… is government transportation and infrastructure policy. We’ll delve into that shortly. For now, here is a little more dog-bites-man:
According to an analysis based on Census data by transportation specialist Ron Utt, nine of 10 Virginia commutes are by car and fewer than one in 20 by mass transit. Yet he calculates that about 60 cents of every transportation dollar goes to roads, while about 30% of Mr. McDonnell’s tax increase would go to public transit and rail.
The McDonnell plan even earmarks $300 million for a $5.5 billion extension of the Washington, D.C. metro to Virginia’s Dulles airport. That project, which rivals California’s high-speed rail project for fiscal implausibility, has been plagued with so many cost overruns that its construction and operating costs will, according to a Heritage Foundation study, “be at least $40,000” per new round-trip weekday rider, or “about as much as the annual cost to lease each new rider a Rolls Royce.”
They added, I think, three lanes on each side of the Long Island Expressway back when either Eisenhower or Kennedy was president. Every lane filled up immediately. They already had the twice bankrupt Long Island Railroad. Thank goodness Robert Wagner or John Lindsay had not successfully pushed through the Manhattan to Sayville, or worse, the Manhattan to Stroudsburg, bullet mag lev train.
Our planners look with great disdain upon suburban “sprawl” evoking an image of a lazy beast lying over his couch. If you think this is fantasy, I saw a cartoon of it in a magazine sent to me by the government when I was on our local planning commission.
At the time, I lived, as I still do, in the country, sort of. I could then and still do appreciate the aspiration to get your own house, on your own land, a little piece of Heaven.
To the planners, that is anathema.
They want you to live in a proscribed number of square feet, walk to the factory, and take public transportation to go everywhere else. The farmers and their helpers will live in the country….
And how does this sound like the German Democratic Republic? Or, for that matter, even Europe? It is their aspiration for equality, which is good, right?
Gov. Patrick last night announced he is proposing to increase the income tax here in Masschusetts by 1% (from 5.25% to 6.25%) in order to fund new transportation projects (trains mostly I guess) and of course education. I look forward to your “further delving” WC, I’ll be needing the data.
FYI he is softenting the blow by cutting sales taxes, pitching “fairness” and that the sales tax is regressive, etc. If regressivity is the issue I’d think he would eliminate the lottery and the cigarette tax. But I am not the expert in “fairness” that the governor is.
Does anyone know of data regarding who bears the burden (income strata) of revenues generated by lotteries or the cigarette tax?
Jb, I did some–ten minutes! — research on the subject, and there are studies, some of which suggested that above 100 IQ people participate.
The odds are awful, much worse than the reviled numbers rackets, which I assume flourish. Meanwhile, for thirty or so years our government protectors have agonized about tighter spreads for stock trades beyond an eighth.
jb, do me a favor and give me a call. WC has my numbers.