The Cost of Using an Automobile in Place of Public Transit

What is the Cost of Using an Automobile in Place of Public Transit?

Merewitz (1972) notes how San Franciscans have long sought to differentiate their city from its sibling, Los Angeles. They have long disdained its pattern of development, as Los Angeles has dedicated large fractions of its land to driving, storing, and maintaining the automobile (Merewitz, 1972). The BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) provides San Franciscans with an efficient and speedy alternative to private transportation. As the building and financing of BART was underway in the late sixties, officials decided that one way of increasing demand for BART was to increase the price of using an automobile.

Merewitz (1972) establishes a case for this argument by noting that autos do not pay their monetized costs. San Francisco, for example, spent $43 million on autos in fiscal 1971, but collected only $30 million in its share of the gasoline tax and license fees. Furthermore, autos impose social costs for which they do not pay. Each driver imposes congestion costs on other drivers and all drivers impose air pollution costs on everyone who breathes. As a solution to preventing congestion in Los Angeles, highway space is expanded, which takes away land. It is for this reason that Los Angeles is considered by Merewitz (1972) to be squandering its land. The economic logic here is that public transportation achieves the same objective while using the land more efficiently by being cleaner and accommodating a greater number of commuters (Merewitz, 1972). In addition, Merewitz (1972) points out that certain proceeds of California gas tax are supposed to be used in populous counties for mass transit.