Calculation of the price in taxes of public transport

In my last post I stated how much cheaper public transport is, but then Suburbanist claimed that this is because we are getting subsidised by people that don't use it. So I decided to calculate exactly how much we are getting from each tax payer:

> Originally Posted by Suburbanist
> (2) Even if you paid nothing for your annual transportation card, that would obviously not cover the costs
> of the service, which would then have to be paid by taxes collected on all people. Somebody is paying
> taxes to fund your heavy use of the transportation system if it is "so cheap".

I could not find the raw data for Wroclaw.... but, I found good data from a city relatively similar in size and public transport: Poznan. And guess what? It has a decent operational profit in public transportation!

http://www.mpk.poznan.pl/images/stories/o_mpk/raporty/raport-roczny-2011.pdf

MPK Poznan has 19 lines of light rail, and +/-40 of buses and it had an income of 370 million zl in 2011 which generated a profit of 16 million zl. It even had to pay 3,7 million zl in income tax because of the profits! So it had a final profit of 12 million zl in 2011.

It is true that this ignores 275 million zl in investments (Actually Poland only pays half of this sum, EU pays the other half) made as lost funds by the government to buy new trams, new buses and build new right of way and do modernization works, but nevertheless we can't ignore that MPK Poznan has operational profit =)

 And when it comes to passenger long distance rail, PKP Intercity was also profitable in 2011, although it does not do regional rail, only long distance (stops are every 50km aprox.). Again, of course this ignores the 5 billion in investments made in the railway infra-structure as a whole (includes both rail line modernization and station rebuilding). Of those 5 billion, the EU pays 2,5 billion, the government pays 1,8 billions and the PLK (Railway lines company) pays 0,7 billions.

 So the total cost for city rail investments (140 million zl) + general railway investment (but this covers cargo too!!) 1,8 billion zl total aprox + operational deficit for regional rail of the region (aprox. 100 million zl, varies per region) = 2 billion zl. If we imagine that 20 million people are working from a total population of 37 millions (excluding children, unemployed, redired people, etc), the cost per tax payer is 100 zl per year

 Oh, yes, we are destroying the wallets of people that don't use public transportation because we are taking from them 100 zl per year =D