Many communities choose to subsidize transit systems because they enhance the local economy in ways that are not directly measurable by myopicly focusing on the costs/revenues of the transit system alone. As an example, even those who choose to continue traveling by car benefit from reduced traffic congestion and increased availability of parking. And downtown merchants benefit because they gain customers from those who would otherwise avoid the downtown shopping district if they had to drive.
Successful cities don’t solve their congestion problems. They manage them. All successful cities are congested. It’s the nature of the beast.
Adulthood comes when you understand that you can’t have everything you want, but have to settle for what is possible. In the city, “what is possible” is what permits the optimum flow of commerce.
I said, and you still dont get my point - forcing people off of what they want is social engineering at its worst. This whole attitude of forcing people out of cars by underbuilding roads is wrongheaded.
We’ve finally come to understand that the decision – forced by an earlier generation’s social engineering – to rely on the private automobile to drive a city’s transportation, was wrongheaded. The automobile was the trendy solution of its day. We’re sadder but wiser now. We understand the need for high-density transportation to serve the high-density workplace and the high-density neighborhood.
If the shoe fits, wear it. It is socialist to demand that people get restricted rights to spend their money as they see fit. It is socialist to insist that you know better than people themselves how to organize their lives. It is socialist to say 'of course you give up rights to live in XXX' ... It doesnt have to be that way. ONly socialist insist on it!
If you live in certain upscale suburbs, there are compacts, covenants and neighborhood associations that restrict your property rights. You might have the money to paint your house a hideous shade of purple. You might want to paint your house that hideous shade of purple. But the neighborhood association will require its approval before you paint your house, and if it refuses that permission, you don’t paint your house. End of story.
Your neighbors are not socialists. Before you do something that might lower their property values, they want to weigh in on your actions and prevent them if necessary. If you don’t like living that way, don’t move into that neighborhood. Pick one without a neighborhood association and a whole lot of rules you don’t want to follow. Or live where your nearest neighbor is five miles away.
When you live in an area of dense population, the fact that you have the money to do something, and the fact that you want to do something, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be allowed to do something. There are other people’s interests to be considered. This was once called “being neighborly”.
In a city, those “other people” may be a number of large corporations whose interest is to keep commerce flowing via high-density means. No one will attempt to pry that steering wheel out of your cold, dead hands. The powers-that-be will simply put money into solutions that work for a city, and those who refuse to take the hint will steam and stew in traffic in their SOV’s.
We dont WANT boondoggle LRTs, can you get that through your skull? I wont ride it, I dont need it. May NYC needs a subway, or DC or chicago, but not the smaller cities of America and not my town.
I don’t know how big “your town” is. I don’t know if it’s a city, suburb, exurb or rural community where people drive their tractors to the general store.
If it’s a city, others will ride those transit systems if you don’t, and they’ll be thankful that they are available. Even smaller cities densify over time and become bigger cities. When you reach a certain critical mass, you need rail transit of one stripe or another to survive and thrive.
Some of us want, enjoy and appreciate the system of transportation that gives maximum flexibility and options to people. Even giving it a malodorous name like "sprawl" when it is nothing more than lower-density housing than a city build with townhomes. I guess if we call Phoenix 'normal' and just referred to anything denser than LA as a "sardine can city", the shoe might be on other foot...And many of us want to live with a nice big backyard, and we will pay in $$ on houses and in time on commute to get that - do YOU get it? Not everybody WANTS URBAN CONDO LIVING!
I don’t have a problem with sprawl. When you live and work in a lower-density suburb, the automobile is the only way to go. But if you live in a suburb and work in a city, you’re better off taking some form of mass transportation to avoid clogging the city and creating congestion. The city is better off, too.
But the real problem occurs when lower-density suburbs densify. A long time ago, before Los Angeles became a major city, towns like Pasadena and Long Beach were cities in their own right. Once Los Angeles became a major metropolis, the two aforementioned cities became suburbs. But as densification occurred, they again became cities. Now mass transit has become an issue in these cities – after nearly a century.
Across Lake Washington from Seattle sit the suburbs of Bellevue, Redmond and Kirkland. Thirty years ago they were true suburbs. Now they are a single city, even though they are made up of three separate municipalities. Downtown Bellevue looks like any downtown in Orange County, California or suburban Dallas-Fort Worth. Redmond is the home of Microsoft. (‘Nuff said.) Congestion and parking have become such problems that people are now seriously exploring a suburban monorail system complementary to, but not connected with, Seattle’s monorail which is now in the early stages of engineering. This is an intelligent reaction to densification and its attendant problems.
I agree with any mechanism that gets users to pay their way for use of products, goods, even public goods. Mass transit riders should PAY THEIR OWN WAY and so should the highway transit users.
Fine. If you’re willing to end any and all hidden subsidies for highways, I’ll agree that subsidies for transit systems should end.
Wonderful St Louis eh? Only 27% of expenses are covered by fares. ...
So what? Until we eliminate any and all subsidies for highways – hidden or open – I’m not going to get my shorts in a knot over subsidized trolleys.
You can get more transportation problems solved through properly designed roads than with mass transit boondoggles ...
If you truly believe that, then I’m wasting my time arguing with you.
It is now three times as expensive to travel by mass transit as by automobile, on a per-passenger-mile basis.
Only if you ignore the hidden subsidies for highways and count the overt subsidies for mass transit.
Competition for taxpayers' funds between special interest lobbies promoting road building and social engineers favoring mass transit has resulted in taxpayers funding both -- although roads pay their way through taxes while mass transit has required increasing subsidies.
I refer you to my original post which thoroughly demolished this argument. What you are quoting is pure, unadulterated BS from the various PR organs of the highway lobby. These people have an agenda, and it’s not about making cities run more efficiently.