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Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike

reuters.com

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Re: Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike

#41

Post by mvieira38 »

mvieira38 wrote: post #40
bluGill wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Public transportation should always be free in cities, with car commuters paying the operation costs Strongly disagree. There are too many perverse incentives that work against transit. If there are a lot of car commuters (which there will be - plumbers taking their tools to the job for example) they have inventive to pressure politicians to reduce that tax - any voting block will always be more powerful than the d…

Wow, that first paragraph is a compelling political economy argument against this policy that I hadn't really thought of. Your model seems to take the assumptions that the trade industries can't reorganize to optimize car usage, and that transit operators have only one stream of income (the car tax). Both are untrue, IMO, and in the desired steady state the car tax is in fact near zero, substituted by higher taxes on…

It's also false that transit prices are small, by the way, at least globally. Where I live (third world), taking the subway daily to and from work amounts to 14% of minimum wage

Re: Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike

#42

Post by colechristensen »

aqme28 wrote: post #38
mvieira38 wrote: post #10

Public transportation should always be free in cities, with car commuters paying the operation costs. Not saying it can be implemented right away, but it should be a policy goal for cities. You have all the right in the world to prefer driving and chilling on your air conditioning and stereo if you can afford it, but it shouldn't be free if you're occupying the lane space 10 people would occupy in a bus, and making t…

I don't want to comment on if it should be free or not, but public transit and micromobility should always be cheaper than owning+driving a car. Even with NYC's controversial new congestion pricing, it's still cheaper to drive your family to the city than to take them via train.

Commuting as one person from Mountain View to SF was cheaper with a car including the total ownership cost of the car, nevermind the reasonable discount for "stuff I wand to do with my car other than commute".

And riding caltrain during peak hours for an hour twice a day would violate the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war.

Re: Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike

#43

Post by pkulak »

smsm42 wrote: post #35
dukoid wrote: post #11

Why do we still allow drivers to externalize most of the costs associated with cars? There is existing technology to extract co2 from the atmosphere, and the current cost of this should be the free market-based price for co2 emissions.

Gas and cars are already heavily taxed. In California, for example, it's 61c per gallon now. I am not sure what's the situation in Switzerland, but last time I have been in Europe gas prices there was very significantly higher than in the US (even in California). Given as European gas doesn't seem to be a different product than US gas, I have to conclude Europeans already pay a lost of costs when buying gas. Same wit…

That 61 cents doesn’t even come close to covering road maintenance, let alone pollution and every other negative externality of personal car use.

Re: Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike

#44

Post by connicpu »

aaronmdjones wrote: post #39
misja111 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you're referring to the article, but that was about Ozone pollution. In most countries cars are already taxed, in Switzerland as well. The tax is proportional to the weight of the car, so it compensates for higher fuel consumption. For similar reasons, EV's are taxed less.

In the UK, VED is based on the vehicle's CO2 emissions per kilometre traveled under prescribed driving conditions. This means the registered keepers of EVs (and some hybrid ICE/EVs) pay nothing. There are talks about scrapping this system as more and more of the country transitions to EVs, and taxing them by vehicle weight instead (the same way driving licences are classed). This would reverse the current status quo,…

Some states in the US with large numbers of EV drivers are already kinda doing this. I now have to pay a flat EV tax on my registration, although it's still less than I'd pay annually in gas tax if I drove an ICE car.

Re: Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike

#45

Post by kccqzy »

aqme28 wrote: post #38
mvieira38 wrote: post #10

Public transportation should always be free in cities, with car commuters paying the operation costs. Not saying it can be implemented right away, but it should be a policy goal for cities. You have all the right in the world to prefer driving and chilling on your air conditioning and stereo if you can afford it, but it shouldn't be free if you're occupying the lane space 10 people would occupy in a bus, and making t…

I don't want to comment on if it should be free or not, but public transit and micromobility should always be cheaper than owning+driving a car. Even with NYC's controversial new congestion pricing, it's still cheaper to drive your family to the city than to take them via train.

No it's absolutely not cheaper to drive your family into the city. You said owning+driving a car; did you really take into account ownership costs (maintenance, insurance etc) and driving costs (tolls, parking)? Just the cost of parking alone dwarfs the cost of the train.

Re: Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike

#46

Post by pkulak »

dfxm12 wrote: post #13
dukoid wrote: post #11

Why do we still allow drivers to externalize most of the costs associated with cars? There is existing technology to extract co2 from the atmosphere, and the current cost of this should be the free market-based price for co2 emissions.

Auto industry is pretty powerful, worldwide, but also particularly locally around Switzerland. I mean powerful enough to shape people's opinions and sway regulations.

That is crazy to me that the country with a national identity built around trains also has a powerful car lobby. You really can’t escape it.

Re: Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike

#47

Post by colechristensen »

thmsths wrote: post #15

How effective do they expect a measure like this to be? Once a car and its insurance are paid for, the marginal cost of a single trip is quite low. I seriously wonder how many people woke up that day and thought "instead of driving I will take the train today because they are waiving the $3 fee" not many I bet. If we want to encourage people to take public transports we need to keep them competitive against the car a…

The $3 -> wouldn't motivate a lot of people, it's more like the cherry on top of asking folks nicely to drive less.

Like if you asked me to help you move a couch and offered me a beer, a beer isn't really a fair trade for the labor value, but I'm being nice and helping, a nice treat makes things a little better.

Re: Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike

#48

Post by bkettle »

smsm42 wrote: post #35
dukoid wrote: post #11

Why do we still allow drivers to externalize most of the costs associated with cars? There is existing technology to extract co2 from the atmosphere, and the current cost of this should be the free market-based price for co2 emissions.

Gas and cars are already heavily taxed. In California, for example, it's 61c per gallon now. I am not sure what's the situation in Switzerland, but last time I have been in Europe gas prices there was very significantly higher than in the US (even in California). Given as European gas doesn't seem to be a different product than US gas, I have to conclude Europeans already pay a lost of costs when buying gas. Same wit…

> So claiming car drivers do not pay the costs is just plain wrong.

We can’t determine that that is the case simply because the cost seems like a lot. California has the highest gas taxes in the US, so even if California is correctly pricing the externalities of consuming a gallon of gas (which I very much doubt), the rest of the country is under-pricing those externalities. The EU has a minimum gas tax of $1.60 per gallon, so if they are correctly pricing the externalities, California must be under-pricing them by over half.

Re: Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike

#49

Post by lillecarl »

smsm42 wrote: post #35
dukoid wrote: post #11

Why do we still allow drivers to externalize most of the costs associated with cars? There is existing technology to extract co2 from the atmosphere, and the current cost of this should be the free market-based price for co2 emissions.

Gas and cars are already heavily taxed. In California, for example, it's 61c per gallon now. I am not sure what's the situation in Switzerland, but last time I have been in Europe gas prices there was very significantly higher than in the US (even in California). Given as European gas doesn't seem to be a different product than US gas, I have to conclude Europeans already pay a lost of costs when buying gas. Same wit…

It is a different product, across the world. In Sweden you can't buy anything below 95 octane whereas I've seen 89 in Australia and 87 seems to be common in USA according to Claude.

Editorialized: US "gas" is cheap crap

Re: Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike

#50

Post by bkettle »

colechristensen wrote: post #42
aqme28 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to comment on if it should be free or not, but public transit and micromobility should always be cheaper than owning+driving a car. Even with NYC's controversial new congestion pricing, it's still cheaper to drive your family to the city than to take them via train.

Commuting as one person from Mountain View to SF was cheaper with a car including the total ownership cost of the car, nevermind the reasonable discount for "stuff I wand to do with my car other than commute". And riding caltrain during peak hours for an hour twice a day would violate the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war.

Riding Caltrain during peak hours is totally fine and not unpleasant at all, particularly with the new trains (I do it most days and am writing this comment while doing so)
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