Re: People Without Meaningful Lives Seek Power Over Others

On Thu, 23 Jan 2025 19:54:37 -0600, AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org> wrote:

On 1/23/2025 7:42 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 1/23/2025 7:33 PM, John B. wrote:

>
And who pays the road tax if you call the police? Or the
water works,
or the fire department, all of which need to use the roads
to aid you
the caller?

 
I'm not saying non-drivers should pay zero for the roads.
But they do pay, as Andrew said, in property taxes, sales
taxes, and even the price of goods, since companies build
transport costs into that price.
 
I'm simply saying more of the burden should be on those who
make more use of the roads.
 
I think railroads are a close parallel to highways. Andrew
says, in essence, we should all pay for roads because we all
use goods delivered by roads. I can agree with that concept.
But it also applies to railroads. We all use commodities
delivered by rail.
 
Our difference is that the car fans here want no further
expenses on those who use cars on those same roads. In
practice, they want to drive with no fares, to have their
driving subsidized. But they don't want to subsidize train
fares, even though that's a perfectly parallel situation.
And they don't want to pay congestion charges in super-
crowded cities. They just want the city residents to deal
with their presence, their contribution to congestion,
pollution, etc.
 

>
Some important differences there.
Governments do not own or maintain track (outside of local
urban systems such as MTA or CTA or BART).
>
The only intercity passenger rail is Amtrak, which is an
entertainment/display system, not a functional
transportation system. It's not anywhere near competitive on
travel times, reliability or price. And Amtrak does not own
or maintain railbed AFAIK.

There's also big differences in how highways and railroads share
freight travel and passnger travel facilities. Are rail passengers
going to be Ok with freight train speeds and the switching delays?  I
suspect lots of special facilities would be required for high speed
passenger trains whereas cars and trucks get along with each other
just fine on highways.

--
C'est bon
Soloman