... any final pointers appreciated!
AWA PRACTICE -
OG 2018, p. 813 10 Sep 17
The following appeared as part of an editorial in an industry newsletter.
“While trucking companies that 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 the 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 a more cost-effective and environmentally sound mode of transport. Furthermore, since rail lines already exist, increases in rail traffic would not require building new lines at the expense of taxpaying citizens.”
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyse the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluation its conclusion.
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The passage's focus is on the merits of rail as a means of industrial shipping as opposed to trucks and roads. Its main point is that railways are more cost-efficient and environmentally sound, and hence should have their taxes reduced. However, there are a number of flaws in the argument, and this essay will examine three: the lack of clarity in comparing tax payments between rail and road haulage companies; the assumption that fuel use is the only thing that has an impact on the environment; and the failure to assess whether the railway lines are close to capacity. The essay will conclude with recommendations of how to improve the argument.
The article states that the government should lower property taxes for railroad company, because "sending goods by rail is clearly a more appropriate mode of ground transportation." Firstly, there is nothing "clear" about it; the mode of ground transportation is likely to be highly dependent on a number of factors, such as, inter alia, the distance that the goods have to move, the infrastructure and railway hub near the goods' final destination, and the type of terrain that has to be crossed. In discussing taxes the article also fails to clarify what the current ratio is between taxes for railways and taxes for road; it may be that even though trucking companies only pay a "portion of higway maintenance costs", this portion may be more than the "billions per year" that railways spend. Finally, this tax comparison ignores the other users of the infrastructure; if far more non-shipping users are on the road then it stands to reason that they are likely to pay for more of the upkeep. Conversely, it may well be that rail shipping accounts for far more of the railway lines' use than the public, and hence they should pay for more of the upkeep. All of these issues are studiously ignored.
The second main issue is the blanket assumption that due to the better fuel-efficiency of trains there is less damage on the environment. This analysis is only surface deep, and ignores all the sunk costs that have gone into the construction of the railways and trains thus far; what of the vast amounts of coal used to power steam engines before the internal combustion engine was refined, for example? What of the noise pollution caused by trains in urban areas, or the damage to the environment caused when railways have been built through areas of natural beauty? It may be that some of these issues are also impacted by the construction of roads, but the analysis of environmental damage fails to examine any of these in the slightest way. It is ferociously narrow, and seems deliberately so in order to support the writer's argument.
Finally, the article makes the assumption that sufficient rail lines already exist, and therefore there would be no requirement to build more. This fails to provide any assessment whatsoever of whether the railway lines are close to capacity - if they are then any desired increase in their use is likely to require the creation of additional railway lines. There are other secondary and tertiary impacts that might come about from increased use of railway lines by shipping companies; if it means the lines reach capacity and thus normal passengers have to find alternative ways to travel, these passengers may well make more use of the roads - the problem is thus shifted back to the road regardless.
Thus overall the argument is very weak, and there are a number of areas where it could be strengthened. It must examine the strengths of railway travel as opposed to road travel in more detail, taking into account all possible factors. The article should also go into greater depth on the taxes being paid by road haulage companies and how much this contributes to the upkeep of roads, and the taxes being paid by railway companies. These figures should be examined both as percentages of the companies' costs and the infrastructure upkeep costs, as well as total figures in dollars. The article could also stand to bear greater analysis of environmental factors, and accept that damage has been done in the past - this would give it more moral authority to make claims about current damage comparisons. It must also think about wider environmental issues than simply fuel use. Finally, there is significant scope to address the concerns about line capacity, and look deeper into the impacts of increasing railway line usage by rail companies - how much more capacity is there, and what if it forces travellers off the line and onto roads? In sum, therefore, the article has been deliberately bounded to support the writer's argument, and there is significant improvement required before the article can stand on its merits.