> Getting groceries for a family, getting kids to schools and after school activities, running errands etc. is very inconvenient on a bus.
This isn’t a universal truth - I know a ton of people who do that (I bike more) - but rather a policy decision. Driving has been massively subsidized for a century so it’s not surprising that it often works better but other choices are possible.
> As for how much cheaper is the bus I am not sure, last time I've taken one it was $1.5 for each leg, of course, this depends on location
Okay, that’s still 20 trips a day before you’re at AAA’s _average_ cost of owning a car. If we chose to offer better service, I’m sure more than a few people would pocket the difference — the primary deterrent for most people is when service is infrequent and inconsistent.
What do you mean by "subsidized driving"? Care to give examples? I am not getting anything for driving, instead I pay taxes in registration and in fuel.
>Okay, that’s still 20 trips a day before you’re at AAA’s _average_ cost of owning a car.
It might be so if they amortized TOC but when you already own a car the additional cost of travel per mile is much cheaper than buses charged 15 years ago or so.
> What do you mean by "subsidized driving"? Care to give examples? I am not getting anything for driving, instead I pay taxes in registration and in fuel.
You pay less in taxes than it costs to maintain the roads — the U.S. average is about half.
Public space is reserved for driving — legal categories like jaywalking were created to remove other users from those spaces — and land owners are required to dedicate substantial amounts of space for parking, most of which is either not charged to users at all or at far below market rates (this is famously a cause of congestion as people drive around longer looking for street parking since it's so much cheaper). Even businesses like bars whose owners don't expect their customers to drive are in many cases forced by parking minimums to provide spaces, which means everyone is paying for that parking even if they don't benefit from it.
Employers can offer free parking as a job perk with no tax impact but cannot do the same for transit or bike commuters.
There are also a lot of social costs which come back to the idea that we've built the world around the idea that everyone has to drive everywhere: we're extremely reluctant to take away unsafe drivers' licenses, drivers are not required to carry enough insurance to adequately compensate people for serious injuries, cities are typically much slower to repair pedestrian infrastructure than car infrastructure, sidewalks, curb cuts, etc. are often not ADA compliant to leave more room for drivers, etc.
>You pay less in taxes than it costs to maintain the roads — the U.S. average is about half.
I don't think so. Quick search shows that states and localities spend $200B per year on roads, the US alone tax revenue from just individual taxes is roughly ~40% of 4T i.e. $1.6T. What sources do you use to support your claim?
>Public space is reserved for driving — legal categories like jaywalking were created to remove other users from those spaces — and land owners are required to dedicate substantial amounts of space for parking, most of which is either not charged to users at all or at far below market rates (this is famously a cause of congestion as people drive around longer looking for street parking since it's so much cheaper).
I don't think you are being serious, there much more legal categories against drivers: speeding, DUI, dozens of kinds of illegal parking etc.
And would need some source on the parking below market rates and land owners required to provide free parking. I own land, I am not required to provide parking to anyone, least so for free or below market rates. Parking requirements for public accommodations is not subsidizing anything it just taking reality into account and prevents patrons from crowding nearby streets with their cars as well as using parking space from other businesses.
Driving is subsidized in many ways. Gasoline taxes and registration taxes don't fully cover the cost of road construction and maintenance, so the rest of the money comes from general revenue at the municipal, state, and federal levels of government - property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes. Parking lots take up a lot of land but pay much less property tax than residential or commercial buildings on the same plots of land. Sprawl causes everyone to travel farther, even people not in cars who didn't ask to sign up for this development pattern. Crashes resulting in property damage and personal injury/death are not fully compensated for by drivers or insurance; every time a driver hits something, both the driver and the rest of society lose together. Paved surfaces increase the amount of flooding during rainstorms, a cost borne by everyone, even those who don't drive. Noise, tire dust, polluting gases, and oil leaks affect everyone.
Gasoline taxes and registration taxes might not fully cover road construction but other taxes do, I am just pointing out that drivers do not get subsidies but are taxed more than, say, bicyclists or pedestrians who use the same roads but don't pay extra tax.
Pedestrians don’t use those roads, usually enforced by law. Their taxes are subsidizing roads they are at best sidelined on, and in many cases have their experience made worse and riskier for.
Bicyclists do use roads, but need much less space - far less than the half of the road their taxes pay for even for the cyclists who don’t own a car. Nobody needs a 6 lane road for bicyclists - even a single lane can handle more people than would fit in cars on that kind of wide road.
The underlying problem here is the spatial inefficiency of driving: you need far more public space for the same number of people and that requires more expensive infrastructure to build and maintain than it would if people primarily used active travel or transit.
The fairest way to pay for the infrastructure which is required to support a predominantly private-vehicle based model would be to fund it entirely by user fees, which would also handle the case of larger vehicle owners paying more to reflect their greater use, but because that model has been subsidized and often legally required for so long most people aren’t even aware of how much that’s true.
>Pedestrians don’t use those roads, usually enforced by law.
They do, it's called "sidewalk".
>Their taxes are subsidizing roads they are at best sidelined on, and in many cases have their experience made worse and riskier for.
Even if they don't walk on the streets and only walk by unpaved footpaths they might be still using roads to get their food and clothes shipped to them.
>Bicyclists do use roads, but need much less space - far less than the half of the road their taxes pay for even for the cyclists who don’t own a car. Nobody needs a 6 lane road for bicyclists - even a single lane can handle more people than would fit in cars on that kind of wide road.
But they pay zero extra tax regardless of the space they use when they don't own a car. So I am not sure what the point you are trying to make here. A one lane road is not free, somebody has to pay for it.
>The underlying problem
I got it in the first 1000 posts on HN from anti-car people, I just have not seen "driving is subsidized" yet so I had been asking what is it based on.
This isn’t a universal truth - I know a ton of people who do that (I bike more) - but rather a policy decision. Driving has been massively subsidized for a century so it’s not surprising that it often works better but other choices are possible.
> As for how much cheaper is the bus I am not sure, last time I've taken one it was $1.5 for each leg, of course, this depends on location
Okay, that’s still 20 trips a day before you’re at AAA’s _average_ cost of owning a car. If we chose to offer better service, I’m sure more than a few people would pocket the difference — the primary deterrent for most people is when service is infrequent and inconsistent.