I feel like people should be paying their taxes even if they own a car
Comment on When you're the last one on the bus and instantly start living like this
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 days agoCars aren’t paid for by taxpayers. Roads are, true, but then both buses and cars need those anyway and buses do far more damage.
mathemachristian@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
They’re paying more taxes if they do own cars though?
All I was saying that it’s technically a waste of taxpayer money to run buses half empty so it’s inefficient. Yes, cars are inefficient too, but that extra cost lies more on the car owners themselves and it’s voluntary.
mathemachristian@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
No it’s not voluntary if public transit gets dismantled look at the US. Running buses half-empty is also more efficient by your calculation if all those people were driving a car. That’s by your calculation 2 ton/person road wear and not whatever it was for busses.
Cars need to go.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Your comment makes no sense.
Running buses half-empty means you pay for 2x as many buses, 2x as many drivers, 2x as much fuel.
The road wear point was there to illustrate that buses don’t magically require less infrastructure maintenance than cars - they require more of it. And in no universe will even 50 cars cause as much road wear as one bus.
The only thing a half-empty bus is more efficient at is the reduced road wear. But overall if the goal of a bus is mass transit, it should be filled to the brim to get the most out of it.
Also I’m not sure why people keep bringing cars into this? The original statement was that full buses are more efficient than empty buses. If they’re full, that means people are actively using them rather than driving.
Idk where you’re from, but in my hometown the morning bus was always filled to the brim because people needed to get to work or school. Half the people had to stand up and honestly it was kinda crowded standing up. But everyone still got on the bus. If they’d had another bus 5 minutes later, that’s 2x as much fuel and other costs for the same amount of riders. If the bus is too full, you just squeeze in somewhere and shut the fuck up because you need to get where you’re going and this is cheap and efficient.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Lmao leave it to Lemmy to downvote basic facts like “heavier vehicles cause more wear to roads.”
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
And not linearly more wear either. It’s the fourth power of axle load.
My 2 ton car (rounded up) is a ton per axle, a 12 ton bus (empty weight of a common city bus here) is 6 or 4 tons per axle. 3rd axle seems to be more common in buses weighing 15 tons or more (empty). So let’s say 6x more weight per axle. That’s 1296 times more wear.
That doesn’t mean I hate public transit but it does mean it comes with additional hidden costs to the taxpayer. Well, buses do at least. The whole equation is rather different for trains.