The local paper's car columnist and his pals had a good laugh at someone who said subsidizing the commuter rail lines was "socialism."

At the end of the article, it says "Alan or anyone who agrees with him, care to respond?"

I sent this via e-mail:

Mr. Richards:

There seems to be a lot of confusion out there about exactly who pays for what in transportation.

Road construction and maintenance is largely paid for by taxes and fees on those who actually use them. According to the Brookings Institution study you quoted, almost 60 percent of road costs come directly from drivers. As far as other sources like property taxes, improvements on the 101-85 interchange near where I live came from taxes from local people who use that interchange. And we got to vote on it. Buses and trucks actually pay higher road taxes than the rest of us.

Something like 80 percent of airport operating expenses are paid by airline companies and their customers. The San Jose airport has to try to make more money than it spends, and it's been a struggle.

If we wanted to treat Caltrain the same way as other transportation systems, the answer would be higher charges on the users. In other words, higher fares. Caltrain has been in a "fiscal emergency" for years. If it has ever earned more money than it has burned, I haven't heard about it. Fare revenue - income from actual users of the service - covers about 43 percent of Caltrain’s operating expenses. Everything else is a subsidy of some form or another, from a variety of sources. A private business that permanently took in only 43 percent of its operating expenses would be dead in a couple of years. How long is Caltrain going to be doing this at the expense of people who don’t use the service at all?

Caltrain's subsidies are not construction subsidies. They are operating subsidies. The Caltrain subsidies that your readers support are not the equivalent of building roads for cars, or selling bonds to build new runways. It’s the equivalent of having taxpayers buy tires and gas for all the automobile drivers, and help to make their car payments to boot. Permanently.

Nobody seems to be aware that California, and many cities in California, are flat out of money. At some point, we can't keep subsidizing things that consistently lose money no matter how much political support they have. That we are seriously discussing constructing a multi-billion dollar high speed rail system under these conditions shows something approaching dementia in our political leadership.

We are shown German roads as examples. Maintaining a national road infrastructure and rail system is a bit easier when your entire country is smaller than California, and if anyone has noticed, Germany is having serious economic problems too.

We are told by your readers that socialism is a brilliant idea. Socialism is a system where, basically, everything is subsidized. It doesn’t take a lot of thought to realize that this is not sustainable, and the last hundred years of observing centralized economies in various parts of the world tend to bear that out.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

TB

(actual letter had my full name)