Raise My Taxes, Please! Evaluating Household Savings From High Quality Public Transit Service

High quality public transit consists of service sufficiently convenient and comfortable to attract travel that would otherwise be by automobile. This report uses data from U.S. cities to investigate the incremental costs and benefits of high quality transit service. It indicates that high quality public transit typically requires about $268 in additional subsidies and $104 in additional fares annually per capita, but provides vehicle, parking and road cost savings averaging $1,040 per capita, plus other benefits including congestion reductions, increased traffic safety, pollution reductions, improved mobility for non-drivers, improved fitness and health. This indicates that residents should rationally support tax increases if needed to create high quality public transit systems in their communities. Current planning practices tend to overlook or undervalue many of these savings and benefits and so result in underinvestment in transit quality improvements.

• Record URL:
  http://www.vtpi.org/raisetaxes.pdf
• 
• Corporate Authors:

  Victoria Transport Policy Institute

  1250 Rudlin Street
  Victoria, British Columbia  Canada  V8V 3R7
• Authors:
  • Litman, Todd
• Publication Date: 2010-2-26

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 19p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Benefit cost analysis; Economic impacts; Public transit; Quality of service; Savings; Subsidies; Taxes
• Subject Areas: Economics; Public Transportation; I10: Economics and Administration;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01152592
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 16 2010 6:14AM