QUOTE: Originally posted by bentstrider New poster here, but I've posted everywhere else. I dunno if any of y'all ever heard of "Peak Oil", but I'm a firm believer in it. I tend to see cars as more of a toy than an actual thing to do everyday work with. The way most cities are designed and/or crowded now, 15-25 mph is the speed you could really go without slamming into someones @$$. I use my mountain bike to go all distances within 10-20 miles of my home, and I do it quite easily. Hang shopping bags from the handlebars or tie it down to the rack. My Bronco II that I bought 2 years ago sits in the garage 90% of the year. I only use it for long distance trips since medium/long distance passeneger bus/rail isn't available all that much up here in Victorville, CA. We do have Amtrak and Greyhound, but even with all the suburbanites from Orange, LA and Riverside counties moving up here, no one is even lifting a finger for the addition of a Metrolink line to the High Desert. As far as the whole of passenger rail goes, we could very well see it coming back again due to rising petroleum costs. Joe Sixpack and the rest of his dumb family will have to get used to riff raff of the transit. Because unless he's able to shell out $100-$200+ a fill-up, his SUV will be doing what mine has been doing for the last two years. If it isn't in the scrapyard by then. Oh, and a sidenote, I've only had my drivers license for 2 1/2 years. I was 20 when I got it , and after driving in horrible traffic for six months, back to the bicycle I went.
QUOTE: Originally posted by rrandb The taxpayers who foot the bill for all subsidies...[2c]
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.
QUOTE: Originally posted by DSchmitt The Highway system is not subsidized. It is paid for by user fees. Fuel taxes excise taxes and fees paid by the automobile owners/users and truck owners. Local streets and roads are another matter. They are mainly paid for from local revenues: property taxes, sales taxes and sometimes special assesments (usually on developers) . If the auto never existed the Highway system would be much less developed, but local street and roads would still be necessary.
QUOTE: Originally posted by piouslion QUOTE: Originally posted by DSchmitt The Highway system is not subsidized. It is paid for by user fees. Fuel taxes excise taxes and fees paid by the automobile owners/users and truck owners. Local streets and roads are another matter. They are mainly paid for from local revenues: property taxes, sales taxes and sometimes special assesments (usually on developers) . If the auto never existed the Highway system would be much less developed, but local street and roads would still be necessary. A Rose, is a Rose, is a Rose, by any other name. . . . . The same applies to taxes, subsidies and government grants. The all come from and are financed by the same form. Somebody's pocket, earnings of a business or realized interest and/or earnings on non tax exempt securities, sales taxes, user fees and a lots of other immaginative ways that governments have of getting more of what belongs to someone else, legally one has very little choice in but agreeing to pay no matter what its use may be.
QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal QUOTE: Originally posted by piouslion QUOTE: Originally posted by DSchmitt The Highway system is not subsidized. It is paid for by user fees. Fuel taxes excise taxes and fees paid by the automobile owners/users and truck owners. Local streets and roads are another matter. They are mainly paid for from local revenues: property taxes, sales taxes and sometimes special assesments (usually on developers) . If the auto never existed the Highway system would be much less developed, but local street and roads would still be necessary. A Rose, is a Rose, is a Rose, by any other name. . . . . The same applies to taxes, subsidies and government grants. The all come from and are financed by the same form. Somebody's pocket, earnings of a business or realized interest and/or earnings on non tax exempt securities, sales taxes, user fees and a lots of other immaginative ways that governments have of getting more of what belongs to someone else, legally one has very little choice in but agreeing to pay no matter what its use may be. A user fee is not a subsidy. They are not all financed by the same form.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal QUOTE: Originally posted by piouslion QUOTE: Originally posted by DSchmitt The Highway system is not subsidized. It is paid for by user fees. Fuel taxes excise taxes and fees paid by the automobile owners/users and truck owners. Local streets and roads are another matter. They are mainly paid for from local revenues: property taxes, sales taxes and sometimes special assesments (usually on developers) . If the auto never existed the Highway system would be much less developed, but local street and roads would still be necessary. A Rose, is a Rose, is a Rose, by any other name. . . . . The same applies to taxes, subsidies and government grants. The all come from and are financed by the same form. Somebody's pocket, earnings of a business or realized interest and/or earnings on non tax exempt securities, sales taxes, user fees and a lots of other immaginative ways that governments have of getting more of what belongs to someone else, legally one has very little choice in but agreeing to pay no matter what its use may be. A user fee is not a subsidy. They are not all financed by the same form. Cool! So all passenger service could simply be paid for with *user fees*? Problem solved![;)]
QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal QUOTE: Originally posted by piouslion QUOTE: Originally posted by DSchmitt The Highway system is not subsidized. It is paid for by user fees. Fuel taxes excise taxes and fees paid by the automobile owners/users and truck owners. Local streets and roads are another matter. They are mainly paid for from local revenues: property taxes, sales taxes and sometimes special assesments (usually on developers) . If the auto never existed the Highway system would be much less developed, but local street and roads would still be necessary. A Rose, is a Rose, is a Rose, by any other name. . . . . The same applies to taxes, subsidies and government grants. The all come from and are financed by the same form. Somebody's pocket, earnings of a business or realized interest and/or earnings on non tax exempt securities, sales taxes, user fees and a lots of other immaginative ways that governments have of getting more of what belongs to someone else, legally one has very little choice in but agreeing to pay no matter what its use may be. A user fee is not a subsidy. They are not all financed by the same form. Cool! So all passenger service could simply be paid for with *user fees*? Problem solved![;)] In theory, yes, although I speculate that would require ticket prices to skyrocket so that most if not all of the costs were covered, and therein lies the problem. Amtrak's user fees aka it's ticket prices cover only a fraction of the total cost of government operated passenger rail service as defined by Amtrak's 1930's logistical mentality. Non Amtrak users are paying the rest, ergo most of Amtrak's operating costs are covered by non-user fees aka subsidies. And if Amtrak was forced to cover all it's operating costs via ticket sales or go out of business, well, we all know what would happen then. Now, if railroads were forced to participate in paying fuel taxes along with truckers and buses, with the railroads' portion returned as track construction/maintenance funds for tax exempt e.g. public by proxy ROW's, maybe a modern passenger rail operator could actually cover it's operating costs within the confines of ticket sales.
QUOTE: Originally posted by daveklepper Gentlemen and Ladies, may I again point out that while user fees may cover most of all of the costs of maintaining, improving, and expanding the highway system, they do not in any way compensate for the loss of real estate tax revenue to general welfare purposes on the land the highway system occupies nor the tax revenue of useful use of that land for agriculture, factories, or housing. It is the free land use that is the big subsidization of highway transportation.
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