Last time I drove down a non-toll Interstate was at Christmas time. I don't expect to be doing so again until September, when I head out on vacation. I think I'd rather pay tolls per use instead of $500 per year in gas taxes.
Because if there really was a demand to have these things, private industry would be chomping at the bit to build and run them. But instead they're pushed through by activists who smell nirvana and contractors who smell money.
First off, before American began subdizing highways, rail lines and streetcars and interurban lines were built all over the place only by private industry and linked up all major cities and most minor towns without government assistance. With the advent of the subsidized motor highway, these companies were bankrupted and their capital plant abandoned for scrap. The demand was there before the government changed the rules of the game in favor of cheap auto transportation.
Second, I have yet to hear of a single road financed by private industry on its own. Why aren't they chomping at the bit to build roads? Of course the reason is no road has ever turned a profit. Heck, the busiest highways can't even support themselves when it comes to earning enough through the gas tax from use on them alone to build and maintain them. Most people are not going to be willing to pay the $0.20 per mile in tolls it takes to actually run a highway.
Third, the gas tax only pays for a portion of road expenses in this country. There are many places where sales taxes and other general revenue sources are routed directly to the State DOT. To say nothing of the universal practice of paying for local roads through property tax revenue. I'd be more willing to listen to complaining about "subsidized mass transit" when I also start hearing complaining about "subsidized highways".
It's apparently a los angeles thing as well. People advocate publicly funded rail mass transit citing numerous benefits that never materialize. If people really want these things built and they feel it will be used, then they should pool money and do it through the private sector. The vast majority of people who will pay for this will never, ever use it. That's what's wrong with it.
I'd be more than happy to have my fares doubled to pay full board on using commuter rail.
I strenuously object as well, though, to having to subdize auto commuters through my gas and property tax bills. Are you willing to see the gas tax doubled to remove the subsidization of highway travel?
Well, here in SoCal we have FastTrack lanes on several freeways that were, I believe, funded by private companies. They turn a profit.
And the Golden Gate Bridge is a small example of a profitable road.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Virtually ALL of the major railroad lines connecting cities in the north and west were built on cushy government perks, land handouts, and subsidies to yankee industrialists between roughly 1850-1890 (I believe the lone exception was a single transcontinental line across the extreme northern part of the country near the canadian border). The southern lines were a bit different, having originally been built to transport cotton to the Mississippi river, so some of them were indeed private (but the war in 1861-65 also destroyed many of those). But as a general rule of thumb, most of the major intercity railroad tracks from pre-interstate days got their starts on government incentives and subsidies. Streetcars, I suppose, vary from city to city and while I do not have data on every city I do know how Houston's streetcar system (which was at one time one of the largest in the nation with about 100 miles of tracks) came to be. It started in the 1870's when a group of businessmen went down to city hall and asked the government to give them free land on city streets for their tracks. City Hall gave them the perks they wanted and from then until 1940 government constistently subsidized and built the Houston streetcar system. When taxicabs came along in the 1910's it cut into the streetcar's business profits. The solution? They lobbied city hall to impose inordinately stringent regulatory licensing procedures on cab operators, and when that didn't work they banned the cabs all together from competing! Houston's streetcars grew up as a city supported, city subsidized, and city protected monopoly.
Second, I have yet to hear of a single road financed by private industry on its own.
There are actually quite a few of them throughout history. Several of the old roads that we know today by the name of "turnpike" were originally trails that private citizens and companies cleared out in previous centuries (they also charged users a fee on several of them). In modern times there have been several private venture tollroads where companies have come in under public-private partnership laws, bought the land, and built the roads on their own. Some of the tollways in CA and the Leesburg Greenway outside of Washington D.C. are prime examples of this.
Why aren't they chomping at the bit to build roads?
Actually several companies have and are doing just that. Virginia has a procedure that allows private companies to buy land and build and maintain roads on them, and some have successfully done so. Unfortunately it is actually the government that impedes this the most - to build a private road you have to go through ridiculously complex bureaucracies before they will give you the land use approval that is necessary to begin construction. To say nothing of the universal practice of paying for local roads through property tax revenue.
Property is worthless without a road to make it accessible. Using a small ammount of property tax revenues to finance and maintain something that benefits the property owner and increases the value of his property is therefore perfectly reasonable.
I'd be more willing to listen to complaining about "subsidized mass transit" when I also start hearing complaining about "subsidized highways".
There's a key distinction to be made. Whereas highways recover the majority of their expenses through user fees and user taxes, public transit doesn't even come close to the 50% mark. Houston's metro is on pace to take in maybe $5 million in ticket sales this year, which is less than ONE QUARTER of what it costs them to simply keep the trains moving. Transportation costs and taxes are a heck of a lot more palatable when the system itself is recovering the majority of its expenses through use (as highways do) as opposed to falling over 75% short (as transit often does) and leaving the rest of us non-users with the tab.
Name one.
Well, name one outside the New York/Conn./NJ hellhole.
Besides, if you don't like subsidizing highways, try getting your furniture moved or your groceries delivered on the subway!
LOL!
OTOH, the plus side to mass transit is you get to meet such a nice class of people there...