What would you do to get the T out of its financial mess?

[Matthew]

No, I just hate Prius drivers and Hummers.

Then you'll probably enjoy that link I posted.

It's a wealth/means tax - the more you can afford, the more you pay. The less you can afford, the less you pay.

I think it's better to leave such progressive measures to the income tax and keep the other ones simple. It wouldn't be a good thing to unintentionally incentivize the purchase of 'junkers'.

As for the gas tax - I'm not necessarily looking to lower the tax for the sake of having a lower tax, I'm looking to lower the tax so that more people purchase here, resulting in a net gain on tax revenue.

I also think that this is too small an issue to be worth the loss in revenue. Most people in MA, CT, RI and NH don't have the luxury of crossing state borders to refill their tank. It would cost more to drive to the gas station than you'd end up saving.

And in cases where there is a problem, that's where multi-state tax treaties come into play. For example, MA and NH could get together and hash out an agreement about how to deal with people filling up in NH and commuting to Boston, or other situations.

 

[AmericanFolkLegend]

So will the City of Boston Assessor be in charge of valuing homes and cars?

What if I buy a car from the dealer and then sell it to my wife for $1. I've just gotten around the tax, right?

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

So will the City of Boston Assessor be in charge of valuing homes and cars?

What if I buy a car from the dealer and then sell it to my wife for $1. I've just gotten around the tax, right?

No. Kelley Blue Book values would be used, or another independent third-party assessment. It'd be a tax on the value of the car (assessed yearly), not how much it was sold for.

 

[Arlington]

No, I just hate Prius drivers and Hummers.

I'm thinking laws based on "Hate" generally don't turn out so well.

It's a wealth/means tax - the more you can afford, the more you pay. The less you can afford, the less you pay.[/QUOUTE]

We already have one of those: it's called the income tax. If you want to tax wealth, say so, but in general, raising it is just a recipe for chasing money out of the state.

That's why it's a charge on the valuation of the vehicle. If you're driving around a car worth $50000+, you're probably not going to notice the tax.

I don't see that disguising an income tax as a car tax solves anything.

As CAFE mileage requirements go up it is quite likely that the cars we most want on the road (the efficient ones) are the ones that you're taxing off. How does it help the state to push everyone toward driving cheap/junky cars?

We're trying to promote transit here. It is *driving* that's the thing that is too cheap (compared to transit), not the kind of car being driven. Gas or VMT taxes are preferable to vehicle-value or income taxes.

If you don't like the regressive features of the gas tax ( it hurts the working commuter) the solution is to raise gas taxes and then also raise the exemption threshhold on income (and raise the earned income rebatable credit). This lets the working commuter chose: either drive at the average (and be no worse off), drive less than the average (and be better off) or drive more and be worse off.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

I'm thinking laws based on "Hate" generally don't turn out so well.

Fair enough.

We already have one of those: it's called the income tax. If you want to tax wealth, say so, but in general, raising it is just a recipe for chasing money out of the state.

I prefer taxing assets to taxing income because it's a more progressive tax - and, unlike the income tax, you can't easily evade it through various methods of dubious legality. You buy nice things, you get taxed on nice things, whether the money you use to pay is from your day job, capital gains, winning the lottery, breaking someone's fingers or a PO Box in the Cayman Islands.

I don't see that disguising an income tax as a car tax solves anything.

As CAFE mileage requirements go up it is quite likely that the cars we most want on the road (the efficient ones) are the ones that you're taxing off. How does it help the state to push everyone toward driving cheap/junky cars?

We're trying to promote transit here. It is *driving* that's the thing that is too cheap (compared to transit), not the kind of car being driven. Gas or VMT taxes are preferable to vehicle-value or income taxes.

I wanted to exempt cheap/junky cars because typically, those who drive that kind of car can barely afford it. I question the idea that exempting the first $2500 would really 'incentivize' the purchase of cars that cost less than $2500 - the kind of car driven by someone who really has no other option. I don't think for a minute that a car tax would be the difference between someone buying a preowned car from Ernie Boch Junior at $7500 or getting a $1995 piece of crap held together by duct tape and hope off of craigslist.

If you don't like the regressive features of the gas tax ( it hurts the working commuter) the solution is to raise gas taxes and then also raise the exemption threshhold on income (and raise the earned income rebatable credit). This lets the working commuter chose: either drive at the average (and be no worse off), drive less than the average (and be better off) or drive more and be worse off.

I don't like the regressive features of the gas tax, no - but I also don't like the idea of 'tax more and exempt more people.' My belief is that by taxing assets and product usage rather than wealth and holdings, you get less money per person but from a far wider range of people, thus resulting in more money overall - which is why I would tax your car, your fuel, your home and your meals out, but not your income or capital gains.

 

[Justin7]

Outside of hybrids and electrics, less expensive cars generally have better gas mileage than more expensive cars.

 

[Arlington]

Outside of hybrids and electrics, less expensive cars generally have better gas mileage than more expensive cars.

This kind of technical-defining, peripheral tweaking, and loophole making is likely to result in a bad law.

Worse, depending on the defining and tweaking, I'm not sure this is true (source?). Which kind of "expensive"?
1) Sticker price at time of purchase
2) Value vs other cars sold in the same year
3) Value right now.

You should answer this, but at the same time, note that you're doing it the hard way from a public-policy standpoint. The dollar value of a car is still several levels removed from things that are undesirable from a public-policy standpoint and will result in all kinds of silliness (are aftermarket lightweight alloy wheels good because they save fuel and roadwear or bad because show-off are bad? How about fat tires? Or Ford charging more for eco-boost V4s and less for bad-mileage V6s?)

We've learned that road wear is proportional to the axle weight to the 4th power. Road wear is expensive. So tax gross vehicle weight to recover the state's cost of road repair. (of course since heavy cars get worse mileage, a gas tax works too).

Actually driving causes road wear, so a VMTs, Gas tax, and tolls a seem good. A gas tax is the easiest, cheapest and least-intrusive to collect. Side note: Leno's car collection, stowed in barns, is costless to society: no driving, no parking, yeah! So maybe rich people should be actually encouraged to take drive-able vehicles off the road.

Driving at *rush hour* causes congestion and triggers the need for more roads. Congestion charges (variable tolls) get at this directly--and rich people are more likely to pay them!

Parking cars (and cheap parking) clogs roads. Performance parking in Boston (as spots get scare, prices go up...DC is trying it) would work like a congestion charge. That, plus a tax on garage parking (raising the one we already have) could be devoted to MBTA. (if rich people drive every day, they'd pay it)

A Tolled CBD congestion perimeter is less acceptable to downtown merchants than performance parking, but has been shown to be very effective in de-congesting the core and promoting (and funding) transit.

In all your proposals to tax expensive cars seems just a "class warfare" thing and really doesn't advance any public policy objectives better than existing (or available alternative) fees & taxes. I just don't see that high-value cars are "bad" in any way that you'd want to make discouraging them a priority. A lot of American jobs are devoted to making those big, expensive cars (including BMW, Mercedes, and other "foreign" marques).

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

This kind of technical-defining, peripheral tweaking, and loophole making is likely to result in a bad law.

Worse, depending on the defining and tweaking, I'm not sure this is true (source?). Which kind of "expensive"?
1) Sticker price at time of purchase
2) Value vs other cars sold in the same year
3) Value right now.

You should answer this, but at the same time, note that you're doing it the hard way from a public-policy standpoint. The dollar value of a car is still several levels removed from things that are undesirable from a public-policy standpoint and will result in all kinds of silliness (are aftermarket lightweight alloy wheels good because they save fuel and roadwear or bad because show-off are bad? How about fat tires? Or Ford charging more for eco-boost V4s and less for bad-mileage V6s?)

We've learned that road wear is proportional to the axle weight to the 4th power. Road wear is expensive. So tax gross vehicle weight to recover the state's cost of road repair. (of course since heavy cars get worse mileage, a gas tax works too).

Actually driving causes road wear, so a VMTs, Gas tax, and tolls a seem good. A gas tax is the easiest, cheapest and least-intrusive to collect. Side note: Leno's car collection, stowed in barns, is costless to society: no driving, no parking, yeah! So maybe rich people should be actually encouraged to take drive-able vehicles off the road.

Driving at *rush hour* causes congestion and triggers the need for more roads. Congestion charges (variable tolls) get at this directly--and rich people are more likely to pay them!

Parking cars (and cheap parking) clogs roads. Performance parking in Boston (as spots get scare, prices go up...DC is trying it) would work like a congestion charge. That, plus a tax on garage parking (raising the one we already have) could be devoted to MBTA. (if rich people drive every day, they'd pay it)

A Tolled CBD congestion perimeter is less acceptable to downtown merchants than performance parking, but has been shown to be very effective in de-congesting the core and promoting (and funding) transit.

In all your proposals to tax expensive cars seems just a "class warfare" thing and really doesn't advance any public policy objectives better than existing (or available alternative) fees & taxes. I just don't see that high-value cars are "bad" in any way that you'd want to make discouraging them a priority. A lot of American jobs are devoted to making those big, expensive cars (including BMW, Mercedes, and other "foreign" marques).

Kelley Blue Book values or another independent third-party value assessment would be used to determine the value of the car for taxation purposes. Assessment would take place on a yearly basis, and the vehicle would be taxed yearly.

A VMT is too invasive, and I'm not looking to get rid of tolls or a gas tax by replacing them with the car tax scheme. Instead, the car tax supplements the tolls and the gas tax: an exemption could be perhaps created for cars you aren't actually driving, and this would have the benefit of incentivizing leaving those nice cars in your showroom.

As for parking... the situation as it is now, where you can pay $2.25 and assume risk to park on the street, or pay $20 to park in a garage, is exactly backwards in my opinion. You should always be paying less to park in a garage than you're paying for street level parking - I'd much rather see $2 garage parking and $20 street parking.

Finally, I don't want a tax 'devoted' to anything. All the money should go into a general fund, from which money is then allocated out. In effect, the same money goes to the same place, but it looks 'cleaner' on paper than 'and this tax money is only used for X, and THIS tax money only pays Y, and never the streams shall cross...'

 

[Arlington]

As for parking... the situation as it is now, where you can pay $2.25 and assume risk to park on the street, or pay $20 to park in a garage, is exactly backwards in my opinion. You should always be paying less to park in a garage than you're paying for street level parking - I'd much rather see $2 garage parking and $20 street parking.

Finally, I don't want a tax 'devoted' to anything. All the money should go into a general fund, from which money is then allocated out. In effect, the same money goes to the same place, but it looks 'cleaner' on paper than 'and this tax money is only used for X, and THIS tax money only pays Y, and never the streams shall cross...'

Garages charge what the market will bear. Nobody would build (or maintain) a garage if they could only charge $2, and I don't see any kind of transit-friendly universe in which the State should be building garages that charge only $2. The best you'll be able to do is raise the price on curbside spots to be at market-parity with garages.

Popular/democratic notions of justice favor political solutions that look like user fees instead of raw coercive tax collection. If taxes on the "wrong kind" of mobility can be used to fund the "right kind" (more-cost effective / more progressive) I think that's where the consensus is likely to form. Sorry if that's not what you'd want.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Garages charge what the market will bear. Nobody would build (or maintain) a garage if they could only charge $2, and I don't see any kind of transit-friendly universe in which the State should be building garages that charge only $2. The best you'll be able to do is raise the price on curbside spots to be at market-parity with garages.

Popular/democratic notions of justice favor political solutions that look like user fees instead of raw coercive tax collection. If taxes on the "wrong kind" of mobility can be used to fund the "right kind" (more-cost effective / more progressive) I think that's where the consensus is likely to form. Sorry if that's not what you'd want.

The state's station garages - Alewife, Quincy Adams, Commuter Rail Stations - should cost nothing, to further incentivize parking there and taking the train. Add it to the cost of operations.

Market-parity between meters and garages isn't a setup that necessarily thrills me, but I'd rather see those prices jacked up even if there's no associated dialing down of garage prices. It should always be equal or cheaper to park in the garage - the garage isn't going away, we might as well do the next best thing and attract as many cars into it and off of the curb as we can.

And I argue that a car tax would be a user fee. Technically, yes, it's an ownership fee, but outside of 'car collections' (how many people have collections anyway?) the odds favor car owners actually using their car pretty regularly.

Sorry if I sound like I'm trying to levy punishments for "the wrong lifestyle." That's not really my intent.

 

[Matthew]

Most of the park-n-ride garages on the rapid transit do fill up. They don't need to be any cheaper during peak hours. Off-peak, they could lower their prices.

Street parking and garage parking should both be priced variably according to demand, like any other commodity, and as Donald Shoup has written about extensively.

The real answer of what to do with street parking is "don't build our roads so damn wide in the first place." Unfortunately, since they were built so damn wide, street parking is better than adding more travel lanes. Unless you are talking about a highway where people are expected to drive fast.

 

[Arlington]

The state's station garages - Alewife, Quincy Adams, Commuter Rail Stations - should cost nothing, to further incentivize parking there and taking the train. Add it to the cost of operations.

Most garages and commuter facilities are already at capacity--full of paying customers. Really, we should be raising prices until there's exactly1 spot empty at 9am every day...then the T would know that it was pricing exactly right, having squeezed every dollar out of users without a drop in ridership..and then take that extra $ and use it to either build more parking or enhance service in some other way.

Where you're at capacity, making parking free won't boost ridership and most "Free stuff" programs result in a tragedy of the commons. Economics tells us that the most people will be most happy when they are all paying a price for a service that they think is "worth it".

Adding free parking costs (loss of current revenues and any future construction) to the cost of operations will make the T's finances worse, not better. The goal here is to get the T out of its financial mess. Free parking doesn't do that (and is regressive...failing to charge people who are rich enough to own cars and who would be (and are) happy to pay).

If you're going to spend a lot of money and give stuff away free, parking is probably not the most cost-effective thing you can do to boost ridership/use (free parking mostly stimulates overconsumption of parking).

[Edit] More and cheaper parking at Alewife will likely be used first by people who today bus, bike or walk to the station. Yes, some people might switch from a 100% auto commute to a park and ride, but if you want to get more people into transit, instead of parking, consider subsidizing better bus access.

 

[Matthew]

I wouldn't shoot for 1 empty space at 9am. Too little margin for error. The idea of demand-responsive parking prices is to make it likely that you'll find a parking space in a short amount of time. I think 85% utilization is a typical rule-of-thumb benchmark for street parking. Maybe that's less appropriate for a park-n-ride though, where most people are coming to park for 9 hours straight, or so.

Constructing garages is expensive, on the order of $40-50,000 a parking space. The T can't go around building these things (like in Salem) and not attempt to recover costs. Plus, the way they obsess over parking is dangerous to finances as well. A big old lot in the middle of nowhere is great for exactly one type of transit usage: CBD commuting. But that kind of utilization is hopeless for making the infrastructure investment worthwhile. If the T ever wants to see higher farebox recovery rates, they're going to need to find a way to promote all-day, two-way usage of their lines.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

The real answer of what to do with street parking is "don't build our roads so damn wide in the first place." Unfortunately, since they were built so damn wide, street parking is better than adding more travel lanes. Unless you are talking about a highway where people are expected to drive fast.

Of course, the real 'best option' here is to eliminate street parking, freeing up the valuable space for wider sidewalks, expanding storefronts, or even - and I know you're going to hate this - greenspace.

[Edit] More and cheaper parking at Alewife will likely be used first by people who today bus, bike or walk to the station. Yes, some people might switch from a 100% auto commute to a park and ride, but if you want to get more people into transit, instead of parking, consider subsidizing better bus access.

I tend to overlook buses, but that's a personal fault and you raise a few excellent points.

Constructing garages is expensive, on the order of $40-50,000 a parking space. The T can't go around building these things (like in Salem) and not attempt to recover costs. Plus, the way they obsess over parking is dangerous to finances as well. A big old lot in the middle of nowhere is great for exactly one type of transit usage: CBD commuting. But that kind of utilization is hopeless for making the infrastructure investment worthwhile. If the T ever wants to see higher farebox recovery rates, they're going to need to find a way to promote all-day, two-way usage of their lines.

I reject the argument that there can ever be such a thing as 'the wrong kind of transit usage' - the more people you have using transit, the better, no matter why they're using it or what for.

As for promoting two-way usage - I believe we've had this conversation before, and I suggested making far-flung stations destinations by building malls, or something similar.

 

[Matthew]

I didn't say it was "wrong" to use transit for CBD commuting. It's not wrong at all. But it shouldn't be the only way the T is used. At least, if you want it to stop being a financial basket-case.

Building "malls" just conjures up visions of massive parking lots and big box stores. Maybe you meant something else. Why not just build the stations inside of existing town centers? Hey, many of our towns already have train stations inside of them -- that's how they grew up in the first place.

As for expanding sidewalks, well, it can go to a point. But there's some roads which are so ridiculously wide I'm not sure that expanding sidewalks is enough. It's still an open problem, how to reclaim some of that space.

This reminds me of: http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/11/street-narrowing-circa-1200-ad.html

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

I didn't say it was "wrong" to use transit for CBD commuting. It's not wrong at all. But it shouldn't be the only way the T is used. At least, if you want it to stop being a financial basket-case.

Building "malls" just conjures up visions of massive parking lots and big box stores. Maybe you meant something else. Why not just build the stations inside of existing town centers? Hey, many of our towns already have train stations inside of them -- that's how they grew up in the first place.

As for expanding sidewalks, well, it can go to a point. But there's some roads which are so ridiculously wide I'm not sure that expanding sidewalks is enough. It's still an open problem, how to reclaim some of that space.

This reminds me of: http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/11/street-narrowing-circa-1200-ad.html

I mean malls like the Prudential Center, or the Burlington Mall, or the Natick Collection. Perhaps that's too "big boxy" - but it's better than nothing.

Also, I happen to think the Natick Collection is pretty cool.

 

[whighlander]

Most garages and commuter facilities are already at capacity--full of paying customers. Really, we should be raising prices until there's exactly1 spot empty at 9am every day...then the T would know that it was pricing exactly right, having squeezed every dollar out of users without a drop in ridership..and then take that extra $ and use it to either build more parking or enhance service in some other way.

Where you're at capacity, making parking free won't boost ridership and most "Free stuff" programs result in a tragedy of the commons. Economics tells us that the most people will be most happy when they are all paying a price for a service that they think is "worth it".

Adding free parking costs (loss of current revenues and any future construction) to the cost of operations will make the T's finances worse, not better. The goal here is to get the T out of its financial mess. Free parking doesn't do that (and is regressive...failing to charge people who are rich enough to own cars and who would be (and are) happy to pay).

If you're going to spend a lot of money and give stuff away free, parking is probably not the most cost-effective thing you can do to boost ridership/use (free parking mostly stimulates overconsumption of parking).

[Edit] More and cheaper parking at Alewife will likely be used first by people who today bus, bike or walk to the station. Yes, some people might switch from a 100% auto commute to a park and ride, but if you want to get more people into transit, instead of parking, consider subsidizing better bus access.

Arlington -- remind me not to hire you to develop a marketing plan for under utilized assets

M-F 8:00 AM to about 5:30 PM Alewife garage is nominally full indeed pre-recession there was overflow demand and they accomodated people parking on the spiral ramps

But such is not the case between 5:30 PM and 1:00 AM or 5:00 AM and 7:30 AM M-F and definitely not the case all day Saturday and Sunday

So what do you do:
1) get rid of the person in the booth - -all the parking is charged RF-wise to either a Charlie Card or a EZ-Pass Transponder -- that will cut you cost of operations substantially
2) drop the price of parking off-peak until the garage is reasonably full -- something like $3.00 to park off-peak
3) rent night time spaces to people who don't have available parking

 

[AmericanFolkLegend]

Kelley Blue Book values or another independent third-party value assessment would be used to determine the value of the car for taxation purposes. Assessment would take place on a yearly basis, and the vehicle would be taxed yearly.

A VMT is too invasive,

You get to Kelley Blue Book the same way you assess a VMT: Check the odometer.

 

[Justin7]

This kind of technical-defining, peripheral tweaking, and loophole making is likely to result in a bad law.

Worse, depending on the defining and tweaking, I'm not sure this is true (source?). Which kind of "expensive"?
1) Sticker price at time of purchase
2) Value vs other cars sold in the same year
3) Value right now.

You should answer this, but at the same time, note that you're doing it the hard way from a public-policy standpoint. The dollar value of a car is still several levels removed from things that are undesirable from a public-policy standpoint and will result in all kinds of silliness (are aftermarket lightweight alloy wheels good because they save fuel and roadwear or bad because show-off are bad? How about fat tires? Or Ford charging more for eco-boost V4s and less for bad-mileage V6s?)

We've learned that road wear is proportional to the axle weight to the 4th power. Road wear is expensive. So tax gross vehicle weight to recover the state's cost of road repair. (of course since heavy cars get worse mileage, a gas tax works too).

Actually driving causes road wear, so a VMTs, Gas tax, and tolls a seem good. A gas tax is the easiest, cheapest and least-intrusive to collect. Side note: Leno's car collection, stowed in barns, is costless to society: no driving, no parking, yeah! So maybe rich people should be actually encouraged to take drive-able vehicles off the road.

Driving at *rush hour* causes congestion and triggers the need for more roads. Congestion charges (variable tolls) get at this directly--and rich people are more likely to pay them!

Parking cars (and cheap parking) clogs roads. Performance parking in Boston (as spots get scare, prices go up...DC is trying it) would work like a congestion charge. That, plus a tax on garage parking (raising the one we already have) could be devoted to MBTA. (if rich people drive every day, they'd pay it)

A Tolled CBD congestion perimeter is less acceptable to downtown merchants than performance parking, but has been shown to be very effective in de-congesting the core and promoting (and funding) transit.

In all your proposals to tax expensive cars seems just a "class warfare" thing and really doesn't advance any public policy objectives better than existing (or available alternative) fees & taxes. I just don't see that high-value cars are "bad" in any way that you'd want to make discouraging them a priority. A lot of American jobs are devoted to making those big, expensive cars (including BMW, Mercedes, and other "foreign" marques).

Did you mean to quote CommutingBostonStudent and accidentally quote me instead? My statement was only meant to point out that a flat gas tax isn't actually very regressive.

 

[Arlington]

M-F 8:00 AM to about 5:30 PM Alewife garage is nominally full indeed pre-recession there was overflow demand and they accomodated people parking on the spiral ramps

But such is not the case between 5:30 PM and 1:00 AM or 5:00 AM and 7:30 AM M-F and definitely not the case all day Saturday and Sunday

I'm mostly responding to the idea that parking should be free at rush hour. Alewife at 9am is not an under-used asset--its price should go up. Off hours (if you can come up with a non-confusing pricing scheme that encourages parkers to leave by 8am the next morning) sure, drop prices.