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On a Long Train Trip, Rare Pleasures Return

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<p>[quote user="schlimm"]</p> <p> </p> <blockquote> <div><img src="/TRCCS/Themes/trc/images/icon-quote.gif" /> <strong>daveklepper:</strong></div> <div> <p> </p> <p>The greatest part of the subsidy for intercity highway transportation is land use.</p> <div style="clear:both;"></div> <p> </p> </div> </blockquote> <p> </p> <p>You could start with this bit from the ARTBA (a highway lobby):  "There are currently 8,443,338 lane miles of road in the lower 48 states. The average width of a highway lane is 11 feet. This means roads cover 17,590 square miles of land.  If shoulders, driveways and parking lots were added, the total would still be less than one percent of the nation's land area."  One could get a very rough estimate the amount of tax not collected on this land by using some average tax per sq. ft. paid by the railroads on their track. [/quote]</p> <p>Getting a realistic appraisal value of the land for the nation's streets, county roads, state highways, and federal highways probably is out of the question.  I have never heard of anyone even trying it.  </p> <p>As I pointed out in a previous post, to the extent that roadways have been taken off the tax rolls, the taxes of the in-service property have been adjusted to reflect the so-called loss of the land for revenue purposes, which means that most motorists, because they pay property taxes directly or indirectly, pay the higher rates.  </p> <p>As I pointed out, which Mr. Klepper has conveniently overlooked, the same notion would apply to railroads, airports, waterways, etc.  The freight railroads pay property taxes, except they don't.  The taxes are paid by the people who buy the goods and services shipped on the railroads.  Moreover, whether the taxes paid by the railroads reflect the alternate value of the property is questionable. Moreover, Amtrak does not pay any taxes. It does not even reimburse its hoist carriers for any pass through taxes because the federal legislation prohibits it.</p> <p>There are approximately 205 million licensed motorists in the United States.  Most of them pay taxes.  By contrast, the number of people traveling on Amtrak is unknown.  Or at least the information is not available through public documents. What is know is the number of passengers, which was roughly 30 million in FY11. But one person on Amtrak, or the airlines or buses for that matter, can be one person traveling once a year, which would be analogous to a licensed motorist, or it could be one person traveling 52 times a year or it could be me with eight trips on Amtrak in FY11.  I rang the Amtrak passenger bell eight times during the year, but I am just one taxpayer. </p> <p>The users of the nation's roadways and airways pay for the system primarily through fuel taxes, vehicle fees, tickets taxes, etc., or they pay for them indirectly through general funds and transfers.  Because there are so many of them compared to the relatively few people who ride Amtrak, they pay for the system, although the indirect payments are difficult but not impossible to trace. I do it frequently, at least for the big bucks, which I have described in previous posts.  They result in some cost shifting, i.e. wealthier users pay more in taxes while lower income motorists pay disproportionately lower taxes or in some instances none at all.  Also, most of Amtrak's passengers pay taxes.  But there are not enough of them to off-set the large subsidies required by passenger rail.</p> <p>At the end of the day the discussion about subsidies is dysfunctional.  It does not matter whether the highways or airways or whatever have been given preferences or whether the railroads have compounded preferences that exceed anything given to the highways and airways.  The key question is this:  Where does passenger rail make sense for the United States, how much of it can we afford, and how will we pay for it? </p>
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