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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

#61

Post by MangoToupe »

bluGill wrote: post #30
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…

> 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…

> Your transit operators need to ensure transit doesn't become too popular: the more people taking transit the less cars there are paying that tax.

So, raise the tax. When nobody takes cars any more you figure out another way to pay for it. The existence of cars shouldn't come at the cost of public services.

Public transit makes the most sense to fund with property taxes proportional to the benefit that public transit brings in.

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

#62

Post by bkettle »

dkiebd wrote: post #53
komali2 wrote: post #14

This is excellent, but I always wonder at the way cities seem to bend over backwards for the worst technology for moving people ever invented, and don't dare do anything that deprioritizing the use of this technology. Here, I found some street parking for cars: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Quai+Turrettini/@46.205451... Alongside a gorgeous canal, with bike lanes there as well as what appears to be a train statio…

> I always wonder at the way cities seem to bend over backwards for the worst technology for moving people ever invented, and don't dare do anything that deprioritizing the use of this technology. I don’t get it - is your comment pro or anti public transportation :)

The rest of the comment gives some pretty nice examples of how bad cars are from a land use perspective alone

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

#63

Post by colechristensen »

bkettle wrote: post #50
colechristensen wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I left California before the new trains were a thing, but peak hours going north starting in Mountain View meant standing room only tightly packed on the world's more unstable train cars.

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

#64

Post by ferguess_k »

bluGill wrote: post #30
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…

> 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…

I completely agree. Free for the poor people but don't give free stuffs to the other people (including me). Public services are NEVER really free - they take $$ from taxes. Looks like many people simply don't care about taxes.

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

#65

Post by lupusreal »

bevr1337 wrote: post #60
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.

> There is existing technology to extract co2 Source? As I understand it, co2 sequestration is still in R&D and not viable at scale. We can hit neutral, like a tree does, but that doesn't improve the situation. Like desalination, it sure seems like an easy problem but is not.

> As I understand it, co2 sequestration is still in R&D and not viable at scale.

I'm sure he knows. He's just tacitly saying cars should be defacto banned for anybody who's not a multimillionaire.

The reason this isn't done is because trying something like that is how you lose elections. So really it's a fantasy about having authoritarian control over everybody else.

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

#66

Post by bluGill »

mvieira38 wrote: post #41
mvieira38 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Cars cost more than transit for most people. However transit is expensive no matter how you look at it. The money to run it much come from someplace.

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

#67

Post by lupusreal »

connicpu wrote: post #44
aaronmdjones wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those taxes pay for road upkeep, as well as other state programs, but not carbon sequestration.

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

#68

Post by bluGill »

MangoToupe wrote: post #61
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…

> Your transit operators need to ensure transit doesn't become too popular: the more people taking transit the less cars there are paying that tax. So, raise the tax. When nobody takes cars any more you figure out another way to pay for it. The existence of cars shouldn't come at the cost of public services. Public transit makes the most sense to fund with property taxes proportional to the benefit that public transi…

> Public transit makes the most sense to fund with property taxes proportional to the benefit that public transit brings in.

Which is essentially zero in many cities. And even in cities with transit, an expansion should result in a lot more benefit than they are currently getting, but they need that money now not in 10 years after that expansion is done and the city sees that benefit.

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

#69

Post by Avicebron »

dkiebd wrote: post #51
sofixa wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, that's not how Switzerland operates, because it's a very direct democracy where the status quo and the will of the majority takes priority over common sense and long term thinking. Full franchise (women being allowed to vote) didn't happen in all cantons until the 1990s (after it being made possible in the 1970s), because the existing voters (men) just voted against it.

I completely reject the notion that direct democracy is bad because Politicians Know Better. It’s borderline if not completely authoritarian and frankly disgusting. Maybe consider that Switzerland is one of the best if not the best country in the world because people can choose what they want it to be.

This issue with direct democracies is that the they can get out of hand pretty fast unless your population is somewhat homogenous and reasonable. Aka Switzerland. If you're too young to remember twitch plays Pokémon, that's direct democracy and it was wild.

A direct democracy could decide tomorrow that we wanted to fuck China sideways with nukes because it's funny and based all because a tiktok went viral.

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

#70

Post by SilverElfin »

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.

Why single out cars? I may like using cars to get to destinations. Maybe you walk but do other things that have various environmental impacts like having kids or buying trendy clothes or pick something else. It seems unfair to let some people externalize their life’s costs but charge others.
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