CalTrain: Economic "Blood on the Tracks"

CalTrain competes with BART, MUNI, and SamTrans for transportation turf, and all these transportation systems compete for municipal and county dollars. It can be likened to a Chinese Checkers game where multiple players seek to dominate the game board, with the added rule of being able, as in chess, to knock rival players off the board.

The CalTrain board and its supporters are pushing multi-county sales tax hikes to strengthen CalTrain's position in this territorial battle.

But what if the matter of revenue and service efficiency were framed in a value-added set of questions? Just as you ask yourself what more would I pay to get a service, what if land users were asked, "what would you pay to add CalTrain or MUNI or SamTrans or BART to your location?" The twist would be this: that all of that extra location rent renters were willing to pay would pay for the service, rather than, as at present, going to the landlord. At present the renter pays the landlord the higher location rent, while the public service provider resorts to sales taxes and business taxes to fund the service. These taxes are in good measure a pass through to the landowner!

You're invited to join a one hour, free introduction to Land Value Taxation as a means of funding services when you pay your rent, and shutting off that landlord's publicly sourced spigot.

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