Interesting transportation things

[TowerDude]

The best first step towards fixing rail travel in the US and Canada (and Mexico) would be to nationalize the track and rebalance the power relations between freight and passenger rail services on those tracks.

[Nouvellecosse]

I don't see why local and state governments would need to raise general property tax rates just to offset losing railway property tax. Not only because that wouldn't be that big a percentage of their revenue, but because governments can choose how they collect revenue. Corporate, capital gains, payroll, levies/fees, and property taxes are all options that many use, not just property tax. If the railroads remained private companies operating on the now public infrastructure, jurisdictions could just apply a railroad operations fee or something in a level equivalent to what they were getting from property tax. Or if rail operations were fully public there's no reason the federal government couldn't share some of the operational profits with other levels of government.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by DirectionNorth

I know how property tax works, you are being presumptuous here.

And I would like to see an "extra property tax on me forever." A more reliable TTC, shorter TCHC wait times, better maintained parks, proper public realm, recreation facilities, and social services? The QoL improvement would be worth the cost.

And you haven't mentioned any of my other points.

Did you not read my earlier response? Public owned does not mean Federal owned. Every penny lost going to a nationalized railroad is one less penny for your parks, hospitals, schools, and social services.

[DirectionNorth]

Originally Posted by electricron

Did you not read my earlier response? Public owned does not mean Federal owned. Every penny lost going to a nationalized railroad is one less penny for your parks, hospitals, schools, and social services.

You're not making any points anymore, only repeating "there'll be more taxes."

If you're talking about property taxes, the economic benefits to preserving existing infrastructure far outweigh the property tax collected. The City of Toronto collects $1.5 million in property tax each year from the railways, that's a fraction of a percent of the city's budget (which was $15 billion last year).

If you don't think passenger rail should be publicly operated, intercity rail *should* make a profit operationally, and the capital expenditures would be reasonable if Anglosphere governments were competent at building transit.

Anyways, I'm done here, unless you can string together three sentences that form logical connections.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by DirectionNorth

You're not making any points anymore, only repeating "there'll be more taxes."

If you're talking about property taxes, the economic benefits to preserving existing infrastructure far outweigh the property tax collected. The City of Toronto collects $1.5 million in property tax each year from the railways, that's a fraction of a percent of the city's budget (which was $15 billion last year).

If you don't think passenger rail should be publicly operated, intercity rail *should* make a profit operationally, and the capital expenditures would be reasonable if Anglosphere governments were competent at building transit.

Anyways, I'm done here, unless you can string together three sentences that form logical connections.

Wow! Since when has Toronto been in the USA? Toronto is also the largest city, metro in Ontario. I wonder how much other smaller cities, towns, or communities get in railroad property taxes in all of Canada?
There are counties, school districts, hospital districts, county supported colleges, and other independent districts fully financed just by property taxes in most of the USA.
Add your C1.5 million of railroad property taxes just for Toronto to the other 3,573 municipalities in all of Canada, and were discussing Cbillions.

And yes, my argument against nationalizating railroads is based upon taxes. Just as important an issue as any other.

[llamaorama]

I don't think broadly nationalizing railroads in the USA for the sake of introducing passenger service would be a reasonable policy because only a small proportion of railroad corridors are suitable for passenger service in the year 2024 and they would all need substantial rebuilding anyways for that passenger service to be fast and frequent enough to have actual value to the public.