I agree with you about using increased gas taxes as a good source of additional revenue, because as you say it's a double-edged sword which will help reduce fuel consumption (though probably to a limited degree). It makes sense also because in most states the legislated purpose for gas taxes is road maintenance.

Oddly, the state of Florida Legislative and Executive branches have exactly the opposite idea; they want to lower gas taxes as a relief measure for consumers. We've even had some loose cannons in Tallahassee who have talked about gas tax holidays!

My guess would be that florida legislators are just trying to pander to old folks on fixed incomes who are not happy with the bite out of their wallet from high gas prices and don't give a rats ass about the nation's future because they'll be dead.

Dave

Industry and commerce need the infrastructure to operate and make profits. The tax structure should be altered to reflect that.

It has been known for some time that the cost of disposal of waste from manufacturing should be considered as part of the cost of manufacturing. In Europe there are considerations that the TOTAL cost of the energy that goes into mining, transportation, production, and disposal, as well as energy actually consumed by the product during its lifetime, be considered as part of its energy efficiency rating.

For a start we should recognize that corporations do not make any profit unless they employs workers. That means that all of the transportation costs of getting workers to work should be considered a cost of production. There needs to be a serious expansion of local public transportation and it should be totally FREE to all riders.

We need to look at the whole economy that way.

The corporations and their government have no intension to set this straight. They'd rather promote the idea that people on fixed incomes should pay 'their' share. What a load of crap.

"There needs to be a serious expansion of local public transportation and it should be totally FREE to all riders."

Even for free, you won't get very many American workers out of their cars; they love 'em too much.

Except in cities where auto ownership is prohibitive (NY, e.g.) American cities have been spectacularly unsuccesful at luring people onto public transportation.

"Even for free, you won't get very many American workers out of their cars; they love 'em too much."

Nothing happens in zero time. Where there are credible transit systems they are used. All of them are such that the service is not adequate. If you can afford any other personal solution, you have a serious incentive to not use public transportation.

#5: Absolutely true, Les. In American cities where there is a good comprehensive public transport system - such as San Francisco, New York and Portland (OR), many residents get by just fine without even owning a car.

Where I live - Fresno, California - is a different story. The city is spread out over a wide area which means most places are too far apart to walk. The only intra-city public transportation consists of expensive taxis or the bus, which is infrequent, slow, stops running too early and doesn't go where you need it to go. Not surprisingly, no-one uses it who can afford to drive.

It's no coincidence that Fresno County has one of the worst air quality scores in the nation.

Yeah, it was interesting to compare the use of public transport infrastructure in say, New York and SF last time I was in the US compared to LA, where a mate I was staying with at his mum's house near Manhattan Beach laughed when I suggested we walk to the shops.

He said, "this is LA ... no one walks. They think you're weird or a car thief if you do".

Although there were buses, the service didn't seem great - and everyone used the car.

Coming from a place chock-full of good public transport options, I did find it pretty hard to deal with - especially as everyone was driving on the wrong side of the road.

And on that air-quality bit, Doc, I did find in LA that I was coughing all the time after a couple of days, then after about a week it went away as my lungs got and throat got used to it.

The problem is the city sits in a very large basin, and even when there's a seabreeze, the pollution only gets pushed so far. Plus, there's the little problem of temperature inversion, which we also get in Sydney - it also being in a basin. That's when you look out to the west (or east, in LA) and see the brown haze hanging really low over the city.

Dr. D. has the key thing there. Texas is a whole, awfully big state, with virtually no decent public transportation and where everyone relies on cars. We've made some progress, but it's slow and impractical given the distances involved. For getting around we need highways. To solve the pollution problem we need alternative fuels and more efficient vehicles. Public transportation just isn't cost effective, and if we took Les' suggestion to put all the burden on the taxpayer the results would be incredibly destructive.

Dave

"...and if we took Les' suggestion to put all the burden on the taxpayer..."

Taxes? In my #3 I specifically called for defining transportation as a COST of production. How does one treat a production expense? Right now it IS treated as a TAX.

"...the results would be incredibly destructive."

Why? Would Atlas shrug? Fuck'em.

Les, surely you realize that any expenses placed on businesses are just passed directly on to their employees or customers?

What you suggest is the equivalent of taxation and it's inherently inequitable, because the expense would likely be passed on equally to people who use public transport and don't use it.

Of course, businesses could find away around this. They could move out into the country and build giant housing compounds around the businesses and then require workers to live in those compounds. Hey and they could have stores in those compounds and require workers to shop in those stores with a company issued credit card.

Are you familiar with the work of David Ricardo? I think you might like him.

Dave

There is NO free lunch (or transportation).

In the final analysis, everything is paid for by the taxpayers (read: working people).

Governments have NO wealth of their own; we are their ONLY source of wealth.

Of course, businesses could find away around this. They could move out into the country

Or, in this era of globalism, they could move out of the country altogether, as Maurice's company is contemplating doing.

I think a little cost benefit analysis is in order before we jump on the aging infrastructure bandwagon. If it is true that it will cost tens or hundreds of billions to fix the bridge problem and these bridges only result in the death of a couple people per year, is there not a better way to spend the money?

Spending an equal amount of billions on hospitals and healthcare could probably save more lives and improve the quality of many more. Spending the money in Africa could save thousands or tens of thousands of human lives a year. Just a thought.

#7, #8: The problem with where I live is that the southern San Joaquin Valley is also a basin. It squats between the Sierra Nevada mountains to the east, the Coast Range to the west, and the Los Angeles County mountains to the south. Air masses blow in from the Bay Area through the San Joaquin delta and just get stuck here. There's nowhere for pollutants to go so they just build up*. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that the San Joaquin Valley is one of the country's biggest agricultural areas, so all the pollen from the fruit trees and all the methane from the cows gets added to the mix. If you didn't have allergies before, they say, move to the Valley and you soon will!

As for city living: when I lived in London the one thing about using public transport that really sucked (other than sadistic bastard bus drivers who'd pull away from the stop when they saw you running) was carting home the weekly grocery shopping. They have a great scheme in San Francisco where you can do a couple of hours' rental on a little runabout so you can get your groceries home. Emphasis on the "little", because finding a parking spot in SF is quite the adventure.


* The ELO song "Mr Blue Sky" never gets played on the radio here because it just wouldn't make any sense...

#9: Were we not talking about Texas, I would advocate a comprehensive high-speed rail network; but since it is Texas, which is the size of a modest galaxy, if you're going to travel that far you might as well fly.

What you need to do in Texas is convince people not to travel. Most journeys, especially middle- to long-distance ones, are probably unnecessary anyway.

I mean, if you think about it, why do you need to drive from Dallas to Houston, except to visit relatives you probably can't stand anyway? Business? Mostly doable via the internet and teleconferencing, and if it's not then take the aforementioned airplane.

Just a thought.

Or, in this era of globalism, they could move out of the country altogether, as Maurice's company is contemplating doing.

Thought they complain about outsourcing and offshoring, it's a direct result of the kinds of business-hostile policies many on the left are advocating. They have no idea what's good for the country, and it scares me that they might get into power.

Dave

#9: Were we not talking about Texas,

Sure we are, because Texas and places like it are the fastest growing parts of the nation, and already make up a huge portion of the infrastructure that we need to deal with.



Can't argue with you there. Various efforts at a high-speed interurban rail system have been suggested, but they just don't make much sense.

What you need to do in Texas is convince people not to travel. Most journeys, especially middle- to long-distance ones, are probably unnecessary anyway.

If you live in the Dallas or Houston or pretty soon Austin too, it's almost impossible to live where you work, so you're looking at a minimum commute of 45 minutes to an hour each way. That adds up to a hell of a lot of driving.

Dave

As much as I diss Dallas, I do have to admit our public transportation system has improved dramatically in the last few years. It's not perfect by any means, but it is possible to get all over town now that we have light tail and expanded buses. You can also take the Trinity Rail Express to commute between Dallas and Fort Worth.

Sure, it takes some scheduling, but it's a myth that you have to have a car to get around Dallas. And with the freeways in near-gridlock much of the time, more and more people are opting fot public transpo, at least for workaday commutes.

Dave, you missed my use of the inverted past imperfect subjunctive there. I said "were we not", not "we were not". Changes my meaning somewhat, n'est-ce pas?

Remind me never to move to Houston, Dallas or Austin. As long as I live somewhere I have to drive to work, I'll stick with my 8-mile, 15-minute commute!

Ah, I did miss that, Dr. D. Austin still has some okay areas where you can keep your commute down under 20 minutes. I live in one of them.

Ray suggests that Dallas has better public transportation than it once did. Perhaps he could tell us how long is an acceptable time to stand in 100 degree weather at an outdoor busstop in a suit, and how long that bus ride from Carrollton to downtown Dallas takes.

Dave

Well, Dave-- that's not how you do it. You take the 400 bus from Carrollton to the Arapaho Transit Center, then take the train downtown, which makes stops at every downtown intersection.

The suit part--hint, don't wear the jacket 'til you have to go in the office. How you work the tie is up to you.
I can almost guarantee you that the route I've just laid out is faster than trying to drive to downtown, haggle over an overpriced parking lot (assuming you can find one) and requires a buttload lot less sweat than driving.
You don't make it up to Dallas often, eh?

I've got inlaws in Flower Mound, so I do get up there from time to time - but not enthusiastically. Given the character of weekday traffic I wouldn't be surprised if buses did end up being faster.

And I'll freely admit to using buses and subways as primary transportation when I lived in Moscow, London, DC and Boston. But cities in Texas are nothing like those places.

Dave

They must be a bit slow in Texas. No-one wears a suit and tie to work in Fresno, AC or no AC.

Give 'em 20 years or so, though. They'll figure it out.

Doc writes: "As for city living: when I lived in London the one thing about using public transport that really sucked (other than sadistic bastard bus drivers who'd pull away from the stop when they saw you running) was carting home the weekly grocery shopping."

Ah, Doc, I really think I do live in paradise. A few years ago when I lived in Balmain, I used to catch the bus on Saturday mornings to Woolworths, do my grocery shopping, and have it home delivered for $5.

I would leave Woolies about midday, walk to the Balmain markets and have a nice $2.50 curry and a milkshake and buy a book or a shirt or whatever, then catch the bus home about the time the Woolies delivery bloke was dropping my grocery bags on the front doorstep - and all the frozen stuff still frozen.

Heaven. Must be here ...

How many years ago was that, Stan - or has Woolworths been out of business a lot less long in Australia than it has here?

Dave

No, mate, Woolworths is still going strong here. It's Australia's largest supermarket chain. I believe the three Woolworths companies - in the US, the UK and Australia - are actually totally separate entitities. Woolworths bought out the US Safeway chain in Australia a few years back, so they're not struggling.

Woolies supermarkets are an icon here ... if someone bought the company out and tried to close or rename the stores, people would take to the streets.

There's a Woolworths supermarket in just about every suburb. They are huge shops, prices are good, and much of the food - not all, obviously, despte their ad jingle claims to being The Fresh Food People - comes fresh from the produce markets the morning of the day it's sold.

I now shop at Aldi, though, with the gypsies, and use Woolies to get the stuff I can't get there.

I live in one of the best public transportation areas in the country. What u guys arw overlooking is that public transport is much more vulnerable to infrastructure failure or terrorist attack. Splitting people up into cars protects them to some degree. Remember the London terror attacks? targwtting buses and subways gets u a high body count, spreada terror to all those inconvenienced and does economic damagw by disrupting work and commerce.

Sorry to burst your bubble, Lumpy, but public transpo is not the only vulnerable target. You may have heard about the propane explosions in Dallas a couple of weeks ago. That was an accident, but since Dallas has one of the most complex freeway systems in the country, it essentially shut down Dallas for most of the day.

Yeah, Lumpy, and?

Do we toss public transportation out of the window for fear some knuckle-dragger might bomb it?

In densely-populated cities, there's no argument that mass transit, in one or more of its many forms, is the best way to get around. As Dave said upthread somewhere: it's a cost-benefit thing. The day-to-day advantages of a public transportation network outweigh the risk of occasionally attracting some idiot terrorists.

#25-27:

Ah, Woolies!

Both times we stayed in Sydney, the Woolworth's supermarket at Wynyard station was our store of choice for snacks for the day, water, booze and - when we were doing self-catering - dinner. We were in there daily, it seemed.

As a Pom, it was strange to shop at Woolies for groceries though. I believe that the British general-store incarnation is nowadays owned by [shudder] Wal-Mart. Although that retail behemoth's nastiness has not yet quite rubbed off, thankfully. Where else would I go to get my Christmas choccy?

"In densely-populated cities"

Doc's right; the densely-populated cities are conducive to mass transit.

The key phrase being "densely-populated."

By and large, most US cities (with the exception of the old Rust Belt cities and a few like San Francisco) are not densely populated; in fact most are exurban to a very advanced degree.

Many of them, in fact, are rapidly becoming in even less dense as the sub- and exurbs increasingly attract more and more commerce and cease being only bedroom communities. According to the Census Bureau, in some of today's metro areas far more commuting goes on from suburb to suburb than from suburb to city center.

In such cities, parking is less of a problem, and when you factor in American attachment to private transportation, public transportation has far less appeal (and becomes far more complicated when multiple commercial centers must be served from multiple residential areas).

These characteristics apply to most Sun Belt cities, such as Atlanta, Miami, Tampa, (pretty much all Florida cities,) New Mexico, Louisiana, Georgia, the Carolinas, etc., etc.

You simply gotta love over-generalizations.

All over-generalizations suck.

Heh.

The problem with urban sprawl is that it renders mass transit cost prohibitive. The only way to fix that would be massive government underwriting of the system, which could only happen on the backs of the taxpayers. That cost can't be put into the fare structure because no one would use the system.

As for relative vulnerabilities, yes you can distrupt traffic by blowing up a bridge, but in most sprawling cities there are other ways to get to work. As I mentioned earlier, I have to cross at least 2 bridges to get to Austin, but that's out of 8 possible bridges on 3 different main routes. If one were taken out I could find an alternative, though it might be slower.

Dave

Many of them, in fact, are rapidly becoming in even less dense as the sub- and exurbs increasingly attract more and more commerce and cease being only bedroom communities. According to the Census Bureau, in some of today's metro areas far more commuting goes on from suburb to suburb than from suburb to city center.

That describes Fresno, California to a tee. Only 500,000 people live within the city limits, which cover an area more than half the size of Greater London. The old downtown area has practically no major commercial activity and pretty much becomes a ghost town after 5pm. Much hand-wringing goes on over this at City Hall, where many possible solutions for this horrendous state of affairs are put forward but nothing is ever done.

The Council does not seem to understand that "Downtown" is no longer the center of Fresno, even geographically. The city has expanded almost exclusively to the north and east, leaving the land to the west of Highway 99 largely to agriculture. Commercial, business and leisure activity is now spread across the city, centered on a few large malls and business parks. As Clavos observes, as much if not more commuting goes on between these centers as from the outskirts to downtown.

Longing eyes are cast at San Jose, which has successfully revitalized what was a decaying and moribund downtown area. But San Jose is a completely different kind of city. The Mayor now wants to construct a fake river to give some kind of focus to downtown. It's unlikely that will happen, because the cost would not get much sympathy from the voters, almost none of whom live or work there. But Autry's not worried about that. It won't be his problem: term limits, you know.

Have you heard the latest on this? Some liberal nutjob is claiming that the 90 degree heat caused the bridge collapse and that global warming is at fault.

"All over-generalizations suck."

Most, anyway :)

State Representative Juan Corona (yes that's his real name), here in Texas has suggested raising the gas tax along with a constitutional amendment that gas tax money can only be spent on transportation infrastructure. Seems like a great idea to me given all the misappropriation of funds the legislator has been doing with highway money - stealing it for other projects and then making up for it with additional bonds and unnecessary tolls.

Dave