Why do we still allow drivers to externalize most of the costs associated with cars? There is existing technology to extract co2 from the atmosphere, and the current cost of this should be the free market-based price for co2 emissions.
smsm42 · 4m ago
[delayed]
misja111 · 25m ago
I'm not sure if you're referring to the article, but that was about Ozone pollution.
In most countries cars are already taxed, in Switzerland as well. The tax is proportional to the weight of the car, so it compensates for higher fuel consumption. For similar reasons, EV's are taxed less.
dfxm12 · 58m ago
Auto industry is pretty powerful, worldwide, but also particularly locally around Switzerland. I mean powerful enough to shape people's opinions and sway regulations.
SkiFire13 · 59m ago
Because drivers are still a majority of the population, so this would be wildly unpopular
dfxm12 · 49m ago
Governments do a lot of wildly unpopular things. I can't speak specifically for Switzerland, but one recent example is UK's Online Safety Act 2023. Even related to drivers, speed cameras are enabled despite being unpopular.
sofixa · 19m ago
Unfortunately, that's not how Switzerland operates, because it's a very direct democracy where the status quo and the will of the majority takes priority over common sense and long term thinking. Full franchise (women being allowed to vote) didn't happen in all cantons until the 1990s (after it being made possible in the 1970s), because the existing voters (men) just voted against it.
dotancohen · 12m ago
Even disregarding your quip about when women got the vote, your post reads like another anti-Western agenda post that has become very popular in the past two years.
It appears that 200,000 people live in Geneva, and daily there are 700,000 "boarding passengers" in Geneva, which I take to mean that if someone transfers a bus, they get counted twice. That said, I suspect based on these numbers that the vast majority of the population are also public transit users.
Geneva Metro area has a million people. Still could be a majority of people using public transit. If true, I suspect it's not the vast majority though Switzerland as a whole is still majority car commuters I think.
theappsecguy · 26m ago
This is a very naive take. For one, we don't do this because a lot of people in a lot of places have no other choice. Not everyone lives in a developed European country, good luck living without a car in Texas.
mvieira38 · 1h ago
Public transportation should always be free in cities, with car commuters paying the operation costs. Not saying it can be implemented right away, but it should be a policy goal for cities.
You have all the right in the world to prefer driving and chilling on your air conditioning and stereo if you can afford it, but it shouldn't be free if you're occupying the lane space 10 people would occupy in a bus, and making the traffic slower for the bus in doing so.
aqme28 · 51s ago
I don't want to comment on if it should be free or not, but public transit and micromobility should always be cheaper than owning+driving a car. Even with NYC's controversial new congestion pricing, it's still cheaper to drive your family to the city than to take them via train.
bluGill · 24m ago
> Public transportation should always be free in cities, with car commuters paying the operation costs
Strongly disagree. There are too many perverse incentives that work against transit. If there are a lot of car commuters (which there will be - plumbers taking their tools to the job for example) they have inventive to pressure politicians to reduce that tax - any voting block will always be more powerful than the distributed masses. Your transit operators need to ensure transit doesn't become too popular: the more people taking transit the less cars there are paying that tax.
Besides almost no transit rider is worried about costs. They are all interested instead in better service, so use all the money you can get - including fares - to build better service. This is long term what everyone needs.
Yes you do need a program for the poor. However the majority of your people shouldn't be in that program.
jewayne · 12m ago
I'm going to guess that you're a fellow American. That's our answer to everything - build a ghetto. Why make anything nice for everybody when you can make it suck for 79% of us, Hell on Earth for another 20+%, and nice for the privileged few?
cyprien_g · 42m ago
Completely agree with you. I live in Montpellier, France, and we have had free public transportation for a year and a half, and it's very good. I definitely use my car less and take public transport more often.
Everyone, including people without cars, pays for the roads through taxes; it is only fair to do the same for public transport.
komali2 · 40m ago
> and making the traffic slower for the bus in doing so.
Strong agree except here, busses should have their own lanes at all expense to cars - even if this means entire roads are now no longer available to cars.
The private car should be the slowest, least convenient way to get where you're going.
mvieira38 · 26m ago
We have dedicated bus lanes where I live, and they don't really work during heavy rush hour, unfortunately, due to merging and turns. For example, most of the time the bus lane needs to be on the right so it can pick people up, so cars turning right will have to cross the bus lane somewhere. The opposite happens if the bus needs to take a left turn, or if another bus is stopped for maintenance or something and overtaking is necessary.
Not to mention a lot of people figure out where the cameras are for the bus lane auto-fines and just dodge them when appropriate, but I guess that's a third world problem.
jewayne · 3m ago
Actual Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems are in place all over the world, where there are physical barriers protecting the bus lane, and transit signal priority along the entire route. They work extremely well when they don't rely on motorists being on their best behavior.
roflmaostc · 43m ago
I live in Lausanne and also noticed that the air looks quite hazy these days.
But the MeteoSwiss weather app does not indicate any high levels of bad air quality.
Notably, ozone shows a value of 90µm/m^3 around Geneva. The article states 180µm/m^3.
All other index such as PM10 or NO2 are not crazy high either.
AshamedCaptain · 1h ago
For the record this is already par for the course for all the French cities surrounding Geneve.
paulette449 · 1h ago
Yes, true here in Lyon, 2hrs away from Geneva.
docdeek · 48m ago
Is it true in Lyon? I was under the impression that there was a special ticket to buy on peak pollution days but it was not free.
elashri · 40m ago
Ironically the small French cities next to Geneva are served by the TPG, the operator of busses in Geneva. And they don't have good coverage because of that.
They are the only public transportation available.
thmsths · 54m ago
How effective do they expect a measure like this to be? Once a car and its insurance are paid for, the marginal cost of a single trip is quite low. I seriously wonder how many people woke up that day and thought "instead of driving I will take the train today because they are waiving the $3 fee" not many I bet. If we want to encourage people to take public transports we need to keep them competitive against the car at all times not one random week per year.
Kapura · 51m ago
Maybe you don't see it, but many folks would value the pro-social benefit as being worth more than the marginal costs of driving a car. Like, for instance, if you're living through a spike in pollution, you may be motivated to do your part to help.
bluGill · 35m ago
It might be enough to get someone to try transit and see that it actually does work. If you are used to driving everywhere and have never used transit then you won't actually know how it works. Routes, timing, transfers, missing the bus... - there are a lot of things that are different about using transit, none of it hard, but all of it needs to be learned. Free transit may be enough to get you to try it once (exactly once!), and if transit works that will be enough that you become willing to figure out how to buy the fare in the future.
In general free transit is a bad idea - nearly everybody is willing to pay a small fee for transit and what they really want is better service (better service meaning more routes, faster routes, and more frequent - pick as many as possible)
komali2 · 55m ago
This is excellent, but I always wonder at the way cities seem to bend over backwards for the worst technology for moving people ever invented, and don't dare do anything that deprioritizing the use of this technology.
Alongside a gorgeous canal, with bike lanes there as well as what appears to be a train station a few blocks away, as well as what may be some kind of street car station? I can't imagine a more phenomenal waste of space given the far superior transport options surrounding this area. Go west just a bit and you can see a much more useful use of that space: some greenspace https://maps.app.goo.gl/xmDdqxob4LegGvwt5 (I don't understand why this business' pin is there but so be it).
Go east a bit and see how an entire bridge is wasted on giving cars some complicated spaghetti to let them go either north or west. https://maps.app.goo.gl/GQNMabh7d9cEf7MC7 Instead that entire middle portion could be further bike parking (you can see some is already there) or a wonderful greenspace to enjoy the river as you cross the bridge. Hell, you could probably fit a few food stands there if you really wanted to get jiggy with it.
In the era of the hyperdense city and the perfections we've brought to non-car transportation technologies, it's time to let cars go. They were a bad idea, we can see that now from how they clog our cities, kill our kids, and cause us to choke on their exhaust, let's be done and aggressively remove them!
Edit: more examples, look to the river near here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/45iLSKpVa4kLwuM69 Everyone's view of the river spoiled, and precious space wasted, all so that 28 cars, just 28 cars, can park on the street.
Or, compare this neighborhood: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Xobo9E5jjQU2Pv2f8 to this one: https://maps.app.goo.gl/SAEYTGBqFDZXUkMn9 Note how much more dense, how much more housing and businesses, fit in the former, how much easier it is to walk around and get places. Notice how in the latter, they turn all their space in the pavilions into parking lots , whereas in the former, they use them for gardens and trees. The former is for humans, the latter is for cars, which aren't people! So why do we build a city for them?
insane_dreamer · 48m ago
Not sure it will make a difference to people's travel habits; I think those inclined to take public transport already do so.
But it does highlight the fact that we subsidize private transport (our taxes pay for the roads, traffic police, etc.), so why not public transport?
FirmwareBurner · 1h ago
OK, imma just say the quiet part out loud here: There would be less need for daily transportation commutes if companies allowed 100% WFH wehre applicable and the government would force/incentivise this on companies for the positions that can be done remotely in order to save the environment. Especially given that Geneva labor market skews heavily towards specialized office jobs like diplomats, banking and pharma where most time is spent in front of the PC and on Teams/Zoom calls anyway.
But from my job search there and anecdotes from mates and the internet opinions, Swiss companies have a highly mandatory in-office culture, plus the cross-border commuters from neighboring countries who drive in and out every day to benefit both from high Swiss wages and also from the cheaper living abroad. Well then no shit Sherlock your air quality goes down the shitter.
So I doubt that the public transportation not being free is what caused the higher pollution in the first place, since people drive by car not because public transportation costs too much money, but because on their commute route, it saves a lot of time despite the extra cost of car ownership (you can make more money but you can't make more time).
To me, it just feels like another way for politicians washing their hands of the elephant in the room: the forced need to commute every day for jobs that don't need it. It seems like the lessons from the pandemic have been quickly forgotten since early to mid 2020 when everyone was locked in their homes had the best air quality we ever experienced, but somehow politicians can't put this 2 and 2 together and go fight made up strawmen instand.
In most countries cars are already taxed, in Switzerland as well. The tax is proportional to the weight of the car, so it compensates for higher fuel consumption. For similar reasons, EV's are taxed less.
https://opendata.tpg.ch/pages/accueil/
You have all the right in the world to prefer driving and chilling on your air conditioning and stereo if you can afford it, but it shouldn't be free if you're occupying the lane space 10 people would occupy in a bus, and making the traffic slower for the bus in doing so.
Strongly disagree. There are too many perverse incentives that work against transit. If there are a lot of car commuters (which there will be - plumbers taking their tools to the job for example) they have inventive to pressure politicians to reduce that tax - any voting block will always be more powerful than the distributed masses. Your transit operators need to ensure transit doesn't become too popular: the more people taking transit the less cars there are paying that tax.
Besides almost no transit rider is worried about costs. They are all interested instead in better service, so use all the money you can get - including fares - to build better service. This is long term what everyone needs.
Yes you do need a program for the poor. However the majority of your people shouldn't be in that program.
Everyone, including people without cars, pays for the roads through taxes; it is only fair to do the same for public transport.
Strong agree except here, busses should have their own lanes at all expense to cars - even if this means entire roads are now no longer available to cars.
The private car should be the slowest, least convenient way to get where you're going.
Not to mention a lot of people figure out where the cameras are for the bus lane auto-fines and just dodge them when appropriate, but I guess that's a third world problem.
All other index such as PM10 or NO2 are not crazy high either.
They are the only public transportation available.
In general free transit is a bad idea - nearly everybody is willing to pay a small fee for transit and what they really want is better service (better service meaning more routes, faster routes, and more frequent - pick as many as possible)
Here, I found some street parking for cars: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Quai+Turrettini/@46.205451...
Alongside a gorgeous canal, with bike lanes there as well as what appears to be a train station a few blocks away, as well as what may be some kind of street car station? I can't imagine a more phenomenal waste of space given the far superior transport options surrounding this area. Go west just a bit and you can see a much more useful use of that space: some greenspace https://maps.app.goo.gl/xmDdqxob4LegGvwt5 (I don't understand why this business' pin is there but so be it).
Go east a bit and see how an entire bridge is wasted on giving cars some complicated spaghetti to let them go either north or west. https://maps.app.goo.gl/GQNMabh7d9cEf7MC7 Instead that entire middle portion could be further bike parking (you can see some is already there) or a wonderful greenspace to enjoy the river as you cross the bridge. Hell, you could probably fit a few food stands there if you really wanted to get jiggy with it.
In the era of the hyperdense city and the perfections we've brought to non-car transportation technologies, it's time to let cars go. They were a bad idea, we can see that now from how they clog our cities, kill our kids, and cause us to choke on their exhaust, let's be done and aggressively remove them!
Edit: more examples, look to the river near here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/45iLSKpVa4kLwuM69 Everyone's view of the river spoiled, and precious space wasted, all so that 28 cars, just 28 cars, can park on the street.
Or, compare this neighborhood: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Xobo9E5jjQU2Pv2f8 to this one: https://maps.app.goo.gl/SAEYTGBqFDZXUkMn9 Note how much more dense, how much more housing and businesses, fit in the former, how much easier it is to walk around and get places. Notice how in the latter, they turn all their space in the pavilions into parking lots , whereas in the former, they use them for gardens and trees. The former is for humans, the latter is for cars, which aren't people! So why do we build a city for them?
But it does highlight the fact that we subsidize private transport (our taxes pay for the roads, traffic police, etc.), so why not public transport?
But from my job search there and anecdotes from mates and the internet opinions, Swiss companies have a highly mandatory in-office culture, plus the cross-border commuters from neighboring countries who drive in and out every day to benefit both from high Swiss wages and also from the cheaper living abroad. Well then no shit Sherlock your air quality goes down the shitter.
So I doubt that the public transportation not being free is what caused the higher pollution in the first place, since people drive by car not because public transportation costs too much money, but because on their commute route, it saves a lot of time despite the extra cost of car ownership (you can make more money but you can't make more time).
To me, it just feels like another way for politicians washing their hands of the elephant in the room: the forced need to commute every day for jobs that don't need it. It seems like the lessons from the pandemic have been quickly forgotten since early to mid 2020 when everyone was locked in their homes had the best air quality we ever experienced, but somehow politicians can't put this 2 and 2 together and go fight made up strawmen instand.