essay - GMAT: Argument 22

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 f 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 . . . etc.

Answer:
The author demands that the government should lower railroad companies' property taxes. He cites that trucking companies don't pay any property tax and railroad companies do pay as the background. He also uses two advantages that railway transportation has, fuel-efficiency and rail lines currently existing, in order to support his conclusion. However, since his argument fails to be reasonable, he fails to make the conclusion convincing.

First, although he cites railway's fuel-efficiency as an advantage that railway transportation has over trucking transportation, this citation ignores the other factors needed to be considered. First, only railway cannot complete transportation. That is, railway can convey goods from a station to another station, but conveying the goods to the final destination such as customer's home or factory requires truck or other automobile transportation. Therefore, virtually the cited figure, a third, should be diminished to some extent. Second, this argument completely ignores customer's convenience. That is, railway transportation generally requires more time to deliver than does truck transportation, thereby it costs the customer in other forms of costs such as low customer satisfaction or more inventories. Therefore, the argument should contain this information to make it reliable.

The second reason why I consider the argument unconvincing is that although the author says that increases in rail traffic would not require building new lines, this assumption is unwarranted. Admittedly, rail lines are unlikely to be required to build in comparison with roads, but it needs to be required in case the traffic exceeds its capacity. For instance, if railway transportation between town A and town B doubles, the railway company will need to build rail lines double between town A and town B.

In conclusion, although the author concludes that the government lowers the property taxes that railway companies need to pay, since the argument is unconvincing, the attempt fails.