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One of the key problems is just how much it costs per mile. In the USA, the price tag of infrastructure projects is substantially more than comparable infrastructure projects in France, UK, Germany, Korea, etc.
I agree, and indeed your recent post on the subject was thoroughly informative. But what are the options? We can forswear infrastructure improvements, devolving to a Jeffersonian yeoman-farmer society. We can delegate the matter to the states – but would they perform the job more efficiently? Or we can pursue it at the federal level.
You are not a qualified judge of such things. Your problems here begin in an unfounded belief that you do or should have any say in these matters at all. Once again, in representative forms of government, lawmakers are elected to represent the INTERESTS of their constituents, not their damned-fool OPINIONS. It is those we elect who make taxing and spending decisions for us. Recognizing the scope and complexity of the task, these folks have strong tendencies toward obtaining advice and counsel from the most well-informed experts on matters at hand. Your are not one of those experts. You are an outsider who does not actually have a clue. You lack both the time and the training that would be necessary to be able to keep abreast of such things, so excepting perhaps for some random pollster or other, no one will ever be calling you up to see what you think about any issue at all. This is how things are designed and supposed to be.
Im sorry how exactly are you qualified? You part of the in crowd there slick? You the big decision making elected official?
Im sorry how exactly are you qualified? You part of the in crowd there slick? You the big decision making elected official?
Well, I'm retired now, but a simple civics course should be enough to point out for you that your assessments of tax burdens and of duly enacted tax-funded programs are completely meaningless and irrelevant. This is thanks in significant part to the lengths the founders went to in keeping their new government out of the reach of the uninformed and easily misled masses.
"A panel of top economists at top research universities weighed in on this question;" Here's the rub, it's obvious why we don't always need to consult with economists when considering what's best for America. Seeing the present infrastructure needs as something akin to a "gift" from government has no merit whatsoever. Modern day infrastructure investment is a necessity, and certainly too important to be left to "a panel of economists" to decide it's fate.
Too bad the rail itself is privately owned. It should be public, like a road or the airways, to foster competition and convenience. Having all these trucks on the Interstates is a safety hazard and air is still cost-prohibitive to ship.
The only reason that we have a unified passenger railroad company is because passenger rail traffic was declining in the 50's and 60's that the railroads decided that they wanted to concentrate on the lucrative freight market. Amtrak was really the dumping ground of disposed private-sector passenger rail assets; a perfect example of privatized profits, socialized losses.
Amtrak was envisioned and created between 1966 and 1971; at that time, there were a fair number of elderly Americans who did not hold a driver's license and were reluctant to fly; most have long since passed from the scene.
What Amtrak did accomplish. and relatively quickly, was to undo the damage and negativity that arose during the days when the freight railroads usually tried to "unsell" passenger service; but when the public's attention turned positive, the planners and bureaucrats tried to redesign the long-distance service along the lines of handful of luxury streamliners which a handful of the freight roads operated as "loss leaders" for public-relations purposes. The financial situation was further aggravated by the loss of "head-end" mail and express (UPS-type) services which the new managers didn't know how to handle, and which continued to deteriorate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KerrTown
Too bad the rail itself is privately owned. It should be public, like a road or the airways, to foster competition and convenience. Having all these trucks on the Interstates is a safety hazard and air is still cost-prohibitive to ship.
The only reason that we have a unified passenger railroad company is because passenger rail traffic was declining in the 50's and 60's that the railroads decided that they wanted to concentrate on the lucrative freight market. Amtrak was really the dumping ground of disposed private-sector passenger rail assets; a perfect example of privatized profits, socialized losses.
Up until around 1985, that freight service wasn't "lucrative" by any measure; The physical plant in the Northeast and much of the Midwest continued to deteriorate, and rendered it unsuitable for most higher-valued "MM&P" (manufactured, miscellaneous and perishable) freight. During that time I worked for a while for a trucking line that hauled perishables (in "piggybacked" trailers) from Chicago to various East Coast points; the freight came off the rails at Chicago because the dilapidated track in much of the Northeast meant that reliable deliveries could no longer be guaranteed. A lot of what's left on the Interstates today is too valuable, too prone to damage, or moves in quantities too small to command rail service, which was re-geared toward larger shipments of low-valued freight in bulk.
The problem was solved by a combination of a redesign of all T/COFC (Trailer/Container on Flat Car) equipment into a limited set of standard forms, by economic dereregulation, and by a cooperative effort by both management and labor to come to a realistic agreement on both crew sizes and work rules; (the mileage traveled for an operating railroader's average day roughly doubled). By 1995, the improvement in the industry's financial health and physical reconstruction was obvious -- and all the seven remaining major rail companies in North America (and most of the short lines which serve them as traffic feeders) are operating at consistent, if not spectacular profits.
Nationalization removes most, if not all incentives to innovate; even the railroad brotherhoods (unions) worked to avoid this during the 1970-85 crisis. Why would anyone want to go back to that?
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 06-19-2017 at 09:04 PM..
I voted "strongly agree" and I'm willing to pay more in taxes that directly go to those infrastructures.
Totally agree.
One of the things that bother me about todays no taxation pledges, is that some other generation paid for the same/similar items that we benefited from.
They should but require the states to return it if the states spend it on public pensions or hiring teachers.
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