03 July, 2012

Dad bait.

Autonomy by Josh Barro, City Journal Spring 2012: Advocates of mass transit like to point out that it isn’t the only form of transportation that gets public subsidies. In particular, road construction and maintenance have benefited from increased taxpayer subsidies over the last decade and a half. “Most drivers still believe that transit eats a huge chunk of transportation funding while roads are self-supporting,” laments Tanya Snyder of Streetsblog. But while it’s true that the government subsidizes all modes of transportation, road subsidies remain a small component of public and private spending on auto travel and are hardly the key factor that is making transit uncompetitive. A fair look at the whole picture shows that government subsidizes mass transit much more heavily than it subsidizes driving and that transit’s problems go far beyond subsidies for cars.