Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "Will Florida's Brightline Make Americans Love Trains Again?" video.

  1. Rail lines assist in creating economic growth. The growth they create has to be poured back into the rails that greatly assisted. The answer is Land Value Taxation, Taxing only the land not the buildings on the land. Hong Kong built a full metro by taxing land. One railway in Shropshire, England, the Bishops Castle Railway, ran for 69 years under the administrators. It just about ran itself. The great beneficiaries were the land owners around the railway, who benefited from increased land values cascading into higher rents. Railways do not make that much money, it is the land around them that makes the money. Land values are not taxed. Land Value Tax (LVT) can reclaim that added value to cycle back and run the railways. LVT is a tax on the value of the land, not the bricks on the land. Full LVT is not having income tax, so effort and productivity is not taxed. Those who put into the economy are not taxed, those who take out such as land values, are taxed. Fast railways boost the economy. It is reclaiming the values they create to maintain them that needs addressing. One needs the other. In isolation many railways are supposedly uneconomical, In reality, overall to the community they are far from that. They create economic growth. Imagine New York without the Subway. Rapid-transit rail stations increase property prices around, and attracts investors, while buses never do such a thing. The cost of infrastructure can be got from Land Value Tax, which US cities are using, as is Hong Kong, Singapore, etc, to fund transport infrastructure. Harrisburgh in the USA, amongst others, use LVT to finance infrastructure. Sydney did it in a cut-down to fund the Olympics. Read Wheels of Fortune by Fred Harrison.
    1