Edmunds dealer partner, Bayway Leasing, is now offering transparent lease deals via these forums. Click here to see the latest vehicles!
Options
Popular New Cars
Popular Used Sedans
Popular Used SUVs
Popular Used Pickup Trucks
Popular Used Hatchbacks
Popular Used Minivans
Popular Used Coupes
Popular Used Wagons
Comments
As far as terrorism, take out a couple of bridges or a tunnel (or a refinery or two) and you shut down car and traffic and hammer the economy in a flash.
Agree, as it is worse in WA where the road taxes paid in Spokane subsidize the Puget Sound Ferry System so a few can enjoy the pleasures of Island Living. So besides using gasoline taxes for MT the vote here is to float the boat as well. Dumb.
No infrastructure is immune from terrorism.
I do have to wonder...London has embraced the congestion charge ideal for some time (I think hybrids and microcars are exempt), has it helped their woes at all?
London Ready to Assist Jakarta Solve Traffic Problem (BeritaJakarta.com)
Traf-O-Data is how Bill Gates got his start.
The London mayor was stung last year with a fine for not paying his congestion fee. His response has been to shrink the congestion zone. Fees for the remaining zone are up $2 and a free pass if you drive a low emission vehicle. Mixed bag of responses.
Boris Johnson unveils plans to scrap western extension of London congestion charge (Guardian UK)
Big shake up of London Congestion Charge (What Car).
They already do pay for as much environmental impact as coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy do. All our main energy sources have environmental impact.
That would probably drive up the price of gas to its true value in the USA, and by doing so, encourage mass transit development.
And what would replace the $40B that Exxon-Mobil alone pays the feds in taxes each year/ And take away all the other income and dividend taxes that the owners of oil companies pay. Mass transit AFAIK is a money loser most everywhere.
I'm all for mass transit, and natural-gas replacing heating oil to heta my house. But tell me how much it's going to cost to have the bus come up my dead-end road every 1/2 hour in case I want to go somewhere? Tell me why the gas company's gas-line doesn't run tio my city of 20,000, stopping 30 miles short?
No you don't. That's been proven when earthquakes or bridge failures have occurred. Personal auto transportation is inconvenienced, but the next day everyone is getting where they are going. Set off a bomb in the NYC subway system 2 days in a row, and the millions that use it would need to be screened, and people would avoid it for months, just like what happened with airports after 9/11.
Centralized systems are much more vulnerable, then decentralized.
I can't say I am sold on it. Let's see that proponent stake everything he owns on his spreadsheets. The cost of the plan is high, and there should be some level of accountability.
The reason I avoid NYC is because the whole area is nothing but a toll-zone. And those tolls for the most part are the cause of much of the backup. I have sat for 1+ hr on the NJ Turnpike, creeping along, all for the great privilege of paying a $5 (or is it $7 now?) toll. I have paid the toll and then found there really is no other backup other than what the tollbooth has caused! :mad: So they create a backup, and make you pay for the "treat" of having to sit in their self-induced backup! Want to know my opinion - take down every toll booth in this country, and get all the toll workers off the payroll or do something that is productive for society. Tolls and the backups they cause are one of the main problems of traffic in NYC.
Anyone who's driven the GS Parkway will tell you that yes they get congested and where does the road get congested? Mainly at the toll booths.
We used to get 1 mile+ backups here on I-95 at the Hampton Tolls on summer weekends. Well guess what - the tolls were cancelled today and there were no backups.
Take down the toll-booths and you'd find traffic flows much better.
I love visiting NYC but I park an hour away if I'm in a car and train in. With the tolls and the parking rates, and the ease of getting around on the bus and subway, you have to wonder why there's any private car congestion.
We have more cabs than ever, so these pampered yuppies can go bar hopping after work and get drunk. {Also have party limo SUV's} This defeats the purpose of 'green cities'. :mad:
They should charge more for cabs/limos clogging the streets. :P
We were in Chicago just about a year ago. Parked the rental car for free on the street at the B&B in Andersonville and didn't drive it again for 4 days. Didn't hail any cabs but we didn't go and get tanked at Lollapalooza either. We did get serenaded on the L by a lot of college age kids who did partake of the refreshments. :shades:
I also have a problem with states that are allowed to charge tolls on federally sponsored Interstate highways. I don't feel that roads built primarily from federal income taxes should allow an individual state to assess an additional state fee or toll. Any toll in that situation should go back to the federal treasury that paid for the Interstate to begin with.
Speaking of tollways, why can't there just be one electronic tag that works on all of them?
They have 3 main tax sections listed: 1) sales based taxes, 2) other taxes and duties, and 3) income taxes.
For 2006: $30.4B, $39.2B, and $27.9B = $97.5B
For 2007: $31.7B, $40.9B, and $29.9B = $102.5B
For 2008: $34.5B, $41.7B, and $36.5B = $112.7B
I don't know why your media doesn't agree, except the penchant for most news organizations to want to appeal to be on the little-guys side. The IRS seems to accept the numbers that I posted above. :P
Obama: Roll back tax breaks for big oil, embrace clean energy (USA Today)
I guess this would tie in with the Is a Higher Gasoline Tax Good Or Bad For America? discussion. If gas prices doubled, that would certainly ease congestion.
But you are wrong if you think the actual numbers posted on an Income Statement are wrong. Those numbers are audited nd produced by price waterhouse, and submitted to governments around the world. Those taxes are what's paid after all the maneuvering of Exxon Mobil's accountants to minimize their taxes. As you said they could have paid the taxes not to the U.S. but to Bermuda, because their headquarters is a hotel room there. But they pay quite a bit in tax. Their taxes are about double their profits.
"The report says that key to less traffic congestion, as demonstrated in metropolitan areas such as Chicago, Portland and Sacramento, is land-use patterns and transportation systems that let residents take shorter trips and reduce the burden of peak-hour travel. The report estimates that if cities followed Chicago's lead, residents would drive about 40 billion fewer miles a year and use 2 billion fewer gallons of fuel, for a cost savings of $31 billion annually."
Study Suggests a New Way of Looking at the Time We Waste in Traffic (Edmunds Daily)
Children in areas affected by high levels of emissions, on average, scored more poorly on intelligence tests and were more prone to depression, anxiety and attention problems than children growing up in cleaner air, separate research teams in New York, Boston, Beijing, and Krakow, Poland, found. And older men and women long exposed to higher levels of traffic-related particles and ozone had memory and reasoning problems that effectively added five years to their mental age, other university researchers in Boston reported this year. The emissions may also heighten the risk of Alzheimer's disease and speed the effects of Parkinson's disease."
The Hidden Toll of Traffic Jams (Wall St. Journal - free link today, story may get truncated tomorrow).
"His family made its fortune selling cars to the masses, but now Bill Ford Jr. is fretting about selling too many.
The great-grandson of Ford Motor Co. founder Henry Ford has been thinking ahead to a time when there will be too much traffic in the world's major cities. Already there is congestion that only will get worse as the world population grows by another 2 billion people to 9 billion in 40 years."
Bill Ford Jr. says plan now for future traffic jams (detroitnews.com)
“People want relief,” said Mark Ridley-Thomas, a Los Angeles County supervisor. “There’s nothing complicated about it. Considering that L.A. distinguishes itself as the traffic congestion capital of the nation, we felt obligated to innovate, experiment, whatever we can do to make driving on the freeways more bearable.”
Toll Unsettles Los Angeles Motorists Used to ‘Free’ in Freeways (NY Times)