PRICING:Honest pricing would doom PC projects

Mark Delucchi has run the numbers for the US and reports that the external costs and subsidies of autos are actually much lower than the external costs and subsidies to transit. And electric cars don’t compute either. So, if we “got the prices right” there would actually be more incentive to use our present cars and roads, and less to use transit.

Writing in the Univ Cal’s Transp Center’s ACCESS (#16 Spring 2000, p19) Delucchi says: “It really doesn’t matter how one does the accounting. In virtually every case the total subsidy to transit greatly exceeds the total subsidy to auto use, per passenger, in both absolute terms and relative to the prices users currently pay. Thus the elimination of subsidies in accordance with a plan for marginal social cost pricing (MSCP) and optimal investment would, on average, reduce, not increase the use of transit... In certain places, at certain times, (implementation of charges for external costs) might add up to noticeable reductions in congestion, air pollution, accidents, or energy use. But it is inconceivable that social-cost pricing, by itself, would dramatically reverse the heretofore ineluctable, longterm, worldwide increase in ownership and use of motor vehicles. The private benefits of motor-vehicle use are too great, and the costs of alternatives too high, for MSCP to have anything more than marginal effects. Recent studies of the effects of pricing on mode choice and travel, along with evidence of growing auto ownership and use in countries with much higher vehicle and fuel taxes than the US support this conclusion. The wealthier a society gets, the more cars it buys and the more miles it drives. To price modes at MSC will not reverse this trend.”

Makes great sense, and the numbers look credible. (In the table we’ve rounded his numbers.) Transit is just not in the same cost ballpark, and of course for most trips it offers a lesser service as well, so even if it were in the same cost ballpark, it often wouldn’t fly.

Now most unfortunately, Delucchi goes on to say that despite the social cost numbers favoring the car, “society can decide” to put “social constraints” on the automobile and to control it by quantitative restraints. And landuse planning can be used to restrict the automobile and favor transit.

But why? If, as Delucchi calculates, the social costs of alternatives are so much greater than the costs of the automobile, what possible justification is there for governmental policies to thwart or reduce auto use?

Delucchi throws up some vague phrases like distributive fairness, uncertainty and risk, ecological stability, quality of life, and equal opportunity as if they justify “society” deciding restraints on the automobile. Society does not decide anything. It is not an entity that makes decisions. That kind of language is a sick euphemism to put a positive spin on arbitrary government intervention. George Washington said it best: “Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is power.”

It is possible to have a dialog with environmentalists as long as they are prepared to compute costs and benefits and to respect people’s right to choose, and let the chips fall where they may. But when they say “To hell with those calculations, we know what’s best and we’ll use our political muscle to get it,” then they are beyond the pale. Just another bunch of righteous powermongers wanting to impose their particular vision on others. Fascists, to be blunt about it. (mdelucchi@ucdavis.edu socrates.berkeley.edu/~uctc access@uclink.berkeley.edu)