by hausen » August 17, 2017, 1:21 pm
ed wrote:Let the users pay for it - not the taxpayers.
We all benefit from waterborne commerce. We are all the users (end beneficiaries of what the ships carry), or put another way the users (shipping companies) are providing fundamental services to the economy that we all use. Our cars, appliances, buildings, roads, bridges, rail lines, fuels, and food products are made most easily and cheaply available because their supply chains involve moving goods by water.
Waterborne transportation is far and away the most fuel-efficient, least wasteful, and least intrusive way of moving large amounts of goods.
We, the taxpayers, benefit from the Great Lakes navigation system and support it through the general fund. This arrangement of toll-free waterborne commerce has been a foundational principle in the United States. That notion is employed to the greatest effect on the Great Lakes, a system with hundreds of miles of deep open water upon which ships travel unimpeded. The Lakes have just a proportionately small amount of mileage at choke points where travel relies on federally-maintained channels and locks. This is an ideal situation, where a relatively small amount of work and funding on the federal government's behalf at just a few key points is leveraged into a system where large, efficient deep draft ships can reach 2,000 miles into the industrial heart of North America.
Meanwhile, state and federal governments spend gigantic amounts of taxpayer money subsidizing one of the least efficient, most dangerous, and most wasteful modes of transport: surface roads. The money spent on maintaining or improving Great Lakes locks and channels is a drop in the bucket compared to road construction and maintenance expenditure, and Lakes ships are pound-for-pound tens or hundreds of times better at moving freight than road vehicles. Meanwhile our road system is sprawling, wastes precious fuel, wastes precious land area unnecessarily, causes death and serious injury to civilians on a massive scale, and is deeply subsidized by taxpayer money. Ships can't go everywhere of course and roads, cars, and trucks have their place, but the amount of subsidy funding and attention given to roads vs. waterways is wildly out of balance.
Taxpayer money gets much better bang for the buck when it's spent on supporting water transport. If we are really concerned about spending tax dollars wisely and cutting spending where its wasteful, a new Poe-sized lock is small fry compared to road spending, and that's where your attention would have the most impact.
[quote="ed"]Let the users pay for it - not the taxpayers.[/quote]
We all benefit from waterborne commerce. We are all the users (end beneficiaries of what the ships carry), or put another way the users (shipping companies) are providing fundamental services to the economy that we all use. Our cars, appliances, buildings, roads, bridges, rail lines, fuels, and food products are made most easily and cheaply available because their supply chains involve moving goods by water. [b]Waterborne transportation is far and away the most fuel-efficient, least wasteful, and least intrusive way of moving large amounts of goods.[/b]
We, the taxpayers, benefit from the Great Lakes navigation system and support it through the general fund. This arrangement of toll-free waterborne commerce has been a foundational principle in the United States. That notion is employed to the greatest effect on the Great Lakes, a system with hundreds of miles of deep open water upon which ships travel unimpeded. The Lakes have just a proportionately small amount of mileage at choke points where travel relies on federally-maintained channels and locks. This is an ideal situation, where a relatively small amount of work and funding on the federal government's behalf at just a few key points is leveraged into a system where large, efficient deep draft ships can reach 2,000 miles into the industrial heart of North America.
Meanwhile, state and federal governments spend gigantic amounts of taxpayer money subsidizing one of the least efficient, most dangerous, and most wasteful modes of transport: surface roads. The money spent on maintaining or improving Great Lakes locks and channels is a drop in the bucket compared to road construction and maintenance expenditure, and Lakes ships are pound-for-pound tens or hundreds of times better at moving freight than road vehicles. Meanwhile our road system is sprawling, wastes precious fuel, wastes precious land area unnecessarily, causes death and serious injury to civilians on a massive scale, and is deeply subsidized by taxpayer money. Ships can't go everywhere of course and roads, cars, and trucks have their place, but the amount of subsidy funding and attention given to roads vs. waterways is wildly out of balance.
Taxpayer money gets much better bang for the buck when it's spent on supporting water transport. If we are really concerned about spending tax dollars wisely and cutting spending where its wasteful, a new Poe-sized lock is small fry compared to road spending, and that's where your attention would have the most impact.