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From: walton@ametek.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.politics
Subject: What does driving cost?
Message-ID: <12252021756.50.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Mon, 3-Nov-86 13:05:36 EST
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Posted: Mon Nov  3 13:05:36 1986
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To: cit-vax!mcgeer@sirius.berkeley.edu

In Poli-Sci V6 #97, you write:

   In the first place, did the factories precede the transit lines, or
   the transit lines precede the factories?  In the second place, the
   very best system of rapid transit in the world is decentralized,
   and privately owned and operated.  It sits in your garage and mine,
   and it's a damned sight better way to get from A to B than any
   transit system I've ever ridden on...

I think this point deserves some expounding on; this mild diatribe was
inspired at least in part by a recent Auto Club study calling for the
construction of 400 miles of new freeway (at a cost of $20 billion) in
Southern California by the year 2000.  Why is it that, even though an
automobile driven by a single person is clearly less efficient (uses
more resources) than mass transit, it is often both cheaper and more
pleasant, especially when a fair valuation of one's own time is used?
    There is only one answer: Massive Government Subsidies.  During
the Carter administration, Congress debated the trucking deregulation
bill (which included an increase in interstate truck taxes).  At the
time, All Things Considered did a series of interviews with various
local transportation officials.  The mayor of Indianapolis stated that
direct taxes on vehicles paid only about 1/3 of the cost of building
and maintaining roads in his city, with the remainder coming from
general funds.  The secretary of transporation of Georgia cited a
study done by his state which showed that trucks caused 95% of the
wear on roads, yet even with the higher truck taxes the trucks would
only be paying about half of the maintenance costs.
    But such things aren't even the largest subsidy.  The largest one
of all is that the Government owns the land on which the roads are
built and will not sell it, even for a good price.  If the roads were
privately owned, the users of the roads would have to pay the owners
at least as much as the owners could receive by leasing the land on
which the road sits to someone else for another purpose.  For the
interstates in the Western deserts, this would be very little.  For
the freeways in downtown LA, this would be a huge amount, much more
than drivers currently pay the Government for use of the roads.
Evidence:  parking in downtown Los Angeles during an 8-hour work day
now costs about $200 per month in a garage which holds perhaps 200
cars in a space the size of a large midtown intersection.  That is a
lot of money.
    Yet we hear from the Libertarians and from the Auto Club that mass
transit cannot be built unless it is self supporting.  To which I
reply:  bring on your libertarian free transportation market!  Let ALL
forms of transit have a price which accurately reflects the cost of
providing it.  You may be surprised at the results, though.
                                                -Steve Walton
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