objecting to mass transit subsidization

Great Debates
21

I absolutely do not believe that figure. Total costs for the entire trucking industry IN CANADA in 2000 were about $17 billion (Statistics Canada, Report on Trucking 2000, p. 27.) So what you’re saying here is that about one eighth of all costs incurred by the entire Canadian trucking industry are caused by delays in Toronto. Given that less than half of the nation’s trucking goes through Toronto, and a fairly large percentage of it doesn’t even spend a lot of time in Canada (one third of all Canadian trucking revenue is cross-border) on a regular basis, you’re saying that Toronto carriers and other carriers that pass through Toronto are incurring at least a quarter of their costs just from Toronto delays, which is just insane. Even if we throw in costs allocated to private carriers, the number defies explanation. If delays in Toronto actually cost carriers that much, they wouldn’t run trucks through it, because they’d never make money; the profit margin in private hauling is 5% at best.

Indeed, if we were to extrapolate delay costs from Toronto to other cities - Toronto traffic isn’t any worse than Montreal or Ottawa or Vancouver, relative to the size of those cities - you’d have to conservatively estimate that half of all costs, and maybe more, are due to traffic delays. That’s nuts; it absolutely does not match the real world of trucking, which I have to point out I’m very familiar with.

I have never heard carrier management suggest that delays in Toronto cost them such a significant amount of money.

22

I can’t say anything about trucking costs in Toronto, but from The Big Dig website:

That’s just on the one major highway in town. Currently, this highway is being replaced, at a cost of $15 billion, give or take, with a bigger, faster, better one, buried underground. That $15 billion, with a b, for 7.8 miles of highway.

The current highway carries 190,000 vehicles per day. I think that’s an average figure, with weekdays topping 200,000, but I’m not too sure. Let’s say it is. That would give us 69.35 million cars per year. Which would amount to a congestion cost of $7.21 per trip, if traffic was evenly distributed, which would be a best case scenario. In actuality, rush hour trips would easily top $10. And that’s not including construction and maintenance costs, plus other externalized costs of driving.

According to the Boston Phoenix, public transit subsidies range from $.86 (subway) to $2.73 (commuter rail) per rider. Of course, since the buses and trains run whether or not they are being used, additional users generally tend to lower the costs, the opposite of the effect on highways.

As a libertarian, I think the ideal situation would be for mass transit to be unsubsidized. However, I don’t think this is a good idea until the externalized costs of road and highway use are put on the users, rather than society as a whole. I mean, if we’re going to keep any subsidies around, I figure it might as well be the ones that help the poor, rather than the middle class.

23

What an ugly, pompous statement that was.

Ottto, you seem to be saying that you shouldn’t pay for mass transit because it does not benefit you in any way, shape or form. Would you prefer those thousands upon thousands of mass transit riders be on the highway with you every morning & evening during rush hour? Does an extra few tens of millions (nation wide) gas guzzlers - all representing an increase in the demand for foreign oil - seem like a good idea? What do you suppose might happen to petrol prices when faced with this boom in demand?

You don’t need to ride the bus to benefit from mass transit.

24

Well, let’s see here’s one…in the early 1990’s, in southern California, it has been estimated that half as many people died from particulate pollution (which automobiles are the chief source of) as died in traffic accidents. (McNeil, “Something New Under the Sun,” p. 73-74) While cars do meet higher and higher emission standards, if you apply that rough percentage to other bad air metropolitan areas, you easily run into thousands of deaths. Emissions from fewer vehicles (buses) would have a direct impact on death rates.

Though I guess it could be argued that this savings in lives doesn’t mean as much as one would think…since mostly the elderly are affected. Statistically they aren’t worth as much as a younger victim.

You are right, both cars and buses need to use roads. And, both do minimal damage to the pavement. It’s truck traffic that rips up the roads (and yes they should be taxed higher for it). However, fewer roads would be needed (and no new ones need be built) if there were fewer vehicles travelling on them. The time saved by the entire traffic system, from just a fractional percentage drop in the total number of drivers on the road, would more than balance out any expense involved in extensive repairs of existing roads (especially in cities) rather than building new roads (usually to suburbs).

Lastly, urban sprawl has eliminated farm land, wetlands, changed the eco-system of many areas, increased the massive mega-damage fires that roil through the west periodically and caused massive erosion by increasing the need for drastic flood control measures. The suburbs beckon and as more people move outward, more roads need to be built. It is a truism among traffic planners: “Build a road and vehicles will come…” Anything that makes a suburban lifestyle less appealing has various less than tangible benefits. This is the weakest argument for mass transit, but personally I get tired of having all the places where I hiked not even 10 years ago filling up with subdivisions.

Oh well, enough rambling. Have a great day…

25

Hey, at least you’re not in New York City, where they’ve been waiting 82 years now for the Second Avenue Subway, during which period any number of new highways, bridges, tunnels, and other roads have been built.

Because they pay for your road use. I suppose that one could argue that the average car user is likely to make more, and thus pay higher income taxes than the average mass transit user. But then, we’re stuck with the argument that rich people deserve better infrastructure than poor people, which seems rather harsh.

Well, as a matter of principle, I don’t see why that is necessarily so. Electricy production is vital to the nation, yet need not be seen to by the government, for example. And even if the carrying of stuff ought to be done on government provided infrastructure, I see no good reason that the carrying of people on the same infrastructure ought to be free, especially given the costs, as matt_mcl and I have brought up, of congestion, which is mostly caused by cars. In cities, the mass influx and exit of people every day will cost money, regardless of how it happens. Having a large chunk of it done via mass transit is cheaper than having it done entirely by automobile.

Really, you haven’t provided any compelling reason that your subsidy is more justified than my subsidy.

I think I have justified a public transit subsidy fairly well, in showing that the marginal savings from removing one car from the Central Artery in Boston during rush hour is most likely at least $10. When added to the savings from removing that car from the surface roads in the city, public transit subsidies look like a damn good investment.

26

“But we limit mass transit potential by focusing on the backbone of present ridership which is the poor.”

The poor as the focus of transit? Depends on what city and what system you’re talking about. Park and ride lots are transit agencies’ effort to attract people who could drive to their destination, and IMHO they are pretty damned successful. I can’t think of a city building new rail stations with park-and-ride lots, or adding park-and-ride lots at existing stations, where the lots didn’t fill up, to the point where it made the local news. And yes, that includes Western cities where critics were certain nobody would ride light rail, like Dallas, Denver, and Salt Lake City. Here in Chicago, Metra (commuter rail) carries nearly 300,000 people every weekday, most from the suburbs and nearly all owning automobiles. Try parking at some Metra stations after 8am!

In fact, I’ve heard (self-appointed) advocates for the poor complain that transit authorities were focusing too much of their efforts and investment on attracting and keeping voluntary riders and not spending enough on routes and services for the poor. Personally, I think they’re talking out of their hat – the debate is usually framed as a poor=bus vs. nonpoor=rail thing, but the poor ride the trains too and many nonpoor ride buses in the densest neighborhoods of cities like Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco. But it is true that a lot of transit authorities have focused – successfully IMHO where the mode is rail rather than buses – on luring drivers out of their cars and not solely on providing basic transit to those without a choice.

“You haven’t addressed how to solve the problems of the majority of city dwellers who don’t want to spend 5 hours in getting to and from work every working day, battling the elements, and quite often filthy environments including harrassment by strangers.”

This is a very broad brush with which to tar all public transit. Most people who ride transit to and from work do not have a 2.5 hour trip as you insist. Conversely, I know of many people who DRIVE 2.5 hours each way each day, versus a 1-hour train ride (that IS a viable option given where their residence and job are located) because they aren’t going to “lower themselves” to riding the train. :rolleyes: And nobody has been “harassed by strangers” in a parking garage?! :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

I own a car, a reasonably comfortable late-model sedan with good air conditioning and a good radio. Yet I park it every weekday at a train station and ride the train a half-hour (not 2.5 hours!) to a station 2 blocks from my office. Am I a masochist to trade my car for a ride in a “filthy environment” where I’m “harassed by strangers”? Hardly. I sit in a seat in a reasonably clean* train car, reading the paper and sipping coffee or soda for a half-hour, as opposed to a commute of EASILY over an hour on the expressway where I can’t read the paper and have to worry about spilling my drink. Some of my fellow passengers are sleeping or using their laptops (try doing either of those while driving!) or chatting with friends. Some are looking out the window or talking on the phone, without having to worry about keeping an eye on the road and a hand on the wheel.

I’ve ridden transit in all sorts of cities in the United States, and I’ve seen more clean and well-run systems than the dirty and frightening bogeymen you hold out as typical if not universal. Not only newer systems like BART or Washington Metro, but even the New York subway (the sine qua non of scary transit in many people’s minds), struck me as reasonably clean and well-run systems. 2002 is NOT NOT NOT the 1970s or early 80s when may cities WERE neglecting their transit systems and when many “never again!” people formed their low opinion of transit.
*People are people, and wherever people assemble, whether train station, office building lobby, ball park, or shopping mall, there’s going to be SOME garbage, in the form of newspapers, old coffee cups, etcetera. Poor people throw wrappers on the floor, middle-class people throw wrappers on the floor, and the rich have even been known to throw wrappers on the floor from time to time. :slight_smile: