This is not at all illuminating and is just a typical advocacy piece for more transit funding.
Like most of these pieces, it compares road spending and transit spending as though this is somehow a useful comparison. It isn't. For rail transit systems, spending includes all labor and capital expenses--train operators, cars, electricity, etc. Road spending does not include the enormous capital investment that citizens and businesses spend for motor vehicles.
Putting that problem aside for a moment, it says that transit gets a smaller share of the funding pie. So what? Roads blanket the nation--I don't think this article would suggest operating public transportation to compete with every road.
Then there's the usual "OMG induced demand": "road building as already mentioned does nothing to combat traffic" because of induced demand. This is specious. Yes building roads encourages people to go places. That's the point.
To top it off the piece says nothing about "why traffic is awful".
Like most of these pieces, it compares road spending and transit spending as though this is somehow a useful comparison. It isn't. For rail transit systems, spending includes all labor and capital expenses--train operators, cars, electricity, etc. Road spending does not include the enormous capital investment that citizens and businesses spend for motor vehicles.
Putting that problem aside for a moment, it says that transit gets a smaller share of the funding pie. So what? Roads blanket the nation--I don't think this article would suggest operating public transportation to compete with every road.
Then there's the usual "OMG induced demand": "road building as already mentioned does nothing to combat traffic" because of induced demand. This is specious. Yes building roads encourages people to go places. That's the point.
To top it off the piece says nothing about "why traffic is awful".