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@ JTS: You are missing the point of my first post in thie thread. The point of infrastructure is that is enables modern society.

In terms of infrastructure you *can* *not* think only of your own usage. You need a bike path to work. But so do your colleagues. And the users of whatever you produce at work. And we need power. And internet. And stores. And all those stores need road from the production places of the goods they sell.

In other words, while you may be very green, and bike to work, you still need I-70 to get strawberries from CA to your supermarket, and I-95 to get orange juice from FL.

That's why infrastructure is of *common* interest, and why is is fair that everybody gets taxed the same amount. This is a principle point of why the government should build infrastructure, and not private industry. It is impossible (for practical purposes) to allocate infrastructure costs to users.

Now, this is a completely different debate than the debate of how much and what kind of infrastructure we need, and how we use it. That is what we have politics for. That's where we determine whether we want roads or transit, nuclear or wind power, and how we use our infrastructure.

Lastly, the matter of metro fares being taxes. You can argue that transit should be free. Just like road usage.

For instance, the Belgian city of Hasselt has completely free transit since 1997.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_transport_in_Hasselt

Some numbers from the first ten years (1997-2007).

1997: 8 buses on two routes

2007: 46 buses on 9 routes

1997: 1,000 riders per day

2007: 12,600 riders per day

1997: 500,000 km driven by the buses

2007: 2,258,638 km driven by the buses

The downtown has been made very green and nearly car-free. One of the weirdest things they noticed was that hospital visits increased significantly.

Whether you consider this a success depends on what you believe the government should do. Right-wingers tend to point out that the terms "free" is misleading, because it's paid out of taxes. Left-wingers love it. They tout livability, and ecofriendliness.

The bus company in the mean time has been looking way other cities can afford "free" transit. Apparently, for them it's a lot cheaper and more efficient too, to have a "free"

system.

Personally, I had "free" (and heavily discounted) transit as a student in my "socialistic" home country. It kept me from having, needing and wanting a car until I was 30, moved to Columbus, OH, where transit is an embarrassment. It leaves me with the strong impression that transit use would explode when offered to the general public. Just like people will use a road when it's there (and "free"), people will use transit when it's there (and "free").

On the whole, I think it's probably not a good idea to call metro-fares at large taxes. You will get into an unproductive and distracting war of words. At most, one can compare rush-hour fares to congestion taxes, or HOV restrictions, or tolls, but I would not go much further.

by Jasper on Mar 10, 2009 10:20 am • link • report