Beyond some travel in Europe, I have no personal experience outside of North America. It is my impression that cities that were large before, say, 1850, are congested, period. If my impression is correct, that would cover many of the large cities of Europe, and likely many in Asia, as well.

The purported benefits of big city transit are unlikely to occur in an area the size and population of metropolitan Ann Arbor. It probably makes more sense for the U, like Google or Apple around San Francisco, to run their own commuter buses from Ypsilanti, Howell, Milan, Canton or wherever.

Seperately:

There are many good reasons to support mass transit, even in a company town like ours. Reduced congestion, however, is NOT one of those reasons. No American city with excellent transits has the absence of congestion. Indeed, the cities with the best transit are precisely the cities with the worst congestion. This is because transit doesn’t reduce traffic. Rather, it enables growth over what the streets can otherwise carry. This distinction only sounds subtle. When you live it, the difference is obvious: people only use transit when their auto commute becomes intolerable. Should the auto commute become more tolerable, a transit users would return to auto commuting up to the point where traffic was once again intolerable.

It’s probably not possible to have a good transit system until auto commuting has become intolerable. Then, people want the other guy to take the bus so that their own car commute is easy. Transit doesn’t reduce congestion, it enables further crowding.

You referred to the second ward being “thinly served”. What do you mean by that?

I believe that Mr. Warpehoski’s argument relied on the idea that the particular level of service provided in each community warranted the different tax rates. If that belief is correct, I will leave it to him to explain his view.

An Ann Arbor resident living in the thinly served Second Ward, where few service improvements are planned, will pay the same millage as a City resident in an area where service is good and improved service is proposed. Transit service is not, and should not be, based on the service one gets. It should be based on the service available throughout the system, to which all riders have access. This is how it is in the Lansing area and in the Grand Rapids area where all participating communities pay the same millage.

I think most auto users in the city would love to get the sudsidies that bus riders get in Ann Arbor where they only pay 25% of the direct costs of their ride. Sure there are various subsidies in many things but it is size and degree of the subsidy which is the problem with bus ridership not the mere presence of a subsidy. Public subsidies for AAATA are far too high and must not grow even more.