Who's "we"? The public is mostly not made up of consultants and do not appreciate consultant logic being applied to everything. People would prefer to define values and then act on those values.
So you would be good with spending more money and even increasing total carbon footprint, if it just felt good?
Seriously, if you're not going to measure anything or use logic, I'm not sure how you can even call them "defined" or "values". It sounds like, "I saw it on TV/internet/billboard so it must be true".
Yes, because that is exactly how American cities are currently built today -- expensive carbon-intensive roads paved out to sprawling suburbs, the independent financial upkeep of which is not sustainable long-term. [0]
The costs for car-based infrastructure are also sky high: $1+ million per mile of new road, excluding constant maintenance in repavings, potholes, and drainage systems. [1]
From an economic lens, transportation infrastructure is a net gain to the economy. To me, there is no reason why public transit subsidies should be scrutinized on financials above and beyond how public roads are scrutinized.
If we recognize roads are useful, then public transit should be an even more efficient use of taxpayer dollars on mobility per infrastructure footprint costs alone -- even before carbon reductions are considered at all.
Strong towns is a terrible source of numbers and has been debunked many times. Streetcar suburbs have been sustaining themselves for 140 years - rebuilding their infrastructure. Infrastructure is a tiny % of any government budget (https://pedestrianobservations.com/2024/10/07/taxes-are-not-...) and so infrastructure spending could go up a lot.
I didn't say that. The OP argued "Actually this is bad because the cost per ton of carbon saved is higher than some other way to save carbon."
The original replyer pointed out that "ways to save carbon" are not necessarily fungible and there are other benefits to subsidized rail travel. The followon dismissal was to throw back and come up with a way to "price" those other benefits.
What I am objecting to is the entire chain of thinking that starts with trying to do simplistic, reductionist price comparisons and then refusing to consider other factors that don't fit in the pricing exercise.
That isn't "consultant logic", that's the way the world works. Resources are finite. We can't do everything everyone wants to do, so we need some means of prioritizing which things we are to do. You can call names all you want, but this is an unavoidable reality of existence.
