Comment by dokein | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dokein | Hacker News Reader

A week ago, at the stop nearest me, the E train uptown was re-routed. The C train had an 18 minute wait (the next one after that -- 19 minutes). The station was somewhere north of 100 degrees F and packed. As the trains were one floor below the turnstiles, these issues were only visible AFTER swiping $3(A) to get into the station. The escalator was broken too, which is fine for me but bad for many others.

Meanwhile, I am already paying one of the highest state and local taxes in the nation. But I'm not complaining about the taxes -- rather, I'm complaining that these dollars don't go very far -- it cost 3.5 BILLION per mile of track(B) because of graft and poor city management.

For those in parts of Brooklyn, looks like the L train will take 15 months to fix. Would anyone take a $100 bet that it finishes on schedule (at 1:1 odds)?

The last time I was in a cab, the driver yelled at me for using an iPhone, accusing me of using Chinese children to assemble them. Somewhat confusingly, he also yelled at me for being Chinese and taking away jobs. I looked up how to report this and it involves showing up in person at a hearing during work hours.

Uber isn't perfect, but banning it doesn't magically fix the subway. Even if the ride takes just as long, at least it's quiet and air-conditioned, and I can read or nap. Rather, Uber's major fault seems to be not greasing the politicans' hands like the medallion industry is. The parent article references the book "The Power Broker" when citing traffic. Funny, because it sure seems that Tammany Hall is still around.

(A) The metro card fare is $2.75, but the machine prevents you from putting in exact change -- only $5 increments -- so anyone who visits town usually wastes some fare.

(B) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

>> Uber isn't perfect, but banning it doesn't magically fix the subway.

There's no doubt there are issues with public transit, but letting the rideshare services run rampant, while being effectively subsidized by the taxpayers roads, etc is no solution either.

>> U.S. ridership is surging, he said — up 37% last year, to 2.6 billion passengers, from 2016.

>> It found that, in U.S. cities, 49% to 61% of ride-hailing trips would have not been made at all — or by walking, biking, or public transit.

Given these two notes from the article, Thats alot of extra demand added to road infrastructure. A medallion system makes the ride-share services contribute their share for the increase in wear & tear on infrastructure. Its not perfect, but letting them run wild isnt working either.

> A medallion system makes the ride-share services contribute their share for the increase in wear & tear on infrastructure.

Medallion revenue doesn't go to infrastructure though; Gas Tax does though and is an existing way to tax on use. And to counter your point, it's rarely the rider oriented cars, suvs, and minivans that actually wear and tear the streets; it's more likely that they are subsidizing the roads for delivery trucks.

To clarify the last point, damage to roads increases exponentially as weight increases. A big-rig will do hundreds of times more damage to a road than a, say, Prius.

https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...

http://archive.gao.gov/f0302/109884.pdf

Ubers and Lyfts pay the $0.25 per gallon New York gas tax, plus sales tax on top of both state and federal gas taxes (tax on a tax), so they are paying for road infrastructure, just like everyone else.

It's important to note that public transit agencies don't pay gas tax, and a large portion of the federal highway fund is diverted to public transit agencies.

Gas tax does not go nearly enough of the way to paying for infrastructure. Most road maintenance is paid for by property and income taxes.

$0.25/gallon is peanuts. New York (State) consumed ~135 million barrels of gas last year. That's 1.35 billion dollars of gas taxes. (Less in reality, because some commercial uses are exempt from these taxes, or can deduct them as expenses.)

The NY DOT's maintenance budget, alone is ~$4.5 billion USD. Not to mention another $7 billion earmarked for new construction.

Increase the gas taxes to $2.5/gallon, and then I'll agree that road users, in aggregate, are paying their way, instead of freeriding.

> Gas tax does not go nearly enough of the way to paying for infrastructure. Most road maintenance is paid for by property and income taxes.

Ride hailing drivers pay income tax.

So do I, but my income doesn't come with direct traffic congestion and road wear externalities.

And of course none of your income is spent on any groceries or other goods that arrive by truck. Motor vehicles could disappear overnight without a single inconvenience to you.

I don't see anyone here arguing for banning motor vehicles. But they should pay more to use the road than the pennies they pay now. Groceries could get cheaper, since the trucks would not be stuck in traffic as much.

I already pay for that, through taxes - by subsidizing inefficient uses of public resources.

If some groceries (Which had to be trucked hundreds of miles to reach my table) became more expensive then other groceries (Which had to be trucked tens of miles to reach my table), I'd be able to discriminate between them, based on their cost, and, through my purchasing decisions, encourage more efficient use of public resources.

Yes, because trucks and personal vehicles are the same thing? The infrastructure requires for all our trucks is 1% we have, because of all the people driving.

Is NY DOT known for frugal and efficient use of funds?

(I don't know, so I'm asking. E.g. MTA is known for the opposite.)

It doesn't really matter. Someone has to pay, and right now, it's taxpayers at large, as opposed to drivers in particular. [1]

Its inefficiency would actually be a point in favor of shifting costs to direct users of infrastructure - it would incentivise a reduction in use (Of a service provided by an inefficient department.)

[1] Yes, I know, gas taxes are regressive. This issue is a bit more complicated then I let on - but if we were to take a purely market economics approach, I feel that my points stand well.

MTA has many onerous labor issues that the NYS and NYC DOT don't need to deal with.

They are reasonably efficient stewards of tax dollars. Most of their spending is at least partially federally funded, so they are subject to many layers of audit.

Can you point to a budget for the NY DoT? I cant seem to find anything. The DoT web site is devoid of budgets and the state's web site doesn't help either.

I may be grossly misunderstanding the budget, but this is what I looked at. [1]

> The FY 2018 Executive Budget recommends nearly $11.6 billion for the Department, an increase of $749.1 million over the FY 2017 budget. This year-to-year change primarily reflects new capital investments in transportation infrastructure.

> Preventive Maintenance - Capital Projects Funds - Other $4,428 (million)

[1] https://www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/archive/fy18archive/exec/agen...

I'm looking for the revenue side. I can't find that. How is the department funded?

Since the expenses of the department greatly exceed the revenue collected by the tax, arithmetic indicates that it has to be funded by some combination of the general state, and federal tax pools.

$0.25/gallon is roughly a penny a mile. Besides road maintenance, cars also get the right of way, add to the noise/air pollution, and add grave danger to pedestrians, all for a penny a mile.

Since the things you just said apply equally across all cars per mile driven, regardless of the reason those cars are being driven (taxis, private, whatever), wouldn't the solution be "increase the gas tax" rather than "ban uber?"

Yes, not ban, just charge more, regardless of what type of car.

Other than the fact that it feels cheap and you think drivers deserve to pay more is there any reason that you believe $0.01/mi is too little? I mean it's about $1500 over the life of every car. Does a single passenger vehicle really cause more than $1500 worth of externalities?

Yes, absolutely. Ten years is a long time. I would argue much more than $1500.

>Does a single passenger vehicle really cause more than $1500 worth of externalities?

Far, far more than $1,500 over the lifetime of a car. The cost of the externalities are more than the cost of gas itself.

https://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist-article/2005-09-0...

Where did you find that out? When you google uber gas tax new york. Your comment is the top result.

Heres what I did find, https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/politics/alb... a per-ride fee. but doenst have a .25/gallon fee

The $0.25/gallon is charged at the pump. Everyone pays it, not just Ubers and taxis.

Road funding should be raised by using gasoline, tolls, and/or mileage taxes. That would force uber to pay for their usage of roads. Many/most jurisdictions already do this.

Why stop there? Why not put tolls on the sidewalks and park benches and charge per usage?

We as a society have decided that it's best for all of us is we collectively eat the cost of letting people use certain resources as much as they want at low/no cost or at a cost not proportional to usage. Roads are one of these resources.

Increasing the cost of transportation basically increases the cost of physical distance. That's a needless drag on the economy in every way and at every level. It's better to just keep filling potholes and ignore the people who grumble about it than it is to enact any sort of pay-per-use system that actually results in the roads being approximately self sustaining. Transportation infrastructure is publicly funded/subsidized for a reason.

>> We as a society have decided that it's best for all of us is we collectively eat the cost of letting people use certain resources as much as they want at low/no cost or at a cost not proportional to usage. Roads are one of these resources.

But we decided this based on the idea that those that use the roads for profit will pay extra as they are making income off a public resource

Because cars are horrible, produce pollution, over a million deaths a year, a huge waster of resources, cars are 20x the size of a person, cause lots of damage, and a 100 other reasons.

> while being effectively subsidized by the taxpayers roads

Uber driver pays taxes including whatever is in the gasoline and vehicle insurance and whatnot.

The proper "get off my lawn" way to complain about non-payers of road taxes is to focus on cyclists.

And the proper way to argue with such a person is to write the fourth-power rule on a large sheet of paper, roll it up into a small, tight cone, and stab them in the eye with it.

Road wear is proportional to axle weight to the fourth power. Gas tax is proportional to total weight to the first power.

In collisions, the more massive vehicle sustains proportionally less damage. A large truck could completely pulverize an economy car while barely even denting its own grill. Clearly, collision liability insurance should be proportional to a vehicle's mass and its top speed, while own-vehicle insurance should be proportional to speed and inversely proportional to mass.

Uber is not a threat from a road maintenance perspective. It's a question of road capacity used per passenger trip distance. If you measure a road's capacity by vehicle throughput per unit time, a hailed ride can transport 0 to 5 passengers in one vehicle-plus-buffer 60m long. A bus is a longer vehicle, but it still needs a traffic buffer for safe stopping distance much longer than its own length. That bus can transport dozens of passengers with nearly the same road capacity utilization as the car.

What's needed to reduce congestion in car-heavy traffic is robovehicle-to-robovehicle communication, that can automatically negotiate multiple robocars into a train, to reduce the length of empty roadway needed ahead of each one for collision-free travel. The robocars have to agree to brake and accelerate at the same times, in the same amounts. Buses can already accomplish this easily, just by putting all the riders in the same box, and using one driver to control the speed of everyone in it. So the problem really is the ride-hailing driver. Their reflexes are too poor to drive at 60 mph with their front bumper touching the rear bumper of the car ahead.

>> And the proper way to argue with such a person is to write the fourth-power rule on a large sheet of paper, roll it up into a small, tight cone, and stab them in the eye with it.

What a nice reasonable start to a discussion.

>> Road wear is proportional to axle weight to the fourth power. Gas tax is proportional to total weight to the first power.

Great, I didnt argue for a gas tax. You are arguing about road capacity which my original point about 49%-61% more rides out there is in line with. and which is what the much-maligned medallion system aimed to work on (it has its own issues but thats due to not raising the limit with population/demand vs the idea being wrong).

When 'logfromblammo' says "such a person", he is referring to a person who complains that cyclists aren't paying their fair share of road taxes. He was not attacking you, although he may have been attacking 'kazinator', the author of the comment he responded to. Personally, I enjoyed both the creative phrasing that 'kazinator' chose and the imagery of the response from 'logfromblammo', and think both of them were having good fun with language while making reasonable points.

The damage a bicyclist does to a road by riding on it, in comparison to that caused by large trucks, storms, and freeze-thaw cycles, is effectively zero. The "fair share" of a bicyclist for roads maintenance is thus zero, as we stopped chopping pennies up into farthings a long time ago.

The fairest use tax for roads would be to charge passenger vehicles and road tractors annually, proportional to ("wet weight"/ 2 )^4, and separately charge the semi-trailers attached to the road tractors for each trip, proportional to ( loaded weight / 4 )^4 * trip distance.

Anyone suggesting that bicycles cause any kind of burden to the roads themselves, rather than just to urban traffic patterns and traffic congestion, need a memorable explanation of the fourth-power rule. Which they can read with their remaining eye.~

Who incidentally usually pay taxes because they also own cars.

> [...] letting the rideshare services run rampant, while being effectively subsidized by the taxpayers roads, etc is no solution either.

Given that any additional taxes will be passed on to ride share users, why should taxpayers subsidize private car ownership but not use of the roads by ride share users?

A blanket congestion tax feels more fair to me.

Congestion taxes seem like such a lazy cop out to me - instead of working towards improving infrastructure to support more people getting around the way they want or make car commuters naturally want to choose transit instead, just beat them with the tax stick until they go away? We can do better.

100% agree. In NYC the serious congestion pricing proposals that I'm aware of have a big part of the revenue going to subway/transit improvements.

>while being effectively subsidized by the taxpayers roads, etc

Every time someone wants to argue against anything involving a road, they pull out this "roads are subsidized" canard. The state actually recovers most of the costs through gas taxes, registration fees, insurance requirements, and tolls, all of which rideshare drivers (and therefore riders) pay for -- and don't forget the income tax. If someone's activities are costing the state money (which I doubt) the correct response is to tax them -- not ban what they're doing or introduce artificial limitations on supply.

I don't know about elsewhere, but in CA a lot of the road money comes from (or at least is supposed to come from) taxes on gasoline/diesel.

https://taxfoundation.org/state-road-funding-2017/

That means that Rideshare drivers are largely paying their fair share.

Your own link tells you exactly how it is elsewhere. Did you read it?

It also shows that 38% of CA's road funding comes from sources not tied to motor vehicle use (meaning sales taxes, income taxes, etc). The median US state (NH at 25 and ID at 26 derive only 48% of their road budget from road user fees. IMO, that means rideshare drivers are far from paying their fair share.

As the other comments have said, gas tax pays for the roads already so it's not unfair.

The biggest issue is that there is plenty of taxpayer money but it's not being used well at all, hence the strong demand for these other transport options. Ask why the local government cant manage some proper rail and bus lines instead.

> Meanwhile, I am already paying one of the highest state and local taxes in the nation. But I'm not complaining about the taxes -- rather, I'm complaining that these dollars don't go very far -- it cost 3.5 BILLION per mile of track(B) because of graft and poor city management.

Sounds like you should take that up with Gov. Cuomo, who's completely washed his hands off of overseeing the MTA, as he's supposed to do.

The good news is that he's up for re-election on Thursday.

Make sure to vote tomorrow then, whatever you believe politically doesn't matter outside of the fact that Cuomo is very much a child of that same sort of machine politics that has run New York for the last 200 if not more years.

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