That applies to funding earmarked for transportation as well. Several readers took some time to give me feedback on the issue of mass transit in the Chicagoland area. This is perspective from one person who does a lot of driving around for technology sales in the region:

[Your column] should be published in every newspaper and downstate publication. It spells out the real culprit – total mismanagement – which is rampant in any other area that is run by the government and all the bureaucrats.

Several others gave similar comments to the ineptness of the executive management of different transportation agencies to get to the real problems and fix them instead of just asking for more money. Before any extra money is given to any transportation authority, they should be reviewed by someone who has no political ties to find out the inefficiencies.

From a reader who has an inside CTA perspective and knows about its antiquated procedures, he says many employees are in fear at the CTA. They’re not in fear losing their jobs but in fear that the unions are targeted to be eliminated.

People collect a lot of overtime for doing things by hand instead of doing things on a computer. There needs to be a complete overhaul of not only procedures but also of attitudes. If one person is doing nothing and collecting a check, people think: “If he’s doing it, why shouldn’t I?” His recommendations are:

First, get rid of the unions. You don’t need them. If you can actually do your job, then prove it.

Second, everyone goes salary. No more overtime. Everyone needs to learn good time-management skills and do their job in the eight hours a day and 40 hours a week or use comp time and take extra days off later.

Third, every employee needs to sit down and create performance objectives. If they aren’t met, why not? Your supervisor needs to come up with a set of measured performance objectives for you as well. Does the employee need retraining or an exit strategy?

Fourth, if you want extra money, wait until the end of the year. If you meet your performance objectives, you’ll get a bonus at the end of the year. No more free money!

Before cutting any buses or service on the CTA, there needs to be a complete review of the waste in time in supervisory positions as well as other administrative positions where the lack of a sense of urgency has to be replaced with real productivity. This could be applied to other agencies as well.

As for the suburban bus lines, one and two passengers on buses are a complete waste of money. This could be rolled back into the infrastructure. What is the cost per mile per passenger? You could drive a Ford Excursion around all day and it would be cheaper.

This reader in Washington, D.C. has some very good points:

You say [in a previous column]: “No one subsidizes commuters who have to drive to work. Their costs have gone up significantly with gas prices. If fares have to go up, welcome to the reality of today’s economy.” This is a widespread misconception that is embedded in the American psyche.

Commuters using cars – and I am one much of the time –- are massively subsidized. The surface street and highway network (with the very isolated exception of toll roads) is one giant tax subsidy in its construction, maintenance, expansion, regulation and policing.

Neither the surface streets of Chicago nor its highways come free. They don’t operate at a profit. Rather, they are provided as a public good as practically all urban transit needs to be provided.

For the purpose of making this point, I don’t need to dwell on the staggering sums we spend securing energy resources that are crucial for the operation of our monumentally inefficient system of private automotive transit.

Fundamentally, we as Americans labor under this strange cognitive dissonance where we view public funds spent on mass transit – be it rails, buses or whatever – as a “subsidy” and demand that those forms of transit some how “pay for themselves” or operate at a profit.

Still, we pour billions upon billions of public funds into subsidies for individualized transit without demanding that streets “pay for themselves” much less operate at a profit. The rest of the world doesn’t apply this odd double standard (nor should we).

Transportation infrastructure is a public good. For a variety of reasons too complex for this brief e-mail, public goods are as a general matter most efficiently provided by governments and by tax subsidies. Cars are just as much a creature of subsidy as trains and buses.

The question is which to subsidize. Characterizing the debate as a choice between a subsidized alternative and a non-subsidized alternative obscures the fundamental issue, which is where best to spend the inevitable subsidies.

Having said all that, many of the points you make (i.e. whether in a highly decentralized suburban environment spending lots of money to operate mostly empty buses makes any sense) are good points. The debate, though, needs to be couched in the correct terms.

Otherwise, we’ll all just spend our time unproductively pummeling straw men.

Too many transportation bureaucrats are not straw men and spend their time justifying their position and need for more budget rather than solving real transportation problems. It’s time to look into the waste in administrative services before shelling out more money.

Fuels Are Taxed Differently

Taxpayers should do some research on how much tax money goes to the various fuels used by both private and public transportation (i.e. cars, trains, planes and buses). You will find that it is not the same across the board. Train fuel, for example, pays the least in fuel taxes.

As for fat subsidies:

When last measured for 2002, the net federal subsidy per thousand passenger miles traveled was $199.90 for rail, $5.87 for commercial aviation and negative 95 cents for highway users, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. While Amtrak carried 24 million passengers in 2006, domestic air carriers that year flew 656 million passengers.

Historically, Amtrak has been hampered by a lack of accountability, poor design and mismanagement.

The latest critical review of Amtrak comes from the Government Accountability Office, which concluded (among several findings) that Amtrak’s long-distance trains “show limited public benefits for dollars expended” and “these routes account for 15 percent of riders but 80 percent of financial losses”.

To turn the enterprise around, the administration has urged basic reforms that would empower local communities and ultimately customers to determine the most efficient way to run trains.

The administration expects the board’s newly installed management to make significant changes required to enable the company to succeed without federal operating subsidies.

That’s straight from the White House. So where is the waste?

Trains get the most subsidy and are the least productive in terms of helping transportation. Too many bureaucrats are in Washington and going out to Georgetown to eat. They should be seeing how much money is wasted by agencies and organizations around the country. They should be flying commercial instead of government jets.

The CATO Institute says an increase in federal fuel tax would not go to roads and instead to wasteful rail projects. Gasoline taxes are very high. The cheapest tax is fuel for trains (they pay the least in taxes on diesel fuel). They also get other subsidies.

So before any money is given out, let’s try cutting out the waste first and then figure out where the money will do the most good.

Carlinism: Mass transportation agencies that don’t solve the problem should be eliminated to free up funds for those that do.