Originally Posted by
david58
We forget infrastructure, and I'm kinda surprised sometimes at the simple logic. Slim, living in the West, you should see this clearly - things are too far apart out here to think that folks will give up cars. Rail service, being almost nonexistent, would be horribly costly to replace cars with. The city of Portland is a great example: The MAX lines are considered by the builders to be such a wonder, but ridership doesn't even begin to put a dent in the cost, and the cost of the system is almost totally funded by the residents of the city, not the riders. Shy of outlawing cars (not inconceivable in Portland), ridership exceeding more than a few percent of the available seats on the Max is a pipe dream.
Europe is a perfect example of the ideal mass transit environment - numerous villages/towns/cities liked by rail lines, with population density such that cycling/streetcar/taxi works well in the towns. Try connecting Medford, Eugene, Salem, and Portland in a manner that would result in riders - ie, get the train off the freight lines and onto dedicated passenger rails - and count the billions of dollars it would take and the years to build. In my lifetime, it simply isn't going to happen. It is far more efficient to improve the automobile's efficiency in fuel usage than to spend the billions on the infrastructure when we can't even fix potholes.
My commute pipe dream would be bike lanes without doors, drivers trained to look for cyclists, and storm drains that won't eat my front wheel. And I'd take a street sweeper every once in a while.
And no flying cars. You think drivers are bad when they're attached to the ground?
Well, before cars were common people often got from city to city and town to town on rail.
Who funds the costs of building and maintaining the local streets? Drivers? That's a myth.
In Minnesota at least, state and federal gas taxes along with other "user fees" only pays for about 25% of the cost of building and maintaining roads in major cities and older suburbs. Most of the state gas tax goes to highways which benefits more rural users, though they still have trouble funding maintenance of their local streets and feeder roads.
So the idea that streets are "user funded" and pay for themselves is a myth. In many places roads are deteriorating quicker than than they can be repaired even with the subsidies.
This doesn't even take into consideration "externalities" - pollution that adds a financial burden to our societies. And how much is it costing us to have that air craft carrier group patrolling in the Persian Gulf in order to keep the oil flowing?
So yes, public transportation is heavily subsidized. So is auto transportation. We just don't like to think of it that way.