Interesting read. Have they ever done something like this in the US?

Interesting – I just posted the begining of the “Giving up the car experiment”

Yes, someone in the US (Los Angeles of all places) is considering giving up the auto.

Best Wishes.

Where is it posted?

if i didn’t fear getting run off the road by soccer mom’s in hummers, i would seriously consider biking to work during the summer…of course i would have to get a functional bike too…

I thought it very odd that they all left for work at 8 and then complained of traffic when driving. That should be expected.

I enjoy the convience of the car and enjoy driving even if it is in traffic. However, public transport can be more relaxing unless it is cramped and people’s ipod headphones blast music out into public. However, it can also be expensive, often albeit certainly not always, then driving.

Push.

Jon,
I definitely agree that motorists tend to be unforgiving of bikers. This even happens to me in Williamsburg when I’m biking along Richmond Road… people just blow right by, just inches away from my bike. Unfortunately I refuse to pay the ridiculous price for a parking pass at william and mary so I have to bike to class…

Mike,
I agree that I do really like being in a car because:
a) I can listen to music without headphones.
b) I’m not forced to stand up for part of the trip (Metro)
c) I’m not crammed between too fat sweaty guys at least once a week.

I think although the initial cost is expensive, you end up saving on wear & tear on your car. I guess that’s kind of an ambiguous expense though. I save a lot of money taking the bus only because parking at the Metro parking lot costs $3.75 per day and the bus only costs $1.35 round trip.

believe it or not george, the parking pass at W&M is relatively cheap…considering that you can park close to where you have classes and when we were there it was around 150 bucks. At cornell, the parking pass for off campus students was around $620 and similar price at GT for the bro.

doesnt the WAT bus go by your area?

I have a 50min walk to school. A bus ride that varies from 20min-50min depending on traffic and promptness of busdriver, or a 25min door to door trip by tube.

One way on the bus cots 1.50, one way on the tube costs 2.80. These are only because I get 50% off fares. Walking is of course free.

I don’t really have a point other than to complain that transportation costs in london are insane.

Why is that insane?

Speaking of negative externalities, why the assumption that cheap transportation is an endowed right or entitlement?

Lets consider a common thread stated here numerous times: I won’t purchase a hybrid car because it costs $4K more, and the $ return on this is negative relative to non-hybrid.

What is the goal? Is it to grow wealth by shopping at Wal*Mart (paying $5 for a shirt so that I can save $7 over the social price and have $7 left over for other purchases). Is the metric that simple? Would you pay the extra $4K for the hybrid on some other basis? Survival? Social responsibility? Or is it clear-cut balance sheet at work and stepping off the balance sheet or including external costs are considered stupid?

Lets assume you earn $9K per month. How much is a fair amount for externalities overhead that you’d have no issues paying for?

I think we focus strongly on the pricetag because that’s what the vendor wants, but would you be willing to look at a consumer object or service and ask yourself what the true cost of the item is regardless of what it says on the pricetag. Every time.

I love this graphic because it shows that the people are perfectly satisfied buying products at the “private cost” line even with full knowledge that the “social cost” line exists. There really is no excuse other than an abject willfulness to have someone else bear that cost so that you can have the extra $7 in your pocket. Is that a function of education, or is it enough to smugly know that only chumps pay $12 for something that you get for $5?

Here’s the main question: If you know the social costs line exists, and the area between the two cost lines is blinking in red, “Danger-Danger Will Robinson”, what’s your excuse?

No preview so I probably screwed up the image.

Well, my inline graphic got stripped.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ef/Negative_externality.jpg

Quite interesting for me as a European, as for us making a fuss over commuting by public transport is often seen as such an American thing, even though there’s more than enough people here too that wouldn’t set foot on a bus.

I don’t even have a drivers license, and neither does my fiancee – I’ve never really found it worthwhile (and I’m now 31). At the moment I’m working from home, but previously I was commuting 1h 15m each way into central London, which meant 20 minutes walking to the train station, two trains followed by 10 minutes walking to the office.

Sure it was tiresome sometimes, but a car wouldn’t save me much time, would cost as much or more, and the time on the train was time I spent sleeping or reading and the hour of walking each day did wonders both for my health and gave me fresh air.

“Why is that insane?

Speaking of negative externalities, why the assumption that cheap transportation is an endowed right or entitlement?”

I certainly was not saying it was an endowed right or an entitlement in fact what I said was that prices were insanely high. Yes I do think over 5 and a half dollars for a single zone 1 tube ride is expensive.

As far as externalities are concern thats one reason why the governments tax companies and specific products. Gas is taxed because of the negative externality associated with driving. Gas taxes are rather high as the goverments attempts two things 1) to decrease usage and force consumers to bear the marginal social cost, and 2) because gas is relatively inelastic and thus follows the ramsey rules.

London even goes a step further by charging a congestion charge for driving in central london. This is to deal both with traffic and in some small part with pollution (at least according to the euro commissions response to the EU’s Lisbon Strategy NRP).

So the idea is that by taxing you are already forcing consumers to bear the marginal social costs of their actions. The argument you can make is that the tax isn’t high enough. Indeed George has done this many a time.

Vidar,

Are you a londoner/brit? If so I find it odd that you identified yourself as a european. Just that many that I have talked to here (london) would standfastly refuse to be identified as european. I ask because london obviously is such a cosmopolitan and diverse city that just working there gives no real indiction of where one is from.

sorry george that was me speaking but I forgot to type in the handle.

I understand your point but there are several items:

1. Using the term insane implies that it’s out of the expected range. What is the expected range? Does it have anything to do with the devaluation of the dollar overseas (deficit funding at home) and/or the preferential prices that ARAMCO gives the US government vs the taxes imposed by Euro governments?

2. Redress through taxes? Yes I’ve heard george say it but I hadn’t heard you say it as a valid approach. In any case, taxes are a blunt instrument that does not deal with the cost difference directly, but rather indirectly, and in my view regressively. Why should I pay the cost difference through taxes (I’m not only speaking of fuel costs but of labor (healthcare, retirements, wages), maintenance and environment as well), and further again, taxes levied don’t necessarily go to address the difference between the lines but get diverted to other areas away from social cost mitigation, for political reasons — say, to be siphoned off for corporate welfare even.

It’s not that I don’t respect academic economics; I just find it theoretical, soft and a social science despite having models, charts and calculus to give the appearance of validity. Put Mankiew and DeLong into a room together and they’ll claw each other’s eyes out. Put 200 economists into a room and the consensus goes out the window while they call each other flaming idiots with the IQ of mildly severely autistic kids. The only consensus is that economists can appear authoritative when they teach out of the book that they wrote and made the students buy. In other words, when they have a captive, non-critical audience.