Originally Posted by
KurtAV
I maybe should have qualified that a bit (but then it wouldn't have been as witty and pithy as it was). I was really really writing about funding at the federal level and at the current time. Currently, at the federal level, net subsidies for highways are negative. That is, more revenue is taken in through fuel taxes than is spent on highways. Much more; fuel taxes fund all sorts of other things.
I imagine that road/highway funding at the state level varies quite a bit, but I know that in many states fuel taxes are as nearly as much to more than the federal tax. I'd be very surprised if those taxes didn't cover, in very large part, most state spending on highways and roads.
Here's an
interesting article on this very subject that's written by someone who says he's an "ardent cyclist". Content warning: This article is clearly written from the libertarian point of view; it may not be suitable for children, socialists, and others with tender sensibilities. According to the article:
- "The Interstate Highway System was built without a dime of subsidy, being funded entirely with gas taxes and other highway-user fees;
- For the last 60 years virtually no federal money and very little state money other than highway-user fees have been spent on any highways or roads;
- Cities and counties, however, do spend property, income, and sales taxes subsidizing new local roads and street maintenance;
- But these subsidies are partly offset by diversions of federal and state highway-user fees to mass transit and other nonhighway programs;
- Bottom line: user fees cover nearly 90 percent of the total amount spent on highway construction, maintenance, and operations."
If the author has his facts straight, and he seems to, cars are the least subsidized form of transportation in the US.
I looked around a bit, and could find nothing that indicates that Federal subsidies to the highway system are negative. Do you have a link to some user-friendly site that can confirm this?
Many of the claims in the article you cited can be flatly contradicted by a quick search. For example, the claim that nearly 90% of the total amount of money spent on highway construction, maintenance and operations is simply not true. User fees do pay for a majority of federal, state and even some county roads, but it's a lot closer to 60% than 90%. 40% still comes from sources other than fuel taxes, that is, property, sales, and income taxes.
Personally, I don't have a problem with these taxes, because all of us benefit from roads, and I'm willing to pay my share, but I also expect other road users to understand that I help to foot the bill, too, even though I don't own a car.
On a related note, here's a link to a point of view that I thought was pretty reasonable:
http://www.planetizen.com/node/35075
Finally, I have to side with Roody and say something about keeping things in perspective. For example, Congress recently approved $13 billion for Amtrak over the next five years. In 2008, Amtrak moved about 10 million people. That amounts to a $250.00 per passenger rail subsidy on the part of the Federal government, which is outrageous. However, the Feds spent a similar amount on air travel per passenger, even more if you count Homeland Security costs. I couldn't find enough data to figure out the Federal subsidy per car driver. All I can say is that 54% of all DOT expenses are devoted to highways. Transportation subsidies of any kind, however, pale in comparison to the costs of the war in Iraq, an effort that doesn't really add much value to our economy as a whole or our balance sheet as a nation. 830 billion dollars is the best figure I can find for this war, which, if my math is right, would fund a bloated and inefficient, yet still very useful, Amtrak for 319 years. If you're going to throw money down a rathole, you might as well use it to move people, rather than getting working class boys killed for no particular reason.