CTA Tattler

"the Regional Transportation Authority accounts for just under 6% of all trips taken in the six-county Chicago area."

That's not exactly surprising, considering how they're including the 6 county area, and 5 of those counties do not have public transportation that supports anything except downtown commuting. If I lived in Kendall County, I bet my number would be less than 6%. Thank God I don't live in Kendall County.

Wonder what the number is for Cook County, or Chicago alone.

I second Josh's comment. I ride both the Metra and the Brown line (depending on time of day and where I'm going) and both are regularly crowded.

“The National Dump the Pump Day on June 19 is an opportunity for people across the country to make a difference in their wallet, as well as in the environment.”

Funny, I had no clue that today was of any particular significance and yet, I'll be taking the CTA twice today, as I do every other workday...

/snark

I don't know how you can say that gas prices are "inching closer to $5 this week". It looks like the price actually went down a little earlier this week.

My biggest concern is that gas prices might actually start falling before they reach $5/gal. The rise in the price of gas is the best thing for the environment and for encouraging livable cities that's happened in a long time. If speculation is a big part of the price increases, the price could drop at any moment - especially now that China has taken the brave step to substantially raise its fuel prices.

We need to start creating a consensus behind a price floor for gas - taxes should be imposed to keep it at $4/gal or above if oil prices start falling. The revenue should be devoted to rapid expansion of public transit and high-speed long-distance rail. It might be a painful transition for all those people living in the suburbs, but if we don't do it now it'll hurt even more when more drastic measures are forced on us later by constricting oil supplies and global warming.

Good grief! I don't even know how to respond to Jake's post. But I will do so shortly.

Well, we could start with mentioning that fuel prices affect more than just single occupant vehicles. Artificially inflating the price of fuel to encourage mass transit use has far greater implications than he is anticipating.

I'm no fan of suburban sprawl, but everyone can't live in a densely populated city. It would be more efficient in some ways, but it ignores many other realities.

There are no simple, one-size-fits-all answers like Jake's.

Taxing gas does not "artificially inflate" its price. It makes the price reflect the many and extremely destructive externalities of driving. Right now drivers rely on society as a whole to pay for the massive environmental damage they cause; the public health effects that include injuries from accidents, obesity, and respiratory diseases; and the tremendous costs (both human and financial) of a foreign policy directed at controlling the supply of oil.

Until the price of driving reflects its true social costs, society and especially future generations - who will have to deal with the problems of global warming and scarce oil - will continue to provide unwarranted subsidies to today's drivers.

First of all, scarce oil is not an externality. It is reflected in the price. Scarcity is, in fact, one of the hallmarks that define the price of anything as well as all the market reactions that occur. There is no need for the government to create policies that do nothing that market forces don't already do.

If you create a price floor on gasoline it really does not serve the purpose you think it does. Yes, some people will drive less. Some people might even have to choose between whether they can afford to go to work, to eat, or to buy medicine. Other people would decide to cut back on spending (which, you might notice, is occuring now) which slows the economy and puts other people out of work. But heck, these people will undoubtadly drive less since they don't have jobs to go to. A select few might even not be able to cope with the unemployment and end up dying from the range of problems that occur when one is going through tough times (drug abuse, or even obesity which you mentioned earlier and I'll get back to). And once they die, you will be delighted to know that they won't drive anymore. But yes, you are correct, many people will drive less when there is a price floor on gasoline. What you overlook, however, is that when these people drive less it means that all the roads will have fewer cars. That, of course, is something you want. But you can forget about celebrating it. Because the fact that there is less congestion means that other people will be encouraged to drive. So all you end up doing by making gasoline artificially more expensive is cause some people to drive less and consequently others to drive more. At the end of the day, there will be roughly the same amount of cars on the road. You accomplish nothing of what you are setting out to do.

I encourage you to go to a politician's town hall meeting or something and suggest that they impose a price floor. I'd encourage you to look at the reactions of everyone else in the room and see what they think. I bet most of them would want to laugh you out of the room. As would the politician.

I must say that you are also the first person who I have seen link driving with obesity. I think that it is pretty odd to say that the two are related. You do, after all, have to walk to get into your car and to go from a parking into a building. The most physically unfit people I have seen are often people who catch buses right outside their building and then take it right to their place of work. Most of the lakefront high rises residents have bus stops right outside their door. There is nothing about that that discourages obesity. So mode of transport and obesity have very little to do with each other.

A few more things to mention. Jake may not get out there much so perhaps he doesn't know. But the overwhelming majority of people live in areas where it is impossible or increadibly inconveniant to get from place to place by public transit. Very dense urban places like Chicago are the exception, not the rule. Most people live in suburbs, rural areas, or even cities like Pheonix or Los Angelas where transit is not anywhere remotely close to a good alternative for most trips. In the suburbs of Chicago(at least in the coller counties), transit is good for going to and from the city, but that is about it. And if you were to mulitply the amount of suburb to suburb transit by ten times it still would not make a dent in the extreme inconvenience of this vs. driving. So this silly idea that we should punish these people because they choose to drive is absurd. They don't have a choice. And no, don't say that they chose not to live in the "superior urban area" because that is short-sided. Many people have very good reasons for choosing those places. They may have much better schools. They may have to work at a job in the area and would not want to spend all the time and money commuting from the city (which of course, is a choice you would want them to make, less driving). The way to encourage less driving and more urban areas is to encourage more transit, in workable places. This means areas that have the potential to be more transit friendly but currently lack good service. Metra, for example, has far fewer reverse commute trains (especially express trains) than one logically would think they would given the amount of employment growth in the suburbs in the last few decades (yes, they have barely changed their schedule in the last few decades) and the amount of demand there is for it. It also might be worthwhile to have bus rapid transit lanes in many suburbs. That has potential to have a lasting positive effect since it generally would not displace parking and can be very convenient. Many people would love not to have to worry about a parking space at Woodfield mall, for example, and instead go directly from near their home to the mall entrance. But there is no purpose in artificially raising the price of gasoline to engourage transit use when there isn't any alternative convenient transit available. And it also is silly to have bus rapid transit lanes to encourage transit in areas where everyone already is using transit (which, of course, is what is going to be built and is something that you support).

I didn't say oil scarcity was an externality. What I did say was that if we run thru most of the world's oil on something inefficient like transporting people in cars, future generations will suffer major hardships because more essential uses of oil, like pharmaceuticals, will be much harder to produce. The market doesn't take into account the interests of future generations, but the price of gas should nevertheless reflect them.

I agree that high gas costs can cause hardship for people, but there are ways to deal with this that do not destroy the environment, like a cut in payroll taxes, living wage laws, or stronger unions. There will certainly be some economic pain in transitioning to a less auto-centric society, but Europe and Japan prove that fewer cars does not necessarily mean a lower standard of living. The question isn't whether it will be difficult, but whether it makes more sense to do it now or to wait until the transition is even harder.

The fact that $4/gal gas has caused the first decline in miles driven in decades indicates that you're wrong about less congestion leading to more driving despite high gas prices. Europe and Japan, which both have far more expensive gas and far less driving, also argue against the idea. The key is to offer adequate and cheap public transit so that drivers have an alternative. When transit is an option, high gas prices will cause a permanent decline in driving and people will begin rethinking where they buy houses - as we've already seen in the past year.

The cost of fuel is reflected in just about everything we buy. Things have to get from raw materials to market somehow.

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The revenue should be devoted to rapid expansion of public transit and high-speed long-distance rail.
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That revenue you're talking about isn't going to come out of thin air. You simply can't propose more taxes while the price of everything is going up because the price of the fuel to transport everything is going up.

If you want to build a transit infrastructure, the money should largely be coming from shifting priorities rather than from new taxes. Public transit can offer more economic bang for the buck than some of the other ways existing taxes are spent.

There's no question we would be better off with better utilization of public transit. And fewer single vehicle cars on the road would be a good thing. More efficient engines would help, too. But expecting to build the infrastructure for such a major paradigm shift at a time when the economy is so fragile is simply not a wise idea.

Already, market forces are creating a huge slap in the face of anyone in the working or middle classes. Adding another huge tax burden with the intention of keeping the price of fuel artificially elevated would be just the push we'd need to cause a huge economic colapse.

After that kind of hit, we'd have less need for mass transit than ever.

MK,

How can you say people don't have a "choice" when it comes to living in the suburbs?

They may have an extremely large investment in living in the suburbs, i.e. House, Neighbors, Schools, Job, but the decision to live in that house, have proximity to those neighbors or schools, or take that job in the office park are all choices.

Just becuase you're standing in front of the counter at McDonalds doesn't mean you have to consumate the transaction and eat there. You can always turn around and walk out.

In the latter half of the 20th century people made that choice on the cities and went to the suburbs. There is no reason why it cannot reverse, or even find a whole new paradigm that doesn't involve much transorting of people at all.

What does it take to change things...a lot of individual choices. And the freedom and enouragement to make those tough choices is about the most American ideal I can think of.

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In the latter half of the 20th century people made that choice on the cities and went to the suburbs. There is no reason why it cannot reverse, or even find a whole new paradigm that doesn't involve much transorting of people at all.
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There was no single policy change that precipitated the paradigm shift to the suburbs. In fact, most policy changes in tax spending were a reaction, rather than a cause of the sprawl.

Many people blame the building of the Interstate system as the cause of suburban sprawl, but the original conception of the Interstate system was as a way to move people and goods between cities so that unlike most of Europe, we would not be so dependent on the railroads as our supply lines.

The huge dollars spent building highways from suburbs into the cities did not cause suburban sprawl. It was a reaction to the sprawl.

And that shift of tax dollars occured over the better part of three decades before there was any serious questioning as to whether it was a good idea. We're now to the point where we have two generations that include children who don't know any other way of life other than life in the suburbs.

You can't change that overnight. Just as the parents and grandparents of people found the choice of moving to the suburbs attractive for a number of reasons, so must the children and grandchildren find a multitude of reasons to make the choice to move back to the cities. That's not something that you can force by a huge tax on fuel even if the money raised is used to build pipe-dream infrastructure for mass transit.

While you can find many, many examples of small taxes and government imposed fees that are meant to nudge people in desired directions, it is simply unprecidented to make such a major change that would have such grave economic consequences.

The suburban paradigm was a big mistake, and there should be incentives to move away from it. Higher fuel costs have woken people up to how big of a mistake the suburbs are. Market forces can be a real slap in the head with a 2x4. But swapping out that 2x4 for an 8x8 that has so much force it knocks down everyone is not the answer.

What good does it do to move back to the city if it's so expensive to truck in the food and other necessities that people can't afford to live decent lives? You might as well be unemployed in the suburbs where you have a backyard big enough for your own garden.

Fuel prices affect more than one's choice in commuting. And a real paradigm shift is going to take a couple of decades, and a multitude of reasons. A huge tax on fuel to build better mass transit systems is simply not the answer.

I'm surprised by the apocalyptic rhetoric here. All I suggested was a price floor of $4/gallon on gas. Europe and Japan already pay 1.5 to 2 times as much, and the US is paying that much right now. The economy has yet to collapse - and if it does, it will be primarily due to finance capitalism run out of control rather than to gas prices.

$4/gallon gas has, for the first time, started an extremely healthy trend in rising public transit ridership and changing ideas about compact, mixed-use development and where people live. For the urgent environmental and economic reasons I outlined above (and which both Rusty and MK have not responded to), these trends must be continued rather than allowed to wither away as they did after the last gas "crisis". Using taxes to keep gas at $4/gallon would keep the incentive in place to move toward sustainable transportation and development, it would (sort of) make gas prices reflect the social damage caused by driving, and it would produce some of the revenue needed for investment in public transit.

Because of the weak economy, at this time I wouldn't want taxes to go higher than maintaining $4/gallon. But if gas prices do start to fall, a payroll tax cut and a major program of infrastructure investment both financed by the gas price floor taxes would produce the major economic boost needed to mitigate the economic downturn.

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But if gas prices do start to fall, a payroll tax cut and a major program of infrastructure investment both financed by the gas price floor taxes would produce the major economic boost needed to mitigate the economic downturn.
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More taxes will produce an economic boost during weak economic times?

Are you insane?

I'm a liberal Democrat who believes that government should provide basic services like a transportation infrastructure, and that they need to tax appropriately for the level of service expected. But even I'm appalled at the idea that you think we can tax our way out of this mess.

Even Al Gore would have a laugh at that one!

Of course it's a moot point to be even discussing this kind of tax. No politician, not even a closet Socialist, could seriously entertain the concept. It just ain't gonna happen.

Why is bike infrastructure not considered part of weaning people off of the car? The rise in gas prices is driving more people 2 wheels, and now I have to search for unused parking meeting to lock up my bike in downtown Evanston.

To Jake: You can't cut payroll taxes. All the baby boomers will riot if they don't get their social security and medicare.

A price floor keeping the price of gas above $4/gallon would not make things any worse than they already are because gas is already $4/gallon. The point is recognize the great benefits flowing from this price level - for the first time in decades people are driving less and buying houses closer to where they work, while transit ridership is breaking records everywhere - by keeping the price at $4 if market prices start to fall.

If prices do fall, there are two possible uses for the newly available money: it could finance increased consumption of gas and other individual goods if we do nothing, or it could finance infrastructure investment and a cut in the payroll tax if we maintain a price floor. Both uses would stimulate the economy (that's just Econ 101), but only one would help us fight global warming and prepare for the real oil crisis sometime in the next century.

It may not be politically realistic because people are thinking about their own interests rather than the general good and future generations. But it's certainly not ridiculous: Paul Krugman, Thomas Friedman, and Charles Krauthammer - that's basically the entire ideological spectrum of newspaper columnists - have endorsed the idea.

Egad, Jake -- it looks like you've touched a nerve!

But you're on to something. Unsurprising to economists everywhere, higher fuel prices are doing more to shift people's use of fuel and fuel-intensive products than anything any conservation PR campaign could ever dream of. In order to limit (or even reverse) suburban sprawl, it SHOULD be really, really expensive to live 75 miles from your job when there's no public transit in sight. And more generally, it SHOULD be expensive to have all of your fruit flown in from several thousand miles away, when there are reasonable substitutes available, say, on your own continent.

Now, the higher price of fuel is, obviously, not being driven by environmental concerns. But the higher costs do mean that the externalities associated with use of gasoline are becoming a smaller compared to the price of gasoline. If the increase in prices had come as a result of taxes (and the revenues used to offset externalities), then the effect would be to even more dramatically bridge the gap between what people pay and the "real" cost of using fossil fuels.

It is sad, though, to think that the only way to get this country to start to re-think unsustainable lifestyles is to impose economic pain. But even greater pain for future generations is at stake, so if that's the only way, then so be it.

The last sentence doesn't make any sense -- CTA diverts capital money to operating because they don't have any capital funding?

Surely the 2007 fiasco was Kruesi diverting capital to operating so he didn't have to make any tough managerial decisions. Huberman, on the other hand, sees full well the disaster in Springfield, and is responding to it by diverting operating funds TO capital (not the other way around) in the form of servicing loans they're taking out in the expectation (or rather hope) that Springfield and Washington will come through with capital funds they have talked about for years but never delivered.

And I forgot to add, besides Kruesi's incompetence, the other cause of the 2007 spike in capital diversion to operating was the Governor and legislature stonewalling the OPERATING funding for a year while they bickered about the sales tax.

I find it really difficult to believe, Jake, that Charles Krautheimer is for imposing a price floor on gasoline. He may be for something intended to raise the price of gas consumption (and I vaguely remember him arguing for something like that). But I doubt it is a price floor. Do you have a link? Price floors are never a good idea. I think just about every economist will tell you that. The way to fight global warming is to make it convenient for people to take mass transit. As I mentioned before, it makes no sense to tax people in order to encourage them to do something which is not feasable for around 90% of the population. There are numerous ways that will not wreck the economy that will generate the revenue to expand mass transit in a logical way. You could license more casinos. You could force Metra to come into the twenty-first century and establish a MUCH less expensive ticketing system involving electronic machines at every station instead of having around 100 ticket agents being payed by taxpayer dollers every morning and having several trains with six or seven conductors. The money saved from this alone probably could allow an entire new train line to be built. And if taxes need to be raised, there are ways to do it without wrecking the economy (for example, actually charging sales tax for goods purchasing on the internet). Even if the price of gasoline does not go down below the price floor level, the floor would still cause the market to charge a higher price.

"but the original conception of the Interstate system was as a way to move people and goods between cities so that unlike most of Europe, we would not be so dependent on the railroads as our supply lines." [Rusty]

I suppose that seemed like a good idea at the time, but to me this is nuts. Why did anyone think trucking stuff in was more efficient than using the trains?

Well, not many retail stores have railroad sidings.

But efficiency wasn't the issue, either.

Here's what Krauthammer said:

"Want to wean us off oil? Be open and honest. The British are paying $8 a gallon for petrol. Goldman Sachs is predicting we will be paying $6 by next year. Why have the extra $2 (above the current $4) go abroad? Have it go to the U.S. Treasury as a gasoline tax and be recycled back into lower payroll taxes.

"Announce a schedule of gas tax hikes of 50 cents every six months for the next two years. And put a tax floor under $4 gasoline, so that as high gas prices transform the U.S. auto fleet, change driving habits and thus hugely reduce U.S. demand -- and bring down world crude oil prices -- the American consumer and the American economy reap all of the benefit."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/05/AR2008060503434.html

He's right, and this is why simply improving transit is not even remotely adequate. There absolutely must be a push as well as a pull - and with $4/gallon gas, even without any major transit improvements, we've seen that for many people taking transit was perfectly viable all along. What's more, not only are many people taking the train for the first time, they're starting to factor distance into their homebuying decisions as well.

Of course we need to massively improve transit too, but your suggestions wouldn't produce nearly enough revenue to fund the billions of dollars in improvement and expansion that is necessary. We either need to massively reduce current expenditures and devote them to infrastructure investment (cutting the military budget by $400 billion might do the trick), or we need to raise taxes (my preference would be on the very rich and on drivers).

You still haven't explained why the price of gas should not reflect the massive social damage caused by driving, nor why moving to a transit-based society now would be more painful than doing it a decade or two from now, when global warming and scarce oil are much bigger problems.

When the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, every problem you face becomes a nail.

Prices are only one tool in shifting people out of their personal vehicles, and onto mass transit. Even when coupled with better availablity of mass transit, it will not be enough to change our culture.

Cars were a status symbol that became a default appliance of American adults. The shift happened in part because it became more affordable to own and operate a car, but that hardly means you can reverse the trend by making it more expensive to own and operate a car. Sorry, but the boat sailed on that idea over 50 years ago.

And the alternative to owning a car -- public transportation -- has always been more affordable to those with access to public transportation, anyway. If the choice was primarily an economic choice, cars never would have become so embedded into our culture.

Further damage to our economy by imposing gas taxes or price floors is going to do nothing but take our economy from bad to worse.

If you want to move people out of their cars permanently, you'll need a better tool than price.