SUV Protest

Frank Krygowski wrote on Saturday 26 November 2005 20:51:

But again: I think we need something to provide transportation to
those who can't drive.

We'll get it eventually, when the PTB wake up and realise that the days
of cheap petrol are over, and that it is an antisocial act to drive a
car.
--
Alex

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Frank Krygowski wrote on Saturday 26 November 2005 20:51:

Mark Hickey wrote:


Mass transit (federally subsidized or not) requires a certain
critical
mass (no pun intended!) to be workable. The conundrum looks like
this:

Q: Why don't more people use mass transit?
A: There aren't enough routes / frequent enough busses/trains to meet
most peoples' needs.
Q: Why aren't there enough busses / routes / trains?
A: Not enough people use mass transit

I do wonder why buses are as big as they are. ISTM that smaller, more
efficient vans would have advantages in operating costs. Gas (or
natural gas?) mileage would be better. Service might be able to be
increased, luring more customers.

At one point, many years ago, I hoped to take the bus to work. But
the nearest stop was several miles away, and the travel time would be
much
slower than riding the bike all the way. If the service had been
better, I'd have been a customer.


I've lived in towns where there IS a VERY developed mass transit
system. Seoul, Korea and Sydney Australia have VERY nice systems
that
can move huge numbers of people efficiently. I never considered
driving more than absolutely necessary in either city - MUCH nicer to
take the subway / train (or even bus in Seoul).

I've found mass transit very pleasant in a few cities while traveling.
Portland, Oregon's is outstanding. I think it was Santa Fe's that was
also very nice. DC's light rail was pleasant.

But again: I think we need _something_ to provide transportation to
those who can't drive.

- Frank Krygowski

We'll get it eventually, when the PTB wake up and realise that the days
of cheap petrol *should be* over, and that it is an antisocial act to
drive a car.
--
Alex

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Reply-to address is valid.

Stephen Harding wrote:
The Wogster wrote:

How about the government not subsidize the car either, currently the
costs for the automobile are around $10,000/year suppose the car had
to bear all of it's costs, and it went up to $30,000/year, how many
people would still drive?


I'm actually not against subsidy. It provides support for something
hopefully useful to the country in economic or social form. Sometimes
it's nothing more than one group carrying off some cash for itself,
but it's something almost everyone benefits from at some time or
another.

I would prefer subsidy be as efficiently utilized as possible. I
don't know that mass transit subsidy is especially beneficial for
the buck, but it does have some use AFAIC, and I don't think I'd
be in favor of its reduction.

Are you claiming the government is subsidizing automobile ownership
to the tune of $10,000 per car per year?

Unless you're including all the road work, bridge construction/repair,
blah, blah, blah, I don't see how subsidy would reach that amount.

Well, you need to consider that a road that has 25 vehicles per day will
need considerably less maintenance then one that sees 400,000 vehicles
per day (like Highway 401, through Toronto, Ontario, Canada -- 320,000
of those are cars ). They are doing maintenance on some part of it, on
a continual basis. It's not only government that is doing the
subsidizing either, take a nearby mall, 75% of the land is parking,
wanna guess what it cost them in the last 48 hours to remove 10cm of
snow? Mall customers, even those that are taking transit (there is a
subway station there), are covering portions of that cost.


I don't think transportation infrastructure should necessarily count
as a subsidy. If it is, then *everything* is subsidized to a high
degree.


Your right, it is, the question really becomes, where is that subsidy
dollar going to do the most good. For many places in North America, for
the last 60 years or so, it has been in providing more and more
automobile specific road and storage space. However with pollution,
lost productivity due to gridlock, more and more leasure time being used
up by travel, higher fuel costs, more and more deaths and injuries due
to automobile collisions, is this still the best use of societies
subsidy dollar.

Take for example Boston's Big Dig, $14,625 Million for a road, that will
probably be in total gridlock in 5 years. Now suppose they had spent
that 14,625 Million on a new subway line, tunneling and track costs
roughly $75 Million for a mile of subway line, the same 7.8miles would
cost roughly $600 Million. Lets add 10 6 car trains, at a cost of $3
Million per car, $180 Million, lets add drivers, guards and some support
staff, say a total of $3,000,000 a year, for staff. Lets add $60
Million a year for maintenance. Heck let's amortize the cost of
building and cars over 30 years, figuring in an interest amount of the
same amount. The whole project would be around $4 Billion, they could
have gone 3 times as far, and still spent less money!

W

Stephen Harding wrote in
news:k7lhf.10643$%Z5.9773@trndny07:

Andy Gee wrote:

But my biggest subsidy is peculiar to Manhattan. Stockbroker from
Connecticut drives to NY in his X5 because the farm state
congessional delegation decided to take my federal transportation
money and pay for a road from his subdivision and not pay for a rail
hub in the former World Trade Center site. I think we're getting a
museum and a bus stop or something instead. Fair enough. But he
then emits ozone precursors at

So how do you feel taking subsidies from the American taxpayer
to promote your mass transit system? I believe the over-riding
bulk of Federal mass transit subsidy actually goes to NYC.


I'm going to put my statistician hat on for a moment. Federal mass
transit money is part of Federal transportation money, which includes
highways. If there is a transportation bill for $286 billion, of which,
say, $20 billion is for mass transit, and New York, where the
overwhelming majority of mass transit riders lives, gets the majority of
that money, we're still paying out much more to other people's highways.


Given that nationally, some studies have put empty bus ridership
at close to 80%, with no actual reduction in pollution achieved
and no increase in use by the public, it might seem to some that
mass transit subsidy is a ripoff.

Frequent bus service is addressed down-thread. Since WW2, we
thouroughly tore up almost all of our light rail in and between cities,
and now we're slowly beginning to realize what a mistake that was and
we're starting to put it back. A bus will get people who can't afford a
car to a job. A train of some kind can get rich people to a job faster
than a car; that's where we'll see the efficiencies outside of New York
City.


I'm not actually against Federal mass transit subsidy. I just
think its merits have been seriously over-stated.

People aren't going to use mass transit until there is some
critical mass in personal transit gridlock.

We're all against subsidies the other guy hauls off for himself.
Our own subsidies always seem just and socially responsible.

Stop all the Federal subsidies. New York built its subways and highways
and bridges and tunnels with it's own money until quite recently.

--ag

Frank Krygowski wrote:

You didn't explain what you'd do to get the elderly, the handicapped,
and the impoverished around town. And certainly, the elderly group will
grow larger and larger in the near future.

What _is_ your idea?

Well I don't really know.

I do think that throwing money at a problem that largely
produces "feel good" effects maybe isn't the way to go, and
I definitely don't think mass transit subsidy should end up
being just another poverty program.

As someone mentioned, smaller buses and perhaps schedules
more concentrated around actual use time could at least help
reduce wasted money, not to mention pollution where a large
diesel bus with few people on it ought to become worse to the
socially and environmentally sensitive than a big SUV.

Of course reducing schedules is a sure way to reduce ridership
even further. Maybe increase the cost of driving a private
car could work in some way. Large gas guzzling vehicles
already pay more taxes because they fill up with gas more
often, but a tax by weight category might be useful, as well
as restricting private motor traffic in certain areas of a
city at certain times. Might make it more enjoyable to go
into the city if people on foot didn't have to be on the lookout
for cars all the time. Get around by bus instead. Some towns
in Europe restrict vehicle traffic to city centers. That won't
work in suburbia though.

IMHO, mass transit isn't going to work in the US until private
transit costs so much time (or money) in congestion (or use
costs) that alternatives start to kick in. That seemed to be
starting to happen with $3/gal gas but now that's gone [for a
while]. I think $5/gal gas will probably do more for public
transit than just about anything else anyone could come up with.

At the very worst if one can't come up with an effective way to
subsidize, then reducing the subsidy may be a positive step.


SMH

Mark Hickey wrote:

I've lived in towns where there IS a VERY developed mass transit
system. Seoul, Korea and Sydney Australia have VERY nice systems that
can move huge numbers of people efficiently. I never considered
driving more than absolutely necessary in either city - MUCH nicer to
take the subway / train (or even bus in Seoul).

Very much agree. I lived in Japan for a few years, and have
traveled in Europe and the mass transit (train) systems there
are spectacular. Why on earth would one bother to drive a car
somewhere with trains so good?

But to try to bring an existing city up to that level in the US would
be a horrendously dangerous political move, since all people would
associate with the polititians who pushed the system would be the
snarled traffic from all the construction. Pure political suicide.

We've sort of burned our bridges in this country. Getting back to,
say, 1935, when people used mass transit for getting to work and
their cars more sparingly, isn't going to be easy or cheap. Also,
the way we live now is largely dictated by car use. Places of work,
shopping, relaxation, sleeping are all spread out, accessible only
my motor vehicle and alternative methods (foot/bicycle) more
dangerous than they should be because of it.

I think only large doses of traffic congestion and high gasoline
prices (say $4-5/gal) are the only way it's going to happen. In
other words, not without a great deal of pain. The only way changes
of this scale can occur is via economics. It can't be dictated
through social responsibility or environmental argument alone.


SMH

Mark Hickey wrote:

Just another data point - I seldom see a bus with more than 10-20%
capacity in the Phoenix, Arizona east valley. I'm sure there are
routes that have more, but the ones I've seen are VERY underused.

Same here. A large, Grumman built (I think) bus with perhaps 2-8
people aboard. Occasionally perhaps half full.

I remember using this bus system 20 years ago and sometimes there
would be standing room only on a morning bus to the campus. Seems
much less usage today.


SMH

Frank Krygowski wrote:

I do wonder why buses are as big as they are. ISTM that smaller, more
efficient vans would have advantages in operating costs. Gas (or
natural gas?) mileage would be better. Service might be able to be
increased, luring more customers.

There are those smaller "buses" here, based on a Ford E-350 van with
a large passenger body in the back. Not certain of capacity but much
smaller than a full sized bus.

Seem to be mostly for Council on Aging use though. They take elderly
or physically impaired to the mall or doctor or wherever. You can
actually call and schedule one. I think the price has gone up to
$2.50 each way (a taxi will cost $16 I'm told).

Still, they are largely empty, but at least smaller and empty is better
than large and empty.


SMH

Andy Gee wrote:

Stephen Harding wrote in
news:k7lhf.10643$%Z5.9773@trndny07:


Andy Gee wrote:


But my biggest subsidy is peculiar to Manhattan. Stockbroker from
Connecticut drives to NY in his X5 because the farm state
congessional delegation decided to take my federal transportation
money and pay for a road from his subdivision and not pay for a rail
hub in the former World Trade Center site. I think we're getting a
museum and a bus stop or something instead. Fair enough. But he
then emits ozone precursors at

So how do you feel taking subsidies from the American taxpayer
to promote your mass transit system? I believe the over-riding
bulk of Federal mass transit subsidy actually goes to NYC.



I'm going to put my statistician hat on for a moment. Federal mass
transit money is part of Federal transportation money, which includes
highways. If there is a transportation bill for $286 billion, of which,
say, $20 billion is for mass transit, and New York, where the
overwhelming majority of mass transit riders lives, gets the majority of
that money, we're still paying out much more to other people's highways.

Sure, but there's a lot more people using national highways than people
in NYC using mass transit!

I just read where the gasoline excise tax is no longer projected to pay
what is required for maintenance/construction of Federal Highways (some
people think it pays for *all* road work but that is not true).

The Federal gasoline tax has been steady for a long time and now there
is talk about raising it. Given the high cost of gas now, that's going
to be difficult for politicians to do.

Raising the gas tax seems fair enough to me, and I drive a big V-8 gas
guzzler! (Of course this negatively impacts the poor, and I don't know
how you charge a different rate at the pump to match one's income level).


SMH

Claire Petersky wrote:
"gds" wrote in message
ups.com...

I don't quite get the subsidy comment.

Trying to find a relatively unhysteric view, he
http://4wheeldrive.about.com/cs/driv...a041603a_4.htm

You also subsidize them through insurance claims -- they are less safe, but
the drivers of SUVs pay the same insurance rates as those who drive normal
cars.

OK I have seen the tax break on the oversized SUV's and trucks. I agree
that is is subsidy.
Of course out tax code is full of these. Renters subsidize home owners
and the investers in income producing reale estate. Wokers subsidize
investors captial gains. I'm not arguing for or against these specfics,
just noting that we have many of these situations.

On the insurance issue I think it is a bit more complex. I have a hard
time parsing out vehicle safety vs. driver safety. I undersant that
there is a lot of self selection going on but I'm more inclined to lay
the risk on the driver than on the vehicle.