I think you've got the shoe on the wrong foot, Dwight. Urban and suburban areas subsidize the rural areas through much higher taxes. You should know better than to claim what you falsely said.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
schlimm I think you've got the shoe on the wrong foot, Dwight. Urban and suburban areas subsidize the rural areas through much higher taxes. You should know better than to claim what you falsely said.
The county I grew up in, Marshall, has no public transportation other than highways. None. So no one is subsidizing our public transportation.
Operations in the RTA , which is the taxing body for the six county Metro Chicago public transportation, responsible for Metra, Pace and the CTA, are primarily funded by sales tax in the district and fare box. Capital improvements receive federal funds and some state. As is the case elsewhere, low density areas of Illinois receive more from the state (and federal) government than their taxpayers pay in, whether income tax or sales tax. If your county felt the need for public transportation, as some downstate counties have done, they could form a district and have buses, etc. But they have not, apparently.
A few more statistics. TSA News reports airport security screenings cost $8 billion per year and about $6 billion is paid by taxpayers. (Each screening costs and average of $11.88 and $8.88 is taxpayer subsidy). This comes out to about $44 per taxpaying family. Of course more people fly than ride the train. But this is only one part of the picture.
Here is the link:http://tsanewsblog.com/1625/news/is-tsa-just-another-airline-subsidy/
John WR A few more statistics. TSA News reports airport security screenings cost $8 billion per year and about $6 billion is paid by taxpayers. (Each screening costs and average of $11.88 and $8.88 is taxpayer subsidy). This comes out to about $44 per taxpaying family. Of course more people fly than ride the train. But this is only one part of the picture. Here is the link:http://tsanewsblog.com/1625/news/is-tsa-just-another-airline-subsidy/
According to the OMB, the total TSA spend in FY 11 was 5.384 million. This includes the cost of the airport screening program, of which the public is most familiar, together with cargo screening, i.e. Federal Express, UPS, DHL, etc., general airport security, the air marshal program, and ground transportation facilities, including scrutiny of Amtrak's facilities. The figures shown in the blogs that you reference are proposed budget numbers, appropriations, etc. They are different from authorizations and the amounts that are spent in a given year.
In FY 11, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, approximately 633 million passengers boarded flights in the U.S. At $2.50 per head, the TSA would have collected approximately $1.582 million. It also collects other fees.
Assuming the entire taxpayer funded portion of aviation security is allocable to commercial airline operations, which is not true, the amount would have been approximately .007 cents per passenger mile. This compares to Amtrak’s federal subsidy of 19.11 cents per passenger mile.
Irrespective of who gets what subsidies, people are not going to stop flying and they are not going to stop driving. So the question is where does passenger rail make sense, what should it look like, and how should it be funded?
The budges for the Department of Homeland Security shows 14 per cent of all DHS expenses go to TSA. This comes out to about $7.8 billion. Here is the link: http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/budget_bib_fy2011.pdf
You are comparing total Amtrak subsidy to a part, and a relatively small part, of airline subsidy.
Of course neither cars nor planes are going to go away. It does not follow there there is no place for trains in our transportation system. Most people in the US live in urban areas and in urban areas we are running out of space for highways. We are even running out of air space so we have to ask if we want to use scarce air space for long flights or for relatively short flights.
I don't see that passenger mile comparisons are really valid. Many flights by their nature are very long--New York to Australia, for example. It is impossible to have similarly long train journeys. To compare a New York to Chicago train trip to a New York to Australia flight is apples and oranges.
Roads get many hidden subsidies that there are no statistics for. My neighbor in her 80's who has no car has to pay full property tax which funds local and country roads. Without these roads interstate highways would be useless. For each gallon of gas you buy you pay Federal excise tax without regard to whether you drive on Federal highways, state highways or state and local roads. Automobiles cause almost no damage to interstate highways; the damage is caused by heavy trucks and buses but almost all of the taxes are paid by automobile drivers. So far I cannot find statistics about these enormous road and highway subsidies but we all must pay them. Private railroads pay property tax part of which is passed on to Amtrak through rental agreements. Government has always given advantages to trucks and even automobiles.
For all of that we will not do away with planes and automobiles but we do need a balanced transportation system that included railroads.
John WR
As noted in my previous post, the TSA numbers for FY11, which are taken from Office of Management (OMB) data, are the actual FY11 TSA spends. I presume that the OMB numbers are accurate.
Budgets are planning documents or wish lists. What is actually spent is rarely what is found in a budget. This is especially true for government budgets, which tend to be as much about politics as planning documents.
Depending on how one defines it, the total federal subsidy for the nation's airlines, as well as highway users, is less than a penny per passenger or vehicle mile. Moreover, the Amtrak subsidy does not include its exemption from all federal taxes, including fuel taxes, and the fact that most of the stations it serves are exempt from all taxes or that is pays just a nominal rent at most of them.
Comparisons between different modes of transport or other activities should be made on a common unit basis. That is to say, a unit measure that can be found across all modes, i.e. miles, seat miles, passenger miles, vehicle miles, etc. This is how the U.S. Transportation Department does it, as per National Transportation Statistics.
There are, of course, exceptions in every environment. A property owner who does not drive may be paying property taxes and, therefore, is paying for services that she does not use. However, she is in the minority. At the end of December 2011 87 per cent of U. S. residents over 16 had a drivers license. Most of them drove a personal vehicle.
If I were empowered to to so, I would price the cost of county roads and local streets, as well as traffic related support services, into the cost of fuel, with an offset to property taxes. This would solve the non-user issue and send a better signal to motorists regarding the true cost of driving. Unfortunately, it is not likely to fly in this country.
We need a balanced transportation system, and trains should be part of that system where they make sense. They are a solution. But the so-called as well as real subsidies to other modes of transport do nothing to further the goal of improving and/or implementing trains where they can be viable.
Ummm. Do you think it might be possible to provide the OMB link? I am unable to find it. Frankly, it seems to me to be not totally unreasonable to use the amount government documents reports are budgeted for an activity for comparative purposes. I don't think TSA turns back significant amounts of government funds that it has not spent.
Certainly statistics, if they are to be used for comparison purposes, should have a common basis. But when airline statistics which include flights across oceans are included that is simply not a common basis.
We agree on the way country and local roads should be funded and we agree that property tax funding will continue. In fact most roads are local and country roads. As long as we do things in traditional ways there will be large parts of the cost that simply are never counted. But, as you observe, a different way will not fly in this country.
It isn't just that some people have no car. In my own case my wife and I share a car. I have neighbors where there are 4 cars in the family. Our property taxes are very similar in that the value of our homes is similar. You make the point that such taxes are often unfair to some people.
You agree that we need a transportation system and trains should be part of it "where they make sense." Certainly intercity trains make the most sense. The transcontinental trains are the most expensive. But--and I think you will probably agree--we also need to achieve political balance with our transportation system if we are to have Congressional support for it. All airline routes are not equally important, all interstate highways are not equally imports and all rail routes are not equally important. In the end the issue is what kind of country do we want to have.
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