“The reason most public transportation is seen as ‘losing’ money is precisely because it charges for trips. If you don't charge fares, suddenly it can't ‘lose’ money. It just costs money, the same as the roads.”
This random comment has given me my new favourite argument for removing fares from public transit.
If you want to see what a road looks like when it doesn’t lose money, look at the 407 in Toronto, which costs $0.50 per kilometre to drive along (about $0.58 USD per mile in freedom units)
(And that has a lot of mitigating factors even so)
@dx
to be fair, you have to pay taxes on your car and on gasoline, so it's not like cars are necessarily a net negative from an "income for state vs its spending on roads etc" point of view..
(I'm all for free public transit, I just think that this particular argument seems a bit.. simplicistic?)
@Doomed_Daniel @dx the gas tax was supposed to pay for roads, but they stopped increasing it and it no longer does ...
That's not including any externalities. That's just road surface upkeep.
@Doomed_Daniel @kilpatds @dx Not really, it’s true in many, perhaps even most, places that haven’t begun de-emphasising travel using personal vehicles.
Several governments around the world have been brought down after attempts to increase fuel excise to better match road maintenance expenditure.
🚲
Daniel Gibson
Douglas Kilpatrick
sen