Driving: America's newest favorite sin tax
Apparently, the policies of San Francisco are reaching out into the suburbs of DC. According to the Washington Post, Arlington is changing building codes to reflect the notion of a "don't build parking and cars won't come" and "tax the hell out of parking" mentalities. Today, SFMTA is hearing argument for and considering variable parking meter rates (prices go up when demand goes up) and extensions of parking meters up to midnight and 7 days a week in most business areas of the city (including the Castro). All across the country, driving is becoming America's newest favorite sin tax.
While there are some good arguments to be made for some of these changes, and some may have a net positive effect, the rashness and shortsightedness of this movement will ultimately be its undoing. First, sin taxes are generally regressive in nature. Sure, in San Francisco itself, having a car is typically seen as a sign of having just a little bit more than your peers, the truth of the matter is that as soon as you get just a little outside the city, a car becomes less of an extravagance and more of a necessity. Try staying out past midnight in the city if you live in the East Bay and don't have a car. Sure, it can be done, but I bet if you start asking people who have to do it, whether or not it affects their behavior, the answer won't be no. What we have a chicken and egg problem. We need money to build better transit to make driving less of a requirement, only to do that, we are going to first make driving more inconvenient and expensive. I predict that rebellion will happen long before we get enough money to make significant public transit improvements which offset the need to drive.
Second, another problem with a sin tax is the fact that it's ultimately unsustainable. You are taxing a behavior in order to stop people from engaging in that behavior. Once that starts to work, you get less revenue. Since I've lived here, the bridge toll has gone from $2 to $4 on promises of dozens of road improvement and transit projects, none of which ever materialized. Why? Because traffic volumes on the bridges decreased. Sure this was partly due to gas prices and economic factors, but the net result is the same. We lowered the amount of people driving, and instead of celebrating, we are all panicked because we suddenly lost our magic funding source. We are eternally addicted to other people's money. We want everything as long as someone else pays for it. Killing off driving means that you will have more people on public transit and less money to subsidize it with. This will eventually lead to higher costs for public transit users.
Finally, I think that the smartest thing that I've heard in this whole debate came from this article, suggesting that in Europe, mobility is treated as a "basic right" and subsequently, that's why they have decent public transit systems. Unfortunately, in this country, we don't even believe that health care is a basic right, so I think we have a long way to go.
While there are some good arguments to be made for some of these changes, and some may have a net positive effect, the rashness and shortsightedness of this movement will ultimately be its undoing. First, sin taxes are generally regressive in nature. Sure, in San Francisco itself, having a car is typically seen as a sign of having just a little bit more than your peers, the truth of the matter is that as soon as you get just a little outside the city, a car becomes less of an extravagance and more of a necessity. Try staying out past midnight in the city if you live in the East Bay and don't have a car. Sure, it can be done, but I bet if you start asking people who have to do it, whether or not it affects their behavior, the answer won't be no. What we have a chicken and egg problem. We need money to build better transit to make driving less of a requirement, only to do that, we are going to first make driving more inconvenient and expensive. I predict that rebellion will happen long before we get enough money to make significant public transit improvements which offset the need to drive.
Second, another problem with a sin tax is the fact that it's ultimately unsustainable. You are taxing a behavior in order to stop people from engaging in that behavior. Once that starts to work, you get less revenue. Since I've lived here, the bridge toll has gone from $2 to $4 on promises of dozens of road improvement and transit projects, none of which ever materialized. Why? Because traffic volumes on the bridges decreased. Sure this was partly due to gas prices and economic factors, but the net result is the same. We lowered the amount of people driving, and instead of celebrating, we are all panicked because we suddenly lost our magic funding source. We are eternally addicted to other people's money. We want everything as long as someone else pays for it. Killing off driving means that you will have more people on public transit and less money to subsidize it with. This will eventually lead to higher costs for public transit users.
Finally, I think that the smartest thing that I've heard in this whole debate came from this article, suggesting that in Europe, mobility is treated as a "basic right" and subsequently, that's why they have decent public transit systems. Unfortunately, in this country, we don't even believe that health care is a basic right, so I think we have a long way to go.