4th August 1998
Steve Symanovich
Letters to the Editor
San Francisco Business Times
Dear Steve:
In your editorial, "Transportation Minds Stuck in Gridlock,"
you miss the easiest and fairest way to solve our
transportation problems. You write, "As the Bay Area
expands geographically and new business centers pop up, it's
not feasible to design expensive mass transit systems to get
people from, say, Hayward to Redwood City." Okay, then
let's stop subsidizing spread-out communities where it is
impossible to provide efficient transportation.
The figures are most transparent for BART, so I will use
those. The entire BART system only manages to board about
one-third of the passengers that San Francisco's Municipal
Railway achieves every day, yet BART gets approximately the
same operating subsidy as MUNI, and many times the
infrastructure subsidy. This means that a suburban rider on
BART gets well over three times the per-passenger subsidy
that an inner city MUNI rider gets. Note that MUNI riders
are far more likely to be poor than BART riders, many of
whom do not need a transportation subsidy.
Even within BART, it costs a city rider $1.10 ($0.76 if they
use a Fast Pass) to travel a kilometer or two; a suburban
resident can go all they way to Pleasanton for only $4.05.
True, San Franciscans enjoy somewhat better service so they
should pay a little more per kilometer, but the current fare
structure strongly favors spread-out suburban residents and
businesses at the expense of those in compact inner cities.
Every time an inner city resident buys BART ticket, they
provides a huge financial subsidy to a rider on, say, the
Pleasanton line, who does not pay very much of their fair
per-kilometer cost. Although they are better hidden, far
larger suburban subsidies apply to roads and other forms of
infrastructure.
The Bay Area does not control its transportation destiny.
But, if we really want to make transportation easier, we
should act as much as we can to equalize per capita
transportation subsidies. Businesses and individuals that
locate at remote green-field sites should pay for all of the
additional costs of their transportation, roads and rail
alike, and those who choose to set up shop in compact
communities should not be penalized for doing so.
In a relatively free transportation market, the real
efficiencies of businesses and workers all being located
close together will make themselves felt. The inner cities
will revive, and to a great degree our transportation
problems will solve themselves.
Sincerely,
Donald F. Robertson
-- _________________________ Donald F. Robertson San Franciscodonaldrf@hooked.net 76217.2066@CompuServe.com
Donald's Space Exploration page: http://www.hooked.net/~donaldrf/index.html
The known is finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land. -- Thomas Huxley.