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Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

latimes.com

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Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#81

Post by joe_the_user »

SilasX wrote: post #39
shereadsthenews wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuel tax revenue and other direct user fees like annual registration in California amount to less than 25% of what the state and its cities pay to maintain the roads and streets. Roads are massively subsidized from general revenues. If you are proposing a $5/gallon fuel tax then I completely agree. That would be about equivalent to what other rich countries tax motor fuel and consistent with the state's greenhouse ga…

That's misleading -- yes, in the aggregate, gas taxes cover only part of the expenses, but that's not because of personal cars . Damage on the roads -- and thus maintenance costs -- scales with the 4th power of weight per axle. So the damage is virtually all from large trucks, with sedans and SUVs as a rounding error. If you were to apportion out the maintenance cost due to personal cars, they are overpaying.

Damage isn't the only thing involved in people using the roads. Roads are a public good (in contrast to railroad tracks which are a private good).

The state effectively charges for the use of roads both to pay for maintenance and to make sure that the road remain usable to a reasonable cross-section of people. This is just as landlords charge for the use of land even when that land isn't consumed.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#83

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

mc32 wrote: post #57
SilasX wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's misleading -- yes, in the aggregate, gas taxes cover only part of the expenses, but that's not because of personal cars . Damage on the roads -- and thus maintenance costs -- scales with the 4th power of weight per axle. So the damage is virtually all from large trucks, with sedans and SUVs as a rounding error. If you were to apportion out the maintenance cost due to personal cars, they are overpaying.

Exactly this. Of course, if they tax per axle and tonnage combination, it’ll just be passed on to consumers anyhow as most of trucks are distributing goods which directly or indirectly end up in the hands of consumers. However, it would be quite fair to do, I think.

Sure, but it might also have some other nice side-benefits, like favouring railroad expansion. Having transport by lorry being artificially cheaper is non-ideal for lots of reasons.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#84

Post by dragonwriter »

tareqak wrote: post #35

It'd be nice to be able to at least see the math that is used to calculate and budget road repairs then compare them with value that that particular road brings in. More broadly, some kind of (global?) effort to accurately calculate externalized costs of all kinds. Gotta catch'em all!

> More broadly, some kind of (global?) effort to accurately calculate externalized costs of all kinds.

So, to do this, you first need to one:

(1) Develop a means to measure individual experienced utility, and

(2) Develop the correct mechanism for aggregating utility across time and individuals.

Analysis which go beyond purely financial impacts now tend to get around this by only considering a narrow range of non-financial externalities, assigning them dollar values by various means, and just treating them as financial externalities. This provides answers, but as to whether they are “accurate” in any deeper sense other than being exactly what you get when you make the assumptions about value that they do is debatable. (But then, that's true of how we aggregate financial externalities, too, because we treat a $ as having equal utility wherever it is, though we know that not to be the case.)

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#85

Post by objektif »

NYC is doing this as well and it makes no sense to me. What is congestion? Is it “people who own cars getting stuck in traffic”? To me it seems like all this benefits is wealthy people who want to drive comfortably to/around their neighborhood.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#86

Post by twblalock »

kbos87 wrote: post #65

Amen. Uber and Lyft are adding congestion to our roads and undermining public transportation, all while profiting off public infrastructure and a class of driver “partners” who incur all of the costs for a razor thin upside. Id like to see the start of a state owned rideshare network with specially zoned drop off, pick up, and lane privileges that Uber and Lyft don’t get access to.

> Id like to see the start of a state owned rideshare network with specially zoned drop off, pick up, and lane privileges that Uber and Lyft don’t get access to.

Uber and Lyft exist because the state didn't build one of those. In fact the state has built a completely inadequate public transit system in LA. Uber and Lyft are widely used because people in LA don't have an alternative.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#87

Post by emiliobumachar »

perl4ever wrote: post #54
shereadsthenews wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we stop with the "rideshare" junk yet? Uber and Lyft are computer-dispatched taxi services. The overwhelming majority of their trips involve the driver going to someplace they have no need of going, with either zero or one other person in the car.

I have no idea what you are really trying to say. How do you define need? All my Lyft trips have either been to/from an auto mechanic or the airport. Is that "need"? In principle, I could have gotten friends to drive me, given enough incentive. Or I could have parked at the airport, or ridden the bus, or gone to a mechanic that made it convenient to wait for work to be done.

Gp is trying to say that nobody is really "sharing a ride" that they would be driving anyway, as in hitchhiking with compensation. It's virtually all professional drivers going where the client goes exclusively because the client goes there. Hence the term "ridesharing" is misleading. A very successful piece of clever viral marketing, or maybe a fossil of an early strategy.

It's a semantic point, but a valid one. Words matter.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#88

Post by integrate-this »

I'm a LA resident. People in this city like to talk about congestion as though they see it as a problem, but they don't actually see it as a problem.

Only people in the valley see it as a problem because there are limited choke points into and out of LA proper which keep people from getting to work.

LA's limited transportation infrastructure prevents DTLA's homeless from getting to Beverly Hills, Long Beach's gang-related activity from getting to Brentwood, etc.

If LA wanted to fix their transportation problem then they could build trains parallel to the 405 and 110 and solve the problem, but they don't want to fix the problem because the problem allows them (us?) to keep the city segregated by income.

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