211–220 of 228 posts
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I'm sorry to hear your partner needs cancer treatment. But also, you can still use the roads.
Yeah, but why should one have to pay more to use roads they have no options but to use?
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You’re not incorrect per se, but it’s important to note that deliveries into downtown would be important for it to be a thriving destination for shopping, residential or business. Not to mention space for heavy equipment to come in to do repairs and construction. Minimal maintenance corridors may not be enough. You also need public transit options into it as well as transportation solutions for “out of towners” who d…
In Ancient Rome, private vehicles were banned during the first ten hours of the day. Doing the same for nearly all commercial deliveries would make a lot of sense today too. A huge number of delivery trucks are massively oversized and inappropriate for their task. Charging for oversized vehicles might wake some business owners up to more carefully evaluating their costs and making more rational choices. Heavy equipme…
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This line of thought is pretty silly. Claiming that the city is subsidizing X billions because some public space is free. The land there is so valuable because it's desirable. Sure, NYC could sell central park for a bazillion dollars. But the land there is so expensive because central park exists. If it were sold and became buildings, the price of sq ft in Manhattan would massively drop.
Except in downtown SF there are dozens of giant empty lots, some are just abandoned, some are flat lots used for 6hrs a week for event parking.
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You paid far less. The top half of American pay almost 98% of federal taxes. The top 10% pay nearly three quarters. The American tax system is very progressive. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tax-irs-income-taxes-who-pays-t...
You have it wrong. You are grouping in that top 10% the millionaires/billionaires who pay nothing with the 6-figure W2 workhorses who cannot hide anything.
It may be you paid a higher percentage of your income despite the progressive nature of the American tax code which has a higher rate the more you make, via some tax breaks some wealthy people take advantage etc... It can also be that you paid a smaller percentage through an EITC. I don’t know without know your situation. It is definitely false that Americans making between $200-400K paid a smaller rate than you did.
Your broad statement the poor are paying the bulk of support for public infrastructure is clearly wrong. Revise your priors.
Roads in cities are such a waste of space. A long time ago I did a quick survey of SF and found something like 20% of the land was dedicated to cars. Some articles from people here that talk about this [1] [2] [3]. That is the most subsidized land on the planet but people don't think of it that way. They think roads are free so any tax to use them is wrong. That space could be helping out the city in so many ways but…
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If the roads are closed to non-emergency traffic, fire trucks and ambulances get where they need to be faster than if the roads are clogged with personal vehicles.
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You have it wrong. You are grouping in that top 10% the millionaires/billionaires who pay nothing with the 6-figure W2 workhorses who cannot hide anything.
Stop equivocating. You said that ‘you’ (as in the lower income half) paid more. This is demonstrably false. The top half of Americans pay 97.7% of taxes. It may be you paid a higher percentage of your income despite the progressive nature of the American tax code which has a higher rate the more you make, via some tax breaks some wealthy people take advantage etc... It can also be that you paid a smaller percentage t…
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If the cars can't park, then they're clogging up the roads and preventing them from being used as intended for transportation. I am fine with parking lots as long as they're not publicly funded and are taxed just as every other parcel in the city. And on-street parking should be prohibited.
In fact I'd say that self driving cars will mean that it's important that parking is not more expensive than simply driving in circles. You can bet that companies will drive self driving cars in circles to store them while not in use if it's cheaper than parking, and that takes up both more space, and higher value space.
Congestion pricing is already a (crude, but still rather effective) way of solving that problem. A more perfect (though impractical to enforce) solution would be charging by the meter-second of lane space consumed, with rates varying over time and location depending on congestion.
Under that pricing scheme, if driving in circles were still somehow cheaper than parking then cars could drive in circles to their heart's content without causing any issues.
Roads in cities are such a waste of space. A long time ago I did a quick survey of SF and found something like 20% of the land was dedicated to cars. Some articles from people here that talk about this [1] [2] [3]. That is the most subsidized land on the planet but people don't think of it that way. They think roads are free so any tax to use them is wrong. That space could be helping out the city in so many ways but…
Nah roads are great and cars are great. They let people get around in ways that are much faster than public transit, with your friends and cargo, protected from the weather, without the safety issues, directly to your destination. If you overbuild and create density of inhuman levels, and don’t build adequate road infrastructure, you will have problems. But otherwise, it’s fine and it works very well in cities of low…
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To be fair, they were mostly right, since 93% continued to drive. This is commute tax for the wealthy, and a time tax for lower income people. B39 only crosses the bridge, so there's waiting/transfer on both sides. Commute is generally 2-5x more time by public transport there, with all the stops.
The key point is that traffic is basically exponential in number of cars. Roads have a capacity below which there's almost no traffic, and above which capacity stays constant (or goes down). The amount of traffic in a city without congestion charging is the amount caused by the last couple percent of drivers most willing to wait in traffic. By introducing a fee that switches the decision for that small group of peopl…
Roads in cities are such a waste of space. A long time ago I did a quick survey of SF and found something like 20% of the land was dedicated to cars. Some articles from people here that talk about this [1] [2] [3]. That is the most subsidized land on the planet but people don't think of it that way. They think roads are free so any tax to use them is wrong. That space could be helping out the city in so many ways but…
Anywhere else, you're completely wrong.
Here in San Diego, a typical car drive of ~20 minutes round trip would take ~3 hours on the bus 8-(
Unless you're planning to walk to Minnesota and back (or where ever else you're going) in the current state of affairs you pretty much need roads...
p.s. Also with the "raise the taxes on this until no one uses it" argument, what you're really saying is "make it accessible only to the wealthy".