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Bush Budget Kills RRIF Program
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[quote]QUOTE: <i>Originally posted by fado12c</i> <br /><br />One of the hidden subsidies is infrastructure for almost every other mode of transportation is financed by governments. This means that trucks, buses, planes & barges do not have to raise capital to build their infrastructure like railroads do. Another is that their infrastructure is taken off the tax rolls. Every mile of new highway takes tax paying property off the books and you have to make up the difference. Railroads have to pay taxes on their infrastructure and if they improve it they pay more. <br /> <br />RH <br />[/quote] <br /> <br />For the most part, the <i>interstate </i>infrastructure used by barges, trucks, and airlines is paid for via user fees. Users of the Columbia/Snake River waterway pay a 0.20 per gallon tax that goes into a waterways trust fund, but unfortunately other waterway systems in other parts of the country do not have such a user fee. Truckers pay 0.18 in federal fuel tax in addition to state fuel taxes and other fees, and for the most part they do pay their fair share of the interstate corridors. For secondary roads and urban infrastructure, there is some contribution from property taxes and other non-user fee funding. <br /> <br />It is true that railroads pay property tax on their ROW, but that is their choice when they opt to keep the owner-operator form. I have pointed out in other threads that one of the benefits of an open access system would be the elimination of the property tax assessments on ROW, but I have been told that such property taxes do not amount to all that much compared to the loss of pricing power that would occur if all captive rail shippers were "freed". <br /> <br />You also must remember that all costs acrued by transporters, whether railroads or trucks, are passed on to the consumer. It is interesting that when calculating break even costs of providing transporter services, both the ROW maintenance costs of railroads and the user fees paid by truckers is about 10% of the cost of the service.
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