I just don’t buy that.

Complain about it to Greg Mankiw, who computed in 2003 that a carbon-balancing externality tax would come out to $1/gallon, and a pollution-balancing tax would add $2.21/gallon. There are more costs of cars – one environmental study in 1999 concluded that to balance military protection, pollution, and social costs of sprawl, gas taxes would have to rise between $5 and $15 per gallon, depending on one’s assumptions.

Per-vehicle pollution is going down, but overall VMT driven had been going up until 2000, which more than made up for efficiency gains and pollution reductions.

My family is one of the 23 percent of Manhattan households with a car. But the four of us who have access to it use it generally just to leave the city for areas that don’t have public transit. It’s not really a conceit at all. I certainly understand the role roads play for essential functions in the city and the need to have them. No one is denying that. You seem, at least in your comments here, to be conflated nonessential and essential driving without allowing for the costs driving exacts on the residents of the area.

As for “impassable roadblock,” that’s due just as much to the fact that too many non-essential vehicles are on the road as it is to our supposedly antiquated and underbuilt road system. As history has shown time and time again, more roads simply leads to more congestion. Building more roads never alleviates congestion. Adding fees that deter non-essential driving and that essential driving can pass on to consumers is what works to clear up that roadblock.

I would argue, only, that transit advocates would most likely prefer an arrangement where more train tunnels are constructed into/around Manhattan (one just broke ground last week, another cargo tunnel is in the engineering stages), rather that Moses-style superhighways.

“Most of us, I’d say, do want to live car-free in New York City.”

I don’t think that’s true even if you confine New York City to Manhattan. But, Mr. Kabak, it would be quite conceit to think that you don’t “use” a road network simply because you don’t own a car. I don’t have a thing to do with the port facilities in Elizabeth, but I most certainly “use” them. You use the road network every day just by living a modern life in this city.

You also live at the center of a region of 20 million people — a region in which NYC is increasingly an impassable roadblock to regional commerce due to a transparently antiquated and underbuilt road system (in much the same way as its airport system had managed to cause problems for flight delays across virtually the entire country). This is not an island, at least not figuratively.

2. How is NASA unresponsive? The use of NASA technology is a titantic subsidy for the telecommunications industry. But, if you don’t see that, here’s another subsidy the government provides: Universal Access Fees–> http://www.entrepreneur.com/tr.....05655.html

3. If you want to live that way (with cars), fine. Just pay your share of the social costs that come with your decision, which right now, drivers most certainly do not.

The 2000 census found that 54 percent of New York City households are not car-owning house holds. In Manhattan, 78 percent of households are car-free; in the Bronx, 60%; in Brooklyn, 54 %. Queens (34 % car-free) and Staten Island (20 % car-free) are the only areas of the city where car owners are in the majority, and not coincidentally, those two boroughs sport some of the least transit-accessible areas in the city.

Most of us, I’d say, do want to live car-free in New York City.

2. NASA? That is really unpersuasive and unresponsive. Why is the MTA treated differently than other public utilities. I really don’t get it. We’d do better if the subsidies were targeted to poor riders, outside of the MTA’s own fare setting process, and not by indiscrimiately subsidizing rides.

3. Right, you hate cars. I assume you don’t own one and never use one. Excellent. Most of us, however, don’t want to live that way, because it’s a lousy way to live.

1. Grammar school science? You are kidding, right? CO2 is literally destroying our atmosphere. There is really no debate over this (unless you believe Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) and his band of science-denying loyalists). See: http://www.carbonemissions.com/ for more information. It isn’t hyperbole to suggest that carbon emissions pose the single greatest threat to man’s survival (with the possible exception of nuclear warfare).

2. Our phone, electricity, and gas systems are MASSIVELY subsidized by the Federal Government. How? Well, for starters, the phone networks are satellite based and took full advantage of NASA technology/launch pads to send satellites into orbit. Who tracks the satellites and makes sure they aren’t struck by orbital debris? Thats’s right, NASA, at the cost of the taxpayer. As for electricity, the Stimulus alone provides $61 billion for energy production and dissemination, including $11 billion for the creation of a Smart Energy Grid. Last but not least, Gas/Oil industries are subsidized by huge grants for research, safety, etc. For example, the Feds, under the Natural Gas Pipeline Safety Act of 1968, provide over 80% of the costs for ensuring the safety of pipelines. The Stimulus has provided $6.7 billion for a pipeline project, which extends 1,679 miles from the Rocky Mountain region in Colorado, through parts of Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and ending in eastern Ohio.

The industries you cited are the beneficiaries of massive government subsidies.

3. You are right about one thing: I have an anti-car bias. I disapprove of a method of transportation that is environmentally unsound, harmful to public health, geopolitically disruptive, and significantly more dangerous than other transit options (planes, trains, ships). Obviously cars have wonderful qualities– after all, who doesn’t like door-to-door service! But the social costs, borne all too often by the poorest of the world’s population, are far to great to justify the convenience.