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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

#131

Post by Herring »

cyprien_g wrote: post #21
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…

Completely agree with you. I live in Montpellier, France, and we have had free public transportation for a year and a half, and it's very good. I definitely use my car less and take public transport more often. Everyone, including people without cars, pays for the roads through taxes; it is only fair to do the same for public transport.

Society pays for cars in a lot of ways other than just taxes. Roads/highways/parking takes up tons of valuable land (opportunity costs). Cars cause a lot of medical conditions, from respiratory/cardiovascular diseases, to obesity. Cars add to climate change, which causes extreme weather events. Congestion and noise impacts health and the economy, etc. Cities all around the world would be net improved with much fewer cars.

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

#132

Post by Leherenn »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #86
smsm42 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not familiar with how things are done in Europe, but in the US fuel taxes aren't enough to pay for road maintenance, let alone new construction and externalities like pollution. New construction is typically mostly done with federal grants (newly printed money) and pollution we all just breathe.

According to the Swiss government that's actually the case there: https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/mobility-tra...

"Degree of coverage of motorised road traffic infrastructure costs: 111%"

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

#133

Post by k_g_b_ »

qcnguy wrote: post #107
IshKebab wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your public transport is so popular that it's becoming infeasible to fund it from car taxes... mission fucking accomplished! That is such a wild and nonsensical fear. "But what if it's too successful?!"

Eh no, that is an actual failure mode. Germany is experiencing it right now. What it means is everyone ends up being forced to use horribly broken public transport and it screws up everyone's business and personal lives. It is possible for public transport to be too popular. It looks like overloaded, crowded and constantly broken lines that can't get better because they're starved of funding.

Public transport being massively/too popular is the only way for it to get anywhere near the level of funding it needs. That's not really a failure mode, just a symptom of the real failure. It was extremely easy for governments to ignore it and leave it to rot for decades because it had next to no lobby compared to cars.

The 9€ and Deutschlandticket reinvigorated that lobby - although that's being snuffed out again.

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

#134

Post by deepsun »

aaronmdjones wrote: post #80
deepsun wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just tax fuel/electricity instead of car.

We also tax those already. EDIT: There is a fixed VAT charge of 5% on electricity, as well as a currently 16% levy on electricity to cover various environmental and social benefit schemes. Which is hilarious, as the UK is moving away from fossil fuels for its electrical generation mix, while taxing electricity consumption much more than it taxes gas (5% VAT and 5.5% levies). This punishes those using electricity for…

Exactly. Why do we need to come up with clever formulas to estimate car CO2 production based on car's gross weight, wheelbase, engine displacement, efficiency ratings if it's much easier to calculate how much CO2 is produced from the car's fuel?

PS: electricity is hard as there's a lot of volatile renewables, but I bet is still way easier than clever formulas.

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

#135

Post by bluGill »

lesuorac wrote: post #130
bluGill wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's just because the roads are built out by the Department of Transportation no? Like if you had to drive on toll roads built underground then nobody would ever drive (see Hyperloop). I think the big mistake being made is people are arguing for free subways and really we should just go to free buses first.

I'm against free buses in general (though probably not in this particular case) because people want to get places. That money from bus fares should be put to running more buses (or building subways... lots of options, but more service). Nobody proposing free transit has ever proposed anywhere enough money that the city can run all needed services. They can maybe come up with enough money to continue current service, but every city in the world needs more transit service. You need service that can get you from where you are to where you want to be, when you want to go. Sometimes that place is farther away (but not unreasonably far) and you need high speed express service. Sometimes you are running late and miss the bus/train - is the next bus/train coming soon enough that you are not unreasonably late? Sometimes you need to be out late, is service still running? Sometimes you want to do something on a weekend. More service is needed everywhere and that lack of service is the primary reason people buy cars which are ready when people want to go (they claim otherwise but when I dig down it comes down to service)

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

#136

Post by insane_dreamer »

ferguess_k wrote: post #99
insane_dreamer wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss the part about the roads for cars? If I don’t have a car I’m still paying for all the roads built and continuously maintained so that those with cars can drive them. So yeah, we are subsidizing private transport.

You are still depending on the roads for trucks that transport merchandises around and emergency vehicles and a lot of other stuffs. We are also paying for your public transit, thank you, because at least in my city it never breaks even, so everyone including us gets taxed -- but I have no issue with that -- I mostly take public transit anyway.

Sure, roads are multi-purpose. But if the roads were only used for public transport, transport of goods, and emergency vehicles, that would reduce wear and tear significantly and many might not even be needed. How much do you think road maintenance costs would drop by? Significantly. So that very large amount is being subsidized by taxes so people can drive private cars instead of taking public transport.

Yes, we as a US society are subsidizing private transport because "it's the American way". Other countries do this too but not to this extent. I'm in my 50s and never even owned a car until I moved back to the US ~7 years ago.

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

#137

Post by bluGill »

baggy_trough wrote: post #126
const_cast wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason is they have no choice. Consumers are the bottom of the totem pole. Americans spend on average 15% of their gross income on automobile transportation. That's not including their taxes that went towards said automobiles, roads, and oil. Nobody actually wants to do that. If you could get to work without an automobile, you would. But you can't, can you? Automobiles are parasidic in nature. To work, they requi…

That's my point. Automobiles are much better than any other alternative. We have a car centric built environment because people have rationally decided for many valid reasons that automobiles are the best way to get around. It's not because they are "parasitic", whatever that means.

Mass transit can be just as good as cars for most people at far less cost. For many people transit because it can avoid congestion and go faster than cars (even on an uncontested highway) transit should be better. However transit is lacking the network needed to make it that good.

Note that a large part of why cars are better is the network exists. If you had to drive on dirt (not even gravel!) roads that became impassible when it rains you would call cars a bad way to get around. However the road network is such that you can nearly anywhere in a car.

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

#138

Post by baggy_trough »

bluGill wrote: post #137
baggy_trough wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my point. Automobiles are much better than any other alternative. We have a car centric built environment because people have rationally decided for many valid reasons that automobiles are the best way to get around. It's not because they are "parasitic", whatever that means.

Mass transit can be just as good as cars for most people at far less cost. For many people transit because it can avoid congestion and go faster than cars (even on an uncontested highway) transit should be better. However transit is lacking the network needed to make it that good. Note that a large part of why cars are better is the network exists. If you had to drive on dirt (not even gravel!) roads that became impa…

I would just propose that the transit advocates concentrate on that goal ("Mass transit can be just as good as cars for most people at far less cost") in one small area, because in most areas in the United States, it is currently extraordinarily far from reality.

Also, they should do this without crippling cars, since that would be far easier to do than producing a compelling alternative to them as they currently exist.

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

#139

Post by MangoToupe »

bluGill wrote: post #127
MangoToupe wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is essentially zero in many cities. ??? How does this make any sense at all? You have no basically economy without transit. And you get a far greater return from mass transit than from roads. > 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 benefi…

When I said transit I mean mass transit. Most people do not refer to roads as transit even though they are part of your transportation network.

Sure, and I'm just saying there's the rational impulse to tax cars to death and then enjoy the fruits of a mass transit network. The way we have things set up now doesn't make any sense to begin with—almost like we're taxing our economic centers for existing.

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

#140

Post by belorn »

k_g_b_ wrote: post #133
qcnguy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh no, that is an actual failure mode. Germany is experiencing it right now. What it means is everyone ends up being forced to use horribly broken public transport and it screws up everyone's business and personal lives. It is possible for public transport to be too popular. It looks like overloaded, crowded and constantly broken lines that can't get better because they're starved of funding.

Public transport being massively/too popular is the only way for it to get anywhere near the level of funding it needs. That's not really a failure mode, just a symptom of the real failure. It was extremely easy for governments to ignore it and leave it to rot for decades because it had next to no lobby compared to cars. The 9€ and Deutschlandticket reinvigorated that lobby - although that's being snuffed out again.

Looking at the Swedish railway, the issue is related to budget but the problem is not that simple. The main issue is that the railway system lacks redundancy in track capacity, meaning that any failure require short term fixes in order to reduce short term losses. Those short term fixes eventually leads to overall higher downtime and higher failure rates, which only lead to a even more focus on quick fixes and shoddy repairs. Building out new capacity becomes too expensive and takes too long time, and takes money from the budget that is needed to do all the quick fixes that pop up. When those lines become too popular, the pressure only increases to continue do quick fixes, since any downtime has even larger impact both on the straining cargo traffic and passenger throughput.

It becomes like the meme when people talk about nuclear power. Sure, it would had been an good idea 10-20 years ago, but there is no time to do it now and it cost too much. Next year will be even later, and it will cost even more. Any new funding need to be channeled directly to the starving short-term budget, which will continue to always be too low on funding.

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