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This argument has to face up to the fact that all of the best systems have high farebox recovery and all the American systems have low recovery except for NY (which is still lower than the good ones). Essentially, if it’s so great to have low farebox recovery why does the Tube, HK MTR, and Taipei MRT have high farebox recovery?

Theorycrafting is all well and good but if you claim that some metric X (farebox recovery) is negatively correlated with some outcome Y (frequent good transit) then you do have to explain why all the good outcome Ys actually have high X. Reality has to meet the theory.

by throw0101c15 hours ago|

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> This argument has to face up to the fact that all of the best systems have high farebox recovery and all the American systems have low recovery except for NY (which is still lower than the good ones).

Perhaps drivers/commuters should also be better charged for the resources they use:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_price

We can let The Market™ decide what the alleged convenience of driving is worth.

by supertrope16 hours ago|

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We don't expect roads to be profitable. We don't expect airports to be profitable. But there is a solution to this as well. If the train operator owns the land around each station and collects rent on the shops and homes, they can become profitable.

by com14 hours ago|

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Um, many airports are HIGHLY profitable where capitalism took on a Thatcherite turn.

I sudoect that airports can be far more portable than airlines, actually, since shopping, eating and drinking are much cheaper to deliver on the ground. And there’s parking too.

by arjie13 hours ago|

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FAA grants require airports to set fee structures that enable them to be as self-sustaining as possible accounting for their ability to capture economic activity. They are not supposed to use the grants as a fee replacement. Airports, in general, far exceed the performance of US public transit systems. SFO is cash-positive even accounting for the cost of capital expenditure and on its own sees as many passengers as a top 20 transit system.

One might have instead believed that because SFO is so valuable to the region it should be heavily subsidized, but the property repeated worldwide is that valuable things are things people don't mind paying to use. Because they're valuable.