And the highways aren't subsidized?
It can be argued either way. They are almost all built with government money. But then the gas tax covers the cost for the interstate highway system. It doesn't cover all road building cost, so you get different answers depending on how you define highway.
Of that $0.52 assumes 16MPG for gas.
The average is higher than 16MPG.
We spend hundreds of millions annually to maintain and add to the highway system. For 20% of that, we can double the main line rail track.
I have some doubt that we can do that. Even if we can doubling the main line rail track wouldn't cover as much area as 20% of the highway system. The rail lines, even if doubled, wouldn't take everyone to where they need to go. Also if you get a lot more total use with double the rail track, then you need to pay for more maintenance, more cars and engines, more employees on the trains and at stations, etc.
Given free bus and rail travel, how many do you think would use it?
Hard to say. Personally it wouldn't reducing my driving by a lot. I supposed I'd consider taking a train to New York or FLA rather then driving or flying but I don't visit either too often. If the train works out ok and is free, it would do more to increase my total travel rather then displace it from driving. It would have almost no effect on my local driving. Even living in one of the worst metro areas for traffic, it still would normally take longer to get to most places by mass transit, and that would be true even if the budget for mass transit greatly increased.
Enough to reduce long distance highway usage by 10%?
I doubt it. In any case 10% of long distance highway use is probably less than 1% of total miles driven.
with rush hours both ways, traffic jams and other obstructions, it takes a normal person 40 minutes each way. A mass transit version would have one walk 3 minutes to the stop, wait 5 minutes for the bus, 5 minutes to the station, 5 minutes wait for the train, 10 minutes on the train, 5 minutes wait for the bus, 5 minutes on the bus and 2 minutes to work. The same amount of time as the car.
A lot of people commute suburb to suburb. It isn't practical to have trains to many of the likely destinations. Buses might be possible, but would have to fight traffic like the cars, would be less convenient, and still wouldn't serve many locations very well even if you greatly increased the budget for buses.
The $0.52 cents per mile you quote above includes the overhead of owning a car. I'm not going to get rid of my car. Taking mass transit would likely be more expensive. I'd be making the car payments (including insurance, taxes, etc. and the daily payments of the mass transit. |
