Laura LangdonAug 29, 2023

@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!

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 threaddragonfrog

@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.

Aug 29, 2023 at 4:09pmWeb
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.