Smashed Metro Bus Windows

[elfs]

Smashed Metro Bus Windows

The other day I took the bus home from work, and saw that the two windows behind the driver's seat had been smashed. "I guess some people just don't like the bus," he told me. Even worse, it turned out that Metro knew about the problem and didn't have a bus to spare, so they pressed this broken bus into service, taping up the damage to warn people away from the potential harm.

Man, those are my tax dollars someone just smashed. His own, too.

I've always wondered why the most rabid anti-tax Republican is pro-road but not pro-transit. If the goal as "someone who governs" is to provide people-moving capabilities from one place to another, the mix of roads and mass transit would seem to be ideal: both are supplmented by non-transit, non-auto fees of some kind. I think roads are just so ubiquitous and seemingly invulnerable that we just see them, we don't think about them. It's the fragility and daily maintenence that gnaws on the conscience.

Metro just raised all prices by 25¢ to 50¢ depending on the route and time of day. The state's budget is taking a huge hit in the next two-year cycle; I hope that our county gets the mix right, because there's a lot of commuter pain coming down.

Comments

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Economics is not a zero-sum game.

Imagine you own some farmland. It's acidic, heavy clay soil. Your crops grow slowly in it. One year, you take money from your other activities (raising chickens, for example), and use it to pay to lay drainage tiles and spread lime. For the next decade, your crop yield is twice its original amount.

You take some of the profits from your field, and use it to build a sturdy shed for your chickens. You lose fewer chickens due to illness and predators, and your poultry profits rise.

Increasing the services provided to an area (roads, sewers, waterlines, subways) increases the utility of the area, and thus increases its value. Developers are willing to pay more for land, and are willing to pay additional development taxes, as potential homeowners and business owners are willing to pay more for dwellings or storefronts.