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Comment by simonklitj | Hacker News Reader

Don’t you suppose public transportation costs would skyrocket with 10x the gas prices? Imagine 15 euros for a liter. Holy yikes. Of course, electric vehicles would be a part of a cheaper solution.

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If the price of gas increases are largely due to taxes which is sometimes the case it could be easy to simply offer rebates to public transit companies, just like you can buy diesel for farm equipment or heating without paying the road taxes.

Public transportation around me is one of the earliest adopters of EVs.

Aren't gas prices relatively negligible compared to driver salaries and other vehicle costs?

Sure, maybe. But even with no taxes on gas, (in WA state), they pay 3.29$ per gallon or so. With buses doing 3 mpg (https://afdc.energy.gov/conserve/mass_transit.html), that's still a dollar a mile. According to Indeed, driver salary here is about 20$/hr. Not sure how many miles a transit bus does an hour, byt maybe somewhere in the 20-30 range? Honestly, no clue. So that equates maybe to the same as the driver's salary, right now.

Assuming gas prices were 10x (32.9$/gal), they'd be paying 200$ an hour just for gas.

Alright, this has gotten ridiculous. Anyway, higher gas prices would just drive alternative adoption, and that's good. I was just selfishly thinking of me having to drive my car with those prices ;)

public utilities don't usually pay taxes on gas

Which, in Washington state, saves them 0.5$ a gallon. Still 3.29 or something, then. I think busses get 3 miles to the gallon. That's like a dollar per mile, still.

And that’s is the US with absurdly low gas taxes. In Europe, taxes represent more than half the price of gas

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