Laura Langdon

@acdha @rsynnott @crashglasshouses @liferstate @mekkaokereke @bluejekyll And really, public transit should be free! Car drivers don’t pay the city every time they drive on city roads.

So why isn’t it free? Because then we couldn’t ticket poor people for not paying! And our systems are designed to keep most Black and brown folks poor, so… oops, there’s that racism again!

Aug 29, 2023 at 2:40pmWeb
Show threadTheneilcaveAug 29, 2023
@LauraLangdon car drivers do incur costs, just like bus operators would, so I don’t know that the comparison is apt. There’s fuel, insurance, wear and tear, etc. That said, I agree that if the transit is publicly owned the cost for passengers is really a use tax and those tend to be regressive. If my local municipality wanted to make public transit taxpayer funded I’d have no qualms with that.
Show threadLaura LangdonAug 29, 2023
@Theneilcace If the relative costs were to make sense, car drivers would need to pay the city for their use of the streets *in addition to* paying for insurance, fuel, etc. Car drivers (and I’m a car driver myself!) are heavily subsidized by state and local governments.
Show threadTheneilcaveAug 29, 2023
@LauraLangdon where I live there are taxes on gasoline that goes towards the road but I’m sure that varies from place to place. There has been a lot of hand wringing here about electric vehicles because “the owners don’t buy gas so they don’t contribute to road upkeep”.
Show threadLaura LangdonAug 29, 2023
@Theneilcace Aha, makes sense!
Show threaddragonfrogAug 29, 2023

@Theneilcace @LauraLangdon

Car drivers incur costs, yes, but the marginal costs that accrue to them with each km driven, are significantly smaller than the costs imposed on society - society significantly subsidizes driving.

The total cost of a transit trip (rider paid + taxpayer subsidized parts) is much smaller than just the tax subsidized part of the cost of driving.

Show threaddragonfrogAug 29, 2023

@Theneilcace @LauraLangdon

... to such an extent that if free transit doubled transit ridership, but only a smallish percentage of those added transit rides would have been drives (e.g. 1/2 of those transit rides would have been walks or bike rides, 1/4 would have been staying at home, and only 1/4 would have been drives) - that still would save taxpayer funds overall, because just the taxpayer subsidy to those relatively few foregone drives would cover all the extra transit rides.

Show threadTheneilcaveAug 29, 2023
@dragonfrog @LauraLangdon great point and I’m in agreement with the sentiment overall. I just was being a bit nitpicky over the analogy drawn as part of my joining the conversation.
Show threadLaura LangdonAug 29, 2023
@acdha @rsynnott @crashglasshouses @liferstate @mekkaokereke @bluejekyll For more analysis and examples of this, I highly recommend The Sum of US by Heather McGee! https://bookshop.org/search
Show threadjonathanpetersonAug 29, 2023
@LauraLangdon @acdha @rsynnott @crashglasshouses @liferstate @mekkaokereke @bluejekyll fire departments, police departments, libraries and public schools are considered infrastructure for urban civilization. Sidewalks should be (not in Atlanta), transit the same, as you say.
Show threadSimon LucyAug 29, 2023

@LauraLangdon @acdha @rsynnott @crashglasshouses @liferstate @mekkaokereke @bluejekyll

In a great many of the world's largest cities there are charges to cover congestion and emissions, in others cars are limited by registration to cut the number of cars on the road.