Schlimm: good question. Trucks (and therefore the shippers that pay truck freight charges) did not pay for the interstates as they were initially constructed. It is likely that a truck operator will argue that they pay for roads when they pay a toll or when they pay certain state and local taxes, and I can see why they do. Transportation funding is so skewed that it is very hard to decipher the fine points of the funding. But the big question is federal funding and trucks don’t pay for new construction and never have. The interstate system is a total gift to the trucking industry and they pay only a fraction of the damage they do to it. The taxes the trucks pay goes into the maintenance and operation of the roads. Over the years hundreds of billions of dollars have gone into the road system for construction. Your question: would the roads cost less? It stands to reason that it would cost less to build a lighter roadway that would adequately support automobiles and lighter trucks. But, I’m not sure that would be best. I just don’t know. Maybe it is better to build them to the class that they are now, just require the user to pay for the extra cost of construction and the wear and tear. Also consider that in urban areas, for a given width of interstate, the lanes could be narrower for automobiles. This would
Henry 6. Good topic, railroad property taxes. Why should railroads pay property taxes? What services to they derive from these taxes? Interstates do not pay property taxes, neither do airport authorities, an obviously the barge users do not pay taxes on the rivers. (more about river traffic later on). The taxes paid for rail property is ultimately paid for by the shippers because the railroads charge shippers for the total costs of providing the service. So………for maintaining and being responsible for their infrastructure, the railroads, alone among freight transportation providers, are taxed on thier property. Class I railroads pay over $750 million per year for taxes. Think of what they could do for $750 million each year!! Ironically, in urban areas this real estate tax pays for the city streets that the trucks use without paying anything. Trucks pay at least some tax for state and federal roads, but they use city and county roads for free.
So – the railroads have taken advantage of this. This is one big benefit of intermodal transportation! Let the trucks make the local delivery. Why pay real estate taxes? Why be responsible to maintain the track and bridges on a branch line?
Not necessarily. In Illinois, while the effective tax rates are different for residential, commercial and industrial in Cook County, the rate is the same in all other counties. Where the difference occurs is in the assessed value of the property.
When the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was built in the mid-'30’s, the upper deck had 6 fairly-narrow lanes (3 in each direction) for automobile traffic only. The lower deck had 3 wider lanes (one in each direction, and one reversible) for trucks and busses (and cars), plus a double-tracked standard guage rail line (initially electrified by both catenary and third rail) used by 3 interurban operators. In early '60’s, was converted to 5 wider lanes on each deck, with each deck being one-way only for all traffic (and no rails).
It always seemed to me that the exclusive auto lanes on one deck (even though narrower), and the bigger/heavier traffic isolated on the other deck, was both safer and more efficient. (But they didn’t ask me.)
And the sad thing is that the new bridge is being pre-fabbed in China and will be installed by Chinese workers here, and not just b/c of costs: " I don’t think the U.S. fabrication industry could put a project like this together," Brian A. Petersen, project director for American Bridge/Fluor Enterprises.
http://prestowitz.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/06/27/cheap_is_expensive#.TgpFCep7oT8.facebook
Before this gets out of hand:
(1) Railroads do pay property taxes, it just happens to be administered and collected by the states. The mess before the Interstate Commerce Act of 1913 resulted in federal oversight of the tax assessment process. Since the ICC Valuation Act of 1913, all parties play by the same rules. The good-ol-boy system was kept in check under these rules and the playing field levelled. Didn’t help in places like New York (ask CSX) where cronyism rises to higher levels like the really big chunks. There are multiple cases in the country where locals got beyond greedy and as a result, whole terminals were moved by the railroad. Examples I can think of include Ellis/Oakley, KS (UP); Hugo/Limon, CO (UP) and Syracuse/Coolidge, KS (ATSF)…
(2) Wasn’t that long ago that railroads paid fuel taxes that never came back in terms of public interface safety projects (like road crossings). Those monies supported the highway infrastructure (aka the taxpayer subsidized trucking industry) or went into the general fund. Railroad lobbying in the early 1990’s to have that fuel tax money put in a Section 400 fund for grade crossing improvements went nowhere.
If the individual State Boards of Equalisation quit doling out disbursement checks to the counties (from railroad taxes collected by the state), the county fathers would be bawling like babies. In my railroad career, I have seen multiple cases where clueless county officials try to assess new taxes on railroads that the railroads were neither informed of or asked for their consent on. (usually that have no benefit for the railroad in terms of benefits from some improvement district) The state usually issues a stearn warning to the county to cease & decist.