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Hassles of Air Travel Push Passengers to Amtrak

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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.
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