Yes, sprawl is expensive
From a very interesting New York Times op-ed:
There is a mistaken notion that American drivers pay for their roads through gas taxes. Actually, even though states collect gas taxes and a modest federal levy was imposed to pay part of the Interstate expenses, the total of these charges never amounted to more than one-third of highway costs. Such taxes, adjusted for inflation, have actually decreased, and efforts to increase them are politically risky, even though each 1-cent rise in the gas tax costs the average driver less than $8 a year. In practice, our roads and highways have been underwritten by general taxation. With gas taxes and tolls capped by effective lobbying, this annual subsidy has grown, amounting to billions of dollars annually.
So, there you have it. You and I are paying for sprawl out of our taxes, whether or not we use interstate highways, to an even greater extent than car drivers pay for transit.
For comparison:
Passenger fares covered 67.3% of the operating costs of New York City subways in 2002, the highest farebox recovery ratio among the nation’s 14 heavy rail transit systems, according to a just released Brookings Institution study. Close behind were the Washington Metro, 61.6%; New Jersey/Philadelphia’s PATCO, 61.4%; Philadelphia’s SEPTA, 58.6%; and San Francisco/Oakland’s BART, 58.4%. Chicago’s CTA came in at 44.3%; Boston’s MBTA, 43.7%; PATH’s trans-Hudson tubes, 41.0%; Atlanta’s MARTA, 39.2%; Maryland Mass Transit (Baltimore), 26.3%; Greater Cleveland’s RTA, 21.5%; the Los Angeles Metro, 19.6%; Miami-Dade Metrorail, 16.1%; and the Staten Island RTOA, 15.2%.
Baltimore, Cleveland, Miami and Staten Island are white elephants that should probably either be expanded to the point of usefulness or taken out. Los Angeles has a brand new subway, which should be given a few years for people to get used to. The other systems are more self-sufficient than highways.
Post Author:
rj3 | 12:16 PM |
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I'm sure libertoids will be able to massage the figures somehow to suggest things are otherwise.
The problem with costing transport infrastructure is there are huge externalities, both positive and negative, that are almost impossible to put an exact value on. So ideologues of all stripes just ignore those externalities that don't support their viewpoint.
