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PUBLIC TRANSIT IN LA IS ALREADY FREE...
Author: PK R.74
Date: 12-08-2019 - 17:21
The bums, crooks and crazy ride for free in the LA basin NOW !
I have seen just about everything on my ride between 7th and El Segundo for the past 10 years.
God help us if we get a "free" system !
BOB2 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's not new "news", about the situation of retail
> vacancy and consolidation. It's just D Nile (oh,
> not that river in Egypt?), I meant to say "denial"
> by many local governments that saw sales tax
> growth (infinitely one would assume...)in an
> ultimately constrained geographic or demographic
> time space continuum as the "fix all" public
> finance "flavor of the week" to all of their
> fiscal woes.
>
> Many a City has even increased these deals, in the
> face of this reality. And many, despite the quite
> often very real and "current" taxpayer costs of
> all of the improvements these developments needed
> to supposedly "compete" with other Cities for that
> long term "sales tax" from these developments.
>
> In many cases and for a number of years, this
> "front end" public infrastructure costs, to build
> these projects, was paid for by schemes such as
> redevelopment, who just stole the tax increment to
> pay for such improvements, from our school
> children.
>
> This is what has precipitated the fight over the
> collection and distribution of on-line sales tax.
> I've worried for a while about the "backward
> bending" impacts of too high of retail sales taxes
> on retail business. It is a concern also because
> we saw a lot of sales tax instability with the
> 2008 recession, affecting such things as funding
> for the Perris line, because we depend on Sales
> taxes too much for rail and transit funding.
>
> The conversion of some of this excess retail space
> into housing by "re-use" at a BART station
> location like this, with a likely "Transit
> Oriented Development" (TOD) housing density bonus
> of some kind, with the neighborhood housing rents
> this high, is likely to be way more profitable,
> than the lease income from Walgreens in that
> market.
>
> Now, if we could just get a lost more of these TOD
> residents to use the T in TOD? Free transit
> passes for TOD residents as a required condition
> in such developments should be considered. This
> should absolutely be a condition, only at
> locations "on" top of transit (1/4 mile or less)
> where parking requirements are lowered as a result
> of a "TOD" designation.
>
> I've done several reviews of "free transit"
> (and/or lowering fares, by increasing fare
> subsidies) as a public "policy" option. And,
> there are actually some good arguments, that for
> urban transit systems (local bus and rail systems)
> it may be more efficient, to give the service away
> free, which would attract more riders, at least
> from the perspective of the positive "time cost"
> savings on local urban traffic. On the other
> hand, many such schemes would also result in
> overloaded, overcrowded, trains and buses. And
> thus, slower and more costly transit systems to
> operate, which would offset much of that benefit.
I have seen just about everything on my ride between 7th and El Segundo for the past 10 years.
God help us if we get a "free" system !
BOB2 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's not new "news", about the situation of retail
> vacancy and consolidation. It's just D Nile (oh,
> not that river in Egypt?), I meant to say "denial"
> by many local governments that saw sales tax
> growth (infinitely one would assume...)in an
> ultimately constrained geographic or demographic
> time space continuum as the "fix all" public
> finance "flavor of the week" to all of their
> fiscal woes.
>
> Many a City has even increased these deals, in the
> face of this reality. And many, despite the quite
> often very real and "current" taxpayer costs of
> all of the improvements these developments needed
> to supposedly "compete" with other Cities for that
> long term "sales tax" from these developments.
>
> In many cases and for a number of years, this
> "front end" public infrastructure costs, to build
> these projects, was paid for by schemes such as
> redevelopment, who just stole the tax increment to
> pay for such improvements, from our school
> children.
>
> This is what has precipitated the fight over the
> collection and distribution of on-line sales tax.
> I've worried for a while about the "backward
> bending" impacts of too high of retail sales taxes
> on retail business. It is a concern also because
> we saw a lot of sales tax instability with the
> 2008 recession, affecting such things as funding
> for the Perris line, because we depend on Sales
> taxes too much for rail and transit funding.
>
> The conversion of some of this excess retail space
> into housing by "re-use" at a BART station
> location like this, with a likely "Transit
> Oriented Development" (TOD) housing density bonus
> of some kind, with the neighborhood housing rents
> this high, is likely to be way more profitable,
> than the lease income from Walgreens in that
> market.
>
> Now, if we could just get a lost more of these TOD
> residents to use the T in TOD? Free transit
> passes for TOD residents as a required condition
> in such developments should be considered. This
> should absolutely be a condition, only at
> locations "on" top of transit (1/4 mile or less)
> where parking requirements are lowered as a result
> of a "TOD" designation.
>
> I've done several reviews of "free transit"
> (and/or lowering fares, by increasing fare
> subsidies) as a public "policy" option. And,
> there are actually some good arguments, that for
> urban transit systems (local bus and rail systems)
> it may be more efficient, to give the service away
> free, which would attract more riders, at least
> from the perspective of the positive "time cost"
> savings on local urban traffic. On the other
> hand, many such schemes would also result in
> overloaded, overcrowded, trains and buses. And
> thus, slower and more costly transit systems to
> operate, which would offset much of that benefit.
