Trucks in Michigan are allowed to weigh 170k pounds if they buy a special permit. It's insane. Mich is heavy industry and I'm sure the permit is cheaper than it should be since so much of Michigans economy is centered around heavy materials. I think that's what the article refers to. These heavy trucks hauling steel and whatnot. That's Michigan's fault though, you can't do that in Ohio where each axel is allowed to carry much less. If you're over the limit and get pulled into a weigh station, you get fined for it. Everyone knows the stark contrast between Mich and Ohio roads. 

KJP owns a retail store. Pays property taxes. Solely pays for its upkeep. No one else can use the store unless he says so. The store size is really small so that he uses every square in of the place to its maximum capacity. Pays a guy to manage the traffic in out of it, using a sophisticated and safe but expensive dispatching system. Pays for his own security guards. Pays liability insurance on the whole thing. And when KJP has to make improvements or buy new equipment for the dispatching system, the security guards, the properties or the facilities, he goes to a bank to get the financing, paying their interest and their profit margins.

 

David runs a retail store but he doesn't own it. Instead, the government owns it. He doesn't pay property taxes. He just uses it and pays one-sixth the actual cost of operating it, according to the Office of Management and Budget. The government pays for traffic management, including roadside signs, the traffic cameras, the people who monitor them and provide traffic messaging. Other branches of government provide him with security at all hours of the day. The store is way overbuilt, and under-capacity. Neither he nor his landlord pay insurance on this massive infrastructure. Just try to sue his landlord and you will see why it carries no insurance. His store's infrastructure, traffic dispatching, access ways and property acquisition is funded not by banks or other private enterprise, but by a government-held trust fund which the government provides interest payments and uses to support tax-free bonds to more more infrastructure. Any surprise that the store he uses is way overbuilt? There's parts he rarely, if ever, uses. And his drivers don't build layovers for his trucks along the property. They just pull off into rest areas to sleep. Despite his landlords huge infrastructure, it does see two spikes in traffic during the day when traffic exceeds capacity, and that's people remember most. He calls them his "rush hours." So they overbuild the capacity of the store to accommodate those two rush hours rather than charge people extra to visit the store during those times and causes the store's traffic to spread out to other times of the day. That's called the free market, where people pay for the services they use, and they pay more when something is in high demand. But since this is a government owned store, unlike the one KJP has, the rules of the free market don't apply.

Pretty good analogy! :-D

 

You might add that privately owned and operated KJP has to compete with government supported David and has to make a profit or go out of business. David, who has a much of the risk assumed by the government, needs less to go into business and less yet to to stay open.

 

This is exactly what has happened to our railroads, which have abandoned many miles of track that we now need, merged to try to compete with the deep pockets of the public purse or gone out business. Much of the time their profit margins were so thin they could not afford the cost of capital for expansion.

 

Thankfully, that's changing for the better as railroads are now very efficient movers of freight.

 

Personally, I'd love it if all transportation had to be truly self supporting. Rail would dominate, especially freight rail. Even Amtrak would be able to raise fares to the point where they covered operating costs if motorists paid the true costs of driving.

Well said, KJP and BuckeyeB.  I feel for your dad, David, but still, the rest of us are paying for the road damage his industry does not pay for.  BuckeyeB is right, end the shell game we play with transportation (especially roads and driving) and the our entire transportation system would be better for it.  We would have the Ohio Hub system today, if this were the case. 

While this plan doesn't seem to have been fully thought out yet, some rendition of this needs to happen.  They absolutely need to make vehicle weight part of the equation otherwise you remove the incentive to own a smaller, more fuel efficient car.  The tracking device they talk about would never fly either.  Just have people report it on their taxes.  Mileage cheaters would be caught when they attempt to sell the car.

 

Obama administration floats draft plan to tax cars by the mile

 

The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive.

 

The plan is a part of the administration's Transportation Opportunities Act, an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.

 

The White House, however, said the bill is only an early draft that was not formally circulated within the administration.

 

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/159397-obama-floats-plan-to-tax-cars-by-the-mile

Owning a car is like having a second mortgage

BY JESS ZIMMERMAN

1 AUG 2011 12:02 PM

 

Auckland Transport Blog points out a sobering calculation from the book The Option of Urbanism: The financial cost of owning and maintaining a car is equivalent to the cost of owning a small house. (Well, a small house in a cheap area. But still.)

 

AAA calculated that the average cost of car ownership and maintenance for a typical car in 2006 was $7,800 per year. This covers loan payments, fuel, parking, maintenance, insurance and incidental costs …

 

… The result is that owning an average car is the equivalent of having an additional $135,000 mortgage (mortgage interest is tax-deductible, and this calculation assumes six percent mortgage interest). In essence, drivable suburbanism has probably been shifting family spending away from investing in a long-term appreciating asset (e.g. a house) or savings to a short-term depreciating asset (e.g. a car).

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.grist.org/list/2011-08-01-owning-a-car-is-like-having-a-second-mortgage

If this article (http://archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=6826) is correct then the metro areas of Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati each could pump about $750 million back into their local economies if just 10 percent of their metro populations had the public transit, pedestrian, biking and land use support systems to let them give up owning and operating cars.

Cool graphic.....

How are costs calculated for bus and car transportation? Much of the society costs I think would be shared.

How are costs calculated for bus and car transportation? Much of the society costs I think would be shared.

 

That's the point, the societal costs are shared by everyone. Society pays for the wear and tear on roads (through our property, sales, and/or income taxes) because gas tax doesn't cover it. We all breathe in polluted air and deal with the other environmental consequences. But the driver is only paying for the cost of their car and the gas.

No, the driver pays that in addition. Even someone who doesn't drive "uses" the roads. If not for personal transportation than for anything they do business with.

That's the point, the societal costs are shared by everyone. Society pays for the wear and tear on roads (through our property, sales, and/or income taxes) because gas tax doesn't cover it. We all breathe in polluted air and deal with the other environmental consequences. But the driver is only paying for the cost of their car and the gas.

 

I think you misunderstood my question, or it was unclear. I meant, I would have guessed societal costs would be similar between car and bus. I don't understand how the two are so far off from each other considering they both use the same infrastructure. 

 

There is probably a logical explanation. Maybe the number of people per bus compared to road space needed? The numbers don't mean anything to me out of context.

I see. While buses and cars use the same infrastructure, cars still do more damage to the roads per person, output more pollution per person, and take up more space per person. Of course, the graphic doesn't break down what factors go into the calculation, so it's hard to say how the author arrived at those numbers.

How are costs calculated for bus and car transportation? Much of the society costs I think would be shared.

 

Probably includes costs such as oil industry subsidies, traffic accidents, stormwater runoff, pollution, keeping a military presence at/near oil producing parts of the world, etc.

@Governing

"What's wrong with us?" America makes people pay for water, electricity & Internet -- but not the roads we drive on. http://t.co/xl6MJE06Jx

Most people don't understand how expensive it is to own a car. This vid breaks it down well. We need options to the car keys. Legalize Transportation Freedom!