It might be news to some but your mail, groceries, healthcare, emergency services, construction vehicles, tradesmen and myriad other essential services require roads regardless of whether you personally drive on them.
That’s totally missing the point. The scale of our roads is far larger than is strictly necessary, but we build in a lot of the costs associated with car usage, making it effectively cheaper to use a car. We also don’t invest in alternatives, making it practically necessary. This all has the effect of increasing the scale of roads, increasing the cost.
Yes, we need some roads, and yes some of that cost should be socialized. We do not need roads like we have today. We also do not need to be making it easier to use a car than, say, a bike for basic things, or a train for longer distances, or a bus for medium distances (yes, busses use roads, but they substantially reduce road usage, which means maintenance costs, by carrying dozens of people, compared to a car on average carrying slightly more than one person).
The largest cost of roads is maintanance. A large part of this, is just regular commuting, not the services you mentioned. That cost should not be socialized. It should be individual based on your usage. If you’re creating a need for more maintenance, you should have to pay for it. This incentivizes not just less car usage, but also less heavy car usage. IIRC, maintenance cost is accrued by a square of mass, or something similar to that. An SUV is creating much more maintenance demand/cost than a sedan, and a sedan more than a bike.
Plus, the implication that your taxes should only pay for services that you personally use, or even for services that you might use, is just plain uncivilized.
Some people have that situation, for example, where they can choose whether to pay for fire services, and if they don’t and their house catches fire, the fire department won’t do anything except protect neighboring houses that have paid for it.
Some taxes are fairly generic, like income tax or property tax. However some are specifically targeted, intentionally or not.
Too many people believe their gas taxes pay for road maintenance (on average in US less than half) so react in outrage when someone proposes other transportation needs, such as rail or bike lanes, or react in outrage at the idea of EVs not paying their fair share.
We should
replace the gasoline tax with a carbon tax on gasoline, so it pays for the environmental damage
Pay for transportation maintenance in a more inclusive way, perhaps cars can pay annually based on weight and mileage. Or for simplicity and privacy perhaps a fixed fee on annual registration. This would be fair for EV vs ice cars, and non-car owners don’t pay
The only thing is I’m getting awfully cynical on that. Sure, I’m all in to approve any tax increase for education, but is it really for that? The cynic in me wonders if politicians tend to shuffle the budget around so education appears to be in need. People are more likely to pay for education but are less likely to approve tax increases for other uses
I don’t have kids why the hell should I pay for schools…wellml because I like living in an educated society, helló I’ll never bep upset I’m paying for (real actual scientifically and primary source-backed) education.
Ah, but facilities used to drive a car are private goods, in that they are rivalrous and potentially excludable. Only one car can occupy a given space at a time, and we can (and do) charge for their use. Education, on the other hand, is a public good, non-rivalrous and non-exclusive. They are not the same, and there are good reasons to fund one with tax money, and not the other.
A ton of public services use roads. Actually, literally all public services use roads. School buses use roads to bring children to school. The post office uses roads, as do firefighters and EMS. So does your electric service, waste collection, and water service
So? those are a tiny fraction of the total use and if it was only used by those who really need it we would need a tiny fraction of the budget to repair them
Yes, and? All of those public services rely on private goods to operate, e.g. vehicles, fuel, wages, et cetera. All of those are rolled in to the cost of providing the service, so there’s no reason that use of the basic vehicle infrastructure could not also be included. It would help eliminate deadweight loss, in fact.
Fair. I’m advocating removing all subsidies for private motor vehicles, so that we have a user-pays system, including the cost of negative externalities, like pollution, carbon emissions, and human health impacts, through taxes and registration fees (or similar). This would price the true cost of transportion into goods and services, which would lead to an economically optimal amount of driving. Undoubtedly we’d choose to drive much less, which would have lots of knock-on benefits for individuals and local communities.
Ok. What would that realistically look like? How does your plan account for the significantly higher cost burden that would be born by people who are lower income, given they’re less likely to be able to afford fuel-efficient vehicles? And how do you account for EVs, or variability in carbon emissions?
Regardless, we’re talking about funding for roads, which is a related but totally separate issue from everything else I just mentioned. Roads are a public service, and I’m vehemently against the libertarian idea of “pay per use” you’re advocating
Given that car drivers currently overpay for road maintenance and trucking underpays you would see the opposite effect, where people are encouraged to use smaller vehicles.
Costs would rise for everyone, impacting the poorest.
Suddenly the BMW drivers who currently overpay and have been subsidising roads for non-drivers is saving money and the pensioner who doesn’t drive has increased food and medicine costs.
There’s a reason the costs are spread the way they are. It’s a form of effective socialism.
Local buses are a public service run by a municipality or transit authority, generally, but are still a private good. They’re rivalrous (only one butt per seat), and excludable (can’t ride if you don’t pay). This is clearer with inter-city buses, which are operated by private corporations.
the public transportation in the west coast has been largely getting rid of seats since they can force more people to stand per area than sitting around.
It’s economically inefficient. The true cost of transport should be naturally priced into the good or service, rather than artificially externalized. Supply-side subsidy by the government like this leads to higher-than-optimal use, which is the definition of deadweight loss. It costs us more to do things this way.
And, in this case, it’s not just taxpayers and consumers paying too much, there are catastrophic climate, social, environmental, and health effects from overuse of automobiles. If anything, government policy should work to eliminate these negative externalities by making drivers pay those costs, instead of imposing them on everybody else.
Saying “things you use go by car, neener neener” may sound profound, if you don’t examine the notion critically. It’s really just a thought-terminating cliché, though.
Eliminating cars in cities and reducing them in towns makes sense. It doesn’t for people that are spread out. I live 15 minutes from the nearest town(by car), with a 900f change in elevation. Not very doable for most people, and essentially impossible in winter.
That’s more than prolly fine, it is fine. If you can afford to pay the true cost of driving to enable that choice of location, I’ll not mind. But what is the net benefit to society to subsidize that choice? It reminds me of the joke about losing money on each sale, but making it up on volume.
If we have to maintain a national road system without charging people to drive on it, everyone will still be stuck paying for the roads. So since that would evidently be non-viable then there will be no ambulances and no roads. So have fun dragging yourself in your belly to the nearest ambulance-train, because nothing else would be cost effective lol
If it’s not nonsense, then let’s examine the logic underlying your comment: A user-pays funding model for automobile infrastructure, with all costs internalized, means that there would no longer be any motor vehicles, and thus no ambulances. So, the implication is that driving is so costly that nobody would do it if they actually had to pay for it themselves.
If your insinuation is that the existence of subsidization is the be-all-end-all of whether a form of transportation is viable or nonviable, then we need only turn our gaze to every other form of transportation available to us which is subsidized to hell and back as well to see how nonsensical your comment is. The only form of overland transportation that doesn’t require substantial state and federal government subsidies is freight rail.
So here we are again, with no way to move people around because it’s too “inefficient” for you. Have fun on your walk to your ambulance train.
Hahahaha, ambulance trains! I would predict that ambulances would cost a bit more due to higher fuel and registration costs, but I’d come out ahead because an ambulance ride is rare, compared to the income and property taxes that I pay every year. Especially since the overwhelmingly-likely way that I might break my leg is getting hit by a car. (They’d also have better response times with fewer cars on the streets.)
So we’ve agreed that private cars are a net loss to society, i.e. they cost more to operate than drivers receive in benefits. (This conclusion must follow from the idea that a user-pays system is untenable, rather than either a wash or a benefit to drivers.) We can bear that as a society, even if it’s grossly unfair, as long as the economic good times last. But the good times aren’t lasting; lots of communities are structurally bankrupt due to infrastructure obligations, primarily due to accommodating motor vehicles.
Walking and biking require no subsidies, by the way. One might argue that bike lanes are a subsidy, but they aren’t needed on streets with fewer, slower cars. Bike lanes are motor vehicle infrastructure.
I would predict that ambulances would cost a bit more due to higher fuel and registration costs, but I’d come out ahead because an ambulance ride is rare, compared to the income and property taxes that I pay every year.
So you think you’d come out ahead in this scenario where private cars don’t exist but roads still need to for emergency services?
So in your scenario where you as a taxpayer still have to pay for the roads to exist for things like emergency services (Invalidating your own entire original point, because you don’t seem too keen on my ambulance-train idea for some reason), but now there are no taxes being paid by the users of the road? No, you would just pay more comparatively as a non driver than the ex-drivers. The only way to come out ahead would be for emergency services, mail, and other logistics systems you rely on every day would to operate via means that don’t need to be subsidized, the only one of which are freight train tracks. (Passenger rail is out of the question in this scenario obviously).
Especially since the overwhelmingly-likely way that I might break my leg is getting hit by a car
Actually the overwhelmingly-likely way you might break your leg is by falling. Either from a height, at speed (like from your bike) or just plain old tripping).
Walking and biking require no subsidies, by the way.
Sure they do. Many sidewalks are maintained by your local government. The ones that aren’t, usually because they charge the homeowner with this responsibility, are often eligible for subsidies and financial assistance programs. If nobody is driving, taking busses, or passenger rail because they can’t be supported by a user-paying system, lots of people will need bike at a minimum, so just sidewalks won’t work. You’d need to maintain some sort of “road” to accommodate all the bikes. Theres really no way you come out of this on top. You either need to get really wacky and increasingly unrealistic to even make this idea work at all, or else it just doesn’t.
yea no shit. I lived all my life with a neurodegerative disease and it’s been proven to be caused by fine particle. I loathe vroomers with all my heart. I wish i was born before cars
Nah, I don’t think “tax money is used to provide public infrastructure” warrants a “carbrain,” and I don’t think that’s an unpopular opinion, even amongst my fellow automotive unenthusiasts.
It’s amazing how you just gloss over than the “public infrastructure” is “roads”. I’ve seen people call people carbrains just for acknowledging roads ARE public infrastructure.
I maybe only see the stupidest and most vicious. You maybe only see the most intelligent and measured.
The truth is, you’re at a disadvantage here trying to convince me or anyone that rabid idiots don’t exist in the fuckcars community when others have seen and interacted personally with them.
I guess all I can really ask is that IF you see this behavior you call it out. Communities that don’t self regulate inevitably go insane and start generating slurs for people outside of thier culture which is a pretty good litmus test for toxicity.
It might be news to some but your mail, groceries, healthcare, emergency services, construction vehicles, tradesmen and myriad other essential services require roads regardless of whether you personally drive on them.
And those are like what? 1% of total traffic? If every fatzo who could would take the train the roads would be pretty much everlasting
That’s totally missing the point. The scale of our roads is far larger than is strictly necessary, but we build in a lot of the costs associated with car usage, making it effectively cheaper to use a car. We also don’t invest in alternatives, making it practically necessary. This all has the effect of increasing the scale of roads, increasing the cost.
Yes, we need some roads, and yes some of that cost should be socialized. We do not need roads like we have today. We also do not need to be making it easier to use a car than, say, a bike for basic things, or a train for longer distances, or a bus for medium distances (yes, busses use roads, but they substantially reduce road usage, which means maintenance costs, by carrying dozens of people, compared to a car on average carrying slightly more than one person).
The largest cost of roads is maintanance. A large part of this, is just regular commuting, not the services you mentioned. That cost should not be socialized. It should be individual based on your usage. If you’re creating a need for more maintenance, you should have to pay for it. This incentivizes not just less car usage, but also less heavy car usage. IIRC, maintenance cost is accrued by a square of mass, or something similar to that. An SUV is creating much more maintenance demand/cost than a sedan, and a sedan more than a bike.
Plus, the implication that your taxes should only pay for services that you personally use, or even for services that you might use, is just plain uncivilized.
Some people have that situation, for example, where they can choose whether to pay for fire services, and if they don’t and their house catches fire, the fire department won’t do anything except protect neighboring houses that have paid for it.
It’s pretty backwards for modern sensibilities.
Some taxes are fairly generic, like income tax or property tax. However some are specifically targeted, intentionally or not.
Too many people believe their gas taxes pay for road maintenance (on average in US less than half) so react in outrage when someone proposes other transportation needs, such as rail or bike lanes, or react in outrage at the idea of EVs not paying their fair share.
We should
Fire services aren’t giving people lung cancer omg.
My property taxes go overwhelmingly to the school (well like 52 percent where nothing else is close to that big) and I’ll never have kids.
I like the kids educated that do exist though! Like damn we need them educated!
but still gets underfunded somehow.
Right? I don’t have kids but I’m happy my property tax funds schools.
The only thing is I’m getting awfully cynical on that. Sure, I’m all in to approve any tax increase for education, but is it really for that? The cynic in me wonders if politicians tend to shuffle the budget around so education appears to be in need. People are more likely to pay for education but are less likely to approve tax increases for other uses
I don’t have kids why the hell should I pay for schools…wellml because I like living in an educated society, helló I’ll never bep upset I’m paying for (real actual scientifically and primary source-backed) education.
Ah, but facilities used to drive a car are private goods, in that they are rivalrous and potentially excludable. Only one car can occupy a given space at a time, and we can (and do) charge for their use. Education, on the other hand, is a public good, non-rivalrous and non-exclusive. They are not the same, and there are good reasons to fund one with tax money, and not the other.
A ton of public services use roads. Actually, literally all public services use roads. School buses use roads to bring children to school. The post office uses roads, as do firefighters and EMS. So does your electric service, waste collection, and water service
So? those are a tiny fraction of the total use and if it was only used by those who really need it we would need a tiny fraction of the budget to repair them
Yes, and? All of those public services rely on private goods to operate, e.g. vehicles, fuel, wages, et cetera. All of those are rolled in to the cost of providing the service, so there’s no reason that use of the basic vehicle infrastructure could not also be included. It would help eliminate deadweight loss, in fact.
I have no idea what sort of model you’re advocating for here
Fair. I’m advocating removing all subsidies for private motor vehicles, so that we have a user-pays system, including the cost of negative externalities, like pollution, carbon emissions, and human health impacts, through taxes and registration fees (or similar). This would price the true cost of transportion into goods and services, which would lead to an economically optimal amount of driving. Undoubtedly we’d choose to drive much less, which would have lots of knock-on benefits for individuals and local communities.
Exatly. I don’t drive, Im sick of my taxes going to some highway so some fatzo can sit on his pollution machine because he’s bothered by trains.
Ok. What would that realistically look like? How does your plan account for the significantly higher cost burden that would be born by people who are lower income, given they’re less likely to be able to afford fuel-efficient vehicles? And how do you account for EVs, or variability in carbon emissions?
Regardless, we’re talking about funding for roads, which is a related but totally separate issue from everything else I just mentioned. Roads are a public service, and I’m vehemently against the libertarian idea of “pay per use” you’re advocating
no you want taxpayers to subsidies your convenience because you’re too fat to take the train
Given that car drivers currently overpay for road maintenance and trucking underpays you would see the opposite effect, where people are encouraged to use smaller vehicles.
Costs would rise for everyone, impacting the poorest.
Suddenly the BMW drivers who currently overpay and have been subsidising roads for non-drivers is saving money and the pensioner who doesn’t drive has increased food and medicine costs.
There’s a reason the costs are spread the way they are. It’s a form of effective socialism.
Buses exist.
Local buses are a public service run by a municipality or transit authority, generally, but are still a private good. They’re rivalrous (only one butt per seat), and excludable (can’t ride if you don’t pay). This is clearer with inter-city buses, which are operated by private corporations.
the public transportation in the west coast has been largely getting rid of seats since they can force more people to stand per area than sitting around.
It’s economically inefficient. The true cost of transport should be naturally priced into the good or service, rather than artificially externalized. Supply-side subsidy by the government like this leads to higher-than-optimal use, which is the definition of deadweight loss. It costs us more to do things this way.
And, in this case, it’s not just taxpayers and consumers paying too much, there are catastrophic climate, social, environmental, and health effects from overuse of automobiles. If anything, government policy should work to eliminate these negative externalities by making drivers pay those costs, instead of imposing them on everybody else.
Saying “things you use go by car, neener neener” may sound profound, if you don’t examine the notion critically. It’s really just a thought-terminating cliché, though.
Eliminating cars in cities and reducing them in towns makes sense. It doesn’t for people that are spread out. I live 15 minutes from the nearest town(by car), with a 900f change in elevation. Not very doable for most people, and essentially impossible in winter.
That’s more than prolly fine, it is fine. If you can afford to pay the true cost of driving to enable that choice of location, I’ll not mind. But what is the net benefit to society to subsidize that choice? It reminds me of the joke about losing money on each sale, but making it up on volume.
not viable in our area to in the west most tech employers are outside of cities.
well they will move when they realize nobody can go there anymore
Ok then the next time you break your leg make sure you limp a few miles to the nearest ambulance-train lmao
if only ambulances would use the road we wouldn’t need to repair them every five years idiot
If we have to maintain a national road system without charging people to drive on it, everyone will still be stuck paying for the roads. So since that would evidently be non-viable then there will be no ambulances and no roads. So have fun dragging yourself in your belly to the nearest ambulance-train, because nothing else would be cost effective lol
We don’t need to do that now…
I love these nonsensical replies. They’re very validating.
Yeah your nonsensical comment would be validated by a nonsensical reply, wouldn’t it
If it’s not nonsense, then let’s examine the logic underlying your comment: A user-pays funding model for automobile infrastructure, with all costs internalized, means that there would no longer be any motor vehicles, and thus no ambulances. So, the implication is that driving is so costly that nobody would do it if they actually had to pay for it themselves.
If your insinuation is that the existence of subsidization is the be-all-end-all of whether a form of transportation is viable or nonviable, then we need only turn our gaze to every other form of transportation available to us which is subsidized to hell and back as well to see how nonsensical your comment is. The only form of overland transportation that doesn’t require substantial state and federal government subsidies is freight rail.
So here we are again, with no way to move people around because it’s too “inefficient” for you. Have fun on your walk to your ambulance train.
Hahahaha, ambulance trains! I would predict that ambulances would cost a bit more due to higher fuel and registration costs, but I’d come out ahead because an ambulance ride is rare, compared to the income and property taxes that I pay every year. Especially since the overwhelmingly-likely way that I might break my leg is getting hit by a car. (They’d also have better response times with fewer cars on the streets.)
So we’ve agreed that private cars are a net loss to society, i.e. they cost more to operate than drivers receive in benefits. (This conclusion must follow from the idea that a user-pays system is untenable, rather than either a wash or a benefit to drivers.) We can bear that as a society, even if it’s grossly unfair, as long as the economic good times last. But the good times aren’t lasting; lots of communities are structurally bankrupt due to infrastructure obligations, primarily due to accommodating motor vehicles.
Walking and biking require no subsidies, by the way. One might argue that bike lanes are a subsidy, but they aren’t needed on streets with fewer, slower cars. Bike lanes are motor vehicle infrastructure.
So you think you’d come out ahead in this scenario where private cars don’t exist but roads still need to for emergency services?
So in your scenario where you as a taxpayer still have to pay for the roads to exist for things like emergency services (Invalidating your own entire original point, because you don’t seem too keen on my ambulance-train idea for some reason), but now there are no taxes being paid by the users of the road? No, you would just pay more comparatively as a non driver than the ex-drivers. The only way to come out ahead would be for emergency services, mail, and other logistics systems you rely on every day would to operate via means that don’t need to be subsidized, the only one of which are freight train tracks. (Passenger rail is out of the question in this scenario obviously).
Actually the overwhelmingly-likely way you might break your leg is by falling. Either from a height, at speed (like from your bike) or just plain old tripping).
Sure they do. Many sidewalks are maintained by your local government. The ones that aren’t, usually because they charge the homeowner with this responsibility, are often eligible for subsidies and financial assistance programs. If nobody is driving, taking busses, or passenger rail because they can’t be supported by a user-paying system, lots of people will need bike at a minimum, so just sidewalks won’t work. You’d need to maintain some sort of “road” to accommodate all the bikes. Theres really no way you come out of this on top. You either need to get really wacky and increasingly unrealistic to even make this idea work at all, or else it just doesn’t.
Road != car road
Don’t tell the /fuckcars people that. They’ll get absolutely livid and start calling you names.
yea no shit. I lived all my life with a neurodegerative disease and it’s been proven to be caused by fine particle. I loathe vroomers with all my heart. I wish i was born before cars
I don’t think that’s true.
You don’t think this would merit a “carbrain”? I’ve seen it thrown at much less.
Nah, I don’t think “tax money is used to provide public infrastructure” warrants a “carbrain,” and I don’t think that’s an unpopular opinion, even amongst my fellow automotive unenthusiasts.
It’s amazing how you just gloss over than the “public infrastructure” is “roads”. I’ve seen people call people carbrains just for acknowledging roads ARE public infrastructure.
I maybe only see the stupidest and most vicious. You maybe only see the most intelligent and measured.
The truth is, you’re at a disadvantage here trying to convince me or anyone that rabid idiots don’t exist in the fuckcars community when others have seen and interacted personally with them.
I guess all I can really ask is that IF you see this behavior you call it out. Communities that don’t self regulate inevitably go insane and start generating slurs for people outside of thier culture which is a pretty good litmus test for toxicity.