https://www.cnn.com/travel/paris-new-metro-network/index.html
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Now that’s infrastructure done as a nation means to do it, rather than have a political talking point!
d fb
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Not to mention “thought leaders” like Sean Hannity. Several years ago, I heard Hannity bellow words to the effect “mass transit is a big gummit conspiracy to take away your freedom”. These days, “thought leaders” will look at how mass transit systems are usually subsidized, rather than each rider paying the full cost of the ride out of pocket, and distill Hannity’s screed down to “COMMUNISM”.
Steve
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"In 2017, Americans paid $15.8 billion in fares to travel 55.0 billion passenger miles by public transit, for an average fare of 28.8 cents per passenger mile. Transit agencies spent $66.4 billion providing those services, or $1.207 per passenger mile. The net subsidy was $50.5 billion or 91.9 cents per passenger mile.
“Since Americans travel more than a hundred times as many passenger miles on highways as by public transit and the subsidies to the two are both around $51 billion, the transit subsidy per passenger mile is more than 100 times the subsidy to driving.”
https://www.newgeography.com/content/006415-transport-costs-subsidies-mode
DB2
Isn’t that what I said?..tho thanks for the numbers. If the mass transit subsidies were zeroed out, a lot of people could not afford to get to work, but then the government could cover the cost of another tax cut for the “JCs”.
Steve
No problem. I’d always known that ridership didn’t cover the costs of mass transit, but hadn’t seen the numbers.
DB2
Subsidized mass transit is an incredible time saver for working class people. My dentist’s secretary used to tell me how much time she wasted coming and going to work. Subways have the advantage of not getting stuck in surface traffic.
One of the things I hated most was getting stuck in rush hour traffic, the reason I looked for living quarters near my workplace. Of course, the home office solves that problem.
The Captain
My first subway was Paris on our way to Venezuela in 1946. My dad, who travelled from Germany to Venezuela via Russia, the Trans-Siberian Railway, Vladivostok, Yokohama, Panama Canal in 1936 said that the Moscow subway was magnificent. The Caracas Metro, funded in 1977, was one of the cleanest public places in Caracas.
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Urban mass transit is different from transit. Cities are dense, and many cities could not function without people using mass transit, and so mass transit gets subsidized.
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There are two kinds of costs AND revenues.
Direct costs AND forgone costs (i.e. cost of alternative choices).
Then there are direct revenue (tolls, etc) AND indirect revenue–income streams to others (which create jobs and are taxed–so govt revenue). Wide variety of indirect revenue is hard to pin down because it is so diverse.
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Albany might be able to give a summary. It is part of his professional field.
DB2
Approved by politicians as it could not be funded by govt otherwise. They would not waste valuable taxpayer funds, would they? Remember: Many politicians either are lawyers or have a legal background.
I went to school at a small college outside Boston. The good concerts were at Brandeis, about a 20 or 30 minute car ride away. Sadly, without a car, the only way to get there was to take the “spoke” of the mass transit hub and spoke into the center city, then another spoke back out to Brandeis, about an hour to and hour-20 each way, depending on connections.
Outer rings or not, we have built ourselves a semi-dysfunctional system all across the land. I like the “new” concept of the 15 minute city, which is that within 15 minutes of housing are all the things that might normally be needed to live: grocery, hardware, medical, etc. I”m sure there are some things that wouldn’t fit the mold (universities, major hospitals, etc.) but overall a change in the way-back-when would have been providing benefits all along. Alas, never to be, I suspect.
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American has a long, celebrated history of being willing to pay extra for less, as long as blacks and browns suffer even more. Health care being the most prominent example.
intercst
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