Yes, I was never against that. I initially argued/asked where do you get the money to implement it if the city is broke? And until that is solved decades from now maybe, how should people get to work without their cars?
Colorado is shipping a regional rail project in the front range. Service will start in ‘29 and the district is voting on new sales tax to fund the expansions.
It’s a very solvable problem. We’re also not talking about removing car infrastructure just funding a small amount of reasonable local transit. You can get quite far with Bus Rapid Transit, bike facilities, etc. The goal is to reduce the vehicle miles traveled in cars in general. Right now it’s very hard for any individual to make that choice because the transit infrastructure sucks.
The sales tax comes out to $0.03 more on a $100 purchase. I don’t think this argument about providing these types of social services really holds that much water. That obviously depends on the actual tax amount but in the case of Front Range Passenger Rail it’s safe to say that the value provided by having a train outweighs the mill-levy.
I don’t know anything about your country’s situation so I can’t speak to it specifically. The US spends $200bn/year on roads and then there is the massive socialized cost of owning a car. Providing alternative options pretty clearly outweighs the social cost.
Taking regional rail to avoid a car trip would already pay back the sales tax I will pay many times over.
> US/Colorado money
CO is quite constrained in taxes compared to other states. Any tax increase must be voted on and have the spending already determined. This sounds nice in theory, in practice people hate new taxes intrinsically even when services are horrifically deteriorated.
