Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

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> It’s amazing how much energy goes into making excuses for why a city can’t get better.

At the end of the day there's one reason why most cities in the US won't have decent transit any time soon - that the people who would build the transit do so on the grounds that it is Virtuous and Glorious and Green. Beyond that, they make projections that everyone will ride it and that it'll reinvigorate the economy and reduce traffic. (And if you're against it that's probably because you're an evil Republican which means you probably voted for Trump which means you're probably a Nazi, but I digress.)

And then, instead, you get something that goes from nowhere to nowhere, and covers maybe 25% of its operating costs off ticket revenue... before the cost of capital expenditures.

And if you think this is exaggeration (including the Trump bits) try reading several articles about the Virginia Beach TIDE light rail project ... which, to sum it up in one number, gets roughly a $8000/rider/year subsidy from the city.

But the unionized public transport employees will vote for you and campaign for you and your causes forever.

The problem, like the author points out, is that you can build all the rail you want -- but you need to make sure that it goes to places dense enough to support it. When cities fail to do this, you get that ridiculousness.

BART's fare box recovery ratio is 75% and I believe that includes capex.

Almost every highway and road and most parking spaces have a revenue recovery ratio of 0%

I see your BART, and raise you Santa Clara VTA Rail.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2012/12/26/25-years-later-vta-lig...

> Almost every highway and road and most parking spaces have a revenue recovery ratio of 0%

Theoretically, that's what the fuel tax is for. At the federal level, the highway trust fund raised $35 billion in fuel tax and spend $39 billion on highways (and $8b on transit - the deficit here being covered by the general fund). If we wanted to be generous we'd say that's an 89% recovery ratio, which probably is totally unfair and ignores some important capex somewhere (recent "stimulus" spending, for example) but is substantially more than zero.

(State and municipal numbers are quite variable, I'm sure.)

  I see your BART, and
  raise you Santa Clara
  VTA Rail.

Right. Instead of joining BART, Santa Clara put that money into car centric expressways and the VTA system and then people use their poor transit planning to indict public transit systems that work.

  Theoretically, that's
  what the fuel tax is
  for.

Okay, I think we could say that. Except let's also take into account the following:

* That's federal spending on interstates only. State and local recovery ratios are lower. The road in front of your driveway is often the worst, it is an amazing outlay of public service to serve relatively few people.

* If you include fuel taxes as part of the recovery ratio for car infrastructure, you should include dedicated sales taxes and other funds as part of the recovery ratio for public transit infrastructure. (Remember, public infrastructure makes things better for car users too. Building an extra parking space helps one car, building a train helps everyone who rides that train and all the car users who no longer have to fight with those people for space on the road or for parking spaces.)

> Right. Instead of joining BART, Santa Clara put that money into car centric expressways and the VTA system and then people use their poor transit planning to indict public transit systems that work.

This is almost in line with my initial premise, that politicians putting together public transportation systems are the reason we can't have nice public transportation systems here in the US.

There is one reasonably good public transportation system (the NYC subway - much of it being privately built ages ago in a different sort of era) and several sorta-quasi-nice public transportation systems in the US. BART is one of the latter. We don't even make them like that anymore, though.

> * If you include fuel taxes as part of the recovery ratio for car infrastructure, you should include dedicated sales taxes and other funds as part of the recovery ratio for public transit infrastructure.

No way. Most gasoline and diesel that is sold is sold for the purpose of driving a vehicle on a public road, and it is roughly proportional to the use of that road. It could be closer to a fee-for-use provision if one added a separate tax on square-of-vehicle-axle-weight times distance - the real thing that wears down highways - but it is a lot more practical to enforce with a fuel tax and without computerized surveillance on all automobiles.

A sales tax on all transactions is completely different and drains unrelated economic activity to maintain and operate transport: the most common use of public transportation by volume is to commute to work, an activity that's pretty poorly connected with shopping at the store.

A dedicated fund covering a portion of taxpayer expenses does nothing to improve it, either (the money is fungible).

According to Wikipedia, it has ~5k riders per day, which is approx 2m per year.

Are you saying this 8mile light rail requires opex of $16bn, more than the entire NY subway system?

No, you're just counting every rider 400 times in an exercise where you are deliberately dense.

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