During the Soviet era, while Soviet “citizens” crowded onto dilapidated streetcars and rattletrap buses, and waited in endless lines for food, shoes, or pretty much all of life’s essentials, and dreamed about getting their own apartment, maybe, and daydreamed about owning one of the Soviet-era cars that were both biodegradable and cost several years’ salary to buy, the Communist Party nomenklatura were whisked about in private cars, shopped in fully-stocked shops that catered to party members only, and had houses in the city and on the lake.
And as the Met Council works overtime to shove Twin Citians into high-density developments and high-density public transit run by high-density public employees, it stands to reason that some things never change.
I can’t blame the Met Council for not riding the bus or train. It is, after all, more polluting than driving. Can’t we say “thank you” for those who refuse to foul our air by riding the bus?
(for the uninitiated, the average mileage for a city bus is something like 25 passenger-miles per gallon of diesel–not much better than every rider getting their very own Powerstroke F250, especially when you note how the bus doesn’t go directly to the destination like your car can)
An 8th grade civics class (do they even still have such things) might be shocked by this. I don’t even find it worthy of a raised eyebrow.
OF COURSE Our Betters (TM) will not live by the rules and constraints they impose on us. What in the world gave you the impertinence to suppose otherwise?
Just for fun, I did a quick estimate of the amount of road taxes city buses ought to be paying. If we assume that, at 10-12 tons, they’re 3 times heavier per wheel (and with twice as many wheels) as a passenger automobile, that means that they’re doing somewhere between 20 and 180 times more road damage than a passenger car. Let’s take a midpoint and assume it’s about 50 times more road damage.
Now if we can estimate a car’s road damage by about three times the gas tax per mile (to include property tax and other funds for roads), we arrive at about six cents per mile. That would mean that a city bus does between $1.20 and $11/mile in road damage with a best estimate of $3/mile.
Given that buses actually carry an average of six to eight passengers, that means that the subsidy per passenger mile is about thirty to fifty cents–and that the “lack of road taxes” subsidy exceeds the fare paid in most cases.
Hence it is pretty clear that the passenger automobile is not only the environmentally sound solution, but also the easiest on the roads. Now if only the Met Council could apply the same good sense they use in their personal lives to urban planning and de-fund transit. It’s for the environment, for the roads, and for our wallets.