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Originally Posted by Busy Bee
And when will the O'toole's and Kotkin's of the world realize that many of those things are only true becuase the federal government made a conserted decision to subsidize automobile mode choice, automobile land use and automobile infrastructure above all others,
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And yet Europe when they do all the things you want the US Federal Government to, cars still dominate modal share. The car did not win because of Government Intervention, it won because it's the best form of ground transportation. It brought fast transport over wide areas to the masses.
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all the while failing to set automotive fuel taxes high enough to sufficiently maintain said infrastructure
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Even in the US, government revenue from the use of cars come far closer to paying for the operating and capital cost of infrastracture (especially if you stop the funds from being used for other purposes) than mass transit, which struggles to pay for a fraction of just the operating costs. It doesn't take much higher gas taxes to pay for all roads, but there's absolutely no fare that will have transit users pay for the full costs of their system.
To say nothing of Europe where fuel taxes account for upwards of 60% of the total cost of gas and registration and use fees approach the value of the car.