As an example San Francisco spends about $1 billion of its $9 billion city budget funding Muni - more than 10% of the entire city budget.
Is the government subsidizing something run by the government really "subsidization?" It may be federal vs state/city, sure, but I don't see this as being a problem, especially since public transportation is beneficial in so many ways (costs people less money than car ownership, less harmful on the environment, less harmful to health, etc.). I do, however, see it as a problem when the federal government subsidizes private transportation, which is objectively harmful to cities (and most things in general, really).
> rider's fares typically pay for less than half the cost of running the bus/subway/light rail system
Let's not forget that drivers also only pay for half of the cost of roads[1]. If we're only going to pay for a portion of something, I think it should be public transportation. In my mind, the whole point of the government is to provide us with services. Providing us with transit makes sense. Providing us with spaces that we can only use if we pay a bunch of money to private corporations (car manufacturer + oil companies mainly) to buy large, dangerous, private, pollution-creating machines? I'm opposed to that.
[1] http://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/01/23/drivers-cover-just-51-...
Yes. Having the government do anything with public money is subsidization.
But it often makes sense to do things like that, especially in areas where there is a large up front cost to build something and thereafter the cost per use is negligible.
It makes sense for the government to build subways in cities and then charge zero dollars to riders, because everyone benefits from their existence (even non-riders, like stores whose customers arrive on the subway) and once the construction cost is paid it makes no sense to discourage use of the sunk-cost infrastructure by charging fares. And fare collection is inefficient because a nontrivial proportion of the fares are spent collecting them.
But it also makes sense to do the same thing for roads for the same reasons.
The real question is where and when to subsidize each. It makes no sense to build subways in rural Kansas that no one would ride, or new roads in Manhattan.
When you see traffic congestion, the question is how to most effectively eliminate it. Sometimes that means improving mass transit so less people have to drive. Sometimes it's more cost effective to just add a lane to the road.
Sometimes the underlying problem is that real estate prices are too high causing people to have to commute too far and the only real answer is to build new housing.
I can agree with this to some extent, but the question is, "how can we do this without encouraging unnecessary sprawl?" I can understand the want for space, seclusion, etc., but at what cost? How do we build roads in rural areas that don't kill the environment while also not creating a ginormous network of roads throughout our entire country which allow tons of people to own cars and rely solely on them for all travel? I am not necessarily opposed to people living in rural areas, particularly because some of it is necessary (e.g. for farming), but for the most part, I think we'd be better off if most people lived in higher density areas. Not Manhattan-dense, but would it kill people to live somewhere with a population density of 10k/sqmi? I grew up in a town with 15k/sqmi and lived in a big house with a big backyard (and even a driveway!). We had good public transit.
> Sometimes it's more cost effective to just add a lane to the road.
I replied to this in another comment of yours, but this actually doesn't work.
>Sometimes the underlying problem is that real estate prices are too high causing people to have to commute too far and the only real answer is to build new housing.
A large part of the reason that real estate prices are high is because of cars. I live in Downtown LA, and within a 2-block radius of me, there are probably at least ten parking lots that could easily fit large apartment buildings with ground retail. To add insult to injury, they're all single-level lots, rather than multi-level structures. When you take into account the minimum parking requirements that are imposed on developers, the amount of space that freeways take up, how wide the roads are, and all the free parking on the streets, it's no wonder that housing costs a lot! In essence, the same thing that allows people to commute long distances in cars is what makes it necessary to do so.
Nobody is actually proposing to build a bunch of new highways in rural areas. The real problem is congestion in cities.
> I replied to this in another comment of yours, but this actually doesn't work.
It does work, it just doesn't work linearly. You can add a lane and discover that there was already a lane's worth of unsatisfied demand. And maybe there were even two. But there most certainly were not 1,000,000 lanes worth of unsatisfied demand, and in most places there probably weren't even two.
> A large part of the reason that real estate prices are high is because of cars.
A two bedroom apartment is at least five times the size of a parking space, so the area allocated to parking is less than 20%. That is not the main source of the cost.
Of course, minimum parking requirements are still ridiculous, because if landlords can attract tenants to a less expensive building without parking, why stop them?
And is is requirements like that which combine with each other to cause high housing costs.
If it's cheaper too, that'd be great.
Roads that go through rural areas don't pay for themselves because they have little traffic. But those are also not the areas where anybody is talking about adding lanes to the roads. And in the areas with actual congestion, tax on the gas burned driving on those roads more than pays for them.
Also, for the record, adding lanes doesn't reduce traffic congestion[1]. Not sure if you were saying that. Even if we did "profit" from building more lanes/roads, it's only because we're externalizing other costs (environmental damage, the cost of space/real estate, etc.). I don't think this is a good strategy.
[1] https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand
The majority of road maintenance costs are caused by the elements rather than cars.
> Also, for the record, adding lanes doesn't reduce traffic congestion
They found that if you add road capacity, people use it. But nobody (except China) spends the money to add road capacity unless they expect it to be used. They just hand wave that away.
It's obviously true that if you add roads people will drive more, but the idea that it's physically impossible to build enough road capacity is ridiculous. As if you could build a twelve lane superhighway at the South Pole and cars would appear out of nowhere to fill it with traffic congestion.
Also, a major reason costs of construction and maintenance on public transportation are so high is that they have to do it in a way that minimizes the disruption to car traffic. Yes roads are cheaper to build than subways, but if they could shut down a whole street and build light rail at surface grade it would be a lot cheaper (which is why streetcars and cablecars were ubiquitous a century ago). Or if they could shut down 4th street for a year, the Central Subway would be done already.
Transit systems do not impose such high externalized costs per commuter moved, but no doubt they are less convenient for individuals.
It depends; in New York, it would be incredibly inconvenient for me to own a car to go from our apartment in upper manhattan to my job in midtown.
people like you have gotten use to enjoying all the tax and revenues from people who do not think like you, like use a car, but become unaware its subsidizing your amenities (such as mass transit).
Cities quite rationally want people to walk and use transit more, because those modes fit the fabric of a city better. Of course you'll still need car trips for some things, but a blanket subsidy like this for something you want less of is nonsense.
"True, there’s also a tax benefit for mass-transit commuters that costs the government about $1.3 billion a year. TransitCenter says that while it’s good as far as it goes, “it is overshadowed by the parking tax benefit’s much larger adverse impact.”"
To be clear I'm not arguing for or against parking or public transportation. But I do think we should be forming policies with more data and less opinion.
What mgreg refers to is the direct money that is used to fund/subsidize the cost of operating bus/train networks in urban areas. The cost of those tickets are less than they would be without the subsidies.
These are two totally separate things.
as drivers pay for none of the cost of maintaining the roads.