{"id":630,"date":"2011-10-10T05:49:04","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T09:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/?p=630"},"modified":"2011-10-10T05:49:04","modified_gmt":"2011-10-10T09:49:04","slug":"congestion-and-the-real-value-of-public-transit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2011\/10\/congestion-and-the-real-value-of-public-transit\/","title":{"rendered":"Congestion and the real value of public transit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One common argument against boosting public transportation is that buses, trains and subway systems \u201cdon\u2019t pay for themselves.\u201d Roads, we\u2019re told, are bankrolled by drivers, via gas taxes. Subway systems, by contrast, aren\u2019t self-sufficient and usually need additional funds on top of whatever they collect through fares. (Boston\u2019s subway system, for instance, collects just 25 percent of its revenues through fares; the rest comes from a state sales tax and other local funds.)<\/p>\n<p>But there are two counterarguments here. The first is that roads don\u2019t always pay for themselves (see this report, or ask the Texas DOT). And the second is that public transit doesn\u2019t just benefit the people who ride the buses or subways. It also benefits drivers, by reducing overall congestion.<\/p>\n<p>via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/ezra-klein\/post\/congestion-and-the-real-value-of-public-transit\/2011\/10\/07\/gIQAU3kTVL_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein\">Congestion and the real value of public transit &#8211; The Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One common argument against boosting public transportation is that buses, trains and subway systems \u201cdon\u2019t pay for themselves.\u201d Roads, we\u2019re told, are bankrolled by drivers, via gas taxes. Subway systems, by contrast, aren\u2019t self-sufficient and usually need additional funds on top of whatever they collect through fares. (Boston\u2019s subway system, for instance, collects just 25&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,111,22],"tags":[379,376,378,377],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":631,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions\/631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}