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Here at HN, your point could
convince a lot of people
if you gave some solid references
to original sources for your
statements about costs and how
they are covered. I'm in NYS and have been for 20+ years,
and what I've seen in the last time
or two I renewed the license on my
car was that I paid a surtax
to support the commuter trains,
the MTA. So, it looks like
the car owners are supporting
the trains whether they use the
trains or not. Only once did I
ever get on one of those trains.
And I'm proud to say that I've
never been on a NYC subway. E.g., I live on a nice street in
the suburbs. There is maintenance
on the streets and snow plowing in
the winters. My impression is that
my local town is paying for that
out of real estate taxes -- if so, then that's
fair since everyone in the suburbs
needs the streets, even if they shop
at Amazon and get deliveries
via FedEx or some such. But passenger
trains? People in the suburbs
don't need passenger trains so much, and
even if they do they still need
the local streets to go
between the trains and the doors.
So, again, using real estate taxes
to pay for the local streets
is fair enough. I don't have good data on what the
costs are for Federal highways, bridges,
trains, capex, opex, and
how those costs are being
covered,
but my impression is
that the gas taxes and tolls pay
for what the cars and trucks use
and that in the US it's just
hopeless for the train tickets
to pay for what the trains cost --
but again that's just my impression. Since I'm not in either the car or
train business, I haven't gotten
the data. But if you are for trains and want
to convince people, then having
the data on costs and how
they are being covered
would help, really, is crucial. Uh, writing this, it occurs to me
that to be fair the Federal gas taxes
should need to cover only
the Federally supported highways
and bridges, e.g., the Interstate
highways. In that case, sure,
local real estate taxes
and not Federal gas taxes
may be the main source of funding
for local streets. |