Welcome to the week. Here are the most notable news items our community has come across in the past seven days…
Who-ser pays?: This very relevant article as Oregon lawmakers (and the USDOT for that matter) ratchet up campaigns to reform transportation funding, lays out the myth that drivers (or any users) pay for the roads they use. (Union of Concerned Scientists)
No VMT, just let me be: A bill moving through the Arizona legislature would result in a ballot measure that would give voters the ability to prohibit government from tracking miles traveled as part of transportation funding or policy programs. (Arizona Free News)
Trump funding backgrounder: Education is one of the most powerful tools we have to counter the Trump dictatorship and their assault on transportation funding programs. Read this update from a major national advocacy group to learn more. (T4 America)
Ford’s follies: A court has denied an injunction request brought by cycling advocates in Toronto and now Doug Ford’s government can begin removing bike lanes this week. (CBC)
The Tesla tide: Anti-Elon Musk protests at Tesla dealerships have scratched a major itch among many Americans, but what if this is just the beginning of a larger, anti-automobile backlash? (Streetsblog USA)
Bad drivers and bipartisanship: Good news from Minnesota where lawmakers and Governor Tim Walz (remember him?) are coming together across the aisle on several bills that seek to reduce dangerous driving. (MPR News)
Bike parking politics: Advocates in New York are worried that a floundering and embattled mayoral administration is ignoring a promise to build out an extensive network of bike parking facilities. The article mentions the “bike hangar” I covered last week. (Streetsblog NYC)
How we treat aviation safety: The reader who shared this story said I should read it while replacing “aircraft” and “aviation” with “car” and “driving.” Imagine if we responded to car crashes like this! (NPR)
Racing while pregnant: A professional gravel racer shares her experience and thoughts about competing while carrying a baby and says she’s not being reckless while “racing for two”. (Cycling Weekly)
Thanks to everyone who sent in links this week. The Monday Roundup is a community effort, so please feel free to send us any great stories you come across.
Thanks for reading.
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The User Pay Myth piece is interesting. The graph of how roads are funded particularly so. But I don’t really see how it refutes the idea that user pay is not warranted for future funding outlays, as the current USDOT has stated. If anything, it reinforces the need for a user pays model as it relates to automobile infrastructure. Which seems fine by me. I think raising gas taxes and registration fees is a good idea for a lot of reasons, even if it is regressive.
What’s more interesting to me is the lack of political context around private public transit operators in the early 20th century. The reason that municipalities capped fares so strongly was that the general public tended to view them as corrupt monopolies – which they often were (at least until ~1920). This quote is also strange:
given that many of the subway lines in New York were famously constructed by private operators (and all of the lines constructed before 1932 were). The privately built IRT was basically immediately overcrowded upon opening. I’m fairly sure the first subway in the US (in Boston) was also built by a streetcar company. It wasn’t until after the automobile age when subway systems became unprofitable to build a strictly governmental affair (you can also see this dynamic in London).
I think it’s important to talk about this because part of why automobiles became so entrenched in American society probably stems from the perceived corruption and graft associated with transit franchises. Rather than reform an existing system to be more fair, most people preferred to use cars and highways as a means to compete with the only game in town. If you read about municipal politics in the 1920s to 1940s, this is a clear theme.
I feel like this same tendency – finding a new technology to get excited about, rather than messy reform of existing ones – is very present still in American culture. It’s why Portland felt the need to include “Fleets of electric, fully automated, multiple passenger vehicles” as a specific line item in the TSP, despite these vehicles not existing (well unless you count driverless metro systems like the Vancouver SkyTrain). I find it to be unfortunate and misguided – so many problems already have solutions, but we have a cultural context where it needs to be framed as a new breakthrough in order to get off the ground.
Thanks for the great information I didn’t know subway lines used to be constructed by private operators!
Maybe I’m in the minority but I didn’t know User-Pays was a myth other people believed.
Few thoughts – Isn’t use-pay basically impossible now with electric cars we can’t simply raise gas taxes. I think car registration probably doesn’t balance actual usage well and tracking miles is going to be too impractical. I like the idea though – especially if we biased it toward accounting for road wear / vehicle weight and perhaps emissions.
To some degree aren’t we all users anyway? even if I don’t own a car and only ride a bike I still get things delivered to my house via the roads, I can still call an ambulance and it will use the roads to get me.
And when I bicycle I also unfortunately have to use mostly roads…