http://reason.tv/video/show/6.html

In DC ridership on the Metro went way up w/ last year’s gas prices. Then the complaint was it was stressing the rail cars, and more riders was going to raises costs for the Metro.

What? What kind of lunatic supports a business model that loses money regardless of economy of scale?

Katherine:
Is commuter transit viable without subsidy anywhere?

Any kind of transportation – including cars – is subsidized in one way or another, no?

The answer is NO. I’m always stunned that people propose this like it’s some sort of counter-argument to allowing people to drive.
Gasoline taxes, tolls, and car registration fees are not subsidies…they are user pay fees. Perfectly reasonable transactions, until the gov’t starts spending those receipts elsewhere. But that doesn’t take away from the argument that autos aren’t subsidized, it proves it even more. Cars would be even more affordable if gas taxes, tolls and registration fees were reduced to the actual costs for roads.

Any kind of transportation – including cars – is subsidized in one way or another, no? It’s just easier to quantify rail.

How do you account for/aggregate the costs of (for example): local police and fire budgets (patrol, moving vehicle violations, accidents, cleanup, ambulance); dead animal cleanup (deer, eg. a common occurance around here.) Not to mention local pothole repair.

Road costs also seem to be spread over a large percentage of the population – even among those who don’t use the roads. It is difficult to imagine that, even though diesel is taxed more than gasoline, that moving heavy construction equipment pays its own way in terms of road repair. Finally, when a lot of people use roads designed 50 or more years ago (think Rte 128 in MA), and the roads need to be widened to accommodate the increased traffic, the immediate financial burden is born by everyone through federal highway money along with state highway money. The hidden costs of dislocation, land taking, and so on, are not necessarily taken into account, but are real nonetheless. Pollution problems? This is real, but this strikes me as a NIBMY argument, nonetheless.

I think that the rail vs. road discussion is much more complicated that we would like to admit. I also think that both forms of transportation are good. Which do I prefer? Depends on the traffic jam that I’m sitting in, or the schedule that says that I can’t get to where I need to go when I need to!

Sorry if I’m a little rambl-y here…I really like your blog. Thanks!

The majority of the US citizens only wait for the chance to turn the US in a modern Europe style all-service state.

A frequent “joke” of mine, sure to set off eye-rolling, is to tell my kids, “Want to hear something really scary? Social Security will be completely bankrupt by the time you retire.” If I could find a pithy way to say what you just wrote, I’d make an update. Gallows humor.

Is commuter transit viable without subsidy anywhere? I’m pretty sure even NYC’s vaunted subway system requires subsidy on an operating basis, and even if not I’m absolutely sure it requires massive subsidy when capital costs are taken into account. Rail is by far the worst at recovering its costs at the farebox, which must be why liberals like it so much. I still don’t understand why so many people think rail transit means “first class city”, when I think it’s obvious that rail is such a poor way to move people that no sane person would undertake constructing a rail line. Rail is a monstrous polluter too, producing literally dozens of times the NOx, hydrocarbon, and particulate emissions per passenger mile that a car does. Cars are so clean these days that on a smoggy day the air exiting the tailpipe is cleaner than the air entering the engine.

If you want to see the ultimate in commuter rail cram jobs, check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjJ3g_wv8H0

This is for real. My brother lives not far from the station pictured. It’s a daily occurance. Anybody want to speculate on the cause and cost of this phenomenon?