Did you miss the part about the roads for cars? If I don’t have a car I’m still paying for all the roads built and continuously maintained so that those with cars can drive them. So yeah, we are subsidizing private transport.

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ferguess_k 3 days ago | parent [-]

You are still depending on the roads for trucks that transport merchandises around and emergency vehicles and a lot of other stuffs. We are also paying for your public transit, thank you, because at least in my city it never breaks even, so everyone including us gets taxed -- but I have no issue with that -- I mostly take public transit anyway.

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insane_dreamer 3 days ago | parent [-]

Sure, roads are multi-purpose. But if the roads were only used for public transport, transport of goods, and emergency vehicles, that would reduce wear and tear significantly and many might not even be needed. How much do you think road maintenance costs would drop by? Significantly. So that very large amount is being subsidized by taxes so people can drive private cars instead of taking public transport.

Yes, we as a US society are subsidizing private transport because "it's the American way". Other countries do this too but not to this extent. I'm in my 50s and never even owned a car until I moved back to the US ~7 years ago.

	▲	tzs 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Careful with road wear and tear. Stress on the road goes as the 4th power of axle weight. My car, a 2025 Hyundai Kona Electric SEL, weighs 3 800 pounds. Call it 4 000 when carrying one typical person. It has two axles so the axle weight is 2 000 pounds. Let's call the amount of stress this puts on the road when driving from point A to point B 1 car's worth of stress. Suppose we need to get 60 people from point A to point B. If we put them in 60 Konas that would result in 60 car's worth of stress. A bit of Googling suggests that a typical 40-foot transit bus with 60 passengers would weigh around 36 000 pounds and has two axles which gives an axel weight of 18 000 pounds, which is 9 times that of the Kona. The bus taking 60 people from A to B then will result in 9^4 car's worth of stress, which is a little over 6 500 car's worth of stress. That's a little over 100 times the stress from sending those people in 60 Konas. There might be some differences due to other factors like tire types and speed, but the weight difference would be the dominant factor. There are some good arguments for buses, but saving on road maintenance might not be one of them. BTW, this outsized stress from heavy vehicles is also relevant to the ICE vs electric debate, since EVs usually weigh more than similar sized ICE cars. For example the ICE version of the Kona is about 500 pounds lighter. The EV version should cause about 70% more stress on the road. But wait! The ICE version needs gas, and gas is usually delivered to gas stations via tanker trucks. When the stress from that delivery of gas was taken into account it turned out that replacing ICE Konas with EV Konas would be a net reduction in road stress if the tanker truck that brought the gas had to drive more than just a few miles from wherever it gets filled up to the gas station.