please help me in improving my Argument

[sunirs]

21. 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.”


In this argument the author recommends that rail road companies’ are the best mode of transportation and the government should lower the rail road companies’ property taxes. However, the author’s argument rests on numerous unproven and dubious assumptions-about the impact of raise in rail traffic-about the adequacy of delivering the goods at a cheaper cost. Thus the author’s argument is unconvincing at its best, as discussed below.

To begin with, the author’s argument rests on two unsubstantiated assumptions involving rail traffic and appropriate mode of transportation. One such assumption is that the rail traffic will be the same if all the goods send my highway shipping is done by trains. While this might be the case, there is not firm evidence to substantiate this assumption; lacking such evidence it is entirely possible that the increase in delivering goods by trains has exponentially increased the traffic and may lead to delay in delivery of goods. A second such assumption is that trains are the appropriate mode of transportation, there is no substantiated evidence to this crucial assumption. The transportation by trains is very limited because there are many places trains can’t reach and where road transportation helps a lot in delivering the goods at the required place.

Another problem with the argument is that the transporting the load by trains is the most cost effective transportation. It is equally possible that the delivery of the may be required at a far distant location at which there is no rail lines for the train to reach. Hence it will incur additional costs for the company to handle the goods from the railway station to the required remote location.

A final problem with the argument decreasing the rail road companies’ property taxes. It is not appropriate to decrease the taxes for the rail road companies’ because the rail lines and necessary infrastructure are the property of the rail road companies’ and there is no necessity to decrease the taxes because once they are decreased it will in turn have a negative effect on the tax paying public.

In sum, the argument is very weak and it can be strengthened by providing the firm evidence in support of the rail road transport and some facts about the highway shipping pollution and addressing the various issues raised in the argument.