I agree that our discussion is at a stale-mate, since you decline to engage the hypothetical question I was raising in favor of distorting my previous remarks.

I don’t think we have anything else to discuss here.

And I have no idea whether the 75/25 breakdown is correct – that is why I prefaced it with an “if.”

Let’s take it as a given that you and I might disagree on what the costs and benefits to the community (as opposed to the costs and benefits to the individual driver or rider) are of the two modes of transportation. If the cost to the community (however defined) is substantially higher from one form than from another, and the individual user declines to pick up at least enough of the cost to make them break even, then I’d consider that mode to be causing the greater economic waste. Wouldn’t you?

I could save probably $300 on my rent – and live in a nicer apartment – if I moved two or three miles away. I live where I do because it’s half a block from a metro station, which allows me to get around without a car. (And this is on one of the suburban spurs of the system, not in the urban core – but I live here and not there because this is where my job is.)

Rents and property values are high in cities and other transit-oriented areas because (some) people are willing to pay them – which means that more people want to live in dense, urban, transit-accessible places than current zoning restrictions allow.

If we built more transit-oriented development to meet that demand (and thus drive down rents a bit), transit routes could be shorter and more efficient, and perhaps riders would be willing to pay more per trip, so transit systems could operate with little or no subsidy (as many did in the past).

There’s congestion, which I’ve already mentioned: Each additional car on a crowded road wastes everyone else’s fuel and everyone else’s time.

There are unpaid costs of collisions (I don’t like to call them ‘accidents,’ because that implies a degree of inevitability and blamelessness that I don’t think is appropriate).

There’s pollution – even if you don’t count CO2 (although you should), there’s still plain old ordinary urban pollution.

And there’s parking. When you drive to a place of business, either the business or the community pays to provide you with a place to park. (Even if you’re paying to park, it’s unlikely that you’re covering the whole cost of maintaining that parking space.) When the business pays, they pass the cost along to all their customers – including the ones who didn’t drive – in the form of higher prices.

I’m skeptical that your 75%/25% breakdown takes all these costs into account.

And in theory, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with public roads that are paid for by user-fees (tolls, gas tax, LIDs, mitigation fees, and the like), although in practice these might work more economically and honestly if they were set up more like utility districts rather than managed by state-wide agencies.

But if a driver on a public road pays 75% of the cost of his ride and imposes 25% on the community, while a transit rider pays 25% of the cost of her ride and imposes 75% on the community, I think the former is going to be preferable to me as long as the community costs are not higher for the driver in absolute terms. Meaning that if the driver’s cost is $20 for a ride, of which he pays $15, while a transit rider’s cost is $6, of which he pays $1.50, then transit is clearly preferable, since it saves both the transit rider AND the community money, while giving the driver a desirable economic alternative.

In other words, I would be cast out of the average meeting of libertarians for lack of ideological purity.

That’s interesting (although not a surprise) – you’ve now gone far beyond the discussion we were having before, which was simply about whether maintaining a public transportation network was a cost-effective choice.

Does it follow that it’s also your opinion that, for the sake of mutual respect and greater liberty, all roads should be privately owned and operated? It seems to.

I don’t at all think that people who use public transit are moochers, or that people who drive are Randian heroes. I just think that the per person-mile costs shifted to others are, in many communities, much much higher for transit riders than for drivers. There surely may be exceptions, though.

Since having people pay for their own choices and decisions as much as possible is more conducive to mutual respect and greater liberty (IMO), I’m not as sold on public transit as a general good as you are.

When some people take public transportation, everyone benefits. Maybe those benefits are not so apparent in your suburb 17 miles outside of the central business district, but in more densely populated and heavily traveled areas (where the biggest and most expensive public transportation systems are concentrated, after all), they really are.

“If these numbers are correct (and I’m not sure how you arrived at them), then for those four people to drive to work in four separate cars would cost $120-140 a day, even more than the cost of taking the bus. And yet, an awful lot of people drive to work alone. Isn’t *that* a lot of economic waste?”

I don’t think so. I think of economic waste as the excess of what is paid for something over the value placed on it by its recipient. If I buy myself a pet rock, absent any coercion, then the amount I pay for it and the value I place on it are presumptively equal. If I buy YOU a pet rock, or force you to buy one, and you don’t value pet rocks, then the price of the pet rock is an economic waste.

Someone who chooses to drive alone presumptively values the ride at whatever it costs. Otherwise, they’d choose differently. The commuter on a subsidized transit system, however, may or may not value the ride at what it really costs. The only way to know for sure is probably to offer the rider the money it costs to subsidize his/her ride, and see if they’d rather have the ride or the money. The rider would then probably consider alternative ways of getting to work that would maximize his/her overall financial well-being. If the cost of the ride is, say, $6 a day, and the rider has been paying $1.50 of it, getting the money instead of the ride would put about $129 a month in his/her pocket (the cost to the rider plus the subsidy).

The rider might choose to use that extra money to buy a more fuel-efficient car and drive alone, might choose to rely on that money take a lower paying job closer to home or become self-employed, might choose to team up with seven other co-workers and hire a van service (like the ones that so successfully transport people door-to-door to/from airports), etc. Since the drivers of such vans usually earn half or less than what public transportation drivers earn in wages and benefits, it’s safe to say the van service would add both convenience and savings to its riders.

Unless the rider would still choose to spend the whole $129 a month to ride the bus, however, it’s safe to say there’s economic waste going on.

We live in an area with top-rated schools. It attracts many corporate people who know they’ll be moving in two or three years and want good resale value. Bigger houses with more amenities sell better than smaller ones with less space.

I think it would be ridiculous for us to cram ourselves, kids who are all over 6 feet tall and two big dogs into the three bedroom ranch I bought as a single woman. I didn’t need the bedrooms then, but thought I’d be leaving in three years so there’s the resale value thing again. Good thing I bought too big, actually, since I got married and we had our first two kids living in that house.

This blog discusses frugality which means different things to different people. To me it means economizing on the things that don’t matter to me (my car is 21 years old, paid for and still runs just fine) so I can afford those that do. Having the space for family, friends and community to gather here is one of those.

I know it takes roughly 30-40 minutes to drive from my house in the morning (depending on how early I leave), and ~60 minutes to drive on the way home (as long as there is no precipitation or accidents).

Or I can do as I’ve been doing a year since my carpools fell apart and get on 5 transit vehicles each way (streetcar, streetcar, subway, bus, bus), and spend over $50/week for the privilege because I’m moving between two municipalities.

I think I’m still saving money on a car and gas and insurance. But really, is 4h/day in transit worth it? Yes, I know, I should just get a new job closer, or else find a new carpool. Both are easier said than done.

The 1865 Locomotive Act in the UK required all road locomotives, which included automobiles, to travel at a maximum of 4 mph in the country and 2 mph in towns and have a crew of three, one of whom should carry a red flag walking 60 yards ahead of each vehicle. They did not know in 1865 that road locomotives (or the demand for their fuel) would more or less completely screw up the planet by 2065, but they knew how bad drivers would be.

You may wonder why in 1865 any UK city-dweller would bother to own a car when they could only drive it at 2 mph – why not walk, for at 3 mph they would reach their destination sooner? Well, in Queen Victoria’s day the women wore clothing that restricted their walking speed to about four miles a fortnight, and the men had much shorter legs than nowadays so that even if they were inclined to race ahead of their spouses (as no gentleman would be in any case), it would do them little good.

Why not ride? Because it had (correctly) been proved by statistics that if the urban population continued to grow at its present rate, and if no alternative to equine transport were adopted, London would be a foot deep in horse excrement by the middle of the 20th century.

But in 1865, car ownership was not so much a necessity as a status symbol. Pretty much as it is nowadays, of course, except that the totemic question is not “do you have a car?” (of course you do) but “how fast does it go?” (if you’re a Republican) or “how eco-friendly is it?” (if you’re a Democrat). Even if you don’t have a fast car or a car that gets 70-odd miles to the gallon, to a man or a woman there is no subject on which you’re more willing to talk than “my car and how I drive it and why I wouldn’t catch a bus instead”. This forum itself has been reinvigorated by a yellow Neon. It would be tragic, if it weren’t funny.

Three facts, quite easy,
should be known to all
would-be survivors
who set out on wheels:
that roads are greasy,
safety-margins small,
and fellow-drivers
fellow-imbeciles.

Piet Hein

Do other nations usually decide who’s at fault for an accident differently than we do here in the USA?
I honestly don’t know how that works.

I wonder if theres a real valid *objective* way to easily measure quality or skill of driving for a nation?

Peoples opinions on the driving skill of another group are going to be biased. It seems people in every state in the US thinks the residents of the neighboring states are all awful drivers.