Re:Amtrak no longer living hand to mouth after being funding...
by eesmith on Thursday May 09, 2024 @05:30PM
(#40313158)
And as I wrote, focusing on transportation cost subsidies like this means leaving out environmental impacts, social impacts, subsidizes for maintaining the flow of oil, and other indirect costs.
Overshadowing all that is a century of deliberate planning decisions to promote car transit over all other forms - something an "antiplanner" should certainly be aware of and against - resulting in a system of land use and transportation policy which is locally optimized for vehicles, and which cannot be easily changed without substantial cost, even if there is a better option.
Do I know the answers? No. What I can say is I much prefer taking the train to taking the bus.
“Americans spent an average of 25.0 cents per passenger-mile driving their cars, light trucks, and motorcycles, while highway subsidies averaged 1.1 cents per passenger-mile. Subsidies to highway trucking, incidentally, averaged 0.8 cents per ton-mile. These highway subsidies compare to subsidies of 1.1 cents per passenger-mile to air travelers, 36 cents to Amtrak passengers, and $1.09 to transit riders. Amazingly, air travel is by far the least-expensive mode of travel, costing passengers just 13.8 cents per passenger-mile, while Amtrak fares average 38 cents and transit fares 30 cents per passenger-mile.”