[sustran] Re: MMRDA will file PIL to block Tata's Rs1 lakh car

[Markus Sander]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 12:05:14PM -0400, Daryl Oster wrote:

> The motorcycle, car, and jet have already beaten the bike, bus, and
> train in transportation value
> 
> The ONLY way to beat the car is by implementing a transportation mode
> that offers a quantum improvement in VALUE for most people.

I agree up to here.

> The relative value of a transportation mode is the total benefits
> divided by the total costs.  Value is pest compared on a relative
> monetary amount per passenger unit of distance traveled (e.g. cents
> per passenger mile).  

1) The VALUE is more than price/distance. For example, the car offers
you to carry around a part of your private property. If someone parks a
car, the parking space is temporarily his private territory. That's
something you can't do with a bike (unless safe bike parking boxes are
offered).

2) You are absolutely right that the car has beaten bike, bus and train
by VALUE. The key problem is that USING a car is to cheap for the user.
Car use is massively subsided:

+ exclusive road space for free. No one can walk, sit, trade, talk on a
  street dedicated for cars -> Solution "Road Pricing" or "Shared Space"

+ costs for parking garages are often subsided by the city council

+ bothering city inhabitants for free -> there's no "noise fee"

+ streets are build with money from *all* people, wheather they're using
  a car or not (other transportation modes need less road space)

+ car users also don't pay for the bad live quality they cause

+ car users don't pay for people that get sick of air pollution and/or
  noise

+ health insurances (which are paid from all people, not only car users)
  pay for the consequenses of car accidents, air pollution, ...

In summary, use of car is cheap for the user and very expensive for the
community. If car users had to pay for all the things they cause, the
car would lose imediately.

So I disagree that we have to change our strategy and offer something
different that offeres improvement in value. We have to stop increasing
the VALUE of a car use by subsidary.

-- 
 (c) markus