A version of this column was first published at the Pacific Research Institute.
Instead of promoting punitive measures such as mileage taxes and congestion fees that punish lower income Americans for not being able to afford to live close to work, transportation advocates must recognize drivers as a significant part of their constituency in building transportation services that serve as many people as efficiently as possible. With much of the drop in post-pandemic public transit ridership attributable to the decline in public transit users by car-owners deciding to use these systems less, building public transit systems drivers want to return to using more regularly should be far more of a priority than beating drivers over the head with financial assault until they can no longer afford to drive.
Using terms such as “carbrain”, progressives portray drivers as evil, wealthy, white suburbanites driving lumbering death machines into the city. They even call for punitive fees ranging from vehicle mileage taxes (VMT) that tax individuals for each mile they drive, to congestion fees that charge drivers each time they enter a city as a means of helping the truly economically disenfranchised, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
The reality is that because people prefer to live closer to where they work and that those who commute the longest to work disproportionately are lower-income Americans who can’t afford to live anywhere else. Moreso, while in many cases taxes and fees aren’t high enough to cover the cost of vehicle infrastructure, in California 99.7% of road spending is covered by user taxes, which means that all drivers—from the wealthy who often don’t have to drive far, to those of less means who have to drive further—are paying for the system they use.
Unsurprisingly, California’s user taxes are high enough to not only fund roads, but also to support public transit projects—2018’s SB1 dedicated the entire 4 percentage point increase on diesel fuel for public transit systems. In a world in which California’s roads are well-maintained, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to divert extra funding towards further developing public transit, or reducing user fees, but sadly, California has the 4th worst roads in the country. With half of the state’s major roads and urban streets in poor or mediocre condition, California drivers spend an average of $808 more on maintenance, equipment, and more due to poor road quality. In the interest of improving the safety of California’s roads and reducing vehicle spending for lower income Californians, prioritizing the use of road taxes for road improvement to a higher standard makes more sense than diverting these limited road user fees towards public transit projects that have little ridership and have been surrendered to vagrants, criminals, drug addicts, and the mentally ill.
While there is a reluctance to spend on road infrastructure due to the idea of induced demand—that spending more money on better roads encourages people to drive more, resulting in the same time in traffic as before—the opposite is true. If poor road quality and traffic induce people to drive less, which prevents people from making more trips that would connect them to jobs and people in ways that would meaningfully improve their quality of life, then improving roads simply allows more people to use the form of transportation they would prefer. If the main benefit of transportation is personal freedom to maximize access to family and opportunity, then adequately funding road improvement clearly would improve economic and social mobility and opportunities for the widest possible section of the population.
However, this isn’t to say that funding public transit cannot benefit drivers—if done effectively, building a robust public transit system can vastly improve the freedom and opportunities of drivers and transit users alike. At a certain level of density—of jobs, housing, and amenities — buses and trains start to make more sense, and one begins to see residents substitute drives for rides, keeping their cars but using public transit to save time and money, thus improving the driving experience of those who remain on the road.
Though public transit advocates seem to want drivers to abandon their cars entirely, the vastness of Western states means it’s likely most drivers won’t ever fully abandon their cars. But because Western riders choose to maintain their cars, that means reductions in quality of public transit can quickly push these driver-riders to revert back solely to drivers, as happened in the post-2020 era when labor shortages and high tolerance for disruptive, anti-social behavior aboard public transportation drove part-time riders back into their vehicles full-time. Such a reduction in service quality and availability hurt those who had no cars to fall back upon the worst, leaving them to suffer as on-transit crime and violence skyrocketed and transit times got longer and longer, making each trip a roll of the dice for arriving on time or even alive.
What this experience should tell transportation planners is that sufficient demand among drivers does exist for public transit so long as that public transit system provides a superior alternative to driving that isn’t just the result of making driving physically and fiscally unbearable. With California’s cost of living already leaving residents with no choice but to flee the state in droves, making driving even more expensive for the sake of forcing adoption of public transit both cruel and short-sighted; after all, what’s the good in getting everyone off the roads if there’s no one left to ride the bus or train?
Thankfully, it need not be so painful for drivers or expensive to build the transit that can satisfy drivers and riders alike. By restoring our roads to adequate conditions and offering safe, clean, and more frequent service on existing public transit lines that have already cost billions of dollars to build, it’s possible to cost-effectively improve transportation quality for riders and drivers alike. Rather than pitting drivers against riders in a zero-sum game of class and even racial tension, realizing the interdependence of automobile and mass public transit is the only way forward for building a transportation system worthy of our great state.