Why the commuter tax should be a non-starter
By adamg - 3/31/05 - 10:17 am
Carpundit says the proposal to tax drivers coming downtown during the day would turn Boston into another Detroit:
... Discouraging people from coming in will squeeze small businesses and large, forcing the small ones to close and the large ones to move out. Then, the only people here will be the rich ones who can afford the real estate in the good parts of town and the poor ones who can't afford to move from the bad parts of town. There will be no middle. Soon after that, the rich ones will move out, and Boston will be Detroit. ...
Comments
Uh...
If done well, it won't discourage people from coming in.
For instance, if a job requires an employee to have a car with them in the city in order to do their job, the job should be required to include the toll into the city in the employee's mileage.
And there should be exemptions on the toll for people who can't use the T or for whom it's a major inconvenience, like someone who carries a large oxygen tank or physically has a really hard time using the T.
If done well....
"If done well...."
That about says it all. No chance of that happening. But I'll throw a couple more things out for you:
What about people who don't live near the T?
What about people who don't even live in Massachusetts?
What about visitors to the city?
Economic incentives should be structured to encourage people to come to Boston, not discourage them.
But...
If you move to the burbs and you work in the city, you should pick somewhere to live that's near the T. This is what we collectivist-minded people do already, without any toll being held over us. Why would you drive in and out of the city every day unless you really couldn't use the T? That's just stupid.
People who can show an out-of-state ID and license plates could be exempt. And the state could crack down more harshly on people who live here and are registered elsewhere. People could also apply for a one-day free pass in and out of the city. Like, 4 per year per license plate, or something.
This encourages people to come into Boston on public transportation. I don't think anything should encourage more cars to come into the city. Overuse of cars should be discouraged everywhere by all means.
those are the wrong incentives, eeka
I disagree with several things there. I responded on my blog, because this discussion is worth publicizing. (Yes, UH gets a lot more traffic than I do, but not its obscure comment threads.)
http://carpundit.typepad.com/carpundit/2005/04/more_on_that_co.html
"There will be no middle."
"There will be no middle."
Not that yr humble correspondent disagrees with the the esteemed Carpundit, but he still must ask: is there a middle now? Because yr humble correspondent certainly doesn't see one.
They're still holding on in pockets
Outside of Beacon Hill and the Back Bay - a lot of people (like us) bought houses 10, 20 years ago, back when it was still possible for a middle-class family to do so. What happens, though, as they move out, either because they finally realize the schools suck or are just too hard to deal with (our plan: get the kid into Latin, but of course, that assumes that she wants to and then can get in and still leaves us to figure out what to do about sixth grade, since her school is K-5), or they retire and move to Florida?