20% of our Income
According to Forbes, that’s the amount the average Cincinnatian spends on transportation. Due to a lack of adequate public transportation, most families need to operate two cars, at a cost of thousands of dollars per vehicle per year.
Investing in transit, both light rail to connect the suburbs with Downtown and streetcars to tie the neighborhoods of Cincinnati together, will allow people in the region to spend more money in the local economy, instead of sending money to Detroit, Tokyo or Saudi Arabia, and give a family the option of owning one car instead of two.
April 9, 2009 at 9:33 am
I would look forward to more people with no car and a decent fleet of carshare cars in a radius around the rail. That would be nice, especially for living downtown without a garage.
April 9, 2009 at 10:43 am
Incredible. Brad, have you come across any figures showing the potential economic development impact that may result from the widening of I-75? Trying to figure out why COAST is silent on this. Old article, but worth reading…
http://www.walkablestreets.com/widen2.htm
April 9, 2009 at 11:28 am
Doug, there will be a slightly positive economic impact resulting from the widening of I-75, but nothing even close to the impact of the Streetcar. I think it’s a 1.15:1 cost-to-benefit ratio for I-75, compared the 2.7:1 for the Streetcar.
COAST and other groups are silent on highway spending because we do not see the full cost of roads due to the way they are funded. If we had to have a public vote on all Interstate projects–or tolled all Interstates and had congestion pricing within cities–you can bet we wouldn’t be building nearly as many roads.
April 9, 2009 at 12:30 pm
I think the problem with cars is that there are daily costs and hidden costs. People don’t consider the cost of a major overhaul or even their insurance rates in their daily usage rates, they are hidden costs when making daily decisions, or more accurately, people consider them fixed.
Then daily costs – mostly gas and parking – fluctuate wildly (mainly gas). when gas was at $4/gallon people carpooled, used public transport, and walked more. Now gas is under $2 or $1.5 so they quickly forget.
In my humble opinion, that is why we need a gas tax – to set the floor for gas at $4/gallon at all times. Market price is $1.5? Tax it $2.50. Price goes up to $3 – tax is $1. Take that money and make it available to people for grants to be more energy efficient by replacing their cars or even moving to a denser neighborhood. Take the remainder for public transit.
Krugman (or Friedman, i forget) had a plan for this after 9/11 – I think the CEO of autotrader also has a good plan – if we had only listened then….
April 10, 2009 at 9:49 am
Travis – http://is.gd/q7c0
Al – $4 is way too high. Raise the gas tax by .25cents across the country