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Permalink Reply by S on March 28, 2016 at 4:06pm

I'm going to be a bit of a contrarian here and bring up some points you should consider.  When you talk about the "rest of of us" subsidizing people who own and drive cars, you're talking about a minority of the population (there's about 2 cars per household on average in the us so the majority of households probably own a car).  Also, even households without a car probably benefit from the road system indirectly (freight deliveries) or directly (transit or intercity buses) so the there's less subsidizing then you may think.

Also I think that talking about government funded infrastructure (e.g. roads) in terms of subsidies is absolutely the wrong way to discuss them.  Most major services that we use are not self sustaining and transportation alternatives even more so.  Bike paths, mass transit, parks, etc. aren't and should not be expected to break even based on user fees.  I think the right way to think about these types of services is to consider the public benefits vs costs.  Although the road infrastructure does have significant costs, I would say that over time cars have done the most in the last 75 years or so to democratize travel and increase geographical mobility for those who weren't pretty well off.  

Another point to consider is that cars often provide the best transportation option for many, especially those that live in areas that aren't well served by public transit (a good part of the city) or that are being priced out of the city's core.

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Permalink Reply by Joe Guzzardo on March 28, 2016 at 5:03pm

I was with you until your last paragraph. Your last point cuts both ways. Cars have contributed to suburban sprawl. If lets say gas was as expensive here as it is in Europe, I'm sure we'd have more densely populated urban areas and better public transportation as well.

There was a recent article in the Trib, extolling the virtues of parkingless apartment buildings. 

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Permalink Reply by S on March 29, 2016 at 6:24am

I agree that we'd have denser urban areas if gas were more expensive but we have a set of realities in the present.  Adding transit and making it easier to use transit is great but that's something that will take 5-10 years at the minimum to start addressing, in the meantime, there's a lot of folks that are stuck with 90 minute or 2 hour commutes because they live in neighborhoods that have crappy transit options.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Bedno on March 29, 2016 at 11:04am

Good doc.  Hits the usual biggies.  Cars are a top example of the standard capitalist abuse of privatizing profits while externalizing costs.

They're all irksome, but parking in particular pisses me off, that I'm paying (in several ways) for other people's storage of their private property.  Drivers Ed also routinely gets overlooked, where we're paying to teach kids to use a product.

The "Costs" page from "The Future is Low Car" may be useful: http://chicagonakedride.org/node/34

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