Steps to Mass Transit:
NYT reports that high gas prices are driving people towards higher use of mass transit. (My office offers us a tax-free subsidy for using mass transit, to a ceiling of around $110 a month. And yes, we use mass transit and the subsidy…) However, there’s a problem:
But meeting the greater demand for mass transit is proving difficult. The cost of fuel and power for public transportation is about three times that of four years ago, and the slowing economy means local sales tax receipts are down, so there is less money available for transit services. Higher steel prices are making planned expansions more expensive.
Typically, mass transit systems rely on fares to cover about a third of their costs, so they depend on sales taxes and other government funding. Few states use gas tax revenue for mass transit.
In Denver, transportation officials expected to pay $2.62 a gallon for diesel this year, but they are now paying $3.20. Every penny increase costs the Denver Regional Transportation District an extra $100,000 a year. And it is bracing for a $19 million shortfall in sales taxes this year from original projections.
“I’d like to put more buses on the street,” Mr. Marsella said. “I can’t expand service as much as I’d like to.”
Average annual growth from sales tax revenue for the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, a rail service that connects San Francisco with Oakland, has been 4.5 percent over the last 15 years. It expects that to fall to 2 percent this year, and electricity costs are rising.
Which goes back to the proposition that people always want government services, but they don’t care much to pay for them. The big problem with the idea of doing a gas sales tax ‘holiday’ is that (1) doing that will mean that there’s no money to repair road infrastructure - which leads to deferred maintenance until the bridges start collapsing.
And people who say this can be taken care of by a windfall tax off of the Big Oil Bidness people have to guarantee that that money is actually going to be paid, not just kicked along to consumers, and that the tax itself will be enacted over the votes of a recalcitrant We-Like-Big-Oil GOP group in the federal and state governments, who will scream RAISING TAXES at the top of their lungs and protect their corporate sponsors. I’ll believe all that will take place - maybe after the next election puts in a more responsible set of jokers in the government. I’m not holding my breath.