Asking for a Fair Shake from the Conservative Press.
The Wall Street Journal recently carried an opinion column bemoaning the fact that a number of improvements to passenger rail systems in the Mid-west would require some subsidy from the federal government.
Of course knee-jerk conservatives, both in and out of the media, go bonkers at the very utterance of the word “subsidy”, and that was the tone of the Mark Peters story in the WSJ.
The column prompted an indignant response to Peters from one of our active and more articulate members of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, a portion of which is quoted herewith:
“No form of general transportation is now or has ever been truly profitable, and few modes – from Roman roads to U.S. railroads — have ever been developed or maintained without significant government “subsidy” – i.e., tax revenues beyond direct user fees.
“Yet, in America, car travel – perhaps the most heavily subsidized form of transportation in the history of mankind – remains the standard means of mobility, while trains are forced to prove their legitimacy in a world that is stacked against them.
“Part of this ‘stack’ is the common practice of otherwise conscientious reporters such as yourself to report that these Midwest trains will require subsidies, but not to point out that our highways and civil-aviation infrastructure require substantial federal subsidies and have been receiving them for much longer—highways since 1916 and airways since 1926.
“Should you question that auto user subsidies exceed other mobility subsidies, please examine the most recent edition of USDOT’s transportation funding data. Then check the budgets of a variety of states, cities and towns to see how much each spends on streets and highways and how much of the needed revenue for those expenditures is generated from non-auto user sources such as sales taxes, property taxes, and bond issues paid off from general fund revenues.”
So how about it, Mr. Peters? Any chance you might give passenger rail a fair shake in the future?
Correct! Passenger rail is the exception. Go figure!
Well said! Just why is it that no conservative is advocating we go with all toll highways (oh, no a “tax”) and have the airlines pay for the air infrastructure – airports, TSA, FAA, the whole nine yards out of their fares. Never ever have I heard that suggested!