Once again for the people at the back. The purpose of public transport is to transport the public. Making money from doing so is a secondary purpose at best.
Noone talks about the profitability of the motorway network. So why do we do the same for public transport?
@quixoticgeek 'No-one talks about the profitability of the motorway network.'
We already have one privately owned motorway, the M6 Toll, and many tunnels and bridges that charge tolls. It's more likely this profit obsessed government will authorise more toll roads than make public transport free.
Toll roads & bridges become converted into taxpayer-funded infrastructure for the rich.
The rich get to travel on uncluttered & well-maintained roads, funded by the taxpayer, while the non-wealthy are crowded into toll-free infrastructure.
Tolls tax the taxpayer twice for the same thing.
Once through income or VAT taxes, & again for service fees to use already funded public infrastructure.
Tolls are a tax on workers. It hides the diversion of public ...
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... funds to the wealthy or the businesses of the wealthy. Like oil drilling subsidies. Or toll management companies.
It hides the fact that the wealthy are evading taxes.
Example:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/new-port-mann-bridge-toll-puts-pressure-on-pattullo-traffic-1.2488984
Toll revenue never reaches its targets as workers divert to using the "free" bridge.
Vehicles using the toll vs toll-free bridge are noticeably different.
Luxury makes & models on the toll bridge & no traffic jams
Toll-free bridges have 4 hour traffic jams of less expensive vehicles
In France, the Autoroute system was built by the government, and then gifted to the Vinci group when it turned out to be extremely profitable.
Vinci are the assholes that charged me 40e for a 30 minute parking at a public hospital to check someone out
Vinci sucks around 5 billion euros a year that should be government money, or a reduction of 10% on their margins
@quixoticgeek they do have a train connection......but it's literally like 13 hours..............yeah.........and politicians have been talking about TGV for decades but never materialises and folks that dont live in Porto/Lisbon really like their cars
i guess would be interesting to see how the petrol heads in Porto think about their Metropolitan line (overground tube), it's been 10y+ at least and it covers a big area/population and reaches other cities
in Italy it's the same - highways are owned by private companies.
I am not sure if they are always profitable though. We had cases like the bridge collapse in Genoa which apparently could/would have bankrupted one entity. Many highways defaulted in Spain in 2008, etc...
@quixoticgeek surely the money is made by having the people in the right place...
For example if you don't need so many seats then you could have bus routes that go to shopping districts that are more like airport busses with lots more space for baggage.
From the perspective of the wealthy, taxpayer infrastructure is for their use only.
When taxpayer dollars go to benefit taxpayers who aren't wealthy, it's resented & is data mined for grievance-building.
Then #KochNetwork uses those feelings of grievance to torpedo investments in public transit & high speed rail.
Keeping folks hooked on long commutes using their toxic planet-frying products.
They fund malign influence campaigns.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-public-transit.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/26/koch-activists-phoenix-ban-light-rail
@scavello public transport doesn't have to be like that. But that will require investment to fix.
Which city?
@scavello maple sauce city it is then. Sprawl and suburbia are the enemy of livable.
Is maple leaf city full of stroads ?
@quixoticgeek lol yea, but the city council has been installing a lot of bikes lanes which is an improvement for non car accessibility.
Full transparency though, I do drive (an EV) as it’s required for my work.
@quixoticgeek I have lived in places that do talk about the "profitability" if the motorways, and basically it becomes a pile of toll roads managed by private companies so the money doesn't even keep the infrastructure running.
So yeah, profitability and transit do not mix well in any model. (This is support for more public transit, to make sure I'm clear)
Public transport benefits the communities it serves far more than it costs in taxes. It's one of the valid reasons for tax - to provide a common good.
Yep! & at the very least, recognize that revenue sufficient and profitability are quite different. It is notable that vocabulary for making money and making so much money that it's profitable... are often conflated.
Ideally public transport "loses" money... but at the very least it should aim to not extract excess from the public.
Otherwise, it can hardly be called "public."
@quixoticgeek Here in Southeastern #Wisconsin, we are years into the "I-43 North-South Expansion" project where they are bulldozing homes to add more lanes while public pressure to remove I-794 (https://www.rethink794.com) is building. Back in 2002, #MKE removed the Park East Freeway (https://city.milwaukee.gov/DCD/Projects/ParkEastredevelopment/Park-East-History) and only good things came from that. I saw the DOT at the State Fair yesterday, lobbying for the i-94 expansion. I really hope that it fails.
What we spend subsidizing cars is obscene.
Rethinking I-794 presents a rare opportunity for Milwaukee to reverse its declining population through exciting new developments, address a plague of pedestrian deaths, and reconnect our city to its most prized natural wonder: Lake Michigan.
@quixoticgeek the Dutch implementing/extending "surge pricing" soon in daily peak hours.
As if they don't want people to use it!
How about increasing capacity, making all non-car commutes (cycling) more attractive? Government forcing companies to allow work-from-home as the norm where possible?
(It may seem strange to bitch about lack of cycling infra in NL, but we still treat cyclists as second rate citizens, cycle path maintenance does not compare remotely to roads. Yeah, as I cyclist I should weigh 40kkg so I would flatten those roots pushing up the asphalt, whaddayasay? That thin cycle path asphalt can't carry 40kkg? So a mover making dents in the cyclepath is also OK? Etc.)
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