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Originally Posted by hammersklavier
Fixed it for ya. It was just a minor misspelling in the code.
Air is a bit more complicated, but the key difference is that a double standard is being applied by the highway crowd.
They reason thus: Americans have a God-given right to cars and thus anything to do with them falls under public works. But every other mode of transportation is private and should be expected to turn a profit to have a raison d'être.
The problem with this is that there's a double standard. Only cars apply for the fulfillment of freedom of mobility.
...Part of the problem comes with the usage of that word, mobility. What we really mean is freedom of access. Freedom to go from Place A to Place B, whenever, however.
And so we can see where the problem comes in with a highway. A highway curtails which freedom...? for which freedom...? If you're going to see mobility as the core freedom being expressed, you're going to be able to justify highways as public works. Problem is, that can also be used to justify public railroads and public airlines (which was done in Europe, recall).
But, as I argue, the core freedom that needs to be addressed is one of access--of being able to get from place to place--and when you think in those terms, the only reasonable solution, from the government's perspective, is to provide the most efficient access network possible. That means maximizing the amount of access enabled per investment. That means that the only reasonable network worth public investment is the local streets and roads network.
Curtailing access for mobility is actually a subversion of the expressed freedom, if access is the critical freedom needing public guarantee.
When analyzed with this framework, it becomes clear that highways, rail, and air all express mobility over access. Mobility can be taken as a freedom, a God-given right, as well, which would imply that all transportation systems are in the public domain.
Or...mobility can be taken as a luxury overlain on the core freedom of access. That allows it to be commoditized, and relinquished to the market. Highways, rail, and air in this regard become something worth paying for. Quantifying, as it were, your time.
(Before the passage of the National Interstate and Defense Highway Act--or something with a similar name--this was how the United States' federal government approached transportation policy.)
This would be the theory...In fact, however, the railroads were enabled by the government giving them their land for free. Very few railroads in the United States were built without some sort of capex subsidy--the land one being most dominant. The same goes for air travel, where the actual facilities (airports) are the public's concern while the equipment (planes) are the airline's concern. Prior to this subsidy, most major airlines utilized seaplanes rather than land facilities.
...In rail terms, this approach would be equivalent to a rail approach where the infrastructure--the trackwork, signalling, and gateways (stations) are the public's concern--while the equipment--the train cars themselves--is a private concern. This is essentially the approach being tried in Britain right now.
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An interesting mix of confusing theory and gratuitous name-calling. Maybe it's just me but I didn't follow the agument very well.
But in any event, it doesn't seem relevant to California; you really should check your facts. Ca HSR themselves EMPHASIZED the issue of profitability while pushing the ballot initiative, claiming that they would make money and return revenues to the state. Presumably they took this approach because they had minimal chance of passing the ballot measure if it was understood to cost 100B up front and large operating losses annually thereafter.
On review, it turned out that their business plan was so flawed that the DEMOCRAT controlled state legislative analyst and 3 other state audit agencies found the documents did not constitute a business plan. The re-did it with no better success. Still no adequate support for revenues, cost or funding sources.
HSR also SPECIFICALLY said that private parties were eager to be involved due to the profit potential. They have gotten zero interested investors. They also suggested that funding would be available from the Chinese, Japanese or others engineering firms. Turned out the Chinese would only extend funds if the repayment (plus interest) was guaranteed by the federal govt. AND if they got their usual profit margins to boot.
A final blow was the arrogance of HSR, basically disregarding those who complained about noise, eminent domain, splitting of cities, etc. Apparently these are little people, who don't count.
This is why so many previous supporters (including myself) have changed their minds about HSR and the people who run it.
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