04 March 2010

Raise My Taxes, Please!

...For transit that increases value in our city:
This paper uses data from U.S. cities to investigate the incremental costs and benefits of high quality transit service. The analysis indicates that high quality public transit typically requires about $268 annually per capita in additional tax subsidy and $104 in additional fares, but provides vehicle, parking and road cost savings averaging $1,040 per capita, plus other benefits including congestion reductions, increased traffic safety, pollution reductions, improved mobility for non-drivers, improved fitness and health. This indicates that residents should rationally support tax increases if needed to create high quality public transit systems in their communities. Current planning practices tend to overlook or undervalue many of these savings and benefits and so result in underinvestment in transit quality improvements.


From the The Victoria Transport Policy Institute.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It looks to me like this figure for savings assumes that people stop paying for/buying cars and parking. That doesn't seem reasonable, especially after subsidizing the industry directly.

JFV

CityKin said...

You would save a lot more than $1040 if you totally got rid of your car.

It averages the savings by using statistics from existing areas with good transit. It is just saying that people in these areas drive less miles and have fewer cars per household...

5chw4r7z said...

I've seen estimates that say total cost of ownership for a car is $400 a month which once I thought about it, sounds reasonable. gas, oil, maintenance, insurance, parking, and I bet a bunch of nickels and dimes and I haven't even thought of.

factor in the cost of parking which the government subsidizes more than medicare and there is a huge social burden to car ownership.

The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup, an urban planning professor at UCLA. http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu

He reports that in 2002 between $127 billion and $374 billion a year was spent nationally to subsidize off-street parking, as much as the U.S. spent on Medicare or national defense that year

In 2007 Americans spent $78 billion in gas sitting in traffic jams, how can we not afford mass transit?

CityKin said...

love you 5chw4r7z, you right-leaning transit supporter you