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ChineseTraffic And Congestion Costs Every Los Angeles Citizen $1561 Annually
Rush hour commuters enjoy their subsidized ride.
Let’s talk subsidy. The American Automobile Association just released the results of a study called Crash vs. Congestion: What’s The Cost to Society [PDF]. Yes, the American Automobile Association, the group that lobbies for automobiles and was formed in order to get more auto roads built. The study reveals that in most metropolitan areas, the cost of traffic accidents far outweighs the already high costs of congestion. In the Los Angeles metropolitan statistical area (which includes almost 13 million people in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Santa Ana) the report concludes that the yearly cost of crashes amounts to $10.5 billion. Traffic congestion in the metropolitan area costs $9.3 billion annually. Together, crashes and congestion cost Los Angeles and Orange County $19.8 billion a year. That comes out to $1,561 per person per year ($817 per person for crashes, $744 for congestion).
Yikes.
But who pays for this? Gas taxes? Californians pay the highest gas taxes in the nation, 63.9 cents per gallon [PDF], and gas taxes are often cited as the way motorists pay for their ride. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average number of miles driven yearly by passenger cars is 12,000 miles. The average fuel economy for passenger cars is 23.9 miles per gallon. So if the 13 million people of the Los Angeles metropolitan area all drive 12,000 miles per year in cars that get 23.9 miles per gallon with a gas tax of 63.9 cents per gallon, gas taxes come up about $15.6 billion short of paying the cost of accidents and congestion. And of course, all 13 million people in the metro don’t drive, so the divide is even higher. If all gas taxes in Los Angeles and Orange County went to pay for the cost of accidents and congestion, each and every citizen of the metropolitan area would still have to pay $1,200 a year, or $100 a month, to cover those costs. And that’s just for congestion and crashes! Highway building, maintenance, environmental costs, the cost of the loss free space… all these things still have to be paid for. And they say transit is subsidized!
Metro’s budget for 2008 is $3.1 billion. Metro provide public transportation to Los Angeles County, an area with a population of almost 10 million. Unlike automobile transportation, it’s no secret that Metro is subsidized. Fare revenue (user fees) only account for $341 million, or 11% of Metro’s total budget. The rest is subsidy. But how does Metro’s subsidy compare to the $1,200 a year subsidy every citizen of Los Angeles and Orange county gives to automobiles just to cover the crashes and congestion they cause? Well, minus fare revenue, Metro costs $2.7 billion, divide that by 10 million people, it turns out that each citizen of Los Angeles County pays $270 per year, or $22.50 a month to subsidize public transit in Los Angeles. Seems like transit is quite a deal in comparison.
It’s time to stop subsidizing the deadly, expensive, and unsustainable car culture. It’s time to charge automobile drivers the true cost of their “freedom”. It’s time to reorient our transportation systems and our cities so that we can live in a way that doesn’t cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives, in a way that doesn’t waste countless hours while destroying the natural and built environment. It’s time to become a Metro Rider.
Elsewhere:
- LAist: Car Crashes Cause LA, OC $11 Billion
- Daily Breeze: Crashes vs. Congestion
- KNBC4: SoCal Traffic Crashes Add Up To $11B
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
this pretty much sums just about everything up when it comes to private auto vs. public transportation, in that everyone who drives just assumes that by paying for their gas they’re paying their way and right to drive, while public transportation is an open and publicly scrutinized, subsidized entity. this fake world is created by the car culture we live in so that these same drivers can feel that they’re paying for public transit even if they don’t take it. yet it’s so obvious, even if completely ignored, we metroriders are paying so much more for them to drive their cars than the other way around. great article, fred.
nice work.
Bravo, Fred.
Ummm, people pay for cars and insurance and repairs and tires and tolls and stuff. You need a sharper pencil before claiming there is a subsidy.
Amazing that the first three posters missed the glaring errors.
Sorry Rob, can’t read what you wrote very well.
The saddest part about the auto subsidy is that people pay so much out of their own pocket and there’s still a massive subsidy. All the cars, insurance, repairs, and tires are nothing without subsidized roads to drive on, subsidized space to park in, subsidized oil to make them go, subsidized services to clean up the accidents, subsidized forgiveness on lost time and environmental damage.
Oh, but I forgot about all those toll roads in the Los Angeles area, good point.
First, someone did a very thorough cost anaylsis of automobile use in the New York metro area. It is worth a look - because deciding what public programs to externalize or internalize in your cost analysis can make a big difference (though cars, in every scenario I’m familiar with, never truly pay their way with taxes and users fees).
Second, take a look at today’s Streetsblog post on the lessons from Bogota, Columbia’s “Ciclovia”. This is a city in a developing nation that has found a way to markedly improve their quality of life and reduce traffic congestion. They are nowhere near as rich as we are.
We could do amazing, traffic reducing, people moving things in L.A. - and end these idiotic subsidies of automobiles.
Bicycle infrastructure is an overlooked people-mover. I know this is the MetroRider site - but mass transit is not the only game in town!
We love bicycles urbrayj02!!
MetroRiderLA, despite the name, is all about the transit oriented lifestyle. The transit oriented lifestyle is based off of transit oriented development, which generally sets the mobility hierarchy as follows:
1. Walking
2. Bicycling
3. Transit
4. Ridesharing
5. Personal Private Automobile
The pedestrian is always number one, the private automobile is always number last.
And that Bogota video is awesome, I watched it this morning.
Rob, that info only shows how much more it costs people to drive than go Metro. It’s an abhorrent shame that people think the subway is too expensive and then are all abuzz about a carpool lane on the 405 that will do absolutely nothing.
It’s like the problem with NIMBYism. The only way to fix our problems is with education. It seems like NIMBYism is a microcosm of our larger auto-dependence problem.
Subsidy is one thing which I think Fred hit right on the head, but savings is another. It’s important to find out that once we get out of our self centered bubbles to invest in real transportation options together, we could actually save people money! The auto based society I believe is a reason why we pay higher taxes than we need to and people in the United States spend on average 19% of income on transport. In areas like New York City people only use 9% of their income. 10% is a big deal. Sure it’s subsidized (let’s use ‘invested in’) but it sure saves more money than the car does.
Here give me your transit pass… snip snip gone. There do you feel subsidized? That’s what you just said happens when drivers are in auto accidents. Depreciating an asset is not a subsidy. Well at least not for auto users. In an interesting twist of accounting rules that is what happens to capital assets of transit agencies. They sometimes claim depreciation and loss. Fairly routine stuff for a business. the funny thing is transit agencies pay none of their capital expenses which is not a normal business practice.
I have absolutely no problem listening to an enumeration of the costs of autos internal and external. There are both. Thing is congestion costs and traffic accidents are not subsidies.
If something has a cost, and the cost is not paid for directly, then it is paid for by someone else in one form or another. It’s called an indirect subsidy.
Public transit systems have a cost (both internal and external), user fees don’t cover that whole cost, money from elsewhere does. Subsidized.
Auto transportation systems have a cost (both internal and external), user fees don’t cover that whole cost, money from elsewhere does. Subsidized.
I don’t care if I spent $3.5 billion dollars of my very own money on a 500 foot giant robot that I can ride in and do ollies on a giant robot skateboard. If I don’t directly pay for the giant robot skate ramp, the giant robot sidewalks, the full price for the plutonium that gives my giant robot life, and the damage I cause with my giant robot feet and my giant robot farts, then someone else is.
You probably wouldn’t be too happy to know that your tax dollars went to pay to clean up the mess my giant robot created.
Gas taxes and the car culture created a fundamental change in the American psyche. Such proof of the automobile’s addictive powers. A country that once rallied against virtually all forms of taxation began to beg for gas taxes in the early 1900s. America’s addiction to the car has led to more government control and intervention in our lives, a positively un-American idea.
I would guess, even though I never met Fred in person, that Fred and Ubrayj would hit it off really well in real life. Thanks for the video plug…it’s an awesome watch if you have 10 minutes.
Real life? Who needs it!
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