California Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia has introduced legislation forbidding the state department of transportation from building or expanding freeways in poor neighborhoods. She noted research showing that freeway expansions allowed more people to travel more, and apparently she doesn’t want to extend such mobility options to low-income people.
Another legislator, state Senator Sydney Kamlager, agreed that the state should focus on “alternative modes of transportation” such as public transit in poor neighborhoods. Transit can’t reach as many places as automobiles and only goes during certain hours of the day, so encouraging poor people to use transit allows more control over when and where they travel.
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Seriously, what kind of a sick society do we live in when people who call themselves progressives think that the right thing to do is limit the mobility of the people who need it most? Someone needs to start a social justice movement demanding that low-income people and minorities have the same access to automobiles and highways as middle-class whites.
“Someone needs to start a social justice movement demanding that low-income people and minorities have the same access to automobiles and highways as middle-class whites.”
Barcia and Kamlager would respond with a government-run and financed Uber clone. Jobs!
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the 2019 American Community Survey found that more than 80 percent of California workers earning less than $25,000 per year took automobiles to work while only 5 percent took transit.
” ~anti-planner
For those of you wondering why transit down by half, it’s focus in carrying relatively wealthy office workers in and out of downtown. 80% of dowtown office workers aren’t coming into the office.
Mobility is an afterthought.
More damning is that moving office workers in and out of downtown was used as the reason to transfer funds from buses to rail transit. It was nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to justify civic jewelry.
Amen. They ARE sick people. I’ve been reading AP for a long time and this is the correct spirit to have at times.
the 30$billion that CAL has so far spent on a useless HSR line would have bought a decent used car for every legit person needing one. Use the local shelters to vet people as worthy candidates.
This article gives me real optimism that visions are aligning. Keep up the good work
There is a real problem with pollution and health outcomes, though. Electric cars will solve that eventually but in the meantime we need better measures to trap the pollution before it reaches the generally poorer neighborhoods bordering highways.
Already done: According to the EPA, today’s cars are 98 to 99 percent cleaner for most tailpipe pollutants compared to the 1960s.
I’m OK with this…. demolishing lower income housing for another lane or two of freeways isn’t productive….nowhere has lane building done much to improve traffic. I said it before traffic is a consequence of simultaneous desirability….in the same location.
People drive 15000 miles per year. At the IRS estimate 60 cents per mile (gas + depreciation + insurance + wear/tear + etc.), that’s $9000 per year on car travel.
But wait. This doesn’t account for the massive subsidies (at about 30 cents per mile) to run the roads, labor cost (at about 30 cents per mile), safety costs (10 cents per mile). Additionally, since road travel is less healthy than mass transit (with less walking), and the poor also have Medicaid subsidies for healthcare, so this is effectively is another automobile subsidy. This is notwithstanding the free parking that they’re getting, which would also cost $5 per workday ($1250 per year). Furthermore, fossil fuels are subsidized at least at 20 billion per year (more in tax breaks) plus more globally, which is also another huge subsidy.
All in all, it would cost nearly $2 per mile to drive in a free market. This would be $30000 in driving costs per year alone.
If you’re earning $25000 per year, you wouldn’t be able to afford driving in a truly free market. The solution is to eliminate zoning regulations and have density and mass transit.
riverwalk7,
All of your numbers are wrong. Americans travel 15,000 passenger-miles a year by car, but the average car has 1.67 people in it, so that’s only 9,000 vehicle-miles. Regardless of what the IRS allows as a business expense, Americans spend only 40 cents per vehicle-mile, or 25 cents per passenger-mile, on driving. Subsidies average just 1 penny per passenger-mile, as I’ve demonstrated in previous posts.
The 40 cents is an average; people can spend per mile less if they buy used cars; drive more miles per year than average; drive cars that are more fuel-efficient than average; etc.
Finally, eliminate urban and rural zoning regulations and you will have less density. More density means more congestion and because of that people who live in dense areas actually generate more greenhouse gases per capita than people living in low-density areas, as I’ve also shown in previous posts.
Your subsidy costs are absurd. When I go into a grocery store and use a shopping cart, am I being subsidized? If the grocery store gives me free parking when I am there as a way to get me in the door, am I being subsidized? Where are these fossil fuel subsidies you are talking about other than the usual business expenses being deductible, which is true in every industry? Your numbers are purely imaginary.