Sure it does. Traveling with a car is cheap. Cars travel on a massively subsidised infrastructure (they are called roads).
The purpose of subsidising an infrastructure is to make operating a service on it profitable.
I don't understand why people are objecting to high speed train networks as if they are a totally novel idea. They are a true and tested transportation solution - I have yet to encounter a country that built one only to regret it, or have it unused. We are not talking about putting a man on Mars here.
> Cars travel on a massively subsidised infrastructure (they are called roads).
Roads aren't subsidized and neither are traffic police. They're paid for by car- and truck-specific taxes and fees.
We've played this game before. You'll bring up a study that supposedly shows that cars have expenses that are not covered by taxes. I'll point out that said study ignores one or more large taxes paid for because of cars that pretty much covers the gap and then some. (The dumb version is that you'll point to the cost of building some road and assert that it couldn't possibly have been paid for without subsidies.)
> The purpose of subsidising an infrastructure is to make operating a service on it profitable.
In the case of train passenger trains, that almost never happens. The cost of running the train exceeds the revenues. Even the CA proposals don't claim that they'll run without subsidies. Instead, they argue "other job creation". (They also claim that folks will pay to build highrises in Fresno over the train station, generating enormous profits.)
Here's an easy test that almost every proposal fails. Take the projected revenue (which they never hit) and divide it by the projected number of jobs (which they usually exceed). Ask yourself if the average salary plus benefits is going to be that low. (The proposal will often tout "high paying jobs".) Notice that this figure doesn't account for non-salary operating costs.
No, roads are not paid for by car taxes and fees in the US. Car taxes and fees are nowhere near enough to build highways. (In Europe actually this is closer to being true due to massively higher car taxes, massively higher gasoline taxes, and ubiquitous toll roads).
Obviously depends on where in the US you are, but typically is estimated that there would have to be a 50c tax per gallon to make highways self-paying. For places where road construction is particularly expensive (mountains, Alaska and Hawaii, etc) that doesn't even come close.
Not that I think there's anything wrong with that - subsidising efficient transport is a perfectly legitimate role of government as it is vital for commerce.
> Obviously depends on where in the US you are, but typically is estimated that there would have to be a 50c tax per gallon to make highways self-paying.
Let's go with that number. But first....
> For places where road construction is particularly expensive (mountains, Alaska and Hawaii, etc) that doesn't even come close.
And in other places, 50c a gallon is way more than it takes to make highways self-paying. That's how averages of different numbers work - some are higher than the average while others are lower.
The cited document says that the average fuel tax in the US is 38c/gallon as of a couple of years ago. That does not include sales taxes, which in CA are currently around 20c/gallon, for a total of 58c/gallon, or 8c/gallon over the average required. In the past, CA got less per gallon because the prices were lower, and other states have lower tax rates, but we're not done counting the car revenues and we're pretty close to 50c/gallon.
Taxes on fuel purchases don't include car taxes, taxes on car goods, fines levied on car misuse (which exceed enforcement costs), income taxes on folks providing car services, and so on. (Rail advocates count taxes on folks whose jobs are enabled by transportation and property taxes next to train stations. I'm not counting that for cars, but will note that they would considerably increase the car revenue numbers.)
That document concedes that counting such revenues would mean that govts make money on roads. That's why said document goes to considerable lengths to argue that certain taxes and fees paid by car/truck folk to drive shouldn't be counted. The reasons range from that money is deposited in the general fund, which is curious since the supposed subsidies come from the general fund, to car drivers have to pay something if they did something else, in which case we'd consider those fees/taxes as being associated with some other cause.
The purpose of subsidising an infrastructure is to make operating a service on it profitable.
I don't understand why people are objecting to high speed train networks as if they are a totally novel idea. They are a true and tested transportation solution - I have yet to encounter a country that built one only to regret it, or have it unused. We are not talking about putting a man on Mars here.