Thursday, May 14, 2015

"Debunking the Myth That Only Drivers Pay for Roads."

The author writes, "The point is that America is an increasingly (and, now, majority) multimodal place, with a transportation network that offers personal options and collective benefits."

Has the point been grasped hereabouts?

Debunking the Myth That Only Drivers Pay for Roads, by Eric Jaffe (City Lab)

The use of general taxpayer money to construct and repair roads is enough on its own to shatter the concept that drivers pay their own way. But there's lots more to the problem—starting with the enormous social costs of driving. Those are the costs that society as a whole pays for car-reliance: the environmental impact of pollution, the health impact of accidents, and the economic impact of productivity lost to traffic, among them. These have been estimated at $3.3 trillion a year ...

... When you tally all these hidden costs together, alongside the assists that already occur for road construction and maintenance, the average household pays between $1,105 and $1,848 a year in what the report calls "uncompensated damage costs to support motor vehicle use in the United States." Again: whether they drive a lot or hardly at all.

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