...it was a rhetorical question; "tollways drivers have always... paid the full cost of driving" is a dubious claim, even if it is difficult to measure externalities.

I knew you were going to post this.

They have only paid for the full cost of road construction. This ignores the massive subsidies given to the auto industry in Detroit that drove down the price of vehicles in the first place. It also ignores the fact that the government acquired land for the tollways using eminent domain in many cases leading to far lower land acquisition costs than the market would demand. And of course there are the oil industry subsidies on top of all of that and, additionally, 30 years of ethanol subsides that are just now ending. That's not to mention the massive cost of our military adventures to protect the low price of our oil against repeated threats in the past. If we didn't spend half a trillion dollars a year on defense and have troops stationed all over the middle east you can bet that gas prices would have been far far higher over the past 30 years. Just look at the recent Libya conflict which sent prices soaring over just 1.5% of global output or the fact that Iran's unrealistic threat of shutting off the gulf sent prices up $2 a barrel yesterday alone.

The price of building the driving surface is only a tiny fraction of the full price we pay for our automobile-industrial complex that controls massive parts of our government.

Actually no, negative externalities for vehicles are FAR higher per person than for Metra. This is because the amount of fuel burned and plastics/raw materials used per person for one ride on Metra is but a tiny fraction of what is used for one ride in a car. How you can deny that is beyond me. But this argument is not about whether Metra is any better, it is about whether or not people who drive pay the full cost of driving. Metra, CTA, Amtrak, Airlines, private submarines, those are all beside the point and outside of the scope of the discussion.

^ I meant to say all that, too. :D

What would be a pre-2008 example of such a massive subsidy?

Where was tollway ROW acquired by "the government?"

I don't care much for tollways, but they're the last component of the roadway system you can criticize for being "subsidized." Not only do their users pay the entire cost of constructing, maintaining, and expanding the system, but the ones in urban areas also throw off huge amounts of gas tax revenue to other levels of government and roads.

Just off the top of my head is the first time Chrysler/Mopar got bailed out. Then there are all the examples of GM and other companies using the government to gut transit agencies/trolley lines in order to subsidize their bus sales. I could probably go on for pages with individual examples.


Do you seriously expect me to cite individual examples of where it was used? Here's an answer for you: throughout the entire system. And guess what, it's still used on a regular basis for tollway construction projects where an individual owner might not be so hot on selling off a portion of their parking lot so the freeway ramp curve can be reduced by a few degrees. Illinois Tollway Authority has the power of eminent domain which no private enterprise ever has had:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinoi...hway_Authority

The last thing I can criticize for being subsidized of a whole list of things that are all inherently subsidized...

Except that Chrysler repaid the loan guarantees in 1983—with $350 million in interest—and gave the government millions of dollars in stock warrants.

Except that, you know, this didn't actually happen. The government wasn't involved, NCL was acquitted of the "bustitution" charge, and the substition of new one-man buses for worn-out two-man streetcars saved dozens of small city systems that would have otherwise completely disappeared in the decades before public ownership. NCL/PCL was never involved with more than 40 of the nation's 900 streetcar systems.

Except for railroads, plankroads, streetcar companies, canal companies, pipeline companies, electric utilities, telephone utilities, other utilities, and various redevelopment authorities. You can look these things up before posting, you know. Illinois statutes are all online.

And TARP will be paid back too. Am I to believe you really think TARP wasn't a subsidy of "too big to fail" banks as well? Please.


Source? You don't have one because you are wrong. No railroads have eminent domain powers and in the instances where eminent domain is used for a railroad they must go through the local government which actually holds such powers. The Illinois Tollway Authority has the power of eminent domain itself. They do no need the local government to take land for them as any other form of transportation does.

Finally, even if it weren't a load of shit, what you just said would be besides the point. This is second time I've had to point this out to you; this isn't a discussion about who else is guilty of being subsidized, this is about whether or not vehicle owners pay the full cost of driving. Whether or not a plank road or Metra has gotten land through eminent domain is irrelevant because we aren't talking about that. The fact is eminent domain is a form of subsidy and the Tollway has that direct power. Period. End of Debate. You lose this point whether you like it or not no matter how many additional tangential arguments you want to make.

Oh, and another thing, the fact the the government has a power to collect a gas tax on all gas sold that they use to pay for infrastructure projects is a subsidy in principal as well. No private enterprise has the capability to tax everyone that uses a product in order to provide an additional venue in which consumers may use its product. The government provides this overarching ability to coerce all participants in the market to fund the construction of such a venue. This is nothing more than a mild form of a mandated monopoly which constitutes a subsidy of the entire market as the natural state of the game would mean no participant would be willing to sink so much money into the construction of an asset that is difficult/impossible to control access to and would likely benefit its competitors equally as much as themselves.

And yet another example is the hyper-inflated tax mileage tax write off for businesses supported by the IRS. Of course you are going to drive when you can write off 58.5 cents a mile of your income. If you drive 10,000 miles a year for business that's $5,850 in income you can write off for a savings of at least $1,500 a year. That's about as direct of a subsidy as you'll ever see for anything.

Or ANOTHER example. You can write of the purchase of a vehicle "for business use" in its entirety. This means that millions of small business owners a year dodge probably more than a billion dollars worth of taxes by writing off the purchase of their vehicles. This is ANOTHER direct subsidy where the government is literally paying people to drive.

Oh and let me mention again the trillions we've spent on overseas adventures over the years to keep our gas prices low.

Additionally, if I recall the tollway authority received interest subsidy for build america bonds via the ARRA.

^^^ There you go, that's another excellent example. The government can borrow at far far lower interest rates to construct such projects than a private firm would be able to.

I don't think you are interpreting that correctly, but again, it's still beside the point. Let's say you are right, how does the fact that railroad companies having eminent domain powers change the fact that the Illinois Tollway Authority has eminent domain? It doesn't. Stop trying to splinter the debate off onto tangents that having nothing to do with the topic.

So tell, are tollways subsidized or are they not. You have presented absolutely nothing to refute what I'm saying and have chosen to spend your time trying to change the topic to "but sometimes railroads are subsidized as well".

In my opinion, the direct costs of tollways are not subsidized in any meaningful way. The costs of constructing, maintaining, and expanding the ISTHA network have always been paid entirely from tollbooth revenue. In fact, the tollway authority was created, like others in the East and Midwest, in the 1950s precisely because it was politically unthinkable to pay for superhighways from general taxation, and the federal gas tax had not yet been raised for the Interstate system.

The very heart of eminent domain law is that the fair market value is paid for any property taken, so it should theoretically make little difference whether the transaction is willing-seller or eminent domain. For every landowner complaining that he got too little, there will be another who quietly got more than he would have on the open market. For every farmer who loses five rows of crops because the tollway angled across his acreage, there's another whose land value immediately quintupled due to tollway frontage.

As we discussed a few weeks ago, the federal government in 2009 tried to jump-start the bond market by providing modest direct payments to bond-issuing agencies. Since the federal program didn't care if the bonds went to finance roads, buses, dams, or schools, I would consider that a cost of the financial crisis; a subsidy to the financial markets industry rather than the tollways specifically.

In 2010 Illinois tollway mileage generated $124 million in fuel excise taxes (plus another $72 million in state sales taxes assuming a price of $3.50 per gallon, and another $10 million or so in local sales taxes). None of that went to the tollway system. More than half of it went for non-road uses.

How does tollway mileage generate fuel tax revenue? Surely you can't be talking about the modest amounts of revenue from the oasis service stations.

The self-funding nature of our tollway system is awesome, but the downside is that Chicago doesn't get anywhere near our fair share of dollars from Washington. Since our expressway needs are mostly funded locally, we should get an increased share of transit dollars, but the two Federal pots of money aren't fungible despite the fact that both pots ultimately come from the Highway Trust Fund.

I'm gonna get some Ron Paul-style eye rolling for this one, but I'm starting to think we should dramatically LOWER the federal fuel tax to a level that funds only interstate maintenance and periodic roadway reconstructions. The interstate highway network has been complete since 1992. Mission accomplished. The rationale for a huge, redistributive transportation funding source is gone.

States that want to dramatically expand their suburban expressway networks should pay for it themselves, just like we do, in whatever way they see fit. As a side effect, states could then set their own transportation policies instead of being a slave to the pet policies of road builders and Sunbelt politicians.

So slippery. Ignore the "indirect" costs all you like: they're still there, they're enormous, and they're (clearly) the focus of this discussion.

I have to put my lot in with Mr D on this one --- the tollway system is a pretty good example of fair pricing structure for road use, with users paying the direct construction and operations costs in tolls, with external costs (air quality, etc.) being at least somewhat captured in the corresponding gas tax which at least went, in part, to programs like CMAQ or the FTA. Granted, the tolls were way too low for at least the last 15 years for purely political reasons, but the end result of that was simply a huge construction backlog and roadways in dreadfully poor condition (I-90 anyone?).

One could argue, either way, on the extent to which external costs still aren't captured by the users, but in the overall scheme of economic distortions and cross-subsidies in our daily lives (in countless ways beyond merely transportation), that has to be pretty far down the list.

IDOT receives "tollway credits" that can be used in lieu of local match funds for federally-funded transportation projects (including transit projects) --- so at least there is some consideration.

Motorists burn fuel driving on them, and that fuel is taxed.

Fascinating news from the world of RFPs
 

CDOT put out an RFP for the Cermak Green Line station. It's great to know the ball is rolling on this. The RFP calls for a "staggered island platform", which I believe is a configuration similar to Loyola. Platform length will be 725 feet and designed for 8-car trains. The grade-level station house will be on the south side of Cermak with auxiliary entrances on the north side of Cermak and the north side of 23rd.

CTA seems dreadfully afraid of structural failure on their steel viaducts. To reduce the loading on the steel, they pitched a staggered side platform design for Morgan until the engineers told them it would be cheaper just to beef up the steel. That just shows that the Cermak configuration is not set in stone. It's good to see CTA noting the need for multiple access points, though.

Also, CTA released another RFP for a renovation of all the North Main stations between Jarvis and Lawrence, with the exception of Loyola. Canopies will be cleaned and spruced up, wooden platforms will be replaced with concrete, and all interior spaces will be blown out and reconfigured, with some tenant space being converted to station house space. The brick facades, doors, and windows of the station houses will also be replaced, probably with some sterile Duplo-block crap like the new North/Clybourn. Elevators are not included, but the concrete viaduct will also see structural repairs and new drainage systems.

The total budget for this project is only $57 million. CTA wants to start by this April and finish by Fall 2013.

Wilson and Loyola will be renovated in separate projects, with Wilson being completely rebuilt for $100 million and Loyola being renovated in partnership with the university. No word on Sheridan, possibly the rattiest station on the North Main. Any project there will have to tackle the curves as well and probably take out a good swath of the neighborhood as the tracks are realigned.

Why would that be necessary?