DC Wants to Raise Taxes on Uber & Lyft to Resuscitate the Metro System .....

[MMC]

The Washington, D.C. Metro system stinks. A stench of mediocrity and failure wafts up from nearly every escalator in the city as the trains below halt to a screech, seemingly never on time. But, according to one D.C. councilman, that is not exactly the fault of the Metro system. No, D.C. Councilman Jack Evans (D-2) says it is largely because of companies such as Uber & Lyft taking all their riders and therefor the public transportation system's money.


“Uber and Lyft are part of the transit system here, and so they should help pay to fix Metro because they’re benefiting from Metro’s demise,” Evans told The Washington Post after D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser introduced new taxes on the ride-sharing companies based largely off his advice.


According to the Post, the new taxes have the potential to add 47 cents on to each $10 ride.


From the Washington Post:
When D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser proposed taxing Uber and Lyft to raise money for Metro, she was turning to an increasingly popular approach to pay for public transit improvements.
However, compared with other cities and states that have used the model, Bowser’s 37-cent additional fee on each $10 trip would be among the most radical examples of raising tax revenue for transit through ride hailing.


But as the Post notes, this reasoning contradicts previous statements by Mayor Bowser in which she said the decline of riders on the metro is largely because of inherent problems within the system, not due to competition.....snip~

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/timoth...ystem-n2466798


Ah.....typical Democrats. Raise taxes on a problem they created. Nor never solved. Of course if DC does it then others will follow. What say ye?

[stjames1_53]

if it doesn't move, tax it to death, if it moves, tax it twice as hard

[MMC]

if it doesn't move, tax it to death, if it moves, tax it twice as hard

They were suppose to use the lottery for education and infrastructure. What happened with following thru on that?

[Adelaide]

A significant portion of people around here rely on the metro almost exclusively because it is more efficient than any other form of transportation. When the metro was down due to emergency maintenance, if I remember right, people were offered the chance to telework because the highways and beltway would not be able to handle every worker driving a vehicle, to say nothing of parking once actually at your destination. Lyft and Uber are not stealing a large number of metro riders because it is still inefficient for many. Regardless of that glaring fact for anyone who actually lives in the area, it has required a lot of unexpected maintenance the last couple years and will require more. Money has to come from somewhere, and given the number of people that rely on it and the fact that the city itself has to rely on it, money has to come from somewhere. Don't necessarily agree with it coming from Uber or Lyft riders, but it has to happen.

[Ethereal]

Tax something successful in order to prop up something that's failing.

Democrats sure are creative.

[MisterVeritis]

A significant portion of people around here rely on the metro almost exclusively because it is more efficient than any other form of transportation. When the metro was down due to emergency maintenance, if I remember right, people were offered the chance to telework because the highways and beltway would not be able to handle every worker driving a vehicle, to say nothing of parking once actually at your destination. Lyft and Uber are not stealing a large number of metro riders because it is still inefficient for many. Regardless of that glaring fact for anyone who actually lives in the area, it has required a lot of unexpected maintenance the last couple years and will require more. Money has to come from somewhere, and given the number of people that rely on it and the fact that the city itself has to rely on it, money has to come from somewhere. Don't necessarily agree with it coming from Uber or Lyft riders, but it has to happen.

The people who use it should pay for it.

Privatize it.