More about the T increase

[bobquasit]

I just tried to post this reply to a comment by my friend charibdis, but LiveJournal crashed every time I tried to post it. Fortunately I'd saved a copy, so here it is.

(Talking about the proposed increase in commuter rail and subway fees):

Actually I left out the most important reason, for me: I can't afford it. The increase will add about $40 to the cost of my monthly pass, and $40 is a huge bite out of our already impossible budget. I just don't have the money.

Actually, it's very arguable that an increase in T fees is effectively a regressive tax. After all, a large portion of those who ride the T do so because they can't afford a car. It's certain that the ridership is proportionally poorer than the overall population. So an increase in the fare hits those who can least afford to pay it.

Now, a red-blooded right-winger would argue that those who ride the T should be the ones to pay for it. But as always, the right-winger would be living in a magical fantasy land, a sort of Ayn Randian fever vision; they forget that we are all living together in a society, and that things are interconnected. Mass transit produces a number of benefits for those who don't ride it, after all! It reduces pollution and smog, reduces traffic congestion (including injuries, death, and property damage), increases property values, wastes fewer natural resources - and that's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more.

Every other modern industrial nation supports their light passenger rail and mass transit to a far greater extent than the US, and for the same reason that they have universal health care: it simply makes far more sense, except in a culture as steeped in corruption and obedience to the dictates of the rich as the US.

I may have discussed this before, but did you know that in the early 1920's there was a well-developed inter-city light rail system in the US? Much of it publicly financed, to boot! But the oil companies pushed the US government to effectively cut the throat of light passenger rail and instead develop the current inefficient and wasteful system of interstate highways. Cars, you see, use up a hell of a lot more oil than trains. Which is great for the profits of Standard Oil and other companies (including Halliburton, come to think of it), although it's bad for everyone else.

Okay, now I'm depressed. And this is starting to look like it should be a blog entry in itself.

Comments

[charibdis.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. I could not agree more that more taxes should go to public transportation, but, while certainly related to the fare increase, whether or not the T gets adequate public funding is a separate issue. If, as I suspect, people are chopping the budgets of public transportation then somehow it still has to get paid for, or discontinued. What you should be doing is poring over the budget and possibly writing a congressman or two. I have a sneaking hunch that, after Bush decided to cut all these programs to the states, the states started looking for ways to cut funding to things that wouldn't put the state politicians out of a job and decided public transit was a good place to cut. If this is the case I'd eagerly support showing them they weree wrong.