🚀 go-pugleaf

David Lesher wrote in message ...
>"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..?

Cite an engineering study??  What have you been drinking?  The system makes
money for the government.  The system provides services which support most
of the economy.   All your "engineering studies" can do is change a few
figures in some cost accounting matrix.   I suspect you want "engineering
studies" so that someone can fudge the figures and convince passenger car
drivers that they are being cheated by the truckers.   Well, the car drivers
in this country get pretty nice roads for the transportation taxes they pay.
If you succeed in creating this attitude, it will not help passenger car
drivers.   If you keep trucks off a road, you don't save all that much
money.   If you only reduce the number of trucks you save almost no money.
If a study says different, then I would question the study.

>
>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?)


Well, if the "honor student" had been studying, he would not have gotten a
truck rolled over on him.

Truckers cause accidents, no question.   If you are drving a car it pays to
keep in mind the limitations of trucks.   Like, when a truck is going down
hill, don't be in front of him.   Don't slow down in front of a truck.
Don't hang around the sides of a truck.   Stay away from trucks when you
drive.   It is just about that simple.
>--
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>& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
>Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
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___________________________
The Senate Sucks!

John Gilmer@Crosslink.net