Montreal City Weblog

Kate 22:20 on 2024-05-06 Permalink Reply  

• Blork 11:38 on 2024-05-07 Permalink

  I only scanned the article, but I’m calling bullshit. The main premise seems to be that all the money spent on roads (maintenance, snow removal, etc.) can be 100% filed under “car subsidy.” As if the ONLY PURPOSE for the city streets is for personal cars. What, bicycles, buses, taxis, and delivery vehicles are supposed to float 10 feet above the ground? Pedestrians don’t need cleared streets to get around?

• Ian 12:52 on 2024-05-07 Permalink

  That crossed my mind, too.
  Also worth noting, it’s basically the same argument as “I don’t have kids, why should I pay school taxes?”

• bumper carz 19:03 on 2024-05-07 Permalink

  Ian, did you only have time to skim the article as well?

  Too busy looking for parking?

• walkerp 21:15 on 2024-05-07 Permalink

  Yes, those highways are really great for pedestrians.
  Come on, our entire society is built around the automobile, of course they are all way more subsidized than public transit, not to mention billions of our tax dollars to the fossil fuel industry.

• Blork 23:54 on 2024-05-07 Permalink

  Yes, but it’s bogus to apply 100% of road cost to “car subsidy.”

• Daisy 06:15 on 2024-05-08 Permalink

  Of course it’s not 100%, but come on, it’s close enough for a rough calculation. Maybe it’s 95%.

• CE 08:02 on 2024-05-08 Permalink

  Just the street side parking in urban areas is a huge subsidy to drivers. I know they have to pay for the vignette in some areas but I doubt it pays for the full cost of paving, cleaning, and snow clearance. Even the amount of space that is given over to these parked cars is a form of subsidy in lost opportunity costs.

• GC 08:04 on 2024-05-08 Permalink

  There must be some rough stats on what percentage of vehicles on the roads are deliveries versus commuters or whatever. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would still be more accurate than just assuming 100%.

• Ian 08:24 on 2024-05-08 Permalink

  I actually did read the article, but i expected the gratuitous snark from the usual crowd 😉

  Emergency vehicles, delivery trucks, buses, heavy trucks, fleet cars, garbage trucks, public transport, shared cars, taxis, police vehicles, city vehicles…
  If you look at the registry numbers private vehicles are nowhere near 95% and all those other vehicle types need roads too, but do go on.

  We don’t get to choose what portion of our taxes go to things we personally see benefit in. 603 million to save French comes to mind.

• jeather 10:11 on 2024-05-08 Permalink

  I’d actually love to know how much more cars are subsidized than public transit — I would be surprised if it were the reverse — but I don’t think this article does the right math. It might not be possible to do the right math, honestly.

• Chris 10:42 on 2024-05-08 Permalink

  >If you look at the registry numbers private vehicles are nowhere near 95%…

  So what? Your list of other types of vehicles are still vehicles, and they still benefit from society’s subsidies to automobile culture, past and present. Don’t confuse cause & effect. It’s *because* of the existence of these subsidies that we have delivery trucks, fleet cars, taxis, shared cars, etc. Without those subsidies we’d have had some alternative history, maybe package delivery compartments on all public transit buses, maybe more bike delivery, helicopter ambulances, who knows. We would have done whatever was most efficient/cheaper, which would have been different without the distortion of massive subsidies.

  Do people other than car owners benefit from the “car subsidy”? Of course. Hypothetical example: I don’t own a car, I order a trinket from Amazon, Amazon uses the free roads to bring me my trinket. My trinket is now cheaper thanks to society building and providing those free roads. i.e *you* have subsidized *my* trinket. I would argue it would be better that society charge Amazon (and it charge me) to use the roads.

  No doubt some wonks have studied what percentage of road spending counts as “car subsidy” and of course it’s less than 100%, but I’d put my money around 90%. The width of roads is almost all for cars (moving and parking), with just a sliver for sidewalks. Cycling mode share is a rounding error of ~2%. Cars are way heavier than cyclists/pedestrians and do way more damage. There’s bus transit, but many souls are concentrated per one bus.

  >We don’t get to choose what portion of our taxes go to things we personally see benefit in.

  Not individually, duh; but collectively we do. The population has spoken and (unlike me) they love spending tax money on automobile subsidies.

• Kevin 10:59 on 2024-05-08 Permalink

  Debating subsidies and tax expenditures is the modern-day equivalent of debating the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

• Blork 11:29 on 2024-05-08 Permalink

  Here’s one more Rhumba on this pin-head (you wanna Rhumba? Pick a Rhumba from one to ten!):

  It’s not just a question of the percentage of private cars versus other vehicles. It’s a question of how IMPORTANT it is to have those roads for all the other purposes. Remember that roads existed long before cars were invented. Italy’s Via Appia was built more than 2300 years ago and still exists, runs for hundreds of kilometres.

  Roads do much more than just carry private cars!

  Even if every private car vanished from the face of the Earth overnight we would still need roads, for (borrowing Ian’s list) emergency vehicles, delivery trucks, buses, heavy trucks, fleet cars, garbage trucks, public transport, shared cars, taxis, police vehicles, city vehicles, etc. etc.

  People need to move around. Things need to be delivered. Fire trucks need to put out fires. On and on.

  Also, would you prefer that sewer and water lines be at surface level, just randomly zig-zagging around?

  That represents way, way more than 5% of the use of roads.

• Ian 11:33 on 2024-05-08 Permalink

  Especially if one side is just spitballing numbers.

• walkerp 14:48 on 2024-05-08 Permalink

  “What about the emergency vehicles!” is the “what about the children! argument for cars. The plastic industry used the same tactic with the “what about straws for handicapped people!” hysteria.

  It’s just excluded middle nonsense.

  Of course we need some kind of systematic transit routes. Nobody is saying remove all the roads. What we are saying (as Chris put very well) that the current road and the massive infrastructure around it, is heavily biased towards the individual automobile and by extension a vast proportion of our tax dollars goes to pay to maintain that model compared to how much goes into public transit.

  Sophists and consnerdatives are going to nitpick stupid debate tactics right up until the planet is unlivable.

• Ian 15:47 on 2024-05-08 Permalink

  TIL not making up numbers to support your point if view is a stupid debate tactic. Good thing hot air doesn’t contribute to the end of the world.

• Tim S. 19:19 on 2024-05-08 Permalink

  “we’d have had some alternative history.” Horses. That’s the real history/alternate future you’re looking at. I have no idea what carbon emissions they produce, but they also run people over, produce noxious fumes and massive amounts of manure, and take up huge amounts of agricultural space to grow fodder.

• Ian 21:48 on 2024-05-08 Permalink

  If we’re cosplaying pre-industrial Montreal I wouldn’t mind seeing Square Victoria turned back into a hay market, but I could do without the cholera.

• Kevin 22:18 on 2024-05-08 Permalink

  Banning plastic straws in Canada was stupid and useless. Straws in Canada aren’t ending up in the ocean because our tax dollars go towards garbage collection.

  Plastic in the ocean is mostly from China, Indonesia, India, and the Philippines.

  https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics

  I understand wanting to make assumptions but doing so without getting it wrong is a difficult skillset.