Pro-Car Propaganda

How Wendell Cox, John Tierney and other anti-transit “experts” walk the fine line between truth and fiction

“Give ‘em cars”

Wendell Cox argues that it would be cheaper to provide new cars to people for free than to construct public transit He underestimates the cost of his plan by $40-$66 billion

Why would he do this? Why does anyone make arguments that please the people with the most

money and power in the US? How does he do it?

he forgets that cars drive on roads but he naturally includes the cost of the rails in his estimated the cost of transit (Doh!)

he overlooks the $20 billion in congestion costs saved each year by public transit (TTI, 2003)

he overlooks the fact that many people who ride the miserable public transit system at present cannot drive and would have to be chauffeured

Smart Roads

“By squeezing three times as many cars on the highway, this technology could drastically ease traffic congestion -- if only engineers could figure out a way to get millions of drivers to buy these systems.” (John Tierney)

What is it? stack of magnets in the center of each express spaced at intervals 1.2 meters

apart equipped car can drive down the road by itself, guided by the magnets and radar engineers in San Diego sent a caravan of eight Buicks at 65 miles per hour and

computers kept the cars just 15 feet apart My questions:

Where does his “three times as many” figure come from? Does it include extra space for vehicles entering and leaving highway and

changing lanes? Does it allow enough time for stopping in case the vehicle ahead needs to slam

on its breaks? Does it use regular tailgating as its base figure (usually less than 15 feet when

cruising) or average distances, which include extra margins for entering and leaving the road, as well as gaps that would occur in any case?

What if one computer freezes up… how many people will die?

Pay-as-you-go Roads

“…cars could be metered for every block they travel. Security officials could monitor the movements of suspected terrorists, and transportation planners could adopt their favorite tactic for eliminating traffic jams: ‘value pricing.’ When tolls are set higher at the busier places and times -- the F.D.R. Drive at rush hour, Midtown cross streets at lunchtime, Fifth Avenue in December -- drivers respond by carpooling, rearranging their schedules or switching to mass transit. Everybody wins, at least according to economists, because the time saved by drivers no longer stuck in traffic jams is worth far more than the tolls they're paying.” (John Tierney)

What’s wrong with this? Do we want to live in a society where everyone’s movements are constantly

monitored and recorded? Any system that uses a flat rate fee system is inherently regressive: the rich

practically ignore the fee because it is an insignificant part of their budget, while it weeds out the poor who can’t afford to pay and accordingly adjust their lives to make it easier for the rich to get around.

Smirking through rhetoric “Americans still love their own cars, but they're sick of everyone

else's. The car is blamed for everything from global warming to the war in Iraq to the transformation of America into a land of strip malls and soulless subdivisions filled with fat, lonely suburbanites. Al Gore called the automobile a ''mortal threat'' that is ''more deadly than that of any military enemy.'' Cities across America, with encouragement from Washington, are adopting ''smart growth'' policies to discourage driving and promote mass transit. Three years ago, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new freeway just outside Los Angeles, Gov. Gray Davis declared that it would be the last one built in the state. Standing at the cradle of car culture, he said it was time to find other ways to move people.” (John Tierney)

Implication of this rhetoric: controlling traffic is: hypocritical silly naïve excessive irrational

Comparative costs Private transportation consumes 20% of the average

American household budget With a median household income of $42,000 that equals

$8,400 per household. In a fully-functional transit system like the Montreal or

Paris metro, it is easy to travel wherever you are going in a period of time equivalent to driving to work in an American city (although there is more walking involved) is walking bad for us, or is not walking bad for us? Toronto subway’s combined operating and capital costs are

about $700 million used by over half a million people per day Subway system cost is roughly $1,400 per daily user per

year

Why should we be surprised?

A private transit system uses separate units that must each be maintained separately and powered separately

vs. A public transit system is based on integrated

units that reduce space and energy-use per person

naturally it costs less per person to “mass-produce” movement just like we mass produce everything else in our society

Democracy & Capitalism

“Commuter trains and subways make sense in New York, Chicago and a few other cities, and there are other forms of transit, like express buses, that can make a difference elsewhere. …But for most Americans, mass transit is impractical and irrelevant. Since 1970, transit systems have received more than $500 billion in subsidies (in today's dollars), but people have kept voting with their wheels. Transit has been losing market share to the car and now carries just 3 percent of urban commuters outside New York City. It's easy to see why from one statistic: the average commute by public transportation takes twice as long as the average commute by car.” (John Tierney)

Democracy

I don’t see any people on the Paris metro…

do you see any people?

6 million people ride the Paris metro every day

Comparative Urban Densities

Paris: 49,000 people per square mile Chicago: 13,000 people per square mile Houston: 3,400 people per square mile The fact that mass transit works better in

dense urban environments than in sprawling cities like Houston is not a justification for encouraging sprawl!

Simple Math More money for public transit

A. means more routesB. means more frequent service

A and B in turn reduce travel times (why?) this raises ridership which in turn creates a demand for more frequent service and more

routes when the demand is met, it in turn means less time to achieve the

average trip from point A to point B which further raises the attractiveness of transit over private

transportation The use of public money justifies itself

more people ride the “access challenged” no longer have to pay a time-tax to get to

work, day-care, rehabilitation, school, etc. and they can move beyond dependency

capacity of the road system does not need to be expanded, saving $$

A positive feedback loop

greaterpublic

support

higherridership

ratio

morefrequentservice

more routes

morefunding

public willingto pay

In cities with good public transit no one is suggesting that it be removed!