--- On Tue, 8/26/08, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Congestion pricing may not hurt the poor, study finds
>
> A new report finds that medium- and high-income earners
> tend to use
> toll lanes the most -- and therefore are the ones paying
> for the debt
> service on the lanes.
> By Steve Hymon
> Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
>
> from their paper: "Using sales taxes to fund roadways
> creates
> substantial savings to drivers by shifting some of the
> costs of
> driving from drivers to consumers at large, and in the
> process
> disproportionately favors the more affluent at the expense
> of the
> impoverished."
[WS:] That is even more true in places like Baltimore/DC area, because transit is used predominantly by the less affluent and ethnic monorities, while white suburban fatheads tend to drive. Toll roads in this area would actually add some progressivity to funding transportation, becaouse as it stands now - it cheaper to drive than to use transit here. It costs me about 10 cents per mile to drive from Silver Spring to Baltimore, but about 26 cents per mile to use transit. That is highly regressive, because you can hardly see a white face on Ride-On or MTA buses during the rush hours.
Wojtek