All over the United States, transit ridership is up for the first time since the seventies. The long, slow decline in public transit ridership parallels the long, slow decline of the great American cities. The recent rise in gas prices (oh, you hadn't heard?) has led people to search for other transportation options, only to find that they don't exist.
Long ignored transit systems are scrambling to add capacity to accomodate the new ridership, while sprawl apologists continue to tell us we can't afford it, that the people choose cars, that the gas tax is a highway user fee that shouldn't be used to fund public transportation.
Would you be willing to pay taxes that would drive gas to $7-8/gallon to fund public transportation?
Actually, its a trick question. It would take that just to pay for highways Right now, the gas tax pays 40% or less of the actual cost of constrution and maintanence of a road. The Texas DOT, quoted here, recently found that:
"in Houston, the 15 miles of SH 99 from I-10 to US 290 will cost $1 billion to build and maintain over its lifetime, while only generating $162 million in gas taxes. That gives a tax gap ratio of .16, \ which means that the real gas tax rate people would need to pay on this segment of road to completely pay for it would be $2.22 per gallon...
There is not one road in Texas that pays for itself based on the tax system of today."
Where does the rest of the money come from? Other pots of tax money. In other words, it is subsidized.
Many people return from their trips Europe amazed at the public transportation system there. The conventional wisdom is that because European cities are so old, they had to build public transportation systems because narrow streets and ancient infrastructure. But, as usual, this is a bit of conventional wisdom that doesn't stand up.
The automobile age began in earnest after the war (Levittown wasn't built until after 1950). That means the United States had been here building cities and towns for quite a while using the same technology that Europe was using, which led to the same development patterns. You wouldn't find that large of difference between 1920's America and 1920's Europe.
The influence of ancient Europe is overstated. Ancient buildings by definition become dilapidated and are replaced. Also, even though European settlements had been around for a long time, real population growth didn't occur until the 18th and 19th century agricultural revolution. Therefore the majority of Europe's development happened during the history of the United States. So at the beginning of WWII Europe and the United States had developed with similar technology and during a similar time period.
During WWII, most of Europe was destroyed. Every one of the great cities, (except for Prague and I think Krakow) were bombed flat. European cities were almost completely rebuilt in the post war period, the same time period that the US began to sprawl. So what happened?
To say the the ancientness of Europe and the newness of the US is the major cause of differences in our transportation system ignores major policy decisions that have led to the system we have today. Eisenhower announced the interstate system in 1956. Ever since then the main priority of the Federal DOT has been building a national, grade separated, limited access highway system. Eisenhower could have put that money into a national, grade separated, highspeed rail system, and over the years we could have upgraded and expanded it the way the interstate system has been. But that's not the way things went.
In an unforeseen move, people began to move out of the cites to areas along the new interstates, and then drive on the interstates into the cities to work. They could not have done this without the interstates. The new highways, intended to move people from city to city, became congested with people traveling from new suburbs to the cities. This was percieved to interfere with through travelers, so the reaction was to build bypasses. The new bypasses, much less congested than the existing highways, naturally became a destination for new development settled by people trying to find a quicker way to work. When the bypasses were congested, new bypasses were built to take traffic around the old ones.
The new highways destroyed the old cities. Historic buildings were torn down, neighboorhoods were cut off, parking lots built, and little by litte American cities became less desirable places to live. So more people move to the suburbs. Creating a percieved need for more highways. Which added more capacity, which allowed more people to move to the suburbs.
The moral is, that the suburbanization of America and our dependence on the automobile was not caused by free market decisions, but by massive government interference. There were conscious decision made to subsidize personal automobiles over public transit, and air travel over railroads.
The good news is, if policy decisions got us into this, different policy decisions can get us out.