Working poor would not be charged the full cost of providing them with a car, and the means to keep it running, either. If they could pay the full cost themselves, they would have a car already. So, which socialistical, big gummit, scheme do you favor; subsidizing mass transit, or subsidizing car ownership?
The average cost of car insurance in Michigan is $4,333 per year. This is the most expensive rate in the United States and is more than three times the national average of $1,424 per year.
Whichever was better. Recognizing that âbetterâ is an unbelievably vague term, and that thereâs lots of different (and competing) policy goals in place.
Access to private cars is (generally) more advantageous for people than access to public transit in places like Michigan. Cars provide a much larger isochron (the portion of a place that can be reached in any given point in time), so having access to a car provides more access to a wider range of potential jobs, housing, and consumer goods and services than getting access to transit. Cars are, broadly, cheaper per passenger mile than mass transit as well.
But - thereâs logistical obstacles that prevent us from directly providing access to passenger cars. You canât just go out and buy people cars and pay their insurance for them, because thereâs no effective way to limit that to just people who wouldnât/couldnât do that for themselves. And of course, with ICE engines thereâs the environmental objections to that type of program.
Those obstacles, though, donât make mass transit âlow cost.â It would be interesting to see how a program that offered low-income folks subsidized âcar vouchersâ (analogous to Section 8 housing reimbursements) for leasing vehicles, combined with state-run (and therefore subsidized) car insurance, compared to the cost and effectiveness of transit. I suspect in a place like Michigan the folks who were able to participate in such a program would have vast improvements in their mobility relative to transit. But the folks who couldnât participate would be in a difficult positoin.
For the halibut, I looked up some numbers for the Detroit SMART system
Annual revenue $144,885,900, of which $4m is from fares.
Ridership: 29,000 people/weekday.
Assume all 29,000 are going to a job. providing those 29,000 people a ride to work each day, for a year, works out to $4,996.07 per person, per yearâŚbarely enough to cover the insurance on a car in Michigan, and if you finance, you are required to pay for broad collision and comprehensive. If you live in Detroit, the average car insurance bill is $6,239/yr. Canât even begin to cover the cost of buying the car, or maintaining it, or fueling it.
Thanks for the prompt. Found some interesting numbers.
I suspect that your calculations are wrong.
First off, the figure you provide for insurance in Michigan is shockingly high - and probably wrong. Thereâs four links below that show the average cost as being between $1,600 and $2,600 for full coverage, and closer to $1K for minimum coverage. I couldnât find any other source that corroborated more than $4K annually for insurance in Michigan.
Second, ridership counts daily trips - boardings, not daily round trips. So if youâve got 29K weekday riders, thatâs going to be $10,000 per year per person per year for the round trip to work. About $20 per one-way ride - which actually isnât far from what other low-ridership transit systems experience.
So youâre comparing that $10K vs. a $2.5K insurance policy. Naturally, thereâs plenty other expense to owning and operating a car. But then again, you get far far more mobility from owning and operating a car than a single round-trip to work - access to shopping options (cheaper groceries!), more variety of medical and other service providers, more flexibility in your child care and other arrangements. Etc.
So, yes - I think mass transitâs a pretty high-cost way of providing a very small amount of mobility to a very small number of people, at least in areas like Michigan.
https://www.thezebra.com/auto-insurance/michigan-car-insurance/mi-average-cost-of-auto-insurance/
https://www.usnews.com/insurance/auto/cheap-car-insurance-michigan
Dueling links! Nerdwallet, from last December, after the âreformâ that cut rates a lot, for some people.
Rates across Michigan differ from those in Detroit for lots of reasons. The number of accidents, the type of roads and even the weather can affect the rates drivers are charged. According to NerdWalletâs most recent analysis, the average rate in Michigan is $3,229, while in Detroit, itâs $6,239.
DB2
And NordstromâŚ
Nordstrom is planning to close both of its Downtown San Francisco stores, choosing not to renew its lease obligations at its location in the Westfield Mall. It will also close a second nearby Downtown Nordstrom RackâŚ
The Westfield mall and its owner, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, said in a statement that the planned closure âunderscores the deteriorating situation in Downtown San Francisco.â
âA growing number of retailers and businesses are leaving the area due to the unsafe conditions for customers, retailers, and employees, coupled with the fact that these significant issues are preventing an economic recovery of the area,â the statement said.
DB2
Seeing poop on the ground is not uncommon in the city by the bay. But human waste has been showing up somewhere else: the elevators in Downtown San Franciscoâs Westfield Centre.
âItâs like twice a week now. It used to be once a month,â said Abimael Garcia, who manages janitors at Westfield. âSo lately, itâs increased.â
DB2
I wonder if said mall management decided to lock the public bathrooms in said mall so the street peeps are telling management what they think of the ideaâŚ
'38Packard
Bloomingdaleâs to close flagship store in San Franciscoâs biggest mall
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-bloomingdales-westfield-mall-20047347.php
The store, which occupies 330,000 square feet in the beleaguered San Francisco Centre, is slated to close at the end of March. Bloomingdaleâs is by far the mallâs largest remaining tenant, and it is closing the brandâs second-biggest store after its New York flagshipâŚ
Bloomingdaleâs, which opened in 2006 in the former Westfield mall, is the second anchor tenant to bail on the 1.5 million-square-foot property at Fifth and Market streets. Nordstromâs flagship store closed in 2023 after 35 years in businessâŚ
The closure of Bloomingdaleâs deals another setback to the struggling San Francisco Centre mall, which is about half vacant after an exodus of retailers since the pandemic.
DB2
No argument that San Francisco has been woefully mismanaged for many years. Both the Left and Right have demonstrated that they cannot govern effectively for any appreciable length of time. Ideologues arenât inclined to do the pragmatic compromises required to govern successfully. The successful future of America lies in the political middle, which seems to have largely disappeared.
This suggests a new topic idea.
The three malls where I worked for RS have all been torn down. Enclosed malls are expensive, due to the occupancy costs from common area maintenance.
Steve
The Westfield San Francisco Centre mall has been dying a long, slow death. From 2023:
From 2025:
Earlier this year it looked as though there were buyers for the mall, but the deal has fallen through.
The prospective buyers of the shuttered San Francisco Centre mall have walked away from the pending deal to buy the downtown shopping center after months of due diligence, according to sources familiar with the talks, scuttling what had been poised to be one of San Franciscoâs highest-profile commercial real estate sales in recent yearsâŚ
One source tracking the sale of the cityâs fully vacant downtown mall reported the deal was killed, in part, after the developers failed to renegotiate an existing long-term lease held by the San Francisco Unified School District for a portion of the propertyâŚ
DB2