Mass Transit Crystal Ball (Jacksonville, Tampa: job, construction, agent)

[Wild Style]

apv if you are from NYC as you say then you should know what they are using that money for. All the extensions to the train and improving service. I dont even live in the city any more and I know whats going on with that.

[Since 1972]

Originally Posted by apvbguy

airports, port facilities, bridges all have sources of funding, it's called user fees, in JAX there used to be tolls on the bridges, when the bridges were paid off the tolls were removed.

mass transit as evidenced by the chart posted in another reply never comes close to paying for itself and will always be a drain on the taxpayers.

The bridge tolls were replaced with a sales tax - they did not go away.

Maybe it depends on your definition of user fee, but there are no true user fees in aviation. A user fee for aviation would be the FAA charging a pilot $20 for a takeoff clearance or $10 for a weather briefing. Some individual airport businesses charge a landing fee, but it's usually waived with a fuel purchase. Other airports charge a landing fee to small aircraft to discourage them from disrupting the flow of large airliners. Pilots, in general, most assuredly do not and will never agree to pay user fees. Airports and air traffic control are funded mostly by federal grants collected through a combination of ticket taxes, fuel taxes, and others. Auto fuel taxes pay for federal highway projects, not "user fees." The users of the systems generally pay for the systems, but it's through a very general and somewhat fair method of sales taxation. Read more here http://www.aopa.org/faafundingdebate/funding.html

[apvbguy]

Originally Posted by Wild Style

apv if you are from NYC as you say then you should know what they are using that money for. All the extensions to the train and improving service. I dont even live in the city any more and I know whats going on with that.

what extensions could that be? the last expansion was over 10 years ago. In fact they are talking about reducing services.
you must really have some good ins because according to the article offered even the execs at the MTA have no clue as to what they are going to do with their "surplus" of funds.

[apvbguy]

Originally Posted by Since 1972

The bridge tolls were replaced with a sales tax - they did not go away.

Maybe it depends on your definition of user fee, but there are no true user fees in aviation. A user fee for aviation would be the FAA charging a pilot $20 for a takeoff clearance or $10 for a weather briefing. Some individual airport businesses charge a landing fee, but it's usually waived with a fuel purchase. Other airports charge a landing fee to small aircraft to discourage them from disrupting the flow of large airliners. Pilots, in general, most assuredly do not and will never agree to pay user fees. Airports and air traffic control are funded by federal grants collected through a combination of ticket taxes, fuel taxes, and others. Auto fuel taxes pay for federal highway projects, not "user fees." The users of the systems generally pay for the systems, but it's through a very general and somewhat fair method of sales taxation.

do you know what you're babbling about? did you read that article? find me a mass transit sysytem that has it's users pay 75% of the operating costs?
in addition you ignoring all the other fees collected from airports, all you've focused on is the air traffic control system, those airlines pay soem very high gate fees and landing fees, that you've managed to ignore.
let's move to autos, the government collects about 60 cents for every gallon of fuel sold, then there are d/l fees, registration fees, have you ever bought tires, the excise tax is built into the cost of those, car batteries, same thing, motor oil more taxes. in addition trucks pay many more in road use taxes. In a place like NYC where you need to pay for parking there is a 14% tax added to that parking fee, that money doesn't go to maintaining roads, it goes to transit. lastly, many places have tolls on their roads, if that isn't a user fee, I don't know what is
Please try and have a little bit of a handle on a subject that you're going to comment on, because you don't have a good grasp of this one

[Since 1972]

Originally Posted by apvbguy

do you know what you're babbling about? did you read that article? find me a mass transit sysytem that has it's users pay 75% of the operating costs?
in addition you ignoring all the other fees collected from airports, all you've focused on is the air traffic control system, those airlines pay soem very high gate fees and landing fees, that you've managed to ignore.
let's move to autos, the government collects about 60 cents for every gallon of fuel sold, then there are d/l fees, registration fees, have you ever bought tires, the excise tax is built into the cost of those, car batteries, same thing, motor oil more taxes. in addition trucks pay many more in road use taxes. In a place like NYC where you need to pay for parking there is a 14% tax added to that parking fee, that money doesn't go to maintaining roads, it goes to transit. lastly, many places have tolls on their roads, if that isn't a user fee, I don't know what is
Please try and have a little bit of a handle on a subject that you're going to comment on, because you don't have a good grasp of this one

I shall attempt not to be as insulting as some people here, as you have no idea what my background is or what qualifications I have to make the statements I made.

It's been said before in this thread, we all get that you have a problem with paying for mass transit. Repeating it over and over and over and insulting everyone in sight does not solve anything.

From the article you said I didn't read:

Everyone who uses the air transportation system pays taxes to help cover nearly 75% of the costs of developing and running America's National Airspace System (NAS) and improving and maintaining public-use airports.

In addition to this dedicated fund from all aviation users, about one-quarter of the costs for the air transportation system come from the General Fund.

What airport fees am I ignoring? The additional sales tax on purchases made on airport property? Government collections beyond the fuel/cargo/ticket taxes plus the general fund are usually for locally generated projects, not for the entire US airport system.

I only brought up the subject of airports because it was said they were paid for by user fees, and they are not. I'm not making any comparison whatsoever to rail transit.

[eureka1]

Congratulations to you folks in Jax for getting going on a much-needed rapid transit system. You'll be ready when gas starts costing $6 a gallon and when I come to Jax to visit my folks I look forward to having a choice at the airport besides renting a car or those overpriced taxis. Way to go!

[KerryB]

Remember, apvbguy knows all because he's a former NYC resident. And he is also highly proficient in the Google & Wikipedia arts.

[WitchDoctor]

Wow! This got interesting today.

I hope that Ocklawaha will continue to keep everyone in the loop because like it or not, something is going to have to be done about traffic in Jax.

Apvguy, I just have one question. If all of the taxes collected in the transportation sector in NYC (parking, excise taxes, tolls, etc) go to fund transit, then please tell us where the funding comes from to maintain the roads.

[Wild Style]

Originally Posted by apvbguy

what extensions could that be? the last expansion was over 10 years ago. In fact they are talking about reducing services.
you must really have some good ins because according to the article offered even the execs at the MTA have no clue as to what they are going to do with their "surplus" of funds.

you sure you live in NYC and maybe not jersey or long island? Anyway

link

link

link

There is TONS more, if you want you can google it.

[OREGONRAIN]

Originally Posted by apvbguy

that's not the argument, I've already said that mass transit works somewhat well in like brooklyn ny that serve an urban core.

the costs are astronomical, NYC which has one of the highest farebox recovery rates of any US transit system still only collects about 60 cents on the dollar to run that system, what that means is that people who never set foot on mass transit are paying for the cheap rides others are receiving. Are the people of the JAX region ready to help pay for others to have a cheap ride to work?

I am not against mass transit, I am against mass transit systems that need massive subsidies from the taxpayers to operate.
the day I have to pay taxes to support mass transit is the day I leave the area

Then you better start packing, because if people in states like you live ,don't get off their butts and do something you won't be going anywhere. People cannot pay for their gas now, and the constant threats of higher prices and so called shortages are a wake up call. Do you honestly think we can continue to run around wasting all this gas at these prices year after year. A state or city its population that shows no interest in getting people out of their cars at least somewhat then this should be the scenario. Cut federal Transportation funds to those areas. If they can't shape up on their own force feed them. It may sound harsh but I wonder about some of the people that live in areas of the country that live in a world of ignorance at this late space in time 2008.