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The real question is not about whether mobility is valuable or not, it is about how valuable it is. When it comes to infrastructure development, we throw tons o

The real question is not about whether mobility is valuable or not, it is about how valuable it is. When it comes to infrastructure development, we throw tons of other people's money at the problem, but if drivers were paying their full costs via gas taxes and congestion charges, how much demand would there be? This article suggests that driving demand is a lot more elastic than we like to claim.

closeparen 8y ago
Can't you make this argument against any public service? We throw a bunch of other people's money at K12. I suspect most families would buy fewer years of schooling if they paid the true cost. We throw a bunch of other people's money at the military. If people had to pay the true cost of America's autonomy, they'd suck it up and learn Russian. The compelling cost argument, IMO, is that a subway system could offer more mobility at the same price point.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Cars are also major contributors to climate change and air pollution in cities, unlike schools. More cars also lead to more sprawl which leads to higher demand for cars. It's a vicious circle.
- ThrustVectoring 8y ago
  >We throw a bunch of other people's money at K12. I suspect most families would buy fewer years of schooling if they paid the true cost. Education is fundamentally (mostly) a positional good - what it buys is the right to be considered for white-collar jobs ahead of competitors who haven't spent as much time getting educated. Families already spend as much as they can afford in education to win this tournament, the only thing that would reduce education spending is if everyone else stopped buying as much education.
- saosebastiao 8y ago
  Yes, you can make that argument against any public service. And it is worth discussing for any public service. All public services have benefits, and all of them are capable of being overprovisioned. In the context of schools, literally everybody benefits from population wide literacy and education. The benefits are diffuse enough that it is worth subsidizing...although we're probably hitting diminishing returns on the amount that we do spend. And the idea that we need to learn russian if we don't have a military 10x bigger than the rest of the world is a cold war rhetorical relic. Of course we could do with less military funding. Cars though, are mostly a benefit to the occupant, and either a detriment to everybody around them, or entirely capable of being priced into the benefit of the goods they buy. Yes, I can afford paying $0.0025 more for a pound of apples if it means the trucking company pays their true costs. And why should we subsidize your drive in a BMW to your office when you can easily pay for the whole cost yourself, or take transit? Why should we be subsidizing cars over the much more efficient alternatives? Cars and transit are competing forms of transportation...a vehicle mile not traveled is very often a fare paid. Car costs scale linearly with the number of people-miles driven, until congestion and space constraints hit and then costs scale exponentially. Transit costs are step fixed costs, and therefore the more riders the less they cost per person. When we subsidize car travel, it forces us to subsidize transit travel even more, because taking away riders makes transit less efficient. It should be remembered that before we started price capping transit companies and subsidizing roads, transit was one of the most profitable industries in the world. That's the power of the cost efficiency of transit. So yes, mobility is important and roads shouldn't just go away, but the amount of roads and car infrastructure that we fund through general taxes is absolutely obscene and should be scaled back dramatically. Mobility can be much more efficiently provisioned to the public with transit.
  - nanis 8y ago
    > In the context of schools, literally everybody benefits from population wide literacy and education. Education is more of a private good than you seem to realize. It is definitely excludable and in traditional settings it is quickly becomes rival past small groups of similarly motivated people. Self learning is not rival, i.e. my learning of something does not prevent you from being able to learn it, but then that cannot be used to justify government provision of education. Once one learns something, it becomes part of one's human capital and one cannot be separated from it. Hence the difference between loans for college versus mortgages. Now, in this case, people are finding out that roads are not very public goods either (even though government entities have take over provision). First, roads are excludable. Second, they tend to also be very rival when they are most needed. The reduction in capacity highlighted their nature of quickly becoming rival. Finally, if it people actually benefited from all the time-shifting, taking ferries instead of driving, leaving home at 5 am and sleeping in the parking lot waiting for the office to open, they all had that option before the construction began. Ergo, people are made worse off by the change no matter how they are adapting.
    - wbl 8y ago
      And the pedestrians and cyclists who dont have to fight drivers downtown, the children not getting asthma all benefit. Do people visit car dominated spaces by choice?
    - thomasz 8y ago
      In a society where most of the people are barely able to read, an advanced degree isn't worth that much compared to a highly industrialized society.
      - nanis 8y ago
        Why are most people barely able to read in such a society? Do you think if there is net return to being literate, people would not be able to learn without government?
  - closeparen 8y ago
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  You can. But roads (the public service) are a separate concern from people moving around (private decisions). I want the roads to be built ahead of and shaping demand. But I also want emission costs to be fully internalized be the drivers. I expect this would cut down demand for excess commuting quite sharply. I don't mind people traveling in general, as long as we can sustainably afford it. Right now, we can't sustainably afford current levels of fossil-fueled transport.
  - closeparen 8y ago
    The theme of TFA is that they are not separate. The provision of roads influences how much people move around. What's to say we can sustainably afford current levels of public transport? Should construction costs and associated disruptions to the city be fully internalized by riders?
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      > What's to say we can sustainably afford current levels of public transport? Add a full carbon tax to price of fuels, and the answer should quickly become apparent.
- romwell 8y ago
  >Can't you make this argument against any public service? >The compelling cost argument, IMO, is that a subway system could offer more mobility at the same price point. So, yes and yes?
  - closeparen 8y ago
    If the principle is that we should not spend other people's money on transportation, or that transportation users should pay the full cost of their mileage, then we shouldn't build subways either. At least not at public expense.
AmericanChopper 8y ago
>if drivers were paying their full costs via gas taxes and congestion charges The entire economy benefits from roads. You can’t reduce your dependence on roads for your own personal travel needs and then claim some sort of moral high ground.

closeparen 8y ago

Can't you make this argument against any public service? We throw a bunch of other people's money at K12. I suspect most families would buy fewer years of schooling if they paid the true cost. We throw a bunch of other people's money at the military. If people had to pay the true cost of America's autonomy, they'd suck it up and learn Russian. The compelling cost argument, IMO, is that a subway system could offer more mobility at the same price point.

adrianN 8y ago
Cars are also major contributors to climate change and air pollution in cities, unlike schools. More cars also lead to more sprawl which leads to higher demand for cars. It's a vicious circle.
ThrustVectoring 8y ago
>We throw a bunch of other people's money at K12. I suspect most families would buy fewer years of schooling if they paid the true cost. Education is fundamentally (mostly) a positional good - what it buys is the right to be considered for white-collar jobs ahead of competitors who haven't spent as much time getting educated. Families already spend as much as they can afford in education to win this tournament, the only thing that would reduce education spending is if everyone else stopped buying as much education.
saosebastiao 8y ago
Yes, you can make that argument against any public service. And it is worth discussing for any public service. All public services have benefits, and all of them are capable of being overprovisioned. In the context of schools, literally everybody benefits from population wide literacy and education. The benefits are diffuse enough that it is worth subsidizing...although we're probably hitting diminishing returns on the amount that we do spend. And the idea that we need to learn russian if we don't have a military 10x bigger than the rest of the world is a cold war rhetorical relic. Of course we could do with less military funding. Cars though, are mostly a benefit to the occupant, and either a detriment to everybody around them, or entirely capable of being priced into the benefit of the goods they buy. Yes, I can afford paying $0.0025 more for a pound of apples if it means the trucking company pays their true costs. And why should we subsidize your drive in a BMW to your office when you can easily pay for the whole cost yourself, or take transit? Why should we be subsidizing cars over the much more efficient alternatives? Cars and transit are competing forms of transportation...a vehicle mile not traveled is very often a fare paid. Car costs scale linearly with the number of people-miles driven, until congestion and space constraints hit and then costs scale exponentially. Transit costs are step fixed costs, and therefore the more riders the less they cost per person. When we subsidize car travel, it forces us to subsidize transit travel even more, because taking away riders makes transit less efficient. It should be remembered that before we started price capping transit companies and subsidizing roads, transit was one of the most profitable industries in the world. That's the power of the cost efficiency of transit. So yes, mobility is important and roads shouldn't just go away, but the amount of roads and car infrastructure that we fund through general taxes is absolutely obscene and should be scaled back dramatically. Mobility can be much more efficiently provisioned to the public with transit.
- nanis 8y ago
  > In the context of schools, literally everybody benefits from population wide literacy and education. Education is more of a private good than you seem to realize. It is definitely excludable and in traditional settings it is quickly becomes rival past small groups of similarly motivated people. Self learning is not rival, i.e. my learning of something does not prevent you from being able to learn it, but then that cannot be used to justify government provision of education. Once one learns something, it becomes part of one's human capital and one cannot be separated from it. Hence the difference between loans for college versus mortgages. Now, in this case, people are finding out that roads are not very public goods either (even though government entities have take over provision). First, roads are excludable. Second, they tend to also be very rival when they are most needed. The reduction in capacity highlighted their nature of quickly becoming rival. Finally, if it people actually benefited from all the time-shifting, taking ferries instead of driving, leaving home at 5 am and sleeping in the parking lot waiting for the office to open, they all had that option before the construction began. Ergo, people are made worse off by the change no matter how they are adapting.
  - wbl 8y ago
    And the pedestrians and cyclists who dont have to fight drivers downtown, the children not getting asthma all benefit. Do people visit car dominated spaces by choice?
  - thomasz 8y ago
    In a society where most of the people are barely able to read, an advanced degree isn't worth that much compared to a highly industrialized society.
    - nanis 8y ago
      Why are most people barely able to read in such a society? Do you think if there is net return to being literate, people would not be able to learn without government?
- closeparen 8y ago
TeMPOraL 8y ago
You can. But roads (the public service) are a separate concern from people moving around (private decisions). I want the roads to be built ahead of and shaping demand. But I also want emission costs to be fully internalized be the drivers. I expect this would cut down demand for excess commuting quite sharply. I don't mind people traveling in general, as long as we can sustainably afford it. Right now, we can't sustainably afford current levels of fossil-fueled transport.
- closeparen 8y ago
  The theme of TFA is that they are not separate. The provision of roads influences how much people move around. What's to say we can sustainably afford current levels of public transport? Should construction costs and associated disruptions to the city be fully internalized by riders?
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > What's to say we can sustainably afford current levels of public transport? Add a full carbon tax to price of fuels, and the answer should quickly become apparent.
romwell 8y ago
>Can't you make this argument against any public service? >The compelling cost argument, IMO, is that a subway system could offer more mobility at the same price point. So, yes and yes?
- closeparen 8y ago
  If the principle is that we should not spend other people's money on transportation, or that transportation users should pay the full cost of their mileage, then we shouldn't build subways either. At least not at public expense.

AmericanChopper 8y ago

>if drivers were paying their full costs via gas taxes and congestion charges The entire economy benefits from roads. You can’t reduce your dependence on roads for your own personal travel needs and then claim some sort of moral high ground.