California adds 12 cent gas tax and 20 cent diesel tax

spoon059 wrote:

NYCgrrl wrote:
Mass transit IS essential to any community that is not simply thinking of the currently able bodied.
Children, certain physically challenged people, the poor, senior citizens, come to mind off the top of my head and least this way it isn't regulated solely to them.

A high speed transit between cities is not "mass transit" of a city. The state of New York doesn't extend a high speed subway to Albany so that "disabled people" or children can easily get to Manhattan. You are comparing 2 VASTLY different things here.

My above quote started as a response to downhome who said the following:

California is not Europe. Most people cannot avail themselves of the single line they have now.
Many dive fifty even one hundred miles each day to and from work.
There is not enough room or available housing on top of where they work.
And unlike Europe they don't get six weeks or ore vacation which take a load off transit.
Talk of mass transit is essentially nosnes for most people. Some will get to use but everyone pays for it.
The essntial problem is they are trying to engineer a vehicle less society, and in socialist system where those that work, who will and are outnumbered by those that aren't working in California get the same level of income. Those engineering and managing this scheme live above it and crack the whip.
Moonbeam Brown's utopia or socialist paradise where everyone smokes dope, wears hair shirts, and lives in huts, and rides bikes and spend their hours at corner coffee houses being enlightened, by readings of Marks etc is the height of delusion and foolishness. They think they can mange our lives for our benefit better than we can. What they mean is they can run the train around the track and build the railroad to suit them and we are forced to pay and abide.

The convo then evolved into your comment here:

spoon wrote:
The difference is that those roads are used to transport freight, police and fire fighters... services that the car-less citizens still use. Those are essential services that benefit everyone in society and are part of the core goals of the federal government.

High speed transit that costs an exorbitant amount of money and benefits very few people is not a core goal of government. I'm not opposed to high speed transit options to give options for domestic air travel, but these are excessive costs for a relatively small stretch of rail.

I'm not opposed to higher fuel taxes, you have to pay to play. The issue that I have is politicians (in either party) that jack the tax of particular item and then use those funds to support projects unrelated to those taxes. Use fuel taxes to fix the roads, bridges and public safety associated with roads.

I really only responded to the section of your post that dealt with the overall necessity of mass transit but I can add a comment about high speed transit as it relates to NE option; not up to date in other parts of the country:).

The Amtrak NE corridor's revenue and usage, surpasses and supports the ENTIRETY of the system. The portion of the ride going from Boston to DC pretty much requires advance reservation for NE Regional and Acela due to popularity which in part is due to it's speed. It could go even faster if new track was laid in parts of the run and gosh the way I hear most RV.net posters comment faster is generally better:B.

How this country got so far behind the rest of the world in developing and maintaining a long distance rail system is a bit perplexing and anti progressive to me yet we are certainly a good half a century behind from what I can see.