Originally Posted by
Jason
Whether someone is rich or poor does affect the finances from the city's point of view, but the city still gets money from upgrading transit for poor people.
If someone is unemployed and doesn't have a car, the city makes $0 in income taxes, but if better transit gets them a job and they make $25,000, the city gets $625 a year, plus at least $900 a year in fares. If this happens with 2,500 people, over the course of 30 years the city would get over $100 million dollars that it wasn't getting before, plus a bunch of spinoff benefits [[less crime/police costs, less blight/demolition costs, etc). When it's all said and done, DDOT is probably a profitable investment for the city.