Arthur Frommer has a great blog post from today covering the vote for increase in funding for the USA train system:
Excerpt:
All the news, last week, was about Congress' approval of the $700 billion bailout, but the Senate (and only the Senate so far), took another important step on the same day they voted to buy up troubled debt. By an overwhelming margin, they voted 74 to 24 to increase the annual funding of Amtrak to $3 billion a year for the next five years -- a near-tripling of the appropriation Amtrak has enjoyed until now....In yesterday's vote, 24 neanderthals stubbornly maintained that Amtrak should "make a profit" on its own, a requirement that they do not impose upon the heavily subsidized airlines or monstrously subsidized (through massive appropriations for highways) automotive industry.
The story is relevant to hostels because having a good transportation system would help the development of hostels & hostelling in the US.
16 years
The story is relevant to hostels because having a good transportation system would help the development of hostels & hostelling in the US.
Exactly.
24 neanderthals stubbornly maintained that Amtrak should "make a profit" on its own
So why shouldn´t roads a profit on their own, then? What about road pricing on highways or a meaningful tax hike on gas to pay for infrastructure maintenance?
16 years
I think Amtrak is not a big money maker--supposedly because of "low demand". I've never seen an advertisement for the train anywhere though. I think the train system could be run a lot better than it is now.
Those people are probably the same people who want to privitize the road system.
Higher gas prices through taxes would never go over well -- political suicide, and it would hurt lower income people.
16 years
Those people are probably the same people who want to privitize the road system.
That is of course a stupid idea. Never privatize a monopoly. A highway between two cities is a monopoly, because it´s usually the only highway between them. On the other hand, building two parallel highways to compete with each other is also lunatic.
If you own a monopoly, like a power grid, you will want to make short-term profits (very easy for monopolies) and neglect long-term maintenance.
There are ways of sensible privatizations though. For example, I can´t see what´s wrong with privatized power plants - as long as those private power plant owners don´t own the grid, too (which is the case in Germany, where they abuse their control over the grid to favor their own plants and make huge profits).
What I´m talking about is that road traffic is so much cheaper than rail traffic is because Amtrak has to pay for the rails, but if you drive you only have to pay for your car and the gas. You don´t pay for the roads. Road traffic has a lot of external costs which are paid for by the taxpayer, not the people who actually use those roads. If you are someone like me who doesn´t own a car you pay twice - the train and the roads which you don´t even use (at least much less than others).
The obvious solution is of course to raise all the money needed for construction and maintenance of roads directly from the ones who use them. Either by direct road pricing (you´ll pay a toll each time you use a highway) or by taxing gas, which involves much less effort. I know very well that sounds like political suicide in America, but there needs to be a debate about how much exactly those roads cost and where the money comes from. Taxpayers already pay that bill - the debate should be how to distribute those costs in the most fair way.
16 years
Higher gas prices through taxes would never go over well -- political suicide, and it would hurt lower income people.
We have both road tax on highways and petrol tax as well... However, the major road tax is being paid by trucks, otherwise its about 5EUR for regular cars for a 4 day sticker... nowadays even e-sticker.
Petrol tax is about 45% of our petrol prices, sometimes even more in Europe. In UK it is about 300%. However, we mainly have average 1,5-2 liter engines running... Having a 3-5 liter engined petrol eater beast would definitely hurt even my wallet! :rolleyes: Not to mention CO2 emissions!
So having road and petrol taxes would actually push people to buy low consuming cars
Just to compare, 1 liter of petrol costs us about 1,5USD which is about 6USD a gallon... double of the average US petrol prices..,and we are almost the cheapest in the EU!
16 years
Yahoo and Huffington Post cover it here:
The high cost of energy, coupled with congestion on highways and at airports, is drawing travelers back to trains not only for commuting but also for travel between cities as much as 500 miles apart.
Californians are considering selling billions of dollars worth of bonds to get going on an 800-mile system of bullet trains that could zip along at 200 miles per hour, linking San Francisco and San Diego and the cities in between.
In the Midwest, transportation officials are pushing a plan to connect cities in nine states in a hub-and-spoke system centered in Chicago.
The public is way ahead of policymakers in recognizing trains as an attractive alternative to cars and planes, said Rep. James Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
"I think we're at a transformational point in intercity passenger rail service," said Oberstar, D-Minn.
15 years
This is good news for American Tourism, lets just hope it make its way into the final budget!
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