Peter Jackson accuses me of ignorance for my position on mass transit subsidies, arguing that the subsidy to mass transit is higher than the subsidy to roads per passenger mile. But the numbers he provides are not quite relevant to my point.
For one thing, they cover only federal subsidy. Yes, I know you've heard so much about the highway bills, but the states spend money on highways too--quite a lot of money.
For another, unless the analysts controlled for it, which I can't tell, the subsidies will have been massively skewed by the great inflation of the 1960's and 1970's, because mass transit investments cluster late in the transportation bill cycles.
Thirdly, subsidy-per-passenger-mile-travelled is not necessarily the right metric to use. The whole point that environmentalists and urban planners make about roads is that they encourage people to move farther out, which means they spend more time on the road, which inflates this metric compared to people who live in closer, denser housing. That would be fine if they were only imposing costs on themselves, but of course, the decision to live farther away also imposes costs on others, in congestion and in pollution. If the proportions of state and federal transportation funds that were spent on highways and mass transit had been reversed, the relationship of subsidy to passenger mile might also be reversed.
If they are driving in the city, they also impose significant externalities on me, making it more difficult and dangerous to navigate the roads on my bike, without paying any compensating taxes for the use of the streets. The problem is especially acute in Washington because, unlike New York, most of the "businesses" people work for are nonprofits that don't pay taxes, and people rarely come into the city to shop or go to dinner. Guess whose income taxes pay for what isn't covered by the sales tax on your garage fees and lunch? That's why the streets in DC are so ghastly; they benefit mostly the people who don't pay for them.
But even if federal subsidy per passenger mile were the right metric, it wouldn't be appropriate to Washington DC. The federal subsidy for mass transit goes to a large number of systems that cover a very small percentage of their costs through fares. The WMATA, on the other hand, gets over half its revenue from fares, and drags most of its passengers from far-flung locations, and gets most of its operating budget from state and local governments (again, my taxes) so whatever that figure is nationally, for DC it is much, much smaller. I mean, I agree that Buffalo's subway system is a ridiculous boondoggle, but that doesn't really have much to do with the WMATA.
Finally, the most worrying "subsidy" is obviously the fact that cars dump a huge amount of carbon into the air; carbon which best estimates think is a) warming the planet and b) may possibly have other nasty effects such as changing the Ph of the oceans. Almost half of all of the United States' gigantic carbon emissions come from transportation uses, and most of those transportation uses are not long-haul trucking, which uses relatively carbon-efficient diesel. This negative externality indicates that car usage is radically mispriced.
Using the he/him test, shouldn't it be "Who subsidizes whom?"
Thirdly, subsidy-per-passenger-mile-travelled is not necessarily the right metric to use. The whole point that environmentalists and urban planners make about roads is that they encourage people to move farther out, which means they spend more time on the road, which inflates this metric compared to people who live in closer, denser housing.
This is a nice point, but it does leave me wondering how to quantify it. Subsidy per commute, maybe -- measuring the amount a subway-rider's five mile commute is subsidized compared to a driver's thirty mile commute? Hard to measure, but something along those lines might make for a good comparison.
First note: You sound like such an out-of-towner referring to "WMATA" all the time. Secondly, it confuses the issue to do so; WMATA operates both the Metro (Metrorail) and the buses (Metrobus). The latter are particularly underused and with ridiculously poor and wasteful routes in some locations.
The whole point that environmentalists and urban planners make about roads is that they encourage people to move farther out
Which is equally true of many commuter rail systems too, of course, though that doesn't necessarily apply to Metro-- but might to the VRE. If the amount spent on mass transit and roads were reversed, it might well be mass transit that would be encouraging people to live farther away.
You're assuming that reversing the amount of money spent on mass transit and roads would somehow lead to using the mass transit money to encourage more density. Not necessarily; it also would be spent on nice commuter rail systems that allow people to commute from farther away distances. The Sounder commuter rail system in King County, Washington, definitely allows people to live further out. So long as preferences about density aren't changed, it's unrealistic to assume that merely concentrating on mass transit would change things.
Almost half of all of the United States' gigantic carbon emissions come from transportation uses, and most of those transportation uses are not long-haul trucking, which uses relatively carbon-efficient diesel.
If you're talking overall transportation uses, you need to include freight trains as well, which carry a much higher percentage of cargo in the US than they do in Europe and are even more efficient. Trains in Europe are optimized for passengers, whereas in the US they are optimized for freight.
The WMATA... drags most of its passengers from far-flung locations, and gets most of its operating budget from state and local governments (again, my taxes)
If it's dragging people from "far-flung locations," then it's encouraging people to live farther out in low-density locations and using a lot of carbon to transport them across long distances.
How does getting most of its operating budget from state and local governments prove that it's not subsidized, considering that it's paid for out of general revenues and non-gas taxes by those locales?
cars dump a huge amount of carbon into the air
And so do mass transit systems, particularly ones that "drag people out from far-flung locations." Also, underused mass transit systems produce more carbon per passenger mile than cars.
Here are some statistics on rail usage by country.
Yes, the US has very little passenger rail usage, like Canada. However, both countries have freight train usage that massively exceeds that of any other country except for Russia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_the_United_States
Claims that 38% of freight in the US moves by rail, compared to 8% of freight in Europe, and includes external links and citations.
http://www.aar.org/AboutTheIndustry/AboutTheIndustry.asp
Claims that 40% of freight in the US moves by rail, more than any other single source, including trucks.
It's incorrect to mention trucks alone when mentioning freight shipments in the US.
Yes, John, but the point is the relative carbon efficiency. And when I say "far flung", I'm comparing it to, say Minneapolis or Buffalo's ridiculous light rail systems, not to New York. Obviously, commuter rail makes it possible for people to live farther away . . . but not at exurban densities.
Yes, I know you've heard so much about the highway bills, but the states spend money on highways too--quite a lot of money.
Yes, around 65% of Virginia Department of Transportation money is state money. However, it also largely comes from dedicated taxes:
http://www.virginiadot.org/projects/reports-budget.asp
http://www.virginiadot.org/projects/resources/VDOT_Budget.pdf
VDOT's FY 2008 revenues:
State Motor Fuels Tax: $843 million
Vehicle Sales and Use Tax: $561 million
Vehicle License Tax: $216 million
Retail Sales and Use Tax: $422 million
Special General Fund: $325 million (this is a supposedly "one-time" source of funding that Gov. Kaine pushed for this year out of general funds.)
Federal monies: $910 million
Other Sources: $737 million (including "International Registration Plan, revenue from the sell of bonds, tolls, and special tax districts where voters voted for temporary property tax surcharges to pay for improvements, such as along Route 28, some other sources.)
The special General Fund cash infusion for FY 2008 (but not before) can definitely be called a subsidy. The portion of the general Sales tax can as well. Arguably the special tax districts too. Still, a greater percentage of the revenues are coming directly from drivers and vehicle owners than the percentage of Metro money is coming from riders instead of general fund.
It's a very small correction, Megan, but the correct spelling of the measurement of acidity is "pH".
Obviously, commuter rail makes it possible for people to live farther away . . . but not at exurban densities.
Sorry, I must disagree with that. Surely you're familiar with park and rides? The VRE extends out to areas with exurban density, certainly. Commuter rail elsewhere in the US (Seattle/King Country) and in the world (suburbs in Japan that I've visited) allow exurban density.
Allow me to rephrase. Commuter rail, combined with massive highway building, may allow people to live at exurban density, though there I would doubt that the commuter rail actually has much to do with the growth of the exurb. But commuter rail in itself dictates smaller, more compact suburbs like those found closer to old cities.
And when I say "far flung", I'm comparing it to, say Minneapolis or Buffalo's ridiculous light rail systems, not to New York.
Don't worry, Minneapolis is just starting. One of the sticking points in funding the replacement for the 35W bridge that collapsed was making the new bridge light rail capable, even though there were no plans for light rail, and the next leg of the rail was crossing the river less than .5 miles downstream.
I'm not sure where that ended up, but the state legislature was whining about having to kick in extra (above the Federal $$) to make the new bridge rail ready.
Thirdly, subsidy-per-passenger-mile-travelled is not necessarily the right metric to use. The whole point that environmentalists and urban planners make about roads is that they encourage people to move farther out, which means they spend more time on the road, which inflates this metric compared to people who live in closer, denser housing.
You seem to be suggesting that it is only roads that would "encourage people to move farther out." But consider the case of Chicago: the growth of urbanized land area in the Chicago metropolitan area follows a radial pattern, with five fingers of urban development extending out from a concentrated area centered on the city. That radial pattern of development is largely a product of urban transit, and in particular of the commuter railroads, during the later nineteeneth and early twentieth. The construction of express highways in the middle of the twentieth century accentuated but did not largely alter this pattern, since they were built in corridors of urban development already established by urban transit.
If the proportions of state and federal transportation funds that were spent on highways and mass transit had been reversed, the relationship of subsidy to passenger mile might also be reversed.
Urban transit is a highly specialized form of transportation. It's really efficient at shuttling commuters into and out of the central business district according to a schedule during the morning and evening rush hours in areas of high population and employment density. But conversely, it's not efficient at providing service to people who are not commuting, or people who are not traveling into or towards the central business district, or people who are traveling in a direction opposite to that of the commuters, or people who are not traveling during rush hour, or people whose activities do not fit the schedule, or people who live in areas of low population or employment density.
In contrast, free roads and highways are an unspecialized means of travel. So long as one wants and can afford a car, one may go whenever and wherever one pleases for whatever purpose, so long as the roads go there. For these reasons, it seems to me that, all other things being equal, people are going to prefer driving over free roads and highways to using urban transit. That certainly seems to be the revealed preference of the American populace. I fail to see how the change in the proportion of transportation funding that you suggest would make urban transit less of a specialized mode of transportation or automobile travel less of an unspecialized mode of transportation, and therefore change the preferability of the one to the other. I should think that the current proportion of transportation funding is better explained as the response of our elected officials to the revealed preferences of the populace than as the means by which those preferences were created.
Just out of curiosity, what “compensating taxes” are bicyclists paying for using the roads that are largely paid for motorists?
Thorley, that's not how urban streets, which is where most bike commuting takes place, are paid for. I don't ride my bike on the highways or state roads, and neither does almost anyone else who wants to live. This is silly. In the areas in which most state road spending is done, almost no one except children living in gas-tax-paying households rides bikes.
In places as dense as DC, I still don't understand why PRT is always off the table. The technology is there, the cost is reasonable, and it's (door-to-door) faster, safer and more comfortable than either driving or light rail/subway. I think the major problem is that PRT is much more reliant on a dense network than light rail - you can't build it in stages and get the same effect.
Also, governments are much more risk-averse than the rest of us.
People forget that most of the discrepancy in freight train usage between the US and Europe is not due to more passenger trains. It is geography.
Europe is more amenable to maritime shipping, which carries a much larger percentage of goods than in the us. (If you're wondering why, look at a map)
Also, distances are shorter in Europe, which makes freight trains less competitive. The more extensive use of passenger trains only explains a small portion of the difference. It is perfectly feasible to combine freight and passenger traffic on the same line. High-speed rail, of course, would need it's own right-of-way.
I beleive you've made up your mind Megan. So I'd propose you figure out how to take a walkabout in the US, and find out how much of what you believe is actually true. AND how much is DO-able. You lived in Chicago, you would have at least passing understanding of what happened when Sears moved from the tower to Hoffman Estates, and all the people who had based everything around taking Metra downtown, suddenly had to drive.
So. you should live in St. Louis fo a while, maybe Albuquerque for a short spell. a week or two should do it. how about Phoenix?
I would submit that what happens in DC and New York isn't a good proxy for what is going on nationwide. In order to understand, you can't just think about it. You need to live it for a time.
Urban planning and changing subsidies would work great if you found an empty spot somewhere and said, "here we will plan a city, and build it."
Other wise talking about subsidies and planning, is like wishing for a pony. By the by before cars, THAT was how you shopped. That was why you only shopped once a month. It was an individual thing then too.
Also? I would like a citation on where diesel is less carbon than gasoline...
The previous posters mentioned rail-freight, which is good, but rail is slow and it doesn't get you to your destination. EVERYTHING travels on a truck at some point. How do you get it to the train, how do you get it from the train, how do you distribute it to neighborhood stores, etc.
So, what d'ya say? Want to do some field work?
But D, this was a post about DC area transit. What happens in Albuquerque isn't exactly relevant . . .
Peter Jackson's numbers ARE missing something: the total we DO pay for roads, not just how much is paid by the gas tax.
The whole point that environmentalists and urban planners make about roads is that they encourage people to move farther out, which means they spend more time on the road,
So they tell us. Yeah, your post is right IF that's true. But what my eye shows me has led me to be skeptical.
Yes, people live farther out, but they actually spend LESS time commuting (saving gas) because it's less congested than if everybody lived close in. And, houses are
40% less expensive to construct than apartments on a per capita basis.
Can anybody on this thread provide a link to solid evidence that suburbs use more resources per-capita (other than land) than high-density areas? I've read the assertion all over the place, but never seen it backed up. Is it just an assertion?
If they are driving in the city, they also impose significant externalities on me, making it more difficult and dangerous to navigate the roads on my bike,
That's true, but if the DC area constructed enough roads, you'd be alot less unhappy. Congestion pricing on roads has its problems, too: it hurts the poor, who can't afford to live near downtown.
And, today's politicians have a fetish for implementing tolling and congestion charging in a way that takes away your privacy.
Why do commenters here keeping ask for "facts" or "citations" or "evidence" from the host? That's not how the game is played here.
You might as well ask for the tooth fairy.
Transportation per se in not an industry or an application (livestock animals alone produce more CO2 than all cars, trucks and planes combined).
But I like Megans arguments regarding subsidies and land expansion and I think they apply even more to livestock agriculture.
nothing we do consumes more land than animal agriculture... this has major implications for all variables involved: transportation, deforestation, species loss, water shortages, etc.
And yet we hand $20 billion of tax money over to a handful of rich factory farmers every year to support this?
More transparency is needed everywhere if we want to get the best ROI on our climate initiatives?
If we had a roadmap for electric cars and green energies for example (like in California) - one could see why subsidizing street infrastructure and further suburban expansion can be practiced (houses and roads take up very little land compared to animal agriculture..)
Are you sure about that? I know that at least part of the federal gasoline tax paid by motorists goes to local roads and bridges (i.e. other than State and federal highways) as does part of the State gasoline tax (in DC it's about $0.20 per gallon IIRC) in a number of States plus many cities charge an additional gasoline tax to pay for local roads in urban areas.
"But D, this was a post about DC area transit. What happens in Albuquerque isn't exactly relevant . . . " - Megan
nice pirouette Megan... but you are still in the same place, really. You are jumping back and forth to DC as an example, while talking about the US as a whole. You discussed it that way in the forerunner thread of this one as well.
"Finally, the most worrying "subsidy" is obviously the fact that cars dump a huge amount of carbon into the air; carbon which best estimates think is a) warming the planet and b) may possibly have other nasty effects such as changing the Ph of the oceans. Almost half of all of the United States' gigantic carbon emissions come from transportation uses, and most of those transportation uses are not long-haul trucking, which uses relatively carbon-efficient diesel. This negative externality indicates that car usage is radically mispriced." -M
seems you are looking at the whole US after all...
It's fine that you don't want to take the argument different directions... You could at least be honest with me about it.
Actually now that I think about it – aren’t some bike paths being paid for with part of the federal gasoline excise tax paid for by motorists? In which case perhaps the proper term is not “negative externalities” produced by motorists but rather why are bicyclists acting as “free riders” yet bitching that they have to share roads with the people who are actually paying for them (or using bike paths paid for by motorists who aren’t able to drive on them).
with this: "It is perfectly feasible to combine freight and passenger traffic on the same line. High-speed rail, of course, would need it's own right-of-way."--berg points to the dreaded waste that is 'light rail'. It soaks up the 'right-of-way' and couldn't, realistically, move freight if we wanted it to.
Jon Kay queries: "Can anybody on this thread provide a link to solid evidence that suburbs use more resources per-capita (other than land) than high-density areas? I've read the assertion all over the place, but never seen it backed up. Is it just an assertion?"
Jon, ever think about water/sewer/electric?
ever wonder why broadband and cell coverage drops with population densities?
IOW, spool up a search engine and do some homework, you might be surprised how easy it is.
I dialed up 1-877-RENT-A-CLU, it came back with this:
http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=water+efficiency+suburbs+v.+cities
as a starter.
Well I if hurt your feelings by using the word "ignorant," then I'm sorry. Apparently I did, otherwise I imagine you would have linked my post. If it makes any difference, I was using the term in the friendly, Hayekian sense, and in no way meant to imply that you, as a person, are any more ignorant than any of us.
As far as passenger miles go, it is unit of measurement common to different modes of transportation and therefore provides a denominator by which the utility of different modes can be compared. I'm certainly not a transportation engineer, but it sounds perfectly reasonable to me, especially when you consider that any other common metric is probably going to demonstrate the same or similar results when comparing conveyances.
Still, however one chooses to slice it, it's hard to see how it's going to make up the order of magnitude of difference between the levels of government subsidy of private auto transportation and public transit, nor does it change the fact that there is no "massive subsidy provided to drivers in the form of free roads...obviously producing highly inefficient outcomes."
Development happens. The US population has gone up some two-thirds since 1960, and those people have to live somewhere. It's not really logical to think that they're all going to be able to live within the 1960s era city limits, so some level of expansion is inevitable.
If you want to find out what drives DC sprawl, I'd suggest you find out what it takes to build a house within the city limits. Find out what the setbacks are, what the permitable floor to area ratio is, what the height restrictions and impermeable cover restrictions are. Then check out what the permitting process entails, and what the costs and inspection fees are. I don't know about DC, but here in central Austin it's taken me a year and a half and $25K just to subdivide my property, much less actually break ground on the house I'm trying to build next door. THAT'S what drives sprawl: increase in demand plus the additional expense of developing within the city limits, the correlation between road expansion and suburban development notwithstanding. There's a correlation between the growth of suburban development and the number of Taco Bells too, but that doesn't mean that thinking outside the bun "induces" sprawl.
A couple of weeks ago my friend Lance posted some statistics from a Texas A&M study which shows that of the 85 cities studied, the ones with the smallest increase in road miles built relative to their increase in population growth also experienced the highest decreases in traffic mobility. This result is difficult to imagine based on the eco-planners' premise that fewer roads drives less development and therefore less traffic.
yours/
peter.
Mr. Jackson points to an interesting study.
hardlink here: http://tti.tamu.edu/
I'm not promising an increase in traffic mobility by refusing to build roads, which I agree is stupid. I'm promising that if you let me slap whacking great congestion charges on people driving at rush hour, and a huge carbon tax to boot, I can make traffic move more freely and significantly increase the passenger miles moved on mass transit, as well as it's cost-effectiveness. All while simultaneously significantly reducing the contribution of commuting Americans to global warming--not to mention the ancillary carbon-reduction benefits of encouraging denser housing, which is more energy efficient both to heat and to electrify.
I understand that people who are currently living in developments that force them to drive everywhere do not think this a good idea, but as a factual matter, I bet I'm correct. (Except, of course, there's no way to test it, so I don't expect anyone to take the bet.)
Everyone wants to smack a wopping big tax on someone else. That's the way it works. Today you are single, live in an urban setting and have no need of a car. Tomorrow you will be married with kids and have an SUV, you will support Republicians. Later you will need infinite health care dollars and support socialized medicine and more benefits for you.
No oneshould live or have theior needs met by the earnings of other people removed from the other people by brute force.
I'll take you up on that bet. Because I bet that my HOT lanes, liberated transit markets with private jitney, bus, van and streetcar companies, and liberalized multi-use zoning will work better than your big whumpin' tax(es). After I've been governor of the State of Texas and you've been governor of the Commonwealth of Columbia for a few years, we'll compare notes and the loser will owe the winner some carbon credits or beer or something.
yours/
peter.
Better at what? Reducing carbon output? No. Reducing congestion in an area already as built up as DC? Probably not.
Doug S., you can choose to believe that I'm a big fat hypocrite if it makes you feel better, but I grew up in a city, so I don't think it's impossible to raise kids there. Moreover, I've managed to maintain my moral beliefs such as they are, in the face of fairly severe personal inconvenience. I didn't start believing in national health care when I was broke, sick, and uninsured; and I don't expect to change my ideas about carbon emissions, absent further evidence, just because believing something false would make my life easier. The whole point of having a moral system is that you do it when it's hard. And that you don't start looking for excuses not to believe what you know is right.
Good comment.. I've heard the "but you're lucky, wealthy and cannot relate" argument too often.. it is usually hot air?
One thing that California is doing in order to promote low emission is "the fast lane". Only cars with more than 1 passengers are allowed unless you are driving a low-emission car - then you can enjoy a speedier commute even a single driver.
nothing is more important to wealthy Californians than time. unlike the rich - they have to commute during rush hours as well. The fats lane in the Bay area (unlike LA) can really cut your commute by half.
Even if you are not into environmentalism - this is a major incentive. nothing feels better than overtaking one Porsch and Hummer after another at moderate speeds in a small electric car?
Arnie's Hummer drives with bio-diesel (and he has a hybrid/electric version in the works?)..
Delucci has studied this issue for the country as a whole, and, big surprise to the Neanderthals, found a large net subsidy to drivers:
http://www.streetsblog.org/2007/09/20/delucchi-study-finds-that-us-motorists-do-not-pay-their-way/
Not really, I remember the Sierra Club trying to pass off the same type of “study” in the 1990’s where in order to get to the point where they claim we are providing a “subsidy to drivers,” they basically take every dollar the federal government spends in the Middle East and tries to attribute it all as a “subsidy” for American drivers.
The problem with that of course is that even if we didn’t get a drop of oil from the Middle East, we’d still have many of the same security concerns (e.g. a nuclear Iran, sponsorship of international terrorism, etc.) which lead to our involvement there. Considering how many other nations share the same concerns (including ones who also get oil from the Middle East) perhaps what we ought to be looking at is some way to have other countries pony up their fair share of the cost.
Mark E Hoffer wrote, oh-so-civilly:
I dialed up 1-877-RENT-A-CLU, it came back with this: http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=water+efficiency+suburbs+v.+cities as a starter.
In fact, I HAVE looked, and I found no more support for the overall statement that density is more efficient than you did. You're only talking about other parts of the picture. You would think that such a major assumption in city planning would have more numeric support. I mean, I can see how it might be true, but that doesn't mean it is, since it's more expensive/sqft to build tall.
Thorley,
Delucci's study does not include ANY of the indirect subsidies you are talking about. Strictly construction/maintenance and other DIRECT expenses.
Thorley, that's not how urban streets, which is where most bike commuting takes place, are paid for. I don't ride my bike on the highways or state roads, and neither does almost anyone else who wants to live.
Is it now? Did you read that VDOT budget that I posted? Did you notice that pages 13 and 24 explain how $340 million of the budget is "financial assistance to localities" to pay for city and county roads, including local streets, not just highways or state roads, and not even just arterial and collector roads? Granted, that's a little over 8% of a $4 billion VDOT budget, but I suspect it pays for a decent amount of urban streets.
In addition, particularly in suburban and rural areas, many state roads are two-lane roads where biking is not a problem at all, nor a risk of injury. See for example this VDOT project including bike lines on an expanded suburban state road:
http://www.virginiadot.org/projects/const-project.asp?ID=275
There are also state-supported state bike trails:
http://www.virginiadot.org/programs/bk-default.asp
You keep mixing valid points with less valid ones. It is true that the amount of money spent on roads is far greater than on mass transit, and that the disparity increases at the local level. However, I tend to view this as a strike against mass transit-- something genuinely popular and able to pay for itself could have its funds raised at a lower political unit. Most of the mass transit funds coming from the federal government imply that the costs don't outweigh the benefits to the locals, so someone else has to be made to pay for it. It's not all that different to why the "Bridge to Nowhere" wouldn't get built with local or state money alone.
The amount of money being spent is different from how much subsidy there is. As I demonstrated, most of the state money is also from direct charges placed on motorists. The "one-time" grant this year is a sad exception that I place a lot of blame at the feet of Gov. Kaine, who pushed for it very hard. (The VA Democrats have determined that a good way to win statewide elections is to push for road construction, because taxes for roads are popular with some swing voters that oppose taxes in general.)
However, merely because the costs are paid by drivers doesn't mean that they are the right costs to impose. Flat fees on drivers regardless of miles driven are clearly worse than gas taxes, and congestion charges should be used along with gas taxes as well. Flat fees will encourage misallocation, overuse, and pollution, even if the costs are still born by drivers in general. It's not a subsidy, but it is a poor pricing scheme.
It is perfectly feasible to combine freight and passenger traffic on the same line.
Feasible, yes. But in the US, the companies that own the lines are all freight lines, whereas passenger service is by a quasi-governmental corporation that uses those same tracks. It's unsurprising that the train companies prioritize freight service.
In the areas in which most state road spending is done, almost no one except children living in gas-tax-paying households rides bikes.
Well, in Virginia yes, "most" state road spending is done on highways and not in urban areas, especially because DC is not part of Virginia. But Virginia offers large payments to Arlington County, Fairfax, Falls Church, Vienna, and all other cities and urban areas to maintain their roads, a total of $340 million in payments to localities. In addition, VDOT directly constructs the secondary roads in most counties (Arlington is one exception because it's basically urban.) The question is not whether most state road spending is on highways, but what proportion of urban road spending is ultimately paid for by the state.
Well, let's look at Fairfax City's budget:
http://www.dpb.state.va.us/budget/04-06/TaxReform/Budget/FairfaxCity.pdf
See the sections on Transportation? "Fairfax Street Maintenance," "Fairfax Urban," and "Northern Virginia District Primary and Interstate Allocations" all have "(VDOT)" after their names. That's because they are entirely subsidized by state money. Also, note that a fair amount of local revenue in Virginia is from the state's "Car Tax," even with the partial reimbursement of that tax from the state.
Well, let's look at Arlington County:
http://www.arlingtonva.us/departments/ManagementAndFinance/budget/fy07adopted/FY07AdoptedBudgetMain.aspx
Once again we find that local roads and urban street maintenance is all paid for by VDOT, along with lots of construction costs (there may be some bonds, I need to check), but Metro gets a $15 million per year subsidy from the county after subtracting state and federal contributions to the county to pay for it. (http://www.arlingtonva.us/departments/ManagementAndFinance/budget/fy07adopted/6-27_Metro.pdf)
Indeed, prior to 1981 the construction and maintenance of all roadways in Fairfax County had been the exclusive responsibility of the Virginia Department of Transportation (see here), but since then local bonds are allowed as well in counties whose roads entirely constructed by VDOT. The voters may indeed now be subsidizing roads more by voting for roads in the form of bond referendums more than bike trails and mass transit.
Please, Megan, read the VDOT budget that I posted before you continue to make factually incorrect statements. I don't know how they pay for things in New York, but you don't know about Virginia. In many states streets are funded quite differently than in Virginia, I don't doubt.
From the Delucci study:
Like I said.
We have bike lanes here in Houston. I'm not sure why, though. Aside from the fact that they are apparently poorly designed, Houston is HOT. If you are trying to go to work, you will most likely arrive sweaty and hot and in need of a shower (if you have coworkers within smelling distance) around 8 months out of the year. And then there's the frequency of rain... tropical storm-type rain that will soak you through even if you have an umbrella and a parka. And then there's the fact that Houston is so spread out that just tossing in bike lanes is sort of pointless since everything is so far apart.
In the process of adding bike lanes, they reduced the number of lanes on several major streets, thus increasing traffic congestion. Given the fact that I almost never see anyone on the bike lanes, I'm sure they've increased the overall carbon footprint.
How can anyone who claims to be a liberal with a straight face argue for big huge carbon and fuel taxes to drive people into telecommuting and/or taking public transportation (funded and/or run by the government)? All these taxes might create a net reduction in carbon production in the US but at what cost? People will be living lifestyles they don't prefer and probably paying more to do so on top of that. And in the end, given China's increasing carbon production, there will be no real change to the any AGW effects.
The models that I've looked at require HUGE decreases in the production of greenhouse gasses to make a change to global warming. Fuel taxes and carbon taxes and rearranging our cities won't make HUGE decreases in the production of greenhouse gasses. We're talking about putting bandaids on a sucking chest wound (and not everyone even agrees that it's really a sucking chest wound, but if it IS, then putting bandaids on it won't make a difference).
I'm not a big fan of rail. In Houston, the experience has been dismal. Any lines that might actually do some good are shot down by activists who live along the route. So they go ahead and build lines in stupid places that they can build them in just so they can say they built some rail. Houston is not a good city for rail anyway since a lot of businesses are out in the burbs. We have a modest downtown but we have clusters of smaller buildings (10-15 stories) all over the city. To get all the commuters, you'd have to criss-cross the city with rail. Busses make much more sense as you can re-route them for special events or for different times of day or as traffic patterns change over time. All of our busses run on natural gas and are very clean. Meanwhile, our train line is leaking electricity into the medical center... stray currents in hospitals? Not so good...
EI
Megan, you are way off base on this subsidy question. You seem to think there are two distinct groups of Americans: those who pay to "subsidize" various modes of transportation, and a completely different bunch of people who utilize said transportation.
Nonsense. Americans do not "subsidize" roads, they pay for what they use. Almost everyone who commutes to work travels by automobile or bus. Virtually all the food Americans eat, the clothes they wear, and the iPods they gyrate to, are delivered to markets, restaurants, and homes by motor truck. Firetrucks and ambulances travel by road, not by rail. Whether through fuel taxes (mainly) or property and sales taxes (for local streets), or to a small extent from state and local income taxes, the people paying for roads are the very people using them.
People also pay directly-- not though taxes-- for the capital and operating costs of nearly all non-governmental vehicles on the road. (The main exception? "Hybrid cars," for which special taxes enable workers with families to subsidize the status displays of the rich.)
By contrast, mass transit in the USA is massively subsidized (80+% of capital expenses and 65+% of operating costs) by road users.
For a person as numerate as yourself I cannot understand why you keep repeating the out-and-out lie that roads are "subsidized" by people who don't use them.
I don't mind if you suggest more efficient ways of paying for roads. I'm all for tolls and so-forth (so long as the revenue gets spent on roads). For all I know transaction costs may be eating a large proportion of the indirect taxes by which we fund streets and such at the moment. I sure that's true if we count corruption as a "transaction cost." But the unassailable facts show that road users subsidize mass-transit riders, not the other way 'round.
Just think for a second! Automobile commuters pay for their cars and repairs and fuel. They pay stiff taxes on all of those, especially fuel (sum of State and Federal per-gallon taxes and State/local sales taxes). Some of those taxes, plus some other taxes (e.g., an extra 0.5% general sales tax in Los Angeles) are diverted to mass-transit capital and operating subsidies (for astonishingly inefficient mass-transit systems). Roads come out of what's left!
And for what it's worth, you seem to have no historical perspective on these questions. We don't have paved roads and automobiles because some highly-placed conspiracy decided to "subsidize" them at the expense of much nicer and more useful steam trains and electric streetcars. We have them because ordinary people found them very, very much more convenient. Sure, there were shenanigans like city governments holding down streetcar fares to a nickel until the private streetcar lines went bankrupt, but the subsequent fate of those streetcar lines under public ownership showed that ordinary people, affluent enough after WWII to buy cars, didn't want to trudge through the rain at both ends of slow, rattling streetcar rides any more.
I'm not making this stuff up. I'm not next to my books at the moment, but I can supply bibliographic and web references, to respectable (not polemical) sources (including gov't data) for all of this stuff.
Thorley,
The WOC #2 scenario estimates a 20 cents per gallon shortfall, nationwide. You are misunderstanding the passage in question. He did NOT say that there is no subsidy when only direct costs are considered, but rather, that the ADDITIONAL subsidy in WOC #3 is due to those indirect costs. Those indirect subsidies are larger than the direct subsidies.
John Thacker,
I have seen Virginia float sales tax referendi for major arterial roadway construction/maintenance. I find it difficult to believe you aren't simply cherry-picking.
A couple points:
I should preface this by saying I am one of the few people I know who uses public transit to get to work.
1.) If it is true that a.) city dwellers subsidize suburban/exurban living and b.) suburban/exurban areas are better for raising children, couldn't we consider the subsidy to actually be a prudent investment in the future? Yes, it's back-door and sneaky, but it doesn't seem completely unreasonable. The major problem is that the benficiaries are middle class and up children.
2.) If the subsidies are redistributed, it raises the question of how to spend it. And boondoggles like Buffalo do not raise confidence that it will be spent well.
3.) Compare the experience of driving to the experience of flying commercial airlines, and you might understand why people favor their cars.
Okay, it was late at night. I should have written this:
When American drivers buy fuel, tires, vehicles, etc. they pay taxes. Lots of taxes. Various levels of government spend some of that money on mass transit and the rest on roads (and so-forth).
When American mass-transit riders pay fares, they receive subsidies. Very large subsidies: e.g., $1 fare for a $3 ride (operating cost only, exclusive of capital costs!). None of that fare money ever goes to maintain public roads.
Look at this quote from a Los Angeles MTA bond prospectus (perfectly typical, I assure you):
Now tell me, can you name any significant mass-transit system in the USA which collects a tax on fares to subsidize roads for cars and trucks?
Of course not. There is none.
(In strict point of fact, American transit users have never subsidized roads. American road users have always paid for their roads. You may entertain arguments about whether long-haul railroads-- which had to buy their rights of way and pay property taxes on them-- were subjected to unfair competition from public highways, but urban mass transit is a different story.)
Road users pay for the roads and subsidize transit users. The reverse does not happen.
Let's go to the (USDOT) numbers:
Mass transit only makes sense for workers in a few unusually dense cities, and for people too poor to afford a car. It is terribly inefficient for most workers in the USA. That is why politicians force (road-using) taxpayers to subsidize transit-- otherwise it would not exist outside of NYC, Chicago, and a few other cities. In most cities mass transit is a welfare program.
"Now tell me, can you name any significant mass-transit system in the USA which collects a tax on fares to subsidize roads for cars and trucks?"
No, but property and sales taxes in almost every major metropolitan area pay for some of the direct (construction/maintenance) costs of major arterial roadways used disproportionately by cars. That's where the subsidies largely originate, and their total dwarfs the subsidies paid to mass transit.
Citation Man, please pay attention. The people who pay the property and sales taxes drive cars (and consume road- dependent goods and services).
For all intents and purposes, there are no other people. Only about 4% of American workers take transit, and many of those folk use cars for other travel (e.g., shopping).
Look, you can argue about the efficiency and transparency of paying for roads through general taxes[1], but not whether non-road-users are subsidizing roads.
(What do you think a subsidy is? Consider persons A who buys a good X at price P, and B who buys good Y at price Q. If A and B each pay the full price for their goods, neither subsidizes the other. Suppose we impose tax T on purchases of X. If A pays (P + T), and B pays (Q - T), then A subsidizes B.
In the USA, A pays (P + T) for roads, and B pays (Q - T) for transit. (Of course, A and B both pay general taxes for local streets, but, they both use them, so neither one subsidizes the other.)
If you bother to look at the numbers (US FHWA, 2005 Table HF-10), "Citation Man," you will find that around 65% of all road spending (the chart title says highways, but it includes all public streets, roads, etc.) comes from fuel and vehicle taxes.[2] Only about 26% is collected by local governments using non-road taxes. Only around 30% of all expenditures are for "locally administered roads," which matches the local government contribution fairly well. So we spend general taxes mainly on local streets, which, please note, we would pay for even if there were no private automobiles. It is quite proper to finance local streets by local/general taxation-- after all, people without cars get as much service from, e.g., firetrucks and paramedic ambulances as drivers do.[3]
Note that $21,285 million (~14%) of highway taxes are diverted to mass transit and other non-road uses.[4] If we quit diverting highway taxes to transit boondoggles and so-forth, we could cut local taxes spent on roads by more than half.
Or we could spend the money reducing congestion. If we did that, fewer people would find transit attractive, neatly reducing demand for transit at the same time we cut subsidies to it. Look, if transit cannot pay for itself through the farebox (mainly), then it deserves to die. Road users pay for their travel already. Why should they subsidize transit (and transit unions, and grafting politicians, etc.)?
[1] Improving efficiency and transparency through, e.g., congestion- related road tolls might be a good idea, but that has little to do with the phony claim that some beleaguered class of utterly immobile people is being forced to "subsidize" roads.
[2] 2005 numbers. 65.6% is what you get by dividing the total Highway User Fee (tax/toll) revenue actually used for roads ($90,343 million), by the total of all tax money devoted to roads ($137,668 million). Some more highway money comes from selling bonds, but those will be paid back by the same sort of tax money as we spend directly.
[3] Not to mention motor trucks delivering goods. Are you from New York, too? New York paved its streets in the horse-and-wagon era. Besides, if we don't use cars we'll need a lot of buses. Buses need paved streets, you'll note.
[4] The numbers in this table understate transit subsidies by omitting general-tax revenues spent on transit. Many states and localities use non-road taxes to fund transit (e.g., extra 0.5% general sales tax in Los Angeles).
I have seen Virginia float sales tax referendi for major arterial roadway construction/maintenance. I find it difficult to believe you aren't simply cherry-picking.
Citation Man:
I will simply say that I repeatedly noted in my earlier posts that Virginia has engaged in acts which are obviously subsidies using general funds, such as the "one time" massive subsidy last year. In addition, I am somewhat skeptical of the new Northern Virginia Special Tax District that was created last year because some of its taxes are not transportation related (the hotel, rental car, and selling a home taxes), and the others, like the car registration fee increase, don't have anything to do with miles driven. It saddens me that the new winning formula for Democratic Governors in Virginia is to run on more road subsidies, particularly road subsidies that break the link with actual miles driven, and that those plans are popular enough to get bipartisan approval in the state legislature.
However, I provided links to all the county, city, and state budgets that I mentioned. I agree that Virginia does not spend that much at the state level on transit; transit spending is largely federally and locally supported. However, Megan was wrong to suggest that cities pay for much of the road upkeep; not in Virginia, where VDOT pays for cities that manage their own roads, or directly manages others.
In addition, Citation Man, while I noted the substantial amount of VDOT money that comes from the general Sales and Use Tax in Virginia, at the same time a substantial amount of local general revenue comes from the statewide Car Tax (special yearly property tax on vehicles), even with some amount being refunded now. (Something I'd classify as more of a mistake if more of the monies went directly towards roads instead of the General Fund.)