Why do voters support public transportation? Public choices and private behavior

Michael Manville () and Benjamin Cummins

Transportation, 2015, vol. 42, issue 2, 303-332

Abstract: We examine American support for transit spending, and particularly support for financing transit with local transportation sales taxes. We first show that support for transportation sales tax elections may be a poor proxy for transit support; many voters who support such taxes do not support increased transit spending, and many people who support transit spending do not support increased sales taxes to finance it. We then show that support for transit spending is correlated more with belief in its collective rather than private benefits—transit supporters are more likely to report broad concerns about traffic congestion and air pollution than to report wanting to use transit themselves. These findings suggest a collective action problem, since without riders transit cannot deliver collective benefits. But most transit spending supporters do not use transit, and demographics suggest they are unlikely to begin doing so; transit voters are wealthier and have more options than transit riders. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Keywords: Public transportation; Voting; Travel behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11116-014-9545-2

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