PROBLEM TWO: INCENTIVES ARE IN THE WRONG PLACES

INCENTIVES ARE IN THE WRONG PLACES

Even if public transportation were to be made cheap, reliable, attractive, and safe across the board, the problem would not be solved. Improving public transportation systems is a very important factor in tipping the balance away from private use of automobiles and towards public use of large-volume vehicles, but is actually just one factor in a sea of misaligned incentives. People are pushed towards using private automobiles by a slew of incentives at all levels, which need to be exposed and removed. How can we envision a Green New Deal for Transportation that incentivizes more sustainable mechanisms for future transportation?

Minimum parking requirements

force cities to sprawl. They exist almost ubiquitously across the urban American landscape. Cities mandate that each building must have a minimum number of parking spaces, usually dependent on the purpose of the building. Philadelphia for example, mandates that educational facilities must have one parking space per 1,000 square feet, hospitals must have one parking space for every four beds, and religious assemblies must have one parking space for every ten seats. 38 Unsurprisingly, there is a lack of a parallel mandating that each building be accessible via public transportation. The reality is it wasn’t until 2017 that every single major city in the United States mandated a minimum number of parking spaces per building, in some respect, with Buffalo, New York being the first to remove this policy. 39 The total number of parking spaces needed in an entire city to satisfy these requirements are staggering, and necessitate blocking off a huge proportion of land to be used only for parking. This forces the city to sprawl outwards, further exaggerating the need to drive. Put concisely, by Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at UCLA, “minimum parking requirements act like a fertility drug for cars.” 40

Roads are a socialized risk that

benefit drivers. A less direct but just as potent way in which citizens are incentivized to use private vehicles is the current way in which infrastructure is funded. With the exception of occasional tolls, roads and highways are largely free to use. Their construction and maintenance are paid for with tax dollars and are mostly independent of use. The federal gasoline tax attempts to remedy this problem, but less than half of road expenditures are covered using revenues from this tax. 41 Subsidizing the use of roads and highways lowers the cost of owning and

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operating a car, incentivizing people to use private cars instead of utilizing public transportation.

Fossil fuels are subsidized to the

extreme. Well exploration, drilling costs, and many other expensive practices necessary to producing oil and gas are subsidized by national governments. It is impossible to exactly quantify the sum of the subsidies, but conservative estimates say that the U.S. subsidizes fossil fuels by $20 billion per year, 42 while the IMF estimates the value to be closer to $650 billion for the United States, and over $5 trillion globally. 43 This results in the price of fossil fuels being much lower than the actual cost, encouraging the use of fossil fuel-emitting cars. This is partially offset by a tax on “gas guzzlers” introduced in 1980, but even this tax has glaring loopholes, such as an exemption for all light trucks, vans, and SUVs despite their widespread use as passenger vehicles. 44 Still, this tax comes nowhere close to offsetting the subsidies in favor of fossil fuels, bringing in a paltry $42 million annually. 45 Furthermore, due to extreme lobbying on the part of the oil and gas industry, companies like Tesla are banned from opening dealerships in sixteen states and restricted in another nine. 46

Subsidies and other forms of incentives are powerful tools. The previous examples show how misaligned incentives exacerbate the issue, but well-placed incentives can also do a lot of good.

Congestion charges discourage driving and fund public

transportation. A prime example is in the city of London. In 2003, the city introduced a congestion charge, requiring a fee of £5 per day to drive in downtown London -- which has since increased to the current value of £11.50. The goal of the policy was to alleviate high levels of traffic in the city, but it also functioned as an effective incentive to encourage public transportation over private vehicles. In the decade following its implementation, the number of private cars driven into downtown London fell by over 30%. 47 London also added 300 buses to their public fleet when the policy was introduced, and in the first year alone 29,000 additional bus passengers entered downtown London during the morning peak period. 48 Another alternative to congestion charging is road space rationing in which driving through certain areas is restricted by license plate on a day-by-day basis. Mexico City, Mexico is an example of a place where this has been successful in discouraging driving on certain days as a way to curb air pollution. 49

In addition to tactics to discourage driving, public transit should be

further subsidized. Lowering the cost of public buses and trains encourages people to use them. Some cities already do this in small ways. Philadelphia for example, allows senior citizens to ride all public transit routes for free. Few cities, both nationally and globally, have introduced free public transit, although this trend is becoming more popular. 50 Luxembourg recently became the first country to abolish fares for all forms of public transportation. 51 While the country is small, with a population of only 600,000, this could set a precedent for a much larger global movement. As ideas such as these gain traction, the incentive to own and drive a car seems less enticing.

To fully utilize clean energy sources, electric vehicles (EVs) should be further subsidized.

Some subsidies do exist towards electric vehicles already. The U.S. government subsidizes the first 200,000 EVs that each automaker sells with a $7,500 consumer tax break, and after that, subsidizes in a decreasing fashion. 52 However, a Strata report found that out of the billions of dollars of EV subsidies handed out by the federal government, the majority was given to individuals of high incomes. 53 To the consumers that cannot afford an EV, the subsidy is usually not enough. Subsidies for EVs need to be expanded to make them more accessible, especially to people living in rural environments that do not have access to densely-concentrated public transportation.

COVID-19 and Density

With the world mired in the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to address a frequent criticism of high-density housing and transportation -- as density increases, the transmission of any infectious disease becomes likelier and accelerant. Still, as ridership has declined rapidly around the world, a few cities provide insight into what an effective remedy may look like in the near future. In Taipei, commuters are screened with infrared sensors prior to boarding the metro in order to measure body temperature. Likewise, South Korea has cleaners desanitizing subways and trains on a daily basis with antiseptic solutions while wearing protective gear. 54 Other technologies are also in the works, but more simple solutions may be implemented in the event of a future pandemic. It is estimated that nearly 37% of the American workforce is capable of telecommuting. 55 This would dramatically lower traffic on public transport systems and would allow for proper social distancing inside train cars and buses. Companies such as Facebook and Google, have already allowed their employees to remain working from home for the rest of this year, but such a policy clearly benefits a small sliver of the working population. Combining a technological and social response will be necessary to combat overcrowding on public transportation while offering solutions that don’t require dismantling or contributing to the existing stigma plaguing modes of public transport. A Green New Deal for public transportation cannot ignore the necessity of making public health a priority, especially since COVID-19 may not be our last pandemic.