🚀 go-pugleaf

"John Gilmer" <gilmer@crosslink.net> writes:



>There are few (if any) taxes on railroad specific operations.   Railroads
>don't pay $.20/.30  per gal in tax on fuel.   Railroad passenger don't pay a
>"security fee" to get on the train.

There is the minor matter of all the property taxes for the right of
way. I do not recall any trucker owning the road {s}he transits.
And the RR maintains that ROW, a non-trivial cost.

>Road transporation pays its share through extra taxes.  To imply that a tax
>paid road is an economic subsidy is nonsense.   The cost accounting may not
>be perfect (revenues generated by a road section may not equal expenditures)
>but the gas tax road building system ends up with a government surplus.

But truckers seldom pay gas tax. They pay tax on diesel fuel.

My point? Can you cite any engineering study about the O&M costs of
the trucks vs. the amount they pay, vice the amount we all (cars &
trucks) do..? 

And the trucking lobby keep slamming bigger and bigger payloads
onto the roadbed. Further, while the larger carriers [the ones worth
suing..] tend to have good maintenance, many of the smaller ones are
deathtraps to the rest of us. (Recall that fly-by-night bozo who
flipped a triaxle dump onto a 16 y.o honor student a while back?)

-- 
A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433