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Public transit is cheaper for low income earners than driving and disproportionately used by them. Improving public transit is a much better solution.

http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...




Don't get me wrong - I'm a huge proponent of well-funded, and extensive public transit options... If you are advocating an expansion of public transit to counter the gas tax, I fear it may be more complicated than tit for tat...

In Seattle, where I live, for example, it is logistically and financially expensive to expand public transit. While the city is building out light rail, adding trolleys, and encouraging density, the city is growing too quickly for public investment to keep up. Moreover, the success of Amazon, Microsoft, etc. in adding great, high-paying jobs has the side effect of making the downtown core (where all the transit is) prohibitively expensive to live in.

More externalities... Thus, it comes to be that the poorer working class live further away, have to drive into the city for work, and would still be the hardest hit by a gas tax. Meanwhie, Microsoft provides a private bus/shuttle network to get its employees around from homes to its various campuses - the very people who could afford the extra cost of fuel.

None of this is bad, per se... It's great that there are all these good jobs available and that so many people are flocking to the city! The knock-on effects are to the detriment of the 50% living below the mean...




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