That has to be a pretty expensive per passanger mile subsidiy.
That has to be a pretty expensive per passanger mile subsidiy.
Actually, its not. The TRE carries someting like 7000 riders per day for about 255 workdays. Those $775,000 payments are quite low per passenger or per passenger mile.
If you do ever get curious, you might consider comparing the cost of building and maintaining an expressway (including interest and lost property tax revenue), versus the revenue it creates through gas taxes based on vehicle miles travelled on the road.
As a hint, I'll note the national "cost recovery ratio" of expressways hovers around 10-20%. Most of the gas tax revenue is created by the 75% of vehicle miles travelled on local roads, which are paid for out of your property taxes to your county and municipality, and not the gas tax. High property taxes subsidize low gas taxes on heavy users of the roadways such as truckers and travelling salesmen. And even at the state level, huge amounts of general fund revenue, especially sales taxes it seems, are used to prop up the low gas tax rate. If you shop a lot in a state like Virginia, you are subsidizing heavy users of the expressways.
A toll rate of about 5 cents per mile average is needed for breakeven conditions on an expressway for cars, with a much higher multiple of 5 to 10 times that amount needed for heavy trucks.
As a final bit of food for thought, the freight railways pay nearly $500,000,000 in property taxes on around 200,000 miles of rail lines. The Interstate and National highway system is of a comperable mileage. Ergo, municipalities are losing out on $500,000,000 in property taxes that must be made up by you and I on our houses and businesses because roadways are publicly held and not taxed.