AUTOPARASITES. According to American ideology, cars are for self-reliant individualists, while mass transit requires deep public subsidies. Mass transit does indeed require subsidies, but cars do too.
In a study published by Komanoff Energy Associates, Cora Roelofs and Charles Komanoff did the math for New York State. They found that while motorists pay $4.5 billion in taxes, tolls, fees, and fines to all levels of government, governments spend a total of $6.9 billion on streets, highways, enforcement, regulation, and administration -- a gap of $2.4 billion. These figures do not include what they estimate to be $21 billion in indirect environmental and social costs -- pollution-caused illness and rot, accidents, congestion -- in New York City alone.
In other words, nearly one in three dollars spent directly on the traffic infrastructure has to come out of general revenues. The subsidy issue is particularly pungent in New York, where 30% of households statewide -- and 56% of households in NYC -- don't own cars. Nationwide, only 16% of households are car-less.
Though the authors didn't extrapolate their detailed analysis to cover the entire U.S., their back-of-the-envelope calculations are that the annual auto subsidy nationwide -- again for direct costs, excluding indirect environmental and social costs -- is $20 - 25 billion, well over 50 times the $377 million in mass transit subsidies by all levels of government in 1990. In another study done with Brian Ketcham, the total indirect costs of vehicle use came to $726 billion in 1990, of which $418 billion was borne by motorists, leaving $308 billion paid for by the public at large.
Komanoff, who made his name by unmasking the full costs of nuclear power, argues that the real costs of driving should be made fully apparent to drivers, through higher fees and taxes -- though with proper rebates and alternatives made available to the poor. In New York, Komanoff argues, the cost per mile of driving would have to rise to 65¢ from the present 17¢ were all the hidden subsidies and indirect costs fully reflected in the price. This is, Komanoff acknowledges, political heresy, but someone has to speak the truth.