C
cozzyd
Guest
http://www.boston.com/news/local/ma...cketing_to_commuter_rail/?p1=Well_Local_Links
This seems like a good idea
This seems like a good idea
No, no, and no. That's an ideological blanket statement. Let's please not confuse fully sensible and neccessary abuse and waste cleanup the likes of which you noted with going scorched-earth on people's ability to organize. There's plenty of counterpoints where union-busting ruins livelihoods. Nothing is ever that simple to get boiled down to a meme like "[allcaps]ALL[/allcaps] public unions need to be disbanded."
And you know this, whigh, so stop pushing this as a meme.
Have the state acquire a company that manufactures tunnel boring machines. With some of the "profits" to be made of sales to other countries, the state can 'donate' a machine every now and again towards the effort of expanding Boston's subterranean network.
~D.I.
Have the state acquire a company that manufactures tunnel boring machines. With some of the "profits" to be made of sales to other countries, the state can 'donate' a machine every now and again towards the effort of expanding Boston's subterranean network.
~D.I.
This is the most boring solution I've ever heard.
Clearly a post for the Crazy Transit Pitches thread
One basic problem - most of Boston is land created by dumping miscelaneous fill into a swamp -- so TBMs are mostly useful only really deep (e.g. Porter) tunneling or throughout the original Boston (e.g. Beacon Hill) where there is rock or at least well consolidated glacial till
In the Back Bay for example up Storrow or Commonwealth the TBM would have to be working 150 or so feet underground -- that makes for very expensive stations
That's true. Shucks! Cut-and-cover probably wouldn't fly as a solution would it? Could anyone support a cut-and-cover operation along Washington St. today to build a Silver Line tunnel?
~D.I.
Solution for the MBTA mess.
CUT THE PENSION PROGRAM
The problem with it is proving that all the miles driven have been in state. If someone is constantly crossing state lines, each state would have to figure out how to lay claim to their portion of a driver's mileage.
Road wear seems to go up approximately with the 4th power of the vehicle axle weight, not the square.
I see VMT as too onerous to collect and of dubious value anyway. The whole "user fee" model is a big failure, and never worked for roads. I don't foresee it working in the future either.
The gas tax should be detached from roads and those revenues put into the general fund. It's kind of ridiculous currently. What other product has its own dedicated governmental revenue stream? When you pay sales tax on shoes, it doesn't go into a dedicated "shoe trust fund." Right now, gasoline taxes are dedicated solely to maintenance or producing more roadways. That's screwy.
Gasoline should be subject to the sales tax and a carbon tax, or whatever is needed for environmental mitigation.
Tolls using convenient, high speed transponder or camera based technology should be more widely deployed. They also have the benefit of being easily adjustable to help manage congestion: if the road has low demand, then lower the price (maybe to zero), and if it has high demand, then raise the price.
Trucks should be paying more than they are now to cross bridges and to use certain roads. Remember, they cause the vast majority of the damage: axle-weight to the 4th power. Also, it is conceivably more realistic to track VMT on commercial vehicles, because it's something that their owners already want to do.
Borders create a number of problems with taxes already. We don't have it as bad as NY/NJ/CT at least. But we shouldn't be looking to lower taxes on gasoline necessarily. After all, there is a significant externality that needs to be priced in the form of carbon emissions, as well as other pollution associated with gasoline production and distribution.
Similarly, I'm not sure what taxing junkers less than Priuses accomplishes. Is that supposed to be a "smug tax?" Perhaps when levels of "smug" need to be controlled, we can consider that.