Comments on: The folly of measuring transportation costs per passenger-mile

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By: The folly of measuring transportation costs per passenger-mile | SMART

The folly of measuring transportation costs per passenger-mile | SMART — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:10:34 +0000

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By: Kurt Johnson

Kurt Johnson — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 01:14:00 +0000

Government doesn’t need to, “be accounting for these subsidies and environmental costs properly.” Government needs to stop all subsidies for any specific type of transportation. Mostly, we should have a “users pay” system.

By: Is “per passenger km” the right metric for comparing modes? « The Melbourne Urbanist

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:48:50 +0000

[…] cars and public transport should be on a “per kilometre” basis. After all, as Steven Smith at Market Urbanism points out, “people take trips of varying length, and longer trips are more expensive than […]

By: Al

Al — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 07:39:00 +0000

If your office moved from DC to New York, I don’t think you would take the Acela– I think you would either move, or get a new job. However, if you did commute, are you seriously suggesting that you would drive 200 miles each way, and that this would be preferable to taking the train (which, I might add, is one of Amtrak’s few profitable routes)?

New York City’s subsidy is around 33% for the subway. (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1215/is_7_205/ai_n6150069/) Yet you want an 80% subsidy for your car, on top of the road subsidies, and you call that logical?

Per passenger mile is a ridiculous metric, unless the people are making the same trip in both cases– but they’re not. Consider: one person lives in a dense neighborhood, walks or rides a bike to do his shopping, and takes the bus five miles to work, which is subsidized by a dollar. Another lives in a distant suburb on a cul-de-sac and drives 25 miles to work, then drives another 25 miles for shopping and entertainment. This is subsidized by two dollars. By your standard, this is an improvement, since the subsidy’s gone from 20 cents to two cents a mile, and yet the more people switch to it, the more subsidies are required!

By: Plucked

Plucked — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:17:00 +0000

I feel the need to start with pointing out a significant problems in your example – while it may cost the individual $89/month, the cost is substantially higher when you include all the subsidies for transit. Therefore, if you do not compare actual costs, it would be just as logical to provide massive subsidies paying for 80% of the cost of owning and using a car. If you do that, the car is cheaper. Then do you really want to get into the ludicrous of comparing different commutes? I can drive a car 10 miles to work, but what if my office moves from DC to New York? I need to take the Acela to work every morning – that is so much more expensive than owning a car, and thus mass transit is absurdly worse.

Per-passenger-mile is the rational metric for comparison. Take what people actually travel and compare it based on how people get around – it avoids absurdly meaningless comparisons like those you cited.

How do you propose accounting for the costs of transport in a way that is truly comparable? How do you divide the cost of mass transit if not by passenger mile? If a bus spends 90% of its route with 3 people on board, and the other 10% with an additional 30 people on board, do you propose dividing the cost of the bus by 33?). Take a Hummer and cram as many college students as you can into it and drive 10 feet – voila, now I get to divide the total cost and mileage of the solitary cross country road trip by the 17 students we fit in there.

Per-passenger-mile is actually fairly favorable to transit, as trips are longer than they would be by car. Instead of driving a car directly to work, I could take a bus to the train station, take the train to another station, hop on another bus, and I’ve just traveled nearly twice as many miles (of course, I also happen to think the extra 50 minutes it adds to the commute to be significant, but convenience is hard to measure appropriately in mass populations, and thus is left out).

If you can demonstrate how to measure the travel of hundreds of thousands of people in a more effective way than per-passenger-mile, you would shock the world and truly make a name for yourself. Go ahead – fabulous fame and fortune await.

By: Stephen Smith

Stephen Smith — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 17:15:00 +0000

I believe O’Toole averaged in bus emissions, too, with the idea that rail-based transit needs feeder buses to be effective.

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 08:55:00 +0000

“Randal O’Toole at the Cato Institute has even used carbon emissions per passenger-mile to claim that cars are more environmentally friendly than rail.”

Alas, O’Toole is blatantly wrong, as a quick check of heavy rail’s per-passenger-mile emissions in the US will tell you. According to the FTA, average subway/el emissions in the US are 0.16 pounds per passenger-mile, which is emissions-equivalent to 82 passenger-mpg of gas. Drive a Prius on an average (probably rural) road at average (probably non-commute) occupancy and it’s still less emissions-efficient than rail in congested urban areas.