"While trucking companies deliver goods pay only a portion of highway
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06 Jan 2016, 08:59
The following appeared as part of an editorial in an industry newsletter:
"While trucking companies deliver goods pay only a portion of highway maintenance costs and no property tax on the highways they use, railways spend billions per year maintaining and upgrading their facilities. The government should lower railroad companies' property taxes, since sending goods by rail is clearly a more appropriate mode of ground transportation than highway shipping. For one thing, trains consume only a third of the fuel a truck would use to carry the same load, making them more cost effective and environmentally sound mode of transport. Furthermore, since rail lines already exist, increases in rail traffic would not require adding new lines at the expense of the tax paying citizens."
Discuss how well reasoned...
The argument is on the cost effectiveness of rail transportation as opposed to truck transportation for the delivery of goods. The author states that rail transportation is the better alternative because trains consume only a third of the fuel a truck would use to carry the same load, making them more cost effective and environmentally sound mode of transportation. In addition, an increase in rail traffic would not require adding new lines since they already exist.
The author contradicts himself about the cost effectiveness of rails by stating that railways spend billions per year maintaining and upgrading their facilities. If that is the case then the trucks are more cost effective. However, we cannot justify this argument because the author did not provide a comparison of what is spent to maintain the highways that the trucks use. In fact, the author's argument is vague. He should have provided the costs for highway maintenance versus rail maintenance side by side preferably providing a dollar value. A better statistic would be to provide the percentage of taxpayer dollars that each mode of transportation costs to maintain.
Other factors that the author neglects to provide include the speed at which each mode of transportation delivers goods. Obviously, the faster the mode of transportation, the more preferable it is. Also, accessibility is another factor because some regions may not have the rail infrastructure and thus it would be better to use trucks instead.
In conclusion, the author delineates vague reasons as to the cost effectiveness of the two modes of transportation. He should have researched on the statistics on the cost effectiveness thus giving the reader a better sense of comparison. He should have also highlighted other factors that make one mode of transportation better than the other such as speed and accessibility.