Too many, but at least some are directly on vehicles. Transit (in the USA, on the West coast) is funded >90% by taxes on income, property, vehicle registration, fuel, etc not by the people using it.
I cannot speak for every state ever, but I remember that roads in WA were mostly funded by gas/diesel taxes + vehicle registration fees.
Which is also why WA state has been charging an additional significant car registration fee on EVs (on top of the usual annual registration costs), since EVs don't contribute to this normally through gas/diesel taxes.
Everyone uses the roads. You have to reach for very obscure examples to find commerce that doesn't utilize roads. Every bit of concrete and steel to build transit was at some point transported over roads.
Assuming an average fare of 2.47$ per to make the math even, that's 6.00$/ride total cost.
When a company / government gets the cost per mile to run a fleet of autonomous EV's down to ~60cents/mile or so, which is a plausible enough number, then a lot of those transit rides are going to look real silly from a cost effectiveness POV.
How many tax dollars go into subsidizing a public transit ride? Varies from place to place but it's not insignificant.
how many tax dollars go to roads and bridges just for cars?
Too many, but at least some are directly on vehicles. Transit (in the USA, on the West coast) is funded >90% by taxes on income, property, vehicle registration, fuel, etc not by the people using it.
I cannot speak for every state ever, but I remember that roads in WA were mostly funded by gas/diesel taxes + vehicle registration fees.
Which is also why WA state has been charging an additional significant car registration fee on EVs (on top of the usual annual registration costs), since EVs don't contribute to this normally through gas/diesel taxes.
Everyone uses the roads. You have to reach for very obscure examples to find commerce that doesn't utilize roads. Every bit of concrete and steel to build transit was at some point transported over roads.
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Varies from place to place but it's not insignificant
https://trimet.org/budget/pdf/2026-adopted-budget.pdf
Tax revenue was $555mm
https://trimet.org/about/pdf/trimetridership.pdf
~122,300,000 rides (originating + boarding)
So about $4.53 per ride.
The Portland metro is ~2.5mm people, so about $222/resident/yr.
Portland metro area residents pay on average about sixty cents per day to subsidize TriMet.
Roughly 1/43rd the average cost of ownership for a new car in Oregon.
https://info.oregon.aaa.com/how-much-does-it-really-cost-to-...
Assuming an average fare of 2.47$ per to make the math even, that's 6.00$/ride total cost.
When a company / government gets the cost per mile to run a fleet of autonomous EV's down to ~60cents/mile or so, which is a plausible enough number, then a lot of those transit rides are going to look real silly from a cost effectiveness POV.
2 replies →