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ChineseDaily Transit Links Roundup for 5/28/08
Contributed by Fred Camino on May 28th, 2008 at 9:22 am
- A Damien Goodmon video from earlier this year surfaces. Comments ensue.
- Megabus bids adieu to the West Coast. We hardly knew ye.
- Don’t worry drivers, money spent on gasoline is just 17% of the total cost of car ownership.
- Republicans don’t realize that money spent on gasoline is just 17% of the total cost of car ownership.
- Even though the cost of gas is only 17% of the total cost of car ownership, the price increase is leading more people to the Gold Line. If these people choose to dump their cars altogether they could get back the other 83%.
Discussion
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
The savings I have by not owning or driving a personal automobile means I don’t just save money on gasoline, I also don’t pay for a car payment, insurance, registration, maintenance and parking fees. Even I take a few taxi rides a month and were I to rent a car every once in a while, it still comes out cheaper.
This doesn’t mean I won’t ever own a car again, but it’s a tough economic argument to make to go back to a automobile-based lifestyle. There’s a LOT of money involved in addition to ever-increasing gasoline prices. Fortunately, I am in no hurry.
It would be nice to have use of a car with a trunk for laundry and Costco runs on the weekends, but I am in no hurry, and have no intention of ever going back to a seven day a week automobile-based lifestyle.
I think one of the more effective things transit advocates could lobby for would be anything that would make the costs of car ownership more proportional to the level of use.
I was originally appalled by the Governator’s rollback of registration fees, but in a strange way, that’s a move in the right direction.
Things that might actually fly with the general public might be
– Require insurance to be charged per-mile (without the rather
high minimum assumed miles that even a bike commuter has to
pay for just to own a car).
– Raise the gas tax–but lower sales taxes at the same time.
We should aim for a point where someone who’s driving to work every day right now could use transit or whatever one day a week and actually see a 20% reduction in their car expenses.
This would require a major restructuring of one prominent source of funds for public transportation, since the sales taxes collected on the sales of gasoline are dedicated to transportation, but are not distributed by the same formula as the gasoline tax.
(See the “Transportation 101″ tutorial at the Transit Insider website for more such education.)
One of the reasons I hate this state’s constitution is the ridiculous 2/3rds vote requirements for every damn thing.
Want to raise taxes? Need a two-thirds vote. Want to pass a budget? Need a two-thirds vote. You pretty much need a two-thirds vote to do everything EXCEPT add more two-thirds requirements via state constitutional referendum; those you can pass with 50%.
It makes no sense and is a mockery of political science and basic reasoning. The anti-tax zealots in this state have even gone so far in recent years to pass new rules that say you can’t pass a new fee or tax without not just a two-thirds vote, but a two-thirds vote where the votes of people who own more property count for more than those who own less.
I’m glad Feuer found at least a modest way around it via the “fee” definition and I hope the MTA can pass some of those bills. All this mock outrage over letting 50+ percent of the voters decide how to pay for things makes me sick.
What’s really stupid is that it takes at 2/3 majority for taxes, but only 50% to sell bonds. Pretty much makes debt inevitable.
Laws should be set up to make it harder to borrow money than to raise it!
It also tends to bias things towards highways, just due to the way things get funded.
Re: Kimberleigh’s point about about sales tax, gas tax, and transit funding: definitely correct, and all I can say, is if there was a shift from sales tax to gas tax as a revenue stream, then we’d certainly want to make sure that transit funding was maintained as part of that–and hopefully make it more stable than it is now.
I should point out that the key problem in relying on gasoline tax funding (as opposed to the sales taxes on gasoline sales) is that there is a constitutional prohibition from using gasoline taxes for the operation of service, and to change that will require yet another vote of the public.
If you irritate the voters by asking them to increase the gasoline tax (even with the carrot of lowering sales taxes) they are not going to be amenable to modifying the state Constitution; they are likely to vote both down, saying “just leave it all alone”.
It’s called informed consent. People understand what’s involved in auto ownership, and are willing to pay the cost.
Oh, and the 2/3 vote came because the people thought the Sacramento (especially) Lawmakers were being too wasteful with taxpayers’ money. Case in point, LA City raised trash fees to pay for 1000 new Police officers two years ago. Not only was the money diverted to other uses, but now the Council wants to raise the fees AGAIN for the same reason.
It’s called informed consent. People understand what’s involved in auto ownership, and are willing to pay the cost.
Speaking as an economist…uh, no. You’d be amazed at the level of irrationality displayed in the decision whether to purchase an automobile, let alone in which automobile to purchase.
I don’t know if this is true or not, but I’ve read that what the wealthy often do with luxury cars is buy them used, typically when leases expire. The logic is that they pay less for what is supposed to be a good car, and also they don’t eat the huge depreciation that comes from buying the car brand new.
Wad: Well, there’s a reason that those people are wealthy.
I’m talking more about perceived capability requirements, etc. Back around the turn of the millennium, a whole lot of people bought pickup trucks–with the accompanying increase in fuel expenditures and insurance premia–based on hauling two sheets of plywood a year.
The behavioral economics literature has established quite firmly that individuals’ perceptions of cost are quite warped. It’s human nature.
A friend of mine, who’s actually a really smart guy, was thinking about buying a truck since he has to move a lot.
I asked him how much his last U-Haul rental was, and he sheepishly admitted it was about $50, so buying a truck really didn’t make much economic sense.
He usually gets to work by train, so I suppose he can own whatever vehicle he wants and not worry about fuel efficiency that much, at least.
Anyway: we should be happy that people’s irrationally human, herd-mentality, warped perceptions of costs are finally making some of them think “OMG gas is expensive, I gotta take the train!”.
As to buying a somewhat used nicer car–I just did this, and I think it makes a lot of sense for people who want a car but *not* for getting to work every day, because it’ll just take a while before you hit the inevitable problems of a used car, and when they happen they won’t be as huge a hassle as they will be for someone who depends on a car for their daily commute.
I’ve no car to travel. I take the megabuss for all my trips through all of southern califorina for the pass year ,and half or two. I will not take greyhound at all….nor fly at all. Megabuss staff are very friendly and so there drivers . PLEASE KEEP OUR MEGA BUSS ALIVE AND TRAVING ALL OF CALIFORINA MANNY THANKS…
Too late, Watler. Megabus’ corporate offices have already made their decision, and because they are a private concern, the public transit advocacy community is powerless to change their minds.
Megabus’s demise was its own fault.
The problem was not the West Coast being too tough a nut to crack. Megabus put little to nothing into marketing, and its ticketing policies locked out many potential riders.
Interestingly, I think if Greyhound brought BoltBus to the West Coast, it would likely do well. Mainly, at least Greyhound has a modicum of experience running an intercity bus system. Coach USA/Coach America is primarily a conglomerate of charter bus companies.