Kalim Kassam recently read a piece on the Republican party’s reluctance to invest in transit infrastructure, and he asks if William Lind provides evidence somewhere for his contention that Republican voters ride trains.
Not quite. He resorts to high income as a proxy:
Studies of passengers on rail-transit systems across the country indicate many conservatives are on board. Chicago’s excellent METRA commuter trains offer one example. A recent survey revealed that in the six-county area METRA serves, 11 percent of commuters with incomes of $75,000 or more commuted by train. In Lake County, the mean earnings of rail commuters were more than $76,000. (The figure for bus riders was less than $14,000.) Not surprisingly, the area METRA serves regularly sends Republicans to Congress.
For those not familiar with Lind’s conservative case for public transit, he argues that most bus passengers are transit dependents with no better way to get around, but most train passengers are riders from choice:
So why are conservatives using the public transportation we are told they oppose? Because being stuck in traffic isn’t fun, even if you are driving a BMW. On a commuter train or Light Rail line, you whiz past all those cars going no-where at 50 or 60 miles per hour — reading, working on your laptop, or relaxing, instead of staring at some other guy’s bumper.
Another pillar of his argument is that highways are not a free-market outcome; they’re heavily subsidized:
Still, libertarians shriek, “Subsidies!” — ignoring the fact that highways only cover 58 percent of their costs from user fees, including the gas tax.
The obvious answer isn’t to counter-subsidize the competition but to increase highway user fees, whether in the form of increased gas taxes or new tolls.