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Amtrak: New framework needed for surface transportation funding
Long on words, short on results. The Boardman legacy.
In other words, take even more of the tax money paid by the highway users and send it to Amtrak, which will quickly find new and improved ways to waste it, while the highway maintenance gets deferred and we get a few more I-35W incidents resulting in “experts” trying to figure out how that happened again. How about a rail user tax to fund Amtrak? That would be much more fair in helping Amtrak in its goal of wasting more money.
Before anybody starts bashing roads and trucks, ask yourself this: Did you eat today? Where did the food come from? How did it get to the restaurant or grocery store? Sorry to burst some bubbles, but 100% of consumer goods arrives at stores every day by truck. Get used to reality.
Then there are the bus companies. Why should they be forced to pay a fuel tax to subsidize their supposed competition, Amtrak? Wait a minute. They are already doing that. So perhaps Boardman is correct. It is time to stop using the highway trust fund to make up difference in the annual Amtrak shortfall. Or he could just do as the private sector does when demand increases and increase the price charged for the service provided. When was the last time ticket prices matched the cost of service provided?
Thank you, Paul!
@JEFFERY GUSE - Uh, no. Currently highway users pay nowhere near enough money to cover the highway fund, which completely destroys the entire basis of your ridiculous rant. Without even counting externalities, and local roads “usage” charges (gas taxes) only cover 2/3 of the cost of highways. The rest is income tax.
Boardman? Who is he? David Gunn used to visit my city every year, or so, when he ran Amtrak. Gunn walked the platform, talked to local denizens, and even rode the cab of the “Empire Builder” over the mountains. Can’t remember him wearing a tie… Boardman? Never seen him, except in photo-ops with Chuck Schumer.
Jeffy Guse: If you think produce grown in the west and south arrives in Illinois entirely by truck, then you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about.
JEFFERY GUSE, highways don’t pat for themselves, the Federal Highway Trust Fund has been in the red for many years dating back to George W. Bush, and the FAA gets a big dollop of money from the federal general fund every year.
If you are going to be a intellectually honest conservative you need to argue that all modes of transport need to be self supporting. Thats means higher airfares and airport fees like in Canada after they privatized their air system.
And higher tolls like those charged by privately operated for-profit expressways in France and Japan. Japan’s expressway network, originally built by a national public corporation has since broken up by region and privatized (like JNR).
Tolls on Japanese super highways are very high, with the 202.3 miles (325.5-km) journey from Tokyo to Nagoya on the Tōmei Expressway costing $85.07 (¥7100) in tolls for an ordinary car.
For comparison the 209.1 mile trip from Albany to Rochester on the NYS Thruway costs only $9.98 for the standard 4 wheel passenger vehicle. Of course most interstates are freeways.
I’m sorry Mr. GUSE but I don’t see you and other Teapots advocating this, which is why your crackpots and not real free market conservatives.
You want to defund Amtrak, fine. But please write your congressman to defund the Highway Trust Fund and FAA too! Argue that we need to further devolve transport planning and financing from the federal level to the state and local level, and the private sector.
Make the point that decisions on transport are best made at the level of the people who will use, benefit, and pay for the services. That we don’t need “Uncle Sugar” telling us want to do with our transport money!
Be a real conservative Mr Guse, argue along these lines and I might respect you! Otherwise your just a uniformed fool mouthing talk radio talking points!
Overturn the New Deal and localized and privatized all transportation, let that be y
The guiding principle, given by Boardman, would protect the NEC, which is Boardman’s only priority. It would provide some coverage for states willing to commit resources for local or regional services. Long distance trains won’t survive. Conceptually Amtrak, as a “national” railroad passenger corporation, would be dead. I believe it’s time to get new leadership at Amtrak. If Congress wishes to pursue changes in surface transportation investment programs that would benefit Amtrak, a condition should be Boardman’s departure.
Jeffery Guse, did you ever stop to consider that the vast majority of goods (once on land) travel most of their distance by train? Yeah. So quit picking and choosing your arguments. You are one of the many reasons I am no longer subscribing to this magazine (aka bad moderation on the part of the Trains staff)
Hays-Guse freak show time.
Blah blah …takers , provider class, socialist, communist, blah blah…more foul blatherings…blah blah…
Did I cover everything ol Jeff?
The comment I submitted a half-hour ago hasn’t appeared yet, but allow me to re-phrase the last point (I was writing in a hurry between tasks at work):
It only makes sense for the U.S. to have a coordinated national approach to surface transportation as a whole rather than behaving as if highway, rail, and waterway transportation were separate and unrelated functions.
One example (of many possible) why we need to coordinate transportation planning: Boston’s Big Dig originally was to have included a rail tunnel to connect North and South stations to make through travel possible–long needed, and might as well, as long as they were digging up the city anyway–but it didn’t qualify for inclusion because the project was funded with highway funds, not rail funds.
This approach makes eminent sense. Whether it happens is another question, but it’s worth a try.
I haven’t seen figures for recent years, but years ago, highway user fees (fuel taxes, tolls, license fees, excise taxes, etc.) covered 60% of the cost of building and maintaining highways nationwide. The remaining 40% came from “general funds”–i.e., income taxes, some of which were paid by railroads who managed to turn a profit while meeting 100% of their own capital and operating expenses.
If the goal is to move people and freight from where it is to where it needs to be, and not to wrangle over roads vs. rails vs. waterways, then let’s try something new and different: an intelligently coordinated transportation network.
Boardman’s premise makes eminent sense to me. Whether anything comes of it remains to be seen, of course.
Who is subsidizing whom? I haven’t seen recent figures, but several years ago U.S. DOT figures showed that highway user fees (fuel taxes, tolls, license fees, excise taxes, etc.) all together covered just 60% of the cost of building and maintaining roads nationwide. The remaining 40% came from “general funds”–i.e., income taxes. Part of those taxes were paid by railroads who managed to turn a profit after covering 100% of their own expenses. (And when there’s a blizzard, the trucks and buses–having paid their flat user fees–just huddle in their cozy capitalist truck stops while socialist government forces go out and make the roads passable again for them. Railroads call their own crews, order up their own plow trains, and open the lines themselves at their own expense.)
If the goal of national transportation policy is to facilitate moving people and freight from where it is to where it needs to be, and not to pit highway, rail, and waterway interests against each other to everyone’s detriment, then it only makes sense to pursue a coordinated, unified national approach to surface transportation. Otherwise we have cases like Boston’s Big Dig: The original concept included a rail tunnel connecting North and South stations, badly needed for generations, and a logical part of the project since they were digging up much of the downtown anyway, but it couldn’t be done because the project was funded with highway dollars and not rail dollars. What nonsense!!
You just have to ignore fools like goosey. Funny how folks with the most blather to spread have the least to actually say constructively.
Of course one thing that almost everyone seems to overlook is that when (at least in Minnesota) the street in front of your house is rebuilt, you are “assessed” for the project, often based on a per-dollar charge per frontage foot of your lot along the street. So, homeowners are actually subsidizing that street. Our city has a 50/50 policy, though in practice homeowners typically pick up on about 25 to 40 percent. The rest is bonded, covered by the annual debt service levy (taxes). So, city streets aren’t covered by state or federal highway funds except for a few that are state-aid or federal-aid routes. I guess roads aren’t paid for out of gas taxes, at least fully, after all. And, Mr. Guse, the finished product may have arrived at your restaurant by truck, but the raw materials, packaging, fuel and many other components likely spent some time on rail at some point.
Reading the article made me think like Mr. Guise. Reading the responses makes me think that Mr. Boardman wouldn’t have a chance against a congress full of Mr. Guises. This isn’t the first time, but Just about everyone on this thread had good comments except Mr. Guise, who seems to be faltering on this one. For sure, any government funding of any transport system, rail, highway, or otherwise, needs to have checks and balances lest we end up building things more for the benefit of politicians and their cronies than real transportation needs and general public good. That is why, the closer you can tie actual user fees to the cost of what they’re using, the better. That isn’t to say that a rail system must be fully funded from ticket sales or roads fully from tolls, but if we’re taxing everyone in the nation for the benefit of a few who happen to live next to a passenger rail station, we better have darn good justification for doing so or not do it at all.
Stop responding to the troll and the troll will go find another bridge to hide under and harass people.
The only problem is that Amtrak has needed a viable funding framework since 1971. I do admire Joe Boardman for staying around as long as he has to fight this good fight.