Mail (physical means of communicating in writing and print) and email (connecting two people with digital signal) are similar but not a great comparison when comparing consumption of natural gas. Technology literally created additional markets for the same material, by modifying it so it could be transported more efficiently over long distances. I think you could say the new methods of natural gas production and storage are more efficient just as easily as saying the old methods were simply inefficient (it would have been possible to pipeline gas from AU to markets across the ocean, but it didn’t make economic sense because it would have been terribly costly and thus an inefficient use of resources)
> Mail (physical means of communicating in writing and print) and email (connecting two people with digital signal) are similar but not a great comparison when comparing consumption of natural gas.
What?
You are missing the point. We're talking about "markets" not the specific "tech/substitutes." It could be any technology disruption. Such disruption doesn't mean the prior status quo IN THE MARKET was inefficient. The tech shock just resets equilibrium.
Further, your explanation is circular, and I propose it has to do with muddling terminology and concepts.
Here's one inconsistency. Either the markets didn't exist (You said they need to be "created."), or they did exist, but a pipeline connecting them was too expensive.
> Technology literally created additional markets
> it would have been possible to pipeline gas from AU to markets across the ocean, but it didn’t make economic sense
I’m a fan of charging market efficient rates for shared goods. The congestion situation in the Holland Tunnel is awful and bleeds out into various streets of Manhattan as well. The cost of sitting in crawling traffic with aggressive drivers cutting around is probably much more than an extra $20.
For sure, let's charge methods of transportation based on negative externalities such as how much space they take, safety, and noise/particulate pollution.
I'm all for it! It would suck for transit, though:
1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs.
2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions.
3. Buses in particular result in excessive road wear&tear.
It's really amazing that people say things like "car owners should not get subsidized" (by whom?), while talking about transit that is literally infeasible without massive subsidies.
> 1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs.
This is too misleading to be unintentional. I don't know if you're comparing buses to small/medium EVs 1:1, but even if you aren't, the environmental footprint of replacing all bus services with EVs would be extraordinary.
> 2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions.
Transit doesn't force people into housing. It creates new housing options that previously were not tenable. Rivers don't create port congestion, rivers create ports. Not having enough ports, or enough rivers, creates port congestion.
> 3. Buses in particular result in excessive road wear&tear.
In proportion to human-miles, or is this a 1:1 comparison?
It's not misleading. On average, buses in the US carry around 15 people. A car carries around 1.5, so the raw multiplier is just 10.
But wait, there's more!
ALL buses have an incredibly polluting component that is fundamental to their functionality: the driver. You need around 3 drivers to cover the useful service time (from 5am to midnight). And drivers are POLLUTING AS HELL.
> I don't know if you're comparing buses to small/medium EVs 1:1
> It creates new housing options that previously were not tenable.
No. It _destroys_ affordable housing to pack people into smaller and smaller footprints. Tokyo is a _great_ example of that.
> In proportion to human-miles, or is this a 1:1 comparison?
In proportion to passenger-miles. Road wear scales approximately as the 4-th power of the axle weight, and under-loaded buses still have to haul around their massive bulks even if there's just one passenger inside.
Honestly, it's amazing how bad public transit turns out to be when you actually start looking at its negative sides.
Let's be honest, it's far from factual that dense housing is problematic in any way. It's just your opinion, and you're mad about it because you stand to lose the most in a world where you have to pay cash for your externalities. The sewer and water system to your house is subsidized. Snow removal from your cul-de-sac is subsidized. Most people couldn't afford the suburbs if someone else wasn't paying for those things (usually future generations).
Many people enjoy living in a dense environment, as evidenced by how much they'll pay to do so. It's objectively better for the Earth, and pretty enjoyable for the people that choose that path.
> Let's be honest, it's far from factual that dense housing is problematic in any way
Densificatoin causes enshittification spiral. Each successive generation lives in worse conditions. This is an inherent property of densification.
> The sewer and water system to your house is subsidized.
It isn't. I'm paying for it from my taxes (that's why in Seattle my water is more costly than in the middle of a freaking desert).
> Snow removal from your cul-de-sac is subsidized.
It isn't. I'm responsible for keeping it clean, and I was once fined when I failed to do that.
> Many people enjoy living in a dense environment
The vast majority of people want to live in single family houses (90% or so - https://www.redfin.com/news/millennial-homebuyers-prefer-sin... ). They simply can't afford that. And of course, the psychological defense mechanism is: "I never wanted it anyway".
> Densificatoin causes enshittification spiral. Each successive generation lives in worse conditions. This is an inherent property of densification.
Could you uh, explain this a bit more? This doesn't seem to correspond with the desirability of dense cities atm. All of the most desirable places to live seem to either be dense or easily commutable to somewhere dense.
Dense cities create a self-reinforcing vicious cycle. It's more efficient for employers to create office-style jobs in the Downtown, because they can more easily attract talent.
In turn, people want to live close enough to their jobs. So this drives up the price of housing in and around the Downtown. In turn, this incentivizes developers to build new buildings as high as economical, and to make units as small as feasible.
Thus the new construction in Downtowns tends to be smaller than the existing one ( https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/seattle-sma... ). This drives up the price of existing larger apartments even more, making them unavailable for younger people. So if you don't work in tech, you'll have to make do with a small apartment.
But no worries, by the next generation your small apartment will look positively spacious!
For the record, there are lots of people who love living in extremely dense urban situations. There are benefits to being exposed to so many different people living different lives, it's one of the things that cuts down on the bias of icky being exposed to an extremely homogenous group with homogenous opinions.
Obviously urban centers can be improved on, and many people living in them wish they had more personal space. But there are advantages too.
It's very misleading because you're starting from the supposition of EVs rather than the actual mix of personal cars. If you choose EVs for the cars, why not choose ZEV buses that are starting to enter the market as well?
> And drivers are POLLUTING AS HELL.
What? I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say here.
> No. It _destroys_ affordable housing to pack people into smaller and smaller footprints. Tokyo is a _great_ example of that.
It doesn't destroy affordable housing, though, it shifts it to other areas while increasing density near stations. You need to show why that's a bad thing. Most urban planners and economists would say that increased density is a good thing and that Tokyo is an excellent example of a city done right.
You seem to have a personal bone to pick with high-density cities that's just not shared by most other people.
> It's very misleading because you're starting from the supposition of EVs rather than the actual mix of personal cars.
If we're talking about planning, then we should look at least 10 years ahead. By that time, most of new vehicles are going to be EVs.
Mind you, the subway construction around here is planned 20 _years_ in advance. All the current proposed projects are going to be finished some time in 2040-s.
> If you choose EVs for the cars, why not choose ZEV buses that are starting to enter the market as well?
ZEV buses still retain the most polluting part of regular buses: the driver.
> What? I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say here.
One average US citizen produces around 20 tons of CO2 per year. A bus needs 3 of them working full-time. This completely dwarfs the emissions due to fuel use.
> It doesn't destroy affordable housing, though, it shifts it to other areas while increasing density near stations.
Bullshit. New density does NOT create ANY affordable housing. Never has, never will. And dense housing near stations is certainly not cheap.
> Most urban planners and economists would say that increased density is a good thing and that Tokyo is an excellent example of a city done right.
Most oil executives say that oil is great and that the large trucks are good!
Tokyo is a great example of young people forced to live in "microapartments" while just a couple of hours away, beautiful old houses sit empty.
> You seem to have a personal bone to pick with high-density cities that's just not shared by most other people.
Most other people haven't heard ANY opposing opinion in their lives. And neither have they researched it themselves. Thus, I routinely hear utterly risible nonsense like "we need more density to allow affordable housing" going unopposed.
> One average US citizen produces around 20 tons of CO2 per year. A bus needs 3 of them working full-time. This completely dwarfs the emissions due to fuel use.
Are you trying to say that these people wouldn't already exist without the bus? So everytime we commission a new bus, 3 fully grown licensed drivers appear in a flash of smoke from the storage compartment of the bus?
> cars _save_ _time_
Cars only save time if there aren't very many of them. Look at Northern Virginia, at 3 A.M you can drive 10 miles in 10 minutes because the roads are direct and have high speed limits, but that same drive would take close to an hour during the day.
Do a mental experiment. Suppose that you have technology that can make buses drive themselves.
First, you want to solve the problem of long bus intervals. It's still not economic to just buy more buses because they require a lot of power to run and do tons of road damage.
But you can make buses smaller! And by making them smaller, you can run them faster without incurring a lot of useless overhead.
Heck, you can just idle, dare I say _park_, these unused small buses when there is no demand. And since it's so easy to manage the fleet this way, you can make personalized buses for every passenger.
Do you have citations for those numbers? They don’t match what I’ve heard in the past so I’m curious to learn more.
Also, everything about density in relation to quality of life is pretty subjective. Luckily, we have cities for both! You’re free to live in Houston while those of us that prefer dense urban environments can live in New York and take transit.
Nothing I'm saying is controversial. Heck, even urbanists admit that, they just try to avoid talking about it.
> Also, everything about density in relation to quality of life is pretty subjective. Luckily, we have cities for both!
My problem is with people that try to remake wonderful cities like Seattle into Manhattan-style hellscapes. And this is a result of market forces, that need to be counteracted via political regulation.
I'd love to live in Houston, but I just can't tolerate its weather. I tried.
If the extraordinarily boring, centerless, sprawling city that is Seattle is your idea of wonderful, you can have it! Young people are moving to NYC over Seattle because that’s the sort of city environment they want to live in.
> On average, buses in the US carry around 15 people. A car carries around 1.5, so the raw multiplier is just 10.
Buses in the US are largely avoided due to the last century spent prioritizing suburban car commuting over everything else. What you should be looking at are the averages on bus routes where the buses run regularly and aren’t blocked by solo drivers. That means that the floor for a bus is 10:1 but it can easily rise to 50-70:1 with cheap policy changes (e.g. put a $500 camera on the bus to ticket drivers and suddenly headways improve by 50%). In contrast, the large EVs people are actually buying will never become more efficient over the lifetime of the vehicle.
> What you should be looking at are the averages on bus routes where the buses run regularly and aren’t blocked by solo drivers
Le sigh. If you want more bus passengers in each bus, you either need to run buses with longer intervals (making them completely useless) or you need to pack people together. Packing people together densely enough to make buses work inevitably requires living in small apartments.
The US in the last century decided to focus on comfortable human-oriented housing, and not on building Soviet-style human anthills.
> In contrast, the large EVs people are actually buying will never become more efficient over the lifetime of the vehicle.
Large EVs have lifecycle CO2 footprint of about 70g/km. Buses are ~100g/km, and EV buses (trolleys) are 60 g/km.
Moving to mid-sized EVs, such as Tesla Model 3/Y, cuts that to about 35 g/km (it depends on the US state). This is definitely something that we should encourage. The US addiction to huge barn-sized SUVs is unhealthy.
> Le sigh. If you want more bus passengers in each bus, you either need to run buses with longer intervals (making them completely useless) or you need to pack people together. Packing people together densely enough to make buses work inevitably requires living in small apartments
This is not my experience. Living in a village of around 2000 pop in Sweden with pretty much only single-family houses with gardens. The whole village was within 15 minutes walk or bike within one of 3 bus stops to a bus service that went into the city every 20 minutes during the day, with double-length buses during peak hours. The buses had a very healthy occupancy rate.
You just have to make sure to design towns around the transit instead of around cars. US suburbs are really hard to retrofit transit into, with designs that actively subvert it
> It's really amazing that people say things like "car owners should not get subsidized" (by whom?), while talking about transit that is literally infeasible without massive subsidies.
If road usage fees cover less than half the cost of roads then clearly someone is subsidizing roads.
Sounds like roads should be paid for only by their users, and proportionally to their use. Then it would be irrelevant whether it’s a sedan or bus since everyone pays their fair share. But of course, such solutions are not acceptable to those that do not intend to pay their fair share.
Transit is completely feasible without subsidies if the transit company owns the land near the stations, which generate generous rents.
Of course if the land is owned by other people, the increase in value provided by transit should be recaptured through a Land Value Tax which is then used to fund the transit.
> Transit is completely feasible without subsidies if the transit company owns the land near the stations, which generate generous rents.
So basically, you want to subsidize transit by making the transport authority be a slumlord. Got it.
There are no unsubsidized urban transit services in the US. Even operating costs are not paid from fares. And new transit construction is COMPLETELY subsidized.
I live in Seattle and I will have paid around $20k in car tab fees alone by the time the choo-choo subway train expansion here is done. It won't go anywhere near me and it will make my life worse, by inducing even more traffic.
There are also no unsubsidized fire departments, police departments, public schools, public parks, etc. Analyzing only the first order costs/benefits is really not a good way of analyzing any infrastructure project.
Dictionary definition: "a sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service may remain low or competitive."
What I have is NOT a subsidy. I use the resources, and I pay for them.
I don't have people from New York paying for my fire department in Seattle.
> Are you saying that if taxes pay for transit then transit isn’t subsidized?
I use fire protection, and I pay for it. My neighbors receive equal fire protection. There are no subsidies, we all pay our equal share (based on the house value).
However, I won't benefit from transit that is being built (heck, it will make my life WORSE). Yet I have to pay for it, thus I subsidize it.
> Do your taxes go towards the fire department even if you never have a fire?
Fire departments provide protection from fire. I absolutely do use and depend on it.
> Do your taxes go towards the public parks even if you don’t use them?
This is indeed a subsidy. A pay-per-use system would allow to remove the subsidy. However, it's so small around here that it's inconsequential in the face of massive transit subsidies.
> Do your taxes go towards public schools even if you don’t have kids?
Nope. I will eventually have kids who will need schools. So not a subsidy.
Also, if your public schools receive funding from people who do not currently have kids in school (no kids, kids already graduated, kids in private school, etc.) it’s subsidized. To claim otherwise is to redefine words.
Sure, to be more specific - tax revenue can be used to subsidize services.
In the context of transit, people talk about transit not being able to “pay for itself” and needing subsidies. That money comes from taxes… so people who don’t ride transit end up subsidizing people who do (via taxes) in the same way people who don’t go to parks subsidize people who do (via taxes) and people without kids subsidize public school education of those who do (via taxes).
Car owners are already hugely subsidized. Toll roads cover only a tiny fraction of road maintenance. The rest is paid by taxpayers, even those who do not drive.
The “farebox recovery ratio” of a road is usually zero. Roads are funded through taxes (with the exception of some toll highways). Why can’t transit be the same?
There's not only the gas tax to think about, but also that every road also enables the truck that inevitably delivers goods to your grocery store to get there.
The subway system is only possibly used by those who live near a station and are traveling near another station, and tourists.
Only a fraction of the US population work and thus commute. Of those that commute, that 80% do not have equal road usage. Even within that community, there is a subsidy going on. So, yes, there is a ton of subsidization going on (and this is not always bad)
> Drivers simply pay for their road use through various taxes, and not directly.
I think this is the point, notably because those 'indirect' payments are also payed by non-drivers as well. Hence, the subsidy.
Even within drivers, some are subsidized by others (let alone non-drivers). To illustrate, first: most road wear is from weather [1]. This means any two lengths of similar roads will have about the same upkeep cost regardless of usage (not quite true, but if taking 30 people vs 300, it's about true).
Let's consider 10 miles of road to suburb A with 30 drives, and 10 miles of different but similar road to suburb B with 300 drivers. The city will pay for upkeep of 20 miles, collecting various taxes from 330 people, and those taxes are then spent evenly across those 20 miles. To do this proportionately, without any subsidies, the group of 300 could arguably have those various taxes reduced for them only by 90% and increase the taxes of the 30 people 9 fold. That would be an equitable upkeep system.
The fact the road upkeep payment per person is not equitable, means there is a subsidy (and this situation is not always a bad thing)
> Only a fraction of the US population work and thus commute.
The fraction that doesn't work is either too young to pay taxes anyway, or they had used road commutes before they retired. Everybody else are within the margin of error.
Additionally, if you are not using a car for commute, you're likely to be in the lower tax brackets and thus not paying (much) in taxes anyway. I had a paper looking at exact numbers bookmarked, but I lost it somehow.
So in practice, car owners don't get substantially subsidized by transit users. While the inverse is overwhelmingly true, transit users are massively subsidized by car users.
> This means any two lengths of similar roads will have about the same upkeep cost
This is simply incorrect. Vehicles cause stresses in the concrete, allowing fractures to accumulate, and they also directly wear down the pavement. The weather then amplifies the damage, especially in areas that experience frequent zero crossings.
Couple do things since I actually live in New York
> The fraction that doesn't work is either too young to pay taxes anyway, or they had used road commutes before they retired. Everybody else are within the margin of error.
If you buy anything anywhere in NY you’re paying taxes.
> Additionally, if you are not using a car for commute, you're likely to be in the lower tax brackets and thus not paying (much) in taxes anyway. I had a paper looking at exact numbers bookmarked, but I lost it somehow
In NY this wouldn’t suffice for the income level (6 figures bracket) we’re talking about. it’s infeasible for a majority chunk of residents living in Chelsea , Hell’s kitchen, Upper East Side , FIDI, etc, to own a car since the cost to have it , pay the insurance, and store it working make economical sense. Especially so since if you’re affording to live there you’re job is also on the island.
It a bell curve where the beginning are the low income residents living in Harlem and the outer boroughs that necessitate having a car (with the space to accommodate for it and wouldn’t be hit by congestion pricing), the middle curve of 6 figures+ making residents that would be in the best position to not have a car, and then the rich or dual income families that has the ability to pay this congestion tax anyway.
> Additionally, if you are not using a car for commute, you're likely to be in the lower tax brackets and thus not paying (much) in taxes anyway.
To the contrary, those in the highest income brackets are the ones most likely to walk to work,[1] and also the most likely to be paying more in taxes.
70% of the tax burden is carried by people making $120k/year or more. The argument that the poor pay more taxes than the rich is mental gymnastics with back injury. Similar to how some believe the rich get richer taking something the poor didn't have in the first place. It is all just class warfare used to divide and conquer.
"Low-income Americans face higher payroll tax rates than rich Americans. Americans with less than five-figure incomes pay an effective payroll tax rate of 14.1 percent, while those making seven-figure incomes or more pay just 1.9 percent.Low-income Americans face higher payroll tax rates than rich Americans. Americans with less than five-figure incomes pay an effective payroll tax rate of 14.1 percent, while those making seven-figure incomes or more pay just 1.9 percent."
While the absolute numbers for the rich paying a lot more in taxes is true, when looking at effective tax rates, the rich are not actually being taxed enough for there to be equity in taxation.
"Billionaires in the US pay a smaller tax rate than most teachers and retail workers. "
"According to a 2021 White House study, the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the US paid an average federal individual tax rate of just 8.2 percent. For comparison, the average American taxpayer in the same year paid 13 percent."
One more thing that occurred to me, most US retirees still own cars, and still pay car tabs! That is kinda the issue, payment for driving is spread across US society rather than being the burden of those that use cars.
A strict counter-example, myself, I pay a _lot_ in property taxes and put almost zero wear on the roads. When I did last own a car, I was averaging about 500 miles per year.
This is really the point. Drivers must be subsidized because the cost of driving does not go up linearly with miles driven. For example, if someone just spent 24 hours driving rather than say 4 hours, their payments for driving upkeep does not go up 6 fold (they do not pay 6 times on car tabs, 6 times on car tax, 6 times on property taxes, etc.. they only pay gas tax as extra).
Now, this is kinda a tired argument, because it then goes to, "well, even if you don't use the roads, you still benefit." I sure do. Though, the issue is that the way things are incentivized, by spreading costs across everyone, we are put in a situation where otherwise unsustainably low density areas become incentivized.
Which goes exactly to the point of charging people to drive through downtown. Seemingly it is a very rare example of a disincentives to car culture. The argument that mass transit is subsidized seems a bit obvious (and is it is true that mass transit is very subsidized), though.. given all the incentives to drive, not having to pay the full cost per mile traveled as those costs are spread out - why the hell not drive everywhere? Why at all would anyone take mass transit when the cost to drive 5000 miles compared to 500 miles are so similar.
Let's look at the math:
Driving 5000 miles (my last car got about 400 miles to the tank, at about 13 gallons), requires about 130 gallons of gas. At about $0.50 per gallon for tax, that is a payment of just $65 dollars in tax to go 10 times further. Car tabs alone are over $100 in WA state.
This hopefully illustrates really easily that users of the road are not paying proportionate to their usage of the road. This is a mixed bag, as I would very much not want farmers to have to pay the full cost of the roads connecting them to the overall transit grid. Yet, because how costs are shared, driving in a lot of ways is "too cheap" and the overwhelming incentive is to (unsustainably) drive everywhere. Further, because everything in the US is built with driving in mind, it makes it so everyone has to drive, whether they would want to or not. This is compounded in city policy with zoning laws that force there to be parking, force residential to be segregated from commercial that would otherwise for walkable neighborhoods. All that is to say, it's the second order effects of how we pay for driving that creates quite a number of sustainability issues and really diminish the quality of life we could have (quieter, less polluted, less time spent in commute, less time spent in traffic jams).
> The fraction that doesn't work is either too young to pay taxes anyway, or they had used road commutes before they retired. Everybody else are within the margin of error.
The argument that either everyone was already a tax-paying driver or will soon be one is hard to believe. Without data, I won't take that at face value.
Even that 'margin of error,' I think needs some examination. Any 'margin of error' means there is a subsidy. Notably, drivers are simply not paying the full cost of their road usage. If so, it would not matter at all whether there were retirees or not, the costs would be payed for entirely by drivers. That is not the case, ergo, drivers are subsidized. Now, let's argue about what that percentage is.
> So in practice, car owners don't get substantially subsidized by transit users.
This is moving the goal posts as far as I can tell. The statement is that car owners get subsidized by everyone else, not just transit users.
> So in practice, car owners don't get substantially subsidized by transit users. While the inverse is overwhelmingly true, transit users are massively subsidized by car users.
“Cars usually do not have that much loading impact on the road,” said John Mueller, a DOT Highway Mainten-ance Engineer. “The main source is the water that sits in the joint that freezes and thaws.”
"It is once concrete deteriorates that traffic loads pack a punch. Large trucks can accelerate the process."
Thus, you have it the other way round. Weather deteriorates roads, then it is traffic that amplifies that damage.
We can still make the example more extreme, let's say that group of 300 are 1 mile away, and half take light rail. At this point, it's very clear that the 30 people living 10 miles away (perhaps even 50 miles!), are being subsidized considerably.
Regarding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law, I think I understand what you are trying to get at. In my example, I was trying to keep things about equal and was assuming that both groups of people were driving similar cars. I would suspect in most realistic examples that are similar, that group that is 10 or 50 miles away are probably driving larger vehicles (and maybe farm equipment & logging trucks are more frequently on those roads).
Cutting to the chase though, we don't have to argue to what extent drivers are subsidized, there are numbers for that:
> A report published in the April of 2022 issue of Ecological Economics teased out the lifetime cost of driving a small car to be roughly $641,000, with society subsidizing about 41% of that cost. [1][2]
Then there are more subsidies at play to keep oil cheap and gasoline artifically low in price, as well as the cost of purchasing cars, and the cost of parking is amortized to property owners [3]
You certainly can subsidize large populations because taxes cover all income but are being used specifically to encourage just one more of transportation. If driving wasn’t so heavily subsidized, people would use other options because the true cost is much higher than what people see directly – it’s not just roads but also things like below market rate storage, zoning rules requiring owners to build more car storage than they necessarily want, and especially not requiring drivers to carry insurance sufficient to cover the full cost of their mistakes and decisions.
> You certainly can subsidize large populations because taxes cover all income but are being used specifically to encourage just one more of transportation.
It can be argued that rich people subsidize poor, since they pay more taxes. However, that's pretty much it.
Transit users in the US overwhelmingly do NOT subsidize car users. While the inverse is true, transit users on average don't pay even half of the true cost of transit. The rest is born by everyone.
You’ve had multiple people tell you so at this point I would highly suggest doing some homework before getting angry. Here’s a summary:
* Roads are paid for around 50% by general tax revenue. Thar keeps the upfront price of driving low compared to alternatives and decades of studies have found this creates a massive number of extra car trips. If we used more efficient transportation modes we would also not need the massive highway projects sold to taxpayers as rush hour alleviation but delivering only more traffic thanks to the principle of induced demand.
* Most cities subsidize street parking below the cost of providing it, much less market rates. This encourages driving but takes a significant amount of public space and generates a huge amount of congestion and pollution (emissions and noise) as people circle looking for subsidized spots rather than paying for garage parking.
* Most cities require minimum amounts of parking to be provided for solo drivers even if the owner of a property doesn’t want it (we require bars to encourage drunk driving!). Everyone pays more for that even if they don’t drive because they’re paying for more construction and maintenance and many businesses have less revenue generating space because, for example, instead of a restaurant having tables for 40 more patrons they have parking for 8 vehicles. Since housing is required to have at least 1-2 spaces per home, a given piece of land will house fewer people and many large projects require expensive garages, which you’re paying for whether or not you want it and traffic is also a common argument against the density which would lower costs. Making housing more expensive causes more people to need longer commutes and the consequent lower quality of life.
* Car owners are not charged for the negative health impacts of driving - a leading cause of asthma and all kinds of cardiovascular conditions – or to compensate city residents for the quality of life reductions their commuting causes.
* Drivers are not charged for the expensive city infrastructure created to protect pedestrians and bicyclists from unsafe driving. All of that concrete, flexposts and barriers, various pedestrian light systems, etc. are car infrastructure.
* Drivers are not required to have sufficient insurance to cover the full cost to anyone they hit. This intersects really badly with our horrific healthcare system and is a common cause of people falling out of the workforce or into substance abuse over chronic pain following collisions.
* Last but not least, driving is the most expensive way to commute in common use when it comes to greenhouse gases. EVs promise a 50% reduction but that’s still far higher than any mainstream alternative. There are many other factors in climate change but driving is something like 30% so it’s going to have to go down a lot to reduce the trillions in economic damage we’re facing.
If your whole argument against transit requires us to ignore the three biggest transit systems is order for your argument to work…. You don’t have a good argument champ.
> 1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs.
If mass transit _and_ also EVs are incentivized over petrol cars, that is not bad [1]
> 2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions.
My anecdotal experience is that areas around light rail stations gentrify and luxery style condominiums pop up like mushrooms around them. A 10 minute and consistent train ride into dowtown is compelling when that same journey can take 30 to 120 minutes by car (this is Seattle, it can take 20 minutes to just cross the U bridge and travel a quarter mile).
> 3. Buses in particular result in excessive road wear&tear.
If a bus is actually taking 50 cars off the road, and is traveling on lanes that are built for the excessive wear; then it is still a net benefit.
> "car owners should not get subsidized (by whom?)"
Point 3 discusses the wear and tear of roads. Drivers do not pay fully for the wear and tear of roads (and road construction, etc). Road funds come from many funds and car traffic does not generate enough in fuel and car-tab taxes to fully pay for roads. Hence, it is subsidized by other people that pay those taxes.
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The comparison perhaps should not be also strictly of just buses against EVs.
Sure, as long as you consider externalities like congestion. That would suggest charging for passage through congested areas (the subject of this thread), and subsidizing mass transit in congested areas.
Dense housing doesn't result in traffic congestion. If more people live closer together there is more population density, but as long as they can access commercial areas easily then they can do their shopping and work and recreational tasks without cars. When you remove cars then you suddenly have much more living space because a car takes up a large amount of room to store and there must be extra space for commuters and visitors.
Are you seriously arguing that adding more space for cars makes cities less congested? For every one parking space you add you remove a large amount of useful space for other things.
> Dense housing doesn't result in traffic congestion.
Yes, it does. And the relationship is causal.
> If more people live closer together there is more population density, but as long as they can access commercial areas easily then they can do their shopping and work and recreational tasks without cars.
What a bunch of bullshit.
> Are you seriously arguing that adding more space for cars makes cities less congested?
Not quite. Nothing can help hellscapes like Manhattan. They just need to be slowly de-densified, it'll take generations, but it will be done eventually.
Cities should make sure that they don't rely on transit, and the rest will follow.
If the relationship is causal, why are spread out areas with less dense populations which rely heavily on cars, like the Dallas or Houston or LA areas, so congested?
If you think your opinion is backed by data, I would love to see it.
Suburbs are unequivocally bad for the environment but saying they shouldn’t be subsidized isn’t saying they should be banned. A high fraction of our problems could be solved with market mechanisms to capture the cost of externalities like carbon emissions or habitat destruction, so those factor into people’s buying decisions. Tolls are one of the most important mechanisms for cities to do this because much of the 20th century was spent redesigning cities for non-residents at the expense of the local economy, tax base, health, and quality of life for residents.
We’re seeing this happen partially as the insurance industry adjusts to climate change drives flooding and fires but it’s incomplete and needs to be combined with zoning reform in many cities.
Sure, there are people with extreme views on any issue.
The existence of those people doesn’t have any bearing on whether or not we should have congestion pricing in one of the densest urban environments in the world.
Huh? The Houston metro area has 7.5 million people. The New York City metro area has 20 million.
If you want to look at the city proper (not a great comparison since city boundaries are somewhat arbitrary) then it’s 2 million for Houston versus 8 million for NYC.
To be fair, that is how commuter trains in the NYC metropolitan area work. The fares are higher during rush hour to discourage people who can shift their schedule from traveling during rush hour.
Sure. Let's make sure we account for all the negative follow-on effects from personal car ownership including wasted space from parking, pollution, etc etc. Also account all the positive effects from transit - less wasted space for parking, less pollution, etc etc.
This isn’t exactly true. Rich people have the resources to live closer to where they work, they are more likely to WFH, they can ride a bike to work often, or maybe even walk. Poor people often live farther away from their jobs, they have worse commutes, and the likelihood of accomplishing that long commute by mass transit in many American isn’t that great.
Anecdotally, we are well to do, chose our house location to minimize our commute and make it easy by bus (and ensure we can go to the grocery store by foot). Then I got the opportunity to work from home, my wife has a straight shot from bus to her office downtown, the kid’s schools (even high school) are all within walking distance. There is no way we could have set all that up without money.
I didn’t make a quantitative claim, just a qualitative one based on anecdotal evidence. I put about 1000 miles a year on my car, but I paid a lot of money to get to the point that I could do feasibly that. I’m not unusual in this either, a lot of rich techies go for urban car-light lifestyles if they can afford it.
The above studies seem to only focus on the poorest of the poor, and not the lower middle class. Congestion charges are going to hit people who are rich enough to drive but not rich enough to live in convenient places the most. There isn’t a binary distinction between rich and poor after all. Those links are pretty embarrassing actually, surely there are better arguments that this will impact rich the most than using the poorest of the poor as an example?
I mean, the answer is that this is New York City, not Seattle, where parking is going to cost you $30+ in the areas affected by the congestion charge. So we've already limited the discussion to the pretty well-off.
Per the article itself: "But out of a region of 28 million people, just an estimated 16,100 low-income people commute to work via car in Lower Manhattan, according to the MTA."
Probably easier to find a way to meet the needs of 16k exceptions. And having a safe fast public transit system, which the connection charge funds, is part of that.
I did an internship at IBM Hawthorn so I’m familiar with parking in the city. It’s actually doable (or was doable?) in midtown near Columbia, and it actually made sense for my girlfriend at the time. The public transit system isn’t that great when you are commuting between West Chester county. And traffic in NYC is weird. Like, going into the city isn’t a problem, especially if you are going in at night. But take one step out to Long Island…and you are snarled in traffic for hours.
My comment about poorer people being more affected I believe is still valid even if it’s the right thing to do. The people who are forced to commute by car generally don’t have better options.
It would be much worse if they tried this in Seattle, but we also need it as well, it just won’t be something only the rich are suffering (like in NYC).
Yeah, but - the proposed congestion charge is only below 60th, and Columbia is up around 116th and higher. Much much easier to park near Columbia. Maybe a little more risk of having your car stolen, too. :)
Also (adding this a few minutes later), the evidence is clear that public transit is seriously beneficial for people with lower incomes - and the elderly and folks with disabilities that prevent them from driving.
So we may be taking about something that harms 16k people and benefits about three million other low-income New Yorkers.
Again, I’m not against congestion charging, I’m against the thinking that most of the immediate downsides are born by the rich. It is politically naive to think like this given that plenty of people who are taking advantage of driving (for better or worse) are not people who would be considered rich. Actually it’s worse than that since rich people aren’t going to think much about a $5 or $10, $20 fee while poorer drivers definitely are.
As for it not encompassing midtown, that sounds a bit weird to me, but ok. I’m not sure it will have much impact on overall region traffic since most trips probably don’t involve that area in the first place.
I was poor, I took the bus to college and work (there were times I'd have to add 30 minutes where I knew I'd have to leg it). It was an hour and a half with transfers. It's doable --you get used to it, just like tech workers get used to driving in from the East Bay into the Peninsula. It's no biggie. On the way home, sometimes you get off at a different stop to pick up groceries and then you're the one walking home with two plastic bags -at first your arms ache. Again, you get used to it.
There are multiple levels of poor, like there are multiple levels of rich. Plenty of people are rich enough to drive, but not rich enough to live in convenient locations. It’s weird that, when I was going to university, many people would save money by living far off campus and driving to pay $5 for parking. The richer kids were living on or next to campus, and didn’t even need cars. Housing is expensive, and the American system has made driving unnaturally cheap.
> Plenty of people are rich enough to drive, but not rich enough to live in convenient locations.
Now they're not rich enough to drive, they're become poor enough to use public transportation. Maybe their votes will improve the convenience of public transportation.
To somebody who can afford to live in Manhattan, you'd have to charge $200 a trip to bother them. Just tax them, and use that money to build out public transportation.
Very weird to crusade for the right of people who can barely afford their cars to be better than those who can't afford cars.
A resident of NY is already one of most, if not the most taxed citizen in the country. You pay fed, state, city, and/or borough tax. Relative to the rest of the country, you pay the most for rent, mortgages, food, electricity, natgas, internet, tolls, and even toiletries.
And you want to tax these residents more, and dump the money into the black hole of state-run public transportation projects that take 10x the budget and 10x the time of any where else on planet earth? ...and that is with no guarantee that project would a) get finished b) not be a total clusterfuck like all the others.
That sucks more than having a car does by far. Even the last part about "your arms ache but you get used to it" - how is that for disabled people? How is it for the elderly? An extra hour and a half - what about if you have kids at home?
Honestly that... Blows?
If the options are to destroy the environment or to have to take an extra three hours daily to commute, I choose destroy the environment - smart people will probably fix it with science.
I thought about it - why would I rather destroy the environment than reduce cars? Because it's a lie - there's clearly no shared burden. Like as soon as humanity bans all privat jets, the entire cruise industry, etc, then maybe I'd consider it. But as it is, it's just one more "eh the poors will get used to it" - meanwhile we don't ban major contributions from sources that are rich people's enjoyment or profits.
3 hours commutes or destroying the environment aren't the only two options. By changing the way we build cities, and by retrofitting the ones we've already built, we can make places where the walked/biked commute is less than a half hour and the environmental impact is slashed dramatically.
A lot of problems can be solved via better urban planning, but most of us have little control over that. What we do have control over leaves us with a couple of options, but we have hope that maybe our grandkids will have more choices.
Agreed. And I'm in the same boat. But I've taken the "best time to plant a tree was 40 years ago" approach and have started working in my community to bring about those changes.
To people who can't afford to drive, this just sounds like relatively wealthy people whining about being reduced to living like they have been the entire time.
If you want to reduce the relative privileges of wealthy people, tax them and redistribute or do a socialist revolution. Never crusade for the privileges of people with some money while ignoring the situation of the people with less money. In the limit, you'll end up crusading for the privileges of billionaires against the privileges of multi-billionaires. As activism, imo it's silly.
Having more money lets you buy more of everything. Yet you are only concerned about roads (which aren’t even used by the poorest segment since they can’t afford a car)? Why not focus on making something more fundamental to existence free, like food or shelter?
Oh right it’s because it creates poor incentives and overuse (tragedy of the commons) exactly like we see with roads (and parking). If car drivers had to pay the full cost of the resources they use it would reduce wasteful driving substantially. And we could use money collected in that way to pay for transit (or just give it as a tax rebate to low income people if you prefer).
Yea you’re exactly right, there’s a tragedy of the commons situation right now. You could either decrease the demand or increase the supply to fix this problem, and it seems pretty impossible to increase the supply (build a bridge across the Hudson? That’s crazy). So here we are.
The average speed driving in Manhattan is something like 7mph. There is not enough space for cars. Congestion charge is such a no-brainer easy solution here.
Unironically I’d hate a new bridge across the Hudson around the Holland Tunnel, that area is the crown jewel of Manhattan and its seafront should be protected.
It’s also one of the few safe bike paths in the city where casual bikers would feel comfortable biking.
Additionally, we already have one Canal St in the area, we don’t need another.
NIMBYism is not inherently a bad thing; it was originally coined by the waste management industry to describe opposition to local landfills and toxic waste dumps, which any sane person doesn't actually want to live next to.
(Yes, I know Europe and Japan build fancy incinerators with parks and whatnot that are very pleasant, but the odds of that being built in the US by penny-pinching private industry is nil.)
The “poors,” as you so delightfully put it have nowhere to park in those parts of Manhattan. So they won’t be going there (leaving aside deliveries and taxis, but then the fee is a cost of doing business.)
The group this will hit the hardest are those with de facto immunity from parking tickets. Cops, teachers, members of certain trade unions, and so on.
However, lest you worry too much about these folk in light of automated speed and red light cameras they’ve taken to obscuring their license plates or buying fraudulent paper plates on the internet. Of course nothing is done about these effectively untraceable vehicles.
I grew up in a city with insanely high taxes on cars and roads (Singapore). But you could get anywhere easily with the bus or MRT. In a rush? Your Grab taxi can get you there quickly and efficiently. I’m not sure why it’d be better to make everyone’s day worse instead. Does that really make the world a fairer place?
Exactly. If those 16K really concern somebody, they should just issue them a pass based on income. And if capitalism means anything, the employers of those 16K will have to raise pay to attract people.
Absolutely true. In fact this was the 1980s republican plan. Lee Atwater has a great hot mic moment about this.
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni*er, ni*er, ni*er.” By 1968 you can’t say “ni*er”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Ni*er, ni*er.”
And you also have New York City and the racist/classist bridges. Bridges were built too low for public transit to get out to Long Island. It did a VERY effective job at keeping black people and poor people away from the middle class and higher areas.
" In one of the book's most memorable passages, Caro reveals that Moses ordered his engineers to build the bridges low over the parkway to keep buses from the city away from Jones Beach—buses presumably filled with the poor blacks and Puerto Ricans Moses despised. The story was told to Caro by Sidney M. Shapiro, a close Moses associate and former chief engineer and general manager of the Long Island State Park Commission."
Who would have thought that building a bridge could be racist and classist?
You mean how the richer you are, the bigger (and safer) the vehicle you can afford?
I drive by many parents taking their kids wherever in old corollas or kias or other small car, and I see many parents at my kids’ daycare dropping their kids off in large suburbans/F150/Sequoia/etc.
Equality would be to be able to go where you need to go, in reasonable time, cost and accomodation, regardless of class, race, gender or disability. Focusing on cars is over-indexing on one potential solution.
People want to move around. Cars are only one way of doing so.
All he needs to do is dig up the 100 million dollars he has buried around his yard so that he can scale to the point that taking a 300% hit on materials doesn't affect him.
Or maybe he should spend some of his billions to buy up all of the apple orchards in the region so he can better control his supply chain (and, coincidentally, that of his competitors)
And thats how monolpolisation happens. Instead of 5 or 6 moderately successful cideries meeting different market needs, we have 1 or 2 who control the entire market.
In this hypothetical are you also removing the salary cap? If anything he'd probably get more because I suspect that replacement-level players would be willing to play for less than the mandated minimum salary of about 1 million dollars.
Probably the same, maybe less. Professional sports players get paid on merit. What they do on the court directly translates into what a team is will to pay them.
Actually he would get paid much more. The NBA CBA has a "max contract" capped at 25% of the salary cap[1]. There are numerous players playing on essentially the same deal, even though there is clearly a big gap in talent. If you look at the list of salaries for the 21-22 season[2], Steph Curry is the highest paid player at $45.6M, which is only about 15% higher than the 10th highest paid player despite being significantly better.
[1] there are some other contract terms that allow for up to 35%, but those require a bunch of other non performance conditions to be met.
[2] http://www.espn.com/nba/salaries
Thats a good point, and I think in general I think using professional sports as an example either for or against unions is a bad faith argument because of the unique dynamics present.
Maybe that's what makes it a great example. It shows labor unions are extremely flexible tools that should be configured for the work force they're representing.
Maybe its all these specific arguments against unions, like "seniority based promotions make for incompetent leaders" and "high performance workers are disincentivized", that are actually the examples given in bad faith.
To abuse this analogy further - if they also put signs for their owns stores in front of the other stores signage, or redesign the mall to direct people away from the competitors - that seems less fine.
What if there's multiple other malls just across the street? As is the case in online retail. Even easier than crossing the street, to be honest, just click that second result in Google instead of the first. Is it so hard to admit that Amazon's customers are using them because their offering is great and not because of lack of alternatives?
Amazon has always used dark patterns with their 3rd party sellers. They even restrict the price sellers can charge on products they sell on Amazon and their own website. This ensures Amazon will be the lowest price.
In this analogy, that would mean you have a store inside the mall and right across the street. Amazon sees you are selling products cheaper across the street since rent across the street is way cheaper than inside the mall. Amazon then says either you charge the same price in the mall or you get kicked out. You could call Amazon's bluff but most sellers are not risking their seller accounts.
I make $400k/yr as an immigrant, and boy do I feel exploited :)
Edit: Sorry for being sarcastic and flexing here. I’m friends with many IMO and IOI medalists (per the paper) who are studying/working in the US and I think it’s an amazing opportunity for them. Where I grew up in Singapore, tech salaries are way lower, and as a new grad I think I easily 3xed what I could’ve made back there. I’m not representative of all immigrants but I believe I can represent a class of highly skilled immigrants who appreciate the opportunity. It’s extremely insulting to call people like me exploited, because the next line is - I’m bringing down your wages.
The paper is specifically talking about highly skilled immigrants in math & science, though. Their dataset was a few thousand IMO gold medalists. Grandparent poster's experience is a lot more representative of this sample than a random agricultural worker who crosses the Rio Grande.
Post history seems to say he won a trading competition. To whoever downvoted this did you think I needed to add "so presumably he works in something along those lines"?
When group health insurance is provided in the US, employers and employees usually split the cost of insurance premiums. Both employers and employees can treat their premium portion as a tax deductible expense.
Additional copays and out of pocket expenses are completely on the employee.
Even some of the worst possible HDHP plans that employees can get have a max out of pocket of $10k/yr (pre-tax) with HSA. So you can say in the worst case OP makes $400k and pays $10k in insurance if he has some major health issues to be addressed. Or maybe just say he makes $390k and has totally free insurance? Even if he’s spending something ridiculous like $50k/yr on a family of eight’s insurance he’s still way better off.
Yes, affording health insurance is not much of a concern for someone making 400k/yr. The financial concerns faced by the vast majority of people are never experienced by someone in that privileged a situation.
It's a much bigger story for people make closer to the median income.
