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Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

But why?

When I commuted from Mountain View to the financial district, it was cheaper to drive by myself than to take public transit including the lifetime cost of my car. (not to mention being immensely more pleasant)

I simply do not get the economics of public transit losing so much money.

I get that I'm not paying myself a salary to drive the vehicle and that the roads I drive on are "free" and the railroad track isn't... but still one would expect the efficiency of rail and economies of scale to make up for this.

Instead BART costs hundreds of millions of dollars per year more than received fares.

I just don't understand.

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When you consider the total cost of ownership (initial car cost, maintenance, insurance, storage, etc.), the cost per km/mile is way higher than the fuel cost. Also there are many externalized costs that are not taken into account when considering the bare cost of driving a car, just to name a few the environmental impact, the related healthcare costs (pollution kills more people per year than COVID), parking space, road infrastructure, car accidents, ... Some of these grow non linearly when reducing/eliminating public transport.

(edited to add TCO considerations)

I don't think public transits lend themselves to such "unit-economics" level individual centric analysis. There are many indirect second/third order benefits which I conjecture outweigh the primary benefit of transporting people from A to B. To name a few

1. They attract a section of population to the region who prefer public transit which in turn leads to more business.

2. A string of businesses spring up in/around intermediate stations. Then you have service businesses that support those; like restaurant etc.,

3. It creates employment for thousands.

4. Cost savings w.r.t. parking space, reduced accidents etc.,

5. It makes car ownership that much less of a requirement for jobs in the city.

This is what I noticed in Amsterdam, Netherlands where car commute is considered almost as a last resort. Obviously there are other things that need to fall in place to make public transit work but I believe it on its own is quite beneficial.

From the view point of an individual I don't doubt that economically car commute is perhaps cheaper than mass-transit, but I don't think think that's the goal of a public transit. The benefit to the society is at an aggregate direct and indirect.

As you already mentioned: roads and gas is heavily subsidized. Politicians focus on building roads rather than public transport systems. The true costs of road infrastructure including parking, bridges, land use, public space usage, health system costs, economic losses due to wasting time while driving and more is just something no one dares to discuss. Once u start looking at all costs car traffic truly is responsible for, you'd have to immediately switch to another system such as... public transport.

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