The House and Senate plan to hold conference committee negotiations over the transportation reauthorization bill. Early this year, the House Transportation Committee had approved the most fiscally conservative reauthorization bill considered by congress since 1991, if not since 1982. Yet the bill never reached the floor of the House due to opposition from fiscal conservatives who said that the bill wasn’t fiscally conservative enough.
So the negotiations will center around the Senate bill, which is far from fiscally conservative in any sense of the word. It requires far more deficit spending than the House bill. It continues to divert a huge share of federal gas taxes to transit, which the House bill would have ended. And it includes all sorts of provisions that have nothing to do with transportation. In short, it is basically a continuation of the 2005 law with a few minor expansions of government power and spending.
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Naturally, House Democrats are elated. Transportation writer Ken Orski says it is likely that numerous “questionable items . . . have been slipped into this massive 1,600-plus page bill” (which is nearly twice as long as the House bill had been). The real fiscal conservatives in the House better do everything they can to kill the conference bill or the gamble they waged killing the House bill will come back to bite them.
Wonder if the final reauthorization will (by chance):
Encourage private-sector operation of urban transit systems?
Encourage states to impose tolls on currently “free” Interstate and non-Interstate freeways (especially those that need extensive reconstruction and/or suffer from recurring congestion)?
Allow states to use private-sector dollars to “match” what comes from the federal government?
A better strategy would be to dismantle the funding scheme’s by the federal government. A intriguing “opting out” concept proposed by several senators in the past few years. Allowing states to opt out of obtaining federal grants for transportation/transit projects. Allowing the states to raise their state gas tax to compensate for removing the federal gas tax so the revenue they generate stays in the state. With no prospects of federal funds in an emergency, the state would opt to seek out private sector in the road construction. I don’t honestly think that urban rail transit or light rail would be built or enhanced to any degree without federal money to pay for some of it. New York is seeking $3 billion that the federal government had committed to the Hudson River rail tunnel that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie scrapped in an attempt to boost the performance and quality of New Yorks’s most undercut subway lines and finance the Second Avenue Subway (whose cost is projected at $17 billion!). The MTA has consistently run on a deficit, but increased spending in 2000-2004 coupled with the economic downturn has led to a severe increase in the financial burden that the MTA bears. The current budget problems stems from multiple sources. The MTA cannot be supported solely by rider fares and road tolls. Revenue collected from real estate taxes for transportation purposes has helped to contain the deficit. However, due to the weak economy and unstable real estate market, money from these taxes has severely decreased; in 2010, tax revenue fell at least 20% short of the projected value; their operating revenue exceeds their budget. I don’t honestly think you can privatize a subway, even if it’s employee’s worked for free, there simply isn’t enough money to seal tunnels from water, pump the water out, replace and electrify rail, replace support columns, replace trains and railcars. I just cant see an entire private system operating something so expansive. Maybe I’m wrong, was there a time when such a system was privately owned?
Stockholm (SL) privatized its subway and regional rail (something like the regional rail systems run by NYMTA’s LIRR and Metro North; and SEPTA) quite a few years ago.
Stockholm’s subway is currently run under contract by Hong Kong’s MTR (and, of course, the Hong Kong system is run by MTR).
Copenhagen’s relatively new (and driverless) Metro system is run by a private-sector contractor.
Tokyo Metro is also privatized.
Some guy named Randal O’Toole with Cato wrote about privatizing the Washington Metrorail system back in 2009 here.
A better strategy would be to dismantle the funding scheme’s by the federal government. A intriguing “opting out†concept proposed by several senators in the past few years. Allowing states to opt out of obtaining federal grants for transportation/transit projects. Allowing the states to raise their state gas tax to compensate for removing the federal gas tax so the revenue they generate stays in the state.
That is a blatantly unconstitutional scheme. All federal excise taxes must be uniform across the entire country. Individual states cannot be “exempted”.
Its amazing the type of idiocy some people endorse around here in the name of ideology. It certainly shows you the care and concern so-called constitutional conservatives have when their ideology comes into conflict with our constitution.
the state would opt to seek out private sector in the road construction
Ummm … in general, private engineering/contracting firms design the roads and build the roads. There are some exceptions of states doing design in house. I’m not aware of any states which perform grading and earthmoving, aggregate mining, asphalt production, or paving.
Stockholm’s subway is currently run under contract
Running something under contract is privitization of the subsidy. Privitization as originally understood involve ending subsidies and selling public assets to private interests. See for example, the privitization of Conrail in the 1980’s.
Letting states opt out of the federal highway funding raises a lot of interesting questions.
I think it would:
1. States would focus more on commuting traffic and less on interstate traffic.
2. Metro areas on state borders, like DC and KC, would have to have interstate negotiations about how to deal with commuters.
3. Middle America states like ND, SD, WY, KS, etc., would probably find the interstates to be important to the state, even if through traffic was a large proportion. But the incentives are badly skewed and bad outcomes could happen there.
I would assume coalitions of states would be formed and together consider interstate roads. Interstate roads account for less than 2 percent of all the roads in America, but account for nearly a quarter of the miles driven. Perfect option for tolling to pay for significant improvement.
Well as long as the tolls go for improvements on the highways on which they’re collected, and not for transit wet dreams like rail, I’m all for it. I strongly support Randal’s congestion pricing ideas. Hopefully, one day, all the useless HOV lanes here in the Puget Sound area will at least be converted to HOT.
I would assume coalitions of states would be formed and together consider interstate roads.
We already have a coalition of the states overseeing road planning and construction. Its called the federal government. It seems to have worked pretty well for the past 225 years.
Why do we need to add on new entities?