home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: sparky!uunet!usc!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!spool.mu.edu!news.nd.edu!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!noose.ecn.purdue.edu!samsung!balrog!ctron.com
- From: smith@ctron.com (Lawrence C Smith)
- Newsgroups: sci.environment
- Subject: Re: Road Usage Fees
- Message-ID: <5995@balrog.ctron.com>
- Date: 23 Nov 92 14:14:05 GMT
- References: <1992Nov20.084807.13539@cheshire.oxy.edu>
- Sender: usenet@balrog.ctron.com
- Reply-To: smith@ctron.com
- Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.
- Lines: 26
- Nntp-Posting-Host: glinda
-
- In article <1992Nov20.084807.13539@cheshire.oxy.edu>, galloway@cheshire.oxy.edu (Gregory Wayne Galloway) writes:
- > I am currently researching the idea of implementing a Road Usage Fee
- >program in the United States. This is not a program such as Turnpikes or Toll
- >Roads, but on in which people would be charged for using all public roads.
-
- I see. Presumably this new tax - excuse my stumbling tongue - this new _fee_
- will be fairer and more properly distributed than previous attempts to get
- people to pay for the public roads, and so any bill to implement would include
- immediate repeal of all the Federal and State fuel taxes that are now presently
- set up for the purpose? The ones that provide capital for public transit, as
- well as the road repairs? And would you care to enlighten us how this new tax
- - oops, I mean "fee" - will be applied to the trucking industry, which is,
- according to several recent studies, responsible for upwards of 90% of the
- maintenance requirements of our highway systems, and which are 100% responsible
- for the vast increase in _engineering_ requirements the system is now being
- held to? Or are we really going to claim the reinforced concrete can no longer
- hold up cars that are lighter now than they were 20 years ago, so we have to
- use all-steel construction, and that the doubling of tire loading and the
- nearly 1000% increase in trucking in the last 20 years are not factors at all?
- Those numbers are from a recent Teamster lobbying effort. I don't know how
- that 1000% figure was arrived at, but they seemed really proud of it.
-
- Larry Smith (smith@ctron.com) No, I don't speak for Cabletron. Need you ask?
- -
- Liberty is not the freedom to do whatever we want,
- it is the freedom to do whatever we are able.
-