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Transit Policy: Whole Cost of Transit

Piccadilly Circus, originally uploaded by Mizz Amontillado

Interesting article by Adam G regarding Transit pricing relating to public policy:

...it strikes me that there are really two and only two fully defensible positions on this question, with maybe the ghost of a third struggling to find form between them. Either (a) you regard transit as an absolute social good and opportunity multiplier, and you subsidize its use fully and for all, or (b) you understand it as a material system which sustains real operating costs, and believe that it is only sensible to recover some of that cost from the system’s direct beneficiaries, the riders.

Adam raises some interesting points, but I would like to step back and look at all transit options, not just mass transit.

In a perfect world transit would be priced two ways:

1. On the carbon market as a proportion of carbon emissions to persons transported, and
2. Based on personal worth (Adam calls this the "museum, pay as much as you can Marxist ideal")

Taxing Consumption and Efficiency

malmörailyard, originally uploaded by christopher line

The first metric sounds futuristic, but is actually only a few steps removed from current systems. Pricing on the carbon market based on carbon emissions per persons transported would be instituted by a mixture of charging users based on car type, commercial delivery, number of occupants and duration.

The rudiments of this system are already in situ at various forms from the London Congestion Charge which sets a fee for some motorists entering the Central London area to HOV lanes to toll roads to E-Z-Pass. All that is needed is the political will and assembly of the systems.

In the end, this would be a system which taxes both consumption and efficiency. As the US continues it's urbanization (and suburbanization), the status quo is becoming untenable. Large infrastructure projects such as highways and airports receive a disproportionate share of funding in lieu of mass transportation.

Illustrating that a multiple-occupancy Hummer costs more to transport than a hybrid car of any occupancy is easy enough, but having more complete metrics is essential. Using established transportation diagrams which show Transit bandwidth by type would be a good starting point. A promising area of study would be to review the carbon emissions per transportation type:

• Secondary surface road
• Primary surface road
• Highway traffic
• Bus Systems
• Subway/light rail
• Flight
• Shipping

Finding the average carbon emission of a mile of highway versus a mile of subway and the associated costs of both would begin to show us both the value of "sunk costs" and operating costs.

Negating Consumption Taxes to the Poor

The biggest problem with the first metric, is that consumption taxes are an inherently regressive form of taxation which hits the poorest (who often have less options) the hardest. Gasoline taxes, so-called "sin taxes" on cigarettes or alcohol, and clothing taxes are examples of regressive taxes. Adjusting your carbon tax to make it proportional to you personal wealth would ease (or eliminate) the regressiveness of the tax. This could be accomplished as a tax break, much like home mortgage interest is deducted from your taxes.

Why?

Pardon our Progress II by Sam Hill

Why go through all of this work? The status quo operates by the Federal government doling large amounts of money on huge infrastructure projects which primarily revolve around highways, which are becoming inherently inefficient to personal transportation due to suburban sprawl. Surface highways and personal vehicles are, and will for the foreseeable future, be a necessary economic engine. However, as sprawl occurs at a continual rate, personal vehicles will increasingly be less and less efficient, both monetarily though wasted gas and time but also due to the fixed bandwidth of roads themselves, less and less personal vehicles will be able to operate.

A solution to the mounting transit problem is to either integrate more mass transit or alternative transit systems and add carbon taxes outlined above in existing urban/suburban areas, or to drastically alter the suburban landscape through zoning and eminent domain to re-urbanize the landscape.

It seems that integration of multiple transportation with carbon taxes would be a preferable solution than to start condemning property.

Later:
Looks like $100,000 was donated to the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility to study study how a free mass transit system could save money for the city (more from Gothamist).