Each of you pays 20% of the rent, and utilities. These are your only expenses.
Now, imagine that I move into your house, demand that you knock down a wall, build a fifth bedroom, and a second bathroom. Construction will cost $100,000, and I will generously chip in my 16% of it.
Do you see a problem, here?
The only fair way to handle this, is to make me pay the full cost of construction. New construction must pay for 100% of the new infrastructure necessary to support it.
If you never intend to use public transit no matter how robust it is, this won't apply. However, in this case, you should really consider the environmental impact of your actions.
They actually still benefit, even if they don't use the public transit. If the less people took public transit, then they would have to drive, and traffic would be much worse.
However, everyone was getting along just fine, with the bathroom at capacity - (5:1) The new bathroom only became necessary when another person moved in.
> Better infrastructure, by contrast, benefits everyone.
For various reasons, nobody was in a hurry to install a new bathroom before the sixth housemate showed up, and made the bathroom situation untenable.
> If you never intend to use public transit no matter how robust it is, this won't apply. However, in this case, you should really consider the environmental impact of your actions.
This doesn't just apply to transit. This also applies to sewage, roadways, city services like police, schooling, etc. When any of these systems are at capacity, and need a large capital expense to expand, it is unfair for existing residents to shoulder 95% of that financial burden.
Adding more buses to a bus line is not a large capital expense. Adding more trains to an under-capacity train line is not a large capital expense. Building a new train line, because a neighbourhood with 5,000 residents, who were sufficiently served by surface streets, but now has 25,000 residents, who cannot be served by existing surface streets is.
Also, the tax revenues often don't offset the ongoing cost of the development to the city (if they do the proper roads, sewers, power, trash, policing). They are a sunk cost at the time of development and then there's no money for maintenance (without more growth).
