could be factored in to the sales pitch. And you will have to show the net pollution gains/losses, especially if your power comes coal as opposed to car ICE.
To elaborate on my fellow Bostonian, NBK’s point #1, it’s not correct to compare miles of transit to miles of urban freeway. To gauge the impact fairly, you have to compare the amount of land taken by each. When you do that, transit is bound to come out a big winner in cities.
Furthermore, by taking some people off of the roads, transit makes the traffic flow more quickly!!! So it is to the major advantage of all car lovers to have more transit.
David
Based on the Big Dig, the $25M per mile in Minnesota would need to go to about a billion per mile in Beantown. Same politicians, same oversight, same contractors. You folks aren’t exactly the poster kids for efficient infrastructure development.
I think the best demonstration projects would be in more open cities like Minneapolis or Houston. Not that their politicos are any less corruptible…..
o’toole’s assertion boils down to this: highways are more successful at attracting users than light rail systems, therefore they are more efficient. talk about circular logic… sigh. the proper comparison is to look at each system at capacity.
The assertions that O’Toole makes are so preposterous and so fly in the face of the success of many public transport systems that you really have to wonder whose payroll he is on.
These studies of his are either being sold for profit (he’s a published writer) or else are being paid for the Cato Institute where his work his published.
Libertarians oppose public transit and support toll roads, as a function of ideology. And sure enough, O’Toole opposes public transit and supports toll roads. Whether he reached his conclusions because of his ideology, or else chose his ideology as an extension of his conclusions, I don’t know.
He does make one possibly valid point, which essentially argues that costly excess capacity is intrinsic to transit systems because it’s not possible to have efficient feeders at the ends. But he doesn’t seem to make any serious effort to consider whether there are ways to remedy this.
I get the feeling that like all ideologues, he looks at his favorite choices through rose-colored glasses, and immediately snubs anything that doesn’t fit under his ideological tent, never questioning whether some of his assumptions might just be wrong. That doesn’t make for good research.
bluecon: writes
“Unions are the problem. You can’t have a mass transit system without the unions holding you hostage and raping the public.”
Right, and oil companies, pharma, utilities, insurance companies, and airlines would never do anything like that.
Sorry, I would rather pay for a good high speed passenger train system, such as the one used in France, than pay to subsidize the airlines any longer.
Gee, it looks like I didn’t even need the Times editorial board. The B&B have shot this one down without my even having to taxi out and take off.
Debating mass transit is about as productive as arguing religious dogma. For every O’Toole there is a transit True Believer who “looks at his favorite choices through rose-colored glasses.” I don’t know why “light rail” has such a romantic appeal and is promoted even in cities with low population density. [Oklahoma City: 255 people per square mile; NY has 8,159.] Without sufficient density, no mass transit scheme can be viable.
My pet idea for expediting traffic flow: traffic circles (“roundabouts”) instead of stop lights or stop signs. I was surprised during my first visit to Brussels to find it has virtually no stop signs.
Yes, it is most definitely a complete load of crap. Indeed, O’Toole is no scientist, but rather, he is probably the most prolific anti-mass-transit writer in North America. His usual reasoning routinely amounts to hogwash, and doesn’t stand up to even the most casual scientific review. So, “to heck with that noise.”
In the end, we can argue about whether the cost of transit projects such as light rail systems are “worth it” or not, but there are a couple of relevant facts here:
1. The federal Department of Transportation has made a significant amount of funding available for mass transit projets over the past couple of decades — generally a lot more, percentage-wise, than it has made available for highway construction projects. Some states HAVE been glad to take that money and run with it, and some have built light rail systems that are becoming more and more effective with each day’s gasoline price increase.
2. In the end, we’re not going to drive down the price of oil and gasoline by “burning more of it.” As the price of a gallon of ‘regular’ gasoline stands on the brink of going over four dollars, we face a very real scenario wherein that price could more than DOUBLE within the next year. And somewhere along the increasing prices, average citizens will start to hit the point where they will not be able to commute to work in their private oil-burning vehicles.
So, what we need are “alternatives.” Plug-in hybrids. Full electric vehicles. Yes, mass transit. Walking, cycling, carpooling — whatever. There won’t be one thing that will “save us,” but rather, it will be a combination of all the things we can do to burn less oil in the future. And I expect that these light rail systems might become among the most popular and, yes — least expensive — alternatives that will be available to these average citizens.
I’m not really any kind of activist for light rail systems, but it’s just plainly obvious to me that we will need alternatives like them, and that communities with them will be better able to manage their transportation needs in the future than similar-sized communities without them.
The number one issue in all of this noise is psychology. ANY mass transit in North America is a failure. It must be subsidized, supported by fiat by all levels of government because we WANT our own mode of transport. Not a scheduled service no matter what the cost.
It’s the convience and yes, the status of having our own vehicle. Our society plans around it, our economy relies on it and our lifestyle revolves around it. Any mass transit “solution” is going to fail no matter how reasonable the cost. As it stands, none of the costs are reasonable either for the transit or the personal vehicle. C’est la vie. Pay up!
The biggest failure is when it becomes an either/or proposition which is where governments have been failing. Either this transit line or this highway. Policies determined to “force” transit use which just makes traffic worse and the solutions that much more expensive when forced to be built.
This ain’t gonna be fixed anytime soon.
ANY mass transit in North America is a failure. It must be subsidized, supported by fiat by all levels of government because we WANT our own mode of transport.
ALL transportation in the US is subsidized. Every single last bit of it.
Roads are paid for by the general fund, and roads and traffic create massive externalities. Airports are subsidized and are far from self supporting. None of it works on a pay-as-you-go basis.
It is typical for transit opponents to argue that transit systems need to be supported, when they forget that the vehicle infrastructures are also far from cheap.
We need to accept that transportation is not a profit center, but a utility. Moving people and stuff is never paid for completely by the end user. Mobility is a social good that benefits all of us, and we have to accept that none of the choices comes without a price.
Roads are paid for by the general fund…
Really? So where exactly do my gas taxes go? I was under the impression that said tax, in the US, was a user fee. And that it was to be used to create, maintain and repair the roads…. If you feel differently, a link would be nice – I couldn’t find one that showed aggregate fed and state taxes and corresponding expenditures on roads.
Other countries may use their gas taxes for various social engineering projects. Some in the US would like to as well. I just hope they’ll have the integrity to admit to what they plan. But I won’t hold my breath.
I was under the impression that said tax, in the US, was a user fee.
In the US, the fuel tax is not high enough to pay for the roads. Road construction and maintenance are funded through a mixture of taxes, including the general fund.
The fuel taxes also don’t fund the costs of the externalities related to cars, such as the pollution created by cars, the medical costs of accidents, or the value of time lost in traffic.
It’s really a collective form of denial for drivers to believe that they are covering all of the costs related to driving through their fuel taxes and tolls.
It’s also unreasonable to believe that any form of transportation is ultimately profitable. Ultimately, mobility is a cost. The cost may be direct (fares) or indirect (buying a vehicle and maintaining it, and funding the infrastructure that is needed to support it), but there is a cost, and it is ultimately a negative.
The way that we offset the cost is what we get in return. If we use transportation to get to work, someone pays us for being there. If we use it to transport a good, we get the utility of that good. But the transportation is still a cost component.
The problem with rail in this country seems to be bad execution. In theory, it could work really well, but it seems they mostly bungle it.
I think a lot of it has to do with trying to introduce rail into a city already built around cars. Also, adding large money transactions into a municipal government corruption machine can’t end well. We let our cities be run by councils that don’t at all seem qualified.
Rail could be the right solution for the right problem, but the emotion around the subject seems to preclude that.
As for tolls, I don’t trust the tolls not to become a seriously inefficient tax system that won’t become yet another club for the power mongers and social engineers to bludgeon us over the head with. They will be used to change the status quo, and/or enforce the status quo against the direction pointed out by the market.
chuckR: I was under the impression that said tax, in the US, was a user fee. And that it was to be used to create, maintain and repair the roads…
I couldn’t find anything definitive on US jurisdictions. But in Canada, there is this:
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/gaudet053007.htm
Only Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and only because they were foolish enough to pass a law. Aren’t they a hotbed of populist proto-communists or something? Crazy famers at least. ;-)
I’m guessing that most governments everywhere are even more addicted to gasoline than car owners. Probably one more reason why people should not turn to them for any immediate, middle or long-term relief. Better to just get Ford to make more Escape Hyrbid’s, Toyota to make more Prius’s and so forth.
The US roadway system is most definitely subsidized by general funds – more typically at the state/local level, where major arterials and even limited access freeways are funded in large part by means other than the gasoline tax.
To add insult to injury, urban drivers often subsidize suburban drivers with their gas taxes, too, since urban drivers are far less likely to drive any given mile on a road which actually got money from gas taxes.
It seems counterintuitive. I always thought LA and Tulsa were a couple of the worst planned cities because of their out of control urban sprawl. LA is in the top 10 longest commute times, but Tulsa is actually one of the shortest commute time cities. The worst city is New York City, even with its large Mass Transit system. This article is interesting, although it makes the case for increased bussing, which is a terrible way to commute. Even with a fast line, nobody wants to ride the bus.
http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/landuse/20040317/12/916
Are cars the answer? Maybe not in their current form. But what if there was a way to have cars drive themselves. You know it’s getting to that point. In the future it may be possible for cars to use the roads in a computer optimized traffic pattern for maximum efficiency. An evolved form of this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_transportation_system
I would imagine that car emissions will be less a problem in the future as well.
Ever ridden a bus in Stockholm, or Amsterdam, or Frankfurt, or Madrid? They’re so interesting, clean and efficient that just jumping on the first one that comes along is a great way to see the city.
This country (the U. S.) seems to get it wrong on matter what the mode of transport is–bus, personal car, light rail, high-speed rail, commercial air transport.
Hope everyone had a good day – and those in the US took a few minutes to remember why we had a three day weekend.
mdf – thanks for a link to numbers instead of assertions.
Sounds like Ontario has a total gas tax of roughly $4 per US gallon. But only about $1.90 is used for roads and of that about %1.50 is used on municipal roads. About $0.40/gallon is for, I guess, provincial roads/highways. Which sounds like US state and interstate roads. And they are grumbling about those roads, just like we do in the US.
Stefan
NY to LA – 2450 miles
Stockholm to Madrid – 1610 miles
London to Moscow – 1550 miles
interurban mass transit makes sense – and we do get it wrong, but intercity makes not so much sense
Pch101: The fuel taxes also don’t fund the costs of the externalities related to cars, such as the pollution created by cars, the medical costs of accidents, or the value of time lost in traffic.
All new vehicles include pollution-control equipment. Buyers therefore pay for the cost to develop said equipment and install it on the vehicle – unless the company choses to eat the cost and not pass it on to the customer.
In most metropolitan areas, drivers pay for an emissions – usually conducted on an annual basis – to make sure that the pollution-control equipment is functioning properly.
Medical costs related to car accidents are supposed to be covered by vehicle insurance. If people drive without insurance – in violation of state law in most places – that is certainly a problem, but it’s not the fault of a too-low fuel tax.
As for “the value of time lost (sitting) in traffic” – every reputable study I’ve seen says that mass transit is not any quicker in getting passengers to their destinations than a private vehicle. If anything, transit takes longer (that has been my experience when taking a trip by mass transit, and then taking it by car, which, of course, is anecdotal).
Fuel taxes do not cover these expenses, because we have other ways of paying for them.
M1EK: The US roadway system is most definitely subsidized by general funds – more typically at the state/local level, where major arterials and even limited access freeways are funded in large part by means other than the gasoline tax.
Mass transit systems cannot rely only on the fares paid by passengers. At the state level, they receive funds from the general funds, too.
At the federal level, since the 1980s, a portion of the Highway Trust Fund revenues have been used to fund transit systems. These funds are raised through levies on motor fuels (gasoline and diesel) and taxes on truck tires, sales of trucks and trailers, and heavy vehicle use.
The Mass Transit Account, created in 1983, receives a portion of the motor fuel taxes, usually 2.86 cents per gallon. At the federal level, mass transit systems definitely receive funds raised by taxes on drivers.
M1EK: To add insult to injury, urban drivers often subsidize suburban drivers with their gas taxes, too, since urban drivers are far less likely to drive any given mile on a road which actually got money from gas taxes.
To further add insult to injury, many rural residents who never set foot in a particular urban area often subsidize transit systems, through taxes paid into the general fund.
That is what happens here in Pennsylvania, where rural residents in, say, Tioga County, never set foot in Philadelphia, but help pay for the expenses of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA).
Stephan Wilkinson: Ever ridden a bus in Stockholm, or Amsterdam, or Frankfurt, or Madrid? They’re so interesting, clean and efficient that just jumping on the first one that comes along is a great way to see the city.
You’re approaching those systems as a tourist, which means that you are likely to be unfamiliar with local roads, you need to search for a place to park a vehicle (even if you have to pay for parking), and you most likely do not have to be anywhere at a particular time. You are not making the same analysis that a local resident would when choosing whether to drive or take mass transit.
As a tourist I prefer not to drive in an unfamiliar city (particularly, say San Francisco or New York City). But that doesn’t hold true for my hometown. I don’t view the local mass transit system as a “great way to see the city.” I want to get from Point A to Point B with the minimum of fuss and time. For some, mass transit works…for me in my hometown, it usually doesn’t.
Fuel taxes do not cover these expenses, because we have other ways of paying for them.
That’s the definition of an “externality.” The end user is not paying for the full cost of his actions; someone else is.
The argument is not that the cost isn’t being paid, but that the cost is borne by a different party. If I get cancer from emissions, then I am paying for the actions of everyone else. If I suffer injury or death from an injury, then I am personally bearing the cost of someone else’s mistake. And so on.
No system is self contained. Drivers like to believe that they are rugged individualists who carry their own weight, but they are the opposite — they rely on massive infrastructure that takes a lot of money from a lot of different sources to feed.
The sooner that we can all accept that transportation inherently produces no profit and always includes externalities, the sooner that we can make rational decisions about what to do about it. The idea that any transportation method is self supporting unto itself is absurd. Not every human activity is meant to generate a profit.
Pch101: That’s the definition of an “externality.” The end user is not paying for the full cost of his actions; someone else is.
But drivers – the end user – are still paying the costs to ameliorate or eliminate those problems, just not through fuel taxes. The original assertion, remember, was that fuel taxes, not drivers, aren’t covering these costs.
Pch101: No system is self contained. Drivers like to believe that they are rugged individualists who carry their own weight, but they are the opposite — they rely on massive infrastructure that takes a lot of money from a lot of different sources to feed.
The debate over “internal improvements” and who should bear the costs dates back to the earliest days of this country. In the 19th century, the debate centered on dirt roads, canals and interstate railroads; in the 20th century, it centered on paved local roads, interstate highways, airports and mass transit systems.
I certainly agree that any successful transportation system will require some sort of public assistance – in the form of initial start-up funds, or government-obtained easements and rights-of-way, or continuing subsidies.
What I disagree on are:
1. That the individual mobility provided by motor vehicles is somehow a bad thing.
2. That drivers are getting some sort of free ride while transit systems (and, thus, their users) are unfairly bearing all of the costs.
3. That Americans are a bunch of dummies for not living like Europeans or laying out their cities like European ones, which completely ignores the differences in available space and sense of scale that comes from living in a large country with relatively cheap land, wide open spaces and relatively low population density. (Not to mention that Europeans have only started thinking on a continent-wide basis for the last 50 years or so.)
4. That people are stupid or selfish for often preferring the privacy and convenience of the motor vehicle over the attributes offered by mass transit.
The original assertion, remember, was that fuel taxes, not drivers, aren’t covering these costs.
There are two separate but related points being made. Road taxes and user fees don’t cover the entire cost of the road network, and drivers don’t bear all of the external costs of driving in general.
Personally, I don’t expect them to. What invariably happens in these discussions, though, is that the anti-transit crowd gets high and mighty about the subsidies needed for transit, while forgetting that they are being subsidized, too.
A common argument against transit systems is that they are losers because the fares don’t cover the costs. But that’s the pot calling the kettle black.
There may be individual circumstances when a given piece of the transportation network may cover itself, such as a toll bridge or a very busy rail line, but generally speaking, all transportation generates a loss unto itself.
What I disagree on are:
1. That the individual mobility provided by motor vehicles is somehow a bad thing.
2. That drivers are getting some sort of free ride while transit systems (and, thus, their users) are unfairly bearing all of the costs.
3. That Americans are a bunch of dummies for not living like Europeans or laying out their cities like European ones, which completely ignores the differences in available space and sense of scale that comes from living in a large country with relatively cheap land, wide open spaces and relatively low population density.
4. That people are stupid or selfish for often preferring the privacy and convenience of the motor vehicle over the attributes offered by mass transit.
I don’t see many people making the first argument. They may argue that the cost of driving outweighs the benefits, but I don’t see anybody lobbying against mobility, per se. You can’t have a free enterprise system or democracy if people and goods can’t move around.
The second point is specific to the realm of debate. The adamant anti-transit drivers give themselves a free ride in terms of analyzing the costs of their own behavior, by applying a higher standard to transit systems than they do to themselves.
I don’t see us as being dumb, but we sure have done a number on ourselves by making ourselves so highly dependent upon oil-based transportation. I certainly understand the desire for low density and private transportation, but there seems to be a point at which these create diseconomies of scale, with more drawbacks than benefits.
We’ve handed the power of our destinies over to Middle East oil sheiks who don’t like us very much. That wasn’t a very good idea.
Getting back to user fees and Interstates/state highways – I have yet to see anyone here cite numbers on the amounts collected and the subsidy.
Here are some numbers for the MN Hiawatha light rail system. Operating expenses of $15M, revenue of $15750000, assuming 9 million trips per year at an average of $1.75 per trip. That average is based on peak and off-peak rates. So roughly break-even in operation. What about retiring the $300M cost to build? Assume a 30 year 3% state muni bond (best I could do with a mortgage calculator). The bond payments constitute another $15.2M per year. There’s a subsidy for you. And one that the anti-roadists would object to were it applied to highways.
I agree that local roads are subsidized from general revenue. But come on, what else do we want from cities and towns? Police and fire protection, schools, water/sewerage, garbage collection – you get that right, you get my vote for mayor. You pretty much need streets for all that.
Pch101: Personally, I don’t expect them to. What invariably happens in these discussions, though, is that the anti-transit crowd gets high and mighty about the subsidies needed for transit, while forgetting that they are being subsidized, too.
A common argument against transit systems is that they are losers because the fares don’t cover the costs. But that’s the pot calling the kettle black.
The problem with many transit systems isn’t lack of funds or insufficient subsidies, but poor management.
When the subsidies are used to cover the costs of new, up-to-date equipment, or clean stations – most people support that.
When the subsidies are used to support staff feather-bedding and very high salaries for ticket takers, then there’s a problem. Which is what happens in Pennsylvania with the Pittsburgh Port Authority and SEPTA, two systems that are perpetually crying out for more money, even though both have a steady stream of riders willing and able to pay for service.
The density is there; the demand is there; the good management too often isn’t.
I have no problem with subsidies for mass transit, but, after having studied the problems of some systems, I’m no more sympathetic to their cries for more money than I am to those who claim that GM needs our support (expressed through a purchase) despite the (repeated) incompetence of senior management.
And just as those who refuse to buy a GM vehicle are called “anti-American” or “someone who doesn’t care about American jobs,” those who question the management of mass transit systems or the need for more funds are labled as “anti-transit” or “selfish,”, etc.
Some of us ask these questions precisely because we DO care about transit.
Pch101: I don’t see many people making the first argument. They may argue that the cost of driving outweighs the benefits, but I don’t see anybody lobbying against mobility, per se. You can’t have a free enterprise system or democracy if people and goods can’t move around.
Not so much on this site, but I see plenty of people arguing that the personal mobility provided by the private motor vehicle is a bad thing. For many of us, driving is mobility.
Pch101: I certainly understand the desire for low density and private transportation, but there seems to be a point at which these create diseconomies of scale, with more drawbacks than benefits.
Judging by trends, $4-a-gallon for unleaded is already curbing the excesses…the SUV and pickup truck segments are nosediving. I just read on CNN that Americans have curbed the number of miles they are driving. Mass transit use is up in most cities. Meanwhile, the imploding housing bubble has stalled development.
This will work itself out…but people will still drive, there will still be enjoyable cars for sale (if anything, the collapse of the truck market will encourage manufacturers to put more effort into passenger cars) and the suburbs will still thrive.
And the anti-car crowd will go right on complaining…