More Highway Widening (Avera: light rail, best, building)

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by architect77

Look at all of the stuff spilling from trucks onto highways.

Do you want to share your train ride with mattress, chicken, construction materials,

Roads function to move goods, food, raw materials as much as they do daily commuters.

And yet no one is say we have to get rid of all roads and cars. Look for your straw man elsewhere.

[samiwas1]

Originally Posted by jsvh

cwkimbro.

Raw dollar amounts.

Roads get mega-buku times more subsidies than transit.

Roads get mega-buku times more usage and people. How about you do a per capita user cost and get back to us.

Get the total dollar amount of subsidies down for roads into the millions of dollars range link transit instead of the billions and trillions of dollar range like roads then lets compare? Do it by raising the gas tax if you think that will work. Either way, stop paying for these massive roadway expansions with (any) money from other non-user sources.

Where are you getting trillions of dollars in subsidies for roads? Over what time period? Because it has been proven over and over (which you refuse to acknowledge) that fuel taxes in Georgia pay for at least 50% of both operations and capital projects. And that leaves around one billion dollars in other funding from federal sources. Even if you tripled the "subsidy" amount and applied it to every state in the country, that would still be $150 billion a year, far from a trillion, and certainly not trillions.

It's also silly to apply the same amount to a state (or nation)-wide road and highway system and a localized transit system.

If you want only user fees to pay for highway and road work, then you must also agree that only user fees should cover transit expansion and operations, yes?

Originally Posted by jsvh

Also, GDOT is not the only funding source for roads in this state. On the whole Georgia only covers about a third of its roads with gas taxes + tolls: Gasoline Taxes and User Fees Pay for Only Half of State & Local Road Spending

The percentage is of state and local roads. Most local roads are covered by property tax, not fuel taxes. So to use local-road funding in your calculations of fuel-tax spending is, as usual, disingenuous.

Do any of you seriously deny that roads / highways are not getting a much, much more massive hand out on a raw dollar amount than transit no matter how you slice it?

Of course they do. Why would state-wide spending in a state of more than ten million people using thousands and thousands of miles of highways be equal to less than 50 miles of track and a few dozen bus routes in a single city? Why on earth would they ever be equal? How ludicrous of an argument could this possibly be?

[cwkimbro]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Yet in places in the world (and in the past here in Atlanta) where roads are less subsidized transit is also less subsidized or not subsudized at all.

The road subsidies are the problem that makes transit less viable. Transit is the more viable option on a dollar for dollar level playing field.

That is false.

You're spending too much time to re-create facts for the argument you wish was true.

We subsidized 100% the capital costs of transit when it exists and over a majority of the operations costs.

Yet, that is not true with our regional highways and freeways.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by cwkimbro

That is false.

You're spending too much time to re-create facts for the argument you wish was true.

We subsidized 100% the capital costs of transit when it exists and over a majority of the operations costs.

Yet, that is not true with our regional highways and freeways.

What is false?

You do realize the original transit companies in Atlanta were private companies, right? Not only were the original private streetcar lines built 0% government subsidized, but government also required the streetcar companies to pay to pave the roads as well. So transit was actually subsidizing cars (their competition).

Honestly, what point are you even hoping to get to? My point is we got to stop subsidizing wide highways so much. You seem to think that since we also give transit a subsidy it is fine to give highways a subsudy too.

I think transit deserves subsidies much more than roads (better for traffic, health, environment, etc). Do you not agree that transit is more worthy of government subsidy that roads? Just like if we are going to subsidize, we should subsidize solar over coal (of course like transit, left on its own solar will win out without subsidy in the long run).

But regardless we should agree that they deserve at least equal dollar amount (not farebox recovery %, dollar-for-dollar amounts).

I am not sure how you are getting hung up on percentages so much. This has never been about percentages. This is about raw dollar amounts of subsidies. Or do you really doubt the raw dollar amount of non-user-fee subsidies for roads is not way, way more than transit gets?

Four options:
-Roads get way more dollars of subsidies (the way things are now, again, not percentages, dollars).
-No subsidies for either.
-Transit and roads get even dollar-for-dollar subsidies.
-Transit gets more dollars of subsidies than roads.

Any of the last three options I am fine with. Is the top choice really the only acceptable one for you?

[cwkimbro]

Originally Posted by jsvh

What is false?

You do realize the original transit companies in Atlanta were private companies, right? Not only were the original private streetcar lines built 0% government subsidized, but government also required the streetcar companies to pay to pave the roads as well. So transit was actually subsidizing cars (their competition).

Honestly, what point are you even hoping to get to? My point is we got to stop subsidizing wide highways so much. You seem to think that since we also give transit a subsidy it is fine to give highways a subsudy too.

I think transit deserves subsidies much more than roads (better for traffic, health, environment, etc). Do you not agree that transit is more worthy of government subsidy that roads? Just like if we are going to subsidize, we should subsidize solar over coal (of course like transit, left on its own solar will win out without subsidy in the long run).

But regardless we should agree that they deserve at least equal dollar amount (not farebox recovery %, dollar-for-dollar amounts).

I am not sure how you are getting hung up on percentages so much. This has never been about percentages. This is about raw dollar amounts of subsidies. Or do you really doubt the raw dollar amount of non-user-fee subsidies for roads is not way, way more than transit gets?

Four options:
-Roads get way more dollars of subsidies (the way things are now, again, not percentages, dollars).
-No subsidies for either.
-Transit and roads get even dollar-for-dollar subsidies.
-Transit gets more dollars of subsidies than roads.

Any of the last three options I am fine with. Is the top choice really the only acceptable one for you?

JSVH the point I'm hoping to get to is really just to stop your twists and lies.

You play the Libertarian card, yet you argue to subsidize for something that is more expensive and requires larger subsidies at the cost of something that mostly pays for itself.

You ignore that governments have always helped pay for roads and transit.

Even when they are privately funded, like the old streetcar systems, they were essentially protected monopolies on their routes and technology changed. Those routes were on government bought and funded land.

Transit didn't fund cars and their demise, it couldn't withstand the change in technology and consumer behavior.


There are real merits to transit and many in these forums are willing to discuss it, but you are the one hijacking all of these threads with heavily biased information and factual inaccuracies.


The Gas tax works. It works better than tolling. There is a real problem with the fact that it hasn't been increased since 1993 and that increase wasn't enough as it was. If it had been tied to inflation and MPG adjustments, it would work much better.

Still, that aside, the statewide and federal road network is predominately paid for by the gas tax and not nearly as subsidized from general funds as you make it out to be.

You have to accept reality and then argue for what you want, rather than trying to warp reality to be a quick convenient argument of what you want.



Now what you are asking people to do is remove the small percentage of subsidies on the network that currently moves most of our people, goods, and supplies and still mostly pays for it self (capital and operations) for a system that requires far larger subsidies, doesn't move goods and supplies, and only moves the smallest portion of our commuters. It doesn't add up and your whole faux-libertarian act is complete BS and getting old.

People keep telling you reality and you just ignore them and repeat the same trash a month later.

[jsvh]

cwkimbro, stop getting caught up in labels and what you think my views should be. I am telling you what they are. The world is not white and black with clear lines separating people into clean cut groups. To me libertarianism is not anarchy. Government still has purpose. If that makes me a "moderate libertarian", "small government eco-urbanist" or whatever else you want to call me, so be it.

Either way, you are getting distracted from the main point here. Where do you stand?

Four options:
-Roads get way more dollars of subsidies (the way things are now, again, not percentages, dollars).
-No subsidies for either.
-Transit and roads get even dollar-for-dollar subsidies.
-Transit gets more dollars of subsidies than roads.

Any of the last three options I am fine with. Is the top choice really the only acceptable one for you?

[cwkimbro]

JSVH,

you're getting distracted from your own hypocrisy, which is we are calling you out on being a faux-libertarian.

You're the one that has brought up the self-defined label many times to justify your point, yet you continually ignore the reality.

You want to discuss subsidies when it is to your preconceived visions, but not during other times. You're arguments are hypocritical. period.

And the way you are trying to summary 3 or 4 main self-created black and white choices and ignore everything else I and others have said on the subject already is simply disingenuous way you're trying to change and/or ignore our previous thoughts on the subject.

[jsvh]

cwkimbro, fine, I am a disingenuous "faux-libertarian"! You got me! My evil plot has been uncovered. Can we get back to the topic at hand now?

I will ask another way: How much non-user-fee based subsudy do you think is acceptable for roads and highways? $1 ? $100,000,000,000? All of the government's budget? 99% of the costs? 50% ? 3%? 0% ? Equal to the farebox recovery ratio of the closest transit system?

[samiwas1]

Originally Posted by jsvh

cwkimbro, fine, I am a disingenuous "faux-libertarian"! You got me! My evil plot has been uncovered. Can we get back to the topic at hand now?

I will ask another way: How much non-user-fee based subsudy do you think is acceptable for roads and highways?

How about 50% user fee/50% subsidy for each, based on an equal dollar amount per expected user on each? So, we'd use the current GDOT budget, make it a 50/50 split instead of what it is now, then apply the same per-user costs to transit dollar-for-dollar. How does that sound to you?

Note that direct user taxes such as motor fuel taxes count as user fees, while general sales taxes count towards subsidy.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by samiwas1

How about 50% user fee/50% subsidy for each, based on an equal dollar amount per expected user on each? So, we'd use the current GDOT budget, make it a 50/50 split instead of what it is now, then apply the same per-user costs to transit dollar-for-dollar. How does that sound to you?

Note that direct user taxes such as motor fuel taxes count as user fees, while general sales taxes count towards subsidy.

Ah, great! Now we are getting down to it. I don't agree at all! :-)

But at least this gets us somewhere, so if that "50%" subsudy is not enough to cover projects you think you "need" (like perhaps 6 laned highways in rural GA) will you agree that we should not do it?