Based on the Mineta-Bush Philosophy, shouldn’t free parking anywhere be illegal?
I walk to my neighborhood supermarket and buy things. The supermarket owns and pays taxes on a huge parking lot occupied by most customers, and the taxes and upkeep of the parking lot are paid by the supermarket and reflected in the prices of what I buy. Is this fair for me? I don’t use the parking lot!
I live on a quiet residential street. Most houses have garages but some hold only one car. There are some families with two or three cars. There are always cars parked on the street. The street has four lanes but effectively only two are used because of the parked cars. I walk, bike, and use public transit. Why should my taxes pay for the upkeep of other people’s paarking places ANd be reflective of the additional land off the tax roles?
I’l bet a real evaluation would say that free parking is worth far more than two billiion a year that is direct subsidy to car drivers.
Then aren’t the sidewalks a subsidy for pedestrians? How about bike-paths, parks, etc. I forget the source but someone once said “Taxes is the price we pay for a civilized society”.
Sure. But, most suburban development in the “car age” has parking included in the zoning and is paid as part of the developement. Upkeep is then paid by the merchants in the shopping center or directly by the merchant if stand-alone business. Similarly, businesses often provide free or subsidized parking to their employees as a perk.
We are an “auto-centric” society, so this behavior is expected, no? If we were “transit centric” then all things, including zoning, would flow from that.
Not exactly free. Many new housing developments are required to provide the infrastructure to support the develpoment. For instance in FL and CA, the developers are required to provide for the initial cost of paving streets that are to become public thorougfares and often the price of schools and fire stations to serve it. This is often done through a bond issue, the service of which is assessed to the homeowners as a part of the association fees.
Along those lines…I drive to work…pay registration fees, sales tax and gasoline taxes to operate my car …so why should I subsidize bike trails and mass transit?
Fine. All that is good. But a Democratic Society takes care of minorities too. And the car-free non-flyer American Citizen deserves access to the entire country. That has been my point on the Amtrak Funding basis.
Regardless of the figures put forth by Mineta. Long distance auto travel is also subsidized and so should Amtrak
No one is saying you can’t walk or bike across the country. But with the exception of the short haul routes, it might as well be a subsidy for a cruise liner…A vacation…not a efficient means of rapidly moving people in this day and age. Clipper ships were once effiicent also, but I don’t see a mass movement to subsidize sail powered vessels.
You are being unfair. Generally the elderly and infirm who cannot fly or drive cannot walk or bike across country. Your clipper ship analogy is false, more like running steam trains on dieselized railroads, and there the analogy is a good one, because there are sailboats, including races, that do recreate the past. And like steam trains, they are there for those that can afford them. I think a better analogy is the sound systems and the ramps for the hard of hearing and the handicapped in auditoriums and theatres and sports stadiums, a definite subsidy by the audiences with normal hearing and streingth. Also, despite the fact that they slow down traffic and provide some annoyance to some impatiant dirvers, you can rent a horse and buggy to tour Manhattan if you want, also in Salt Lake City, and I have done so for elderly relatives in both place. Perhaps this is true in other places as well.
Since this is a railroad forum, parking plays a role in commuter railroads. Depending on the situation, free parking is a subsidy for cars, and a penalty to bikers and walkers.
Often, the end point stations have free parking, since land is usually cheap, and the transit system is interested in boosting ridership. And, the close-in stations often have no parking, or charge for parking. The mid-line stations tend to start out with free parking, but over time, evolve to paid parking.
As the area around a station develops, ridership increases, and the land becomes more valuable. Parking garages are more expensive, but the increased ridership and the reduced availability of land often forces the issue. But, when the transit agency charges for parking, it allows private developers an economic opportunity to get into the parking business, too.
Washington’s metro does a good job of mixing parking charges and fares, so that walkers don’t subsidize drivers. And, the parking fees are zoned, so that early birds, shoppers and students pay less than regular worker commuters.
Other systems, like BART, have mostly free parking, but after the suburban lots fill up at 7 or 8 AM, the ridership plummets. About half a dozen suburban stations have commercial parking nearby, for 3 to 10 bucks a day.
Playing devil’s advocate for a moment: Access to a great deal of the ‘entire country’ for car-free, non-flyer Americans has been provided for many years by private enterprise – Greyhound Lines et al. Might also mention they serve a whole lot more of the ‘entire country’ than Amtrak does… what do your purported American Citizens do to get to the station, or from the station to wherever it is in the entire country they’re going?
You might say bus lines have been indirectly subsidized by the highway-building ‘movement’ in the United States, and by tax-supported roads provided by states and localities to serve their needs. But the roads do exist (for those other purposes) and even if Greyhound paid a ‘fair’ use tax representing a pro rata share of the infrastructure costs, they’d still be wildly closer to profitability than most Amtrak services.
A major question to ask is: What would happen to supermarket revenues (and hence to prices charged per unit to people like you) if the supermarket people didn’t provide and pave free parking areas? (Hint: Gelson’s in Southern California found their business dropped off dramatically when they didn’t provide adequate free ‘comp’ tickets for adjacent parking decks). Your point regarding free street parking is best addressed by looking at how residents vote for their local representatives (who make the parking decisions) – note that many locations have special permits so only residents or their guests can legally park on the streets there, and some also have ‘selective enforcement’ (some areas in Brooklyn being directly observed) to find opportunities to ticket people who ‘don’t belong’ – it’s not very difficult, given Bloomberg’s highly integrated ticket-computer system, to find some excuse…
Please, don’t ever, ever, ever make the mistake of confusing an incentive with a subsidy. They’re operationally different. Likewise, don’t confuse what democracies do with what you consider ‘fair’ – if you don’t like the fact that y
I agree with you about Greyhound. But it isn’t practical for the elderly and infirm for long periods. That is why I am advocating for the present, until high speed rail becomes economically an investors choice, retention of the core Amtrak system we have now which does connect with Greyhound and other bus systems to serve the country. In fact, I’m absolutely certain if Amtrak long distance service were ended, Greyhound would loose more patronate than they would gain, because the small percentage they get from Amtrak connections would dissapear and not be replaced by picking up travelers on the long-distance routes. Most of the elderly and infirm simply would not be able to travel, and those that would would fly.
The parking is never free. Somebody, somewhere is paying for it. Might be in the cost of your quart of milk, might be in your gas tax, might be in your sales tax, or your property tax. Might even be in the bed tax visitors pay at the hotels, not to mention parking meters and fees.
The question becomes are you getting a fair return on your investment? The examples have already been stated here, be it a grocery store or a commuter rail station.
Yes, I probably am, but then again life isn’t fair. My tax dollars already go to to local transport for elderly on special buses. They go to make sure that persons with diabilities have access to public transportation and facilities. The go to make sure I have road to drive on and a place to park my cars. They go to paying for food stamps and a host of other programs which I do not use becasue I have worked hard to provide for my family and future, and to providing grants and foriegn aid to countries I will probably never visit. If there is ever a system of long distance high speed rail that would be great. But to support continued half way funding of Amtrak…life support…to ensure that a few people have an opportunity to take vacations…because these elderly passengers are not travelling by Amtrak cross country on business… is not what I consider to be a priority. If a no kidding efficient, modern passenger rail system that was funded and then capable of being either self sufficient or recognized as a util
Don’t take this as a rejection of your overall contention; I might be more sympathetic to your underlying goal than you would suspect. But, if you are going to attack the Bush view of Amtrak, I think it important that you attack actual his reasons supporting his view.
The examples you cite are largely, if not exclusively, local services that individual taxpayers and voters have a much larger say in. Bush’s claim with Amtrak is that if people had to pay for it with local money—that they perceive as their own—instead of with federal money—which they perceive as belonging to someone else—no one would support it.
I am not saying I agree or disagree with Bush’s view; but, if you are going to challenge Bush’s view, this is where you need to start . . . otherwise it is a big shouting contest.
Yes, I probably am, but then again life isn’t fair. My tax dollars already go to to local transport for elderly on special buses. They go to make sure that persons with diabilities have access to public transportation and facilities. The go to make sure I have road to drive on and a place to park my cars. They go to paying for food stamps and a host of other programs which I do not use becasue I have worked hard to provide for my family and future, and to providing grants and foriegn aid to countries I will probably never visit. If there is ever a system of long distance high speed rail that would be great. But to support continued half way funding of Amtrak…life support…to ensure that a few people have an opportunity to take vacations…because these elderly passengers are not travelling by Amtrak cross country on business… is not what I consider to be a priority. If a no kidding efficient, modern passenger rail system that was funded and then c
I must admit, though I have felt that way long before ever logging on to this forum, I probably stole the gist of the wording from you from one of your posts about four months ago.
I suspect quite a bit. Most cities, which is about as small of a public voting entity that you can get, directly subsidize airports. Currently, Indianapolis is setting up an initiative to spend its own money to considerably expand its airport.