Why not make it a percentage of the purchase price rather than a fixed amount?

 

For the congestion charge?  Sure, sounds good to me.

Where are the protests?  Americans killed in road accidents equivalent to a jumbo jet crash every month. 

 

http://t4america.org/resources/dangerousbydesign2011/map/

Where are the protests?  Americans killed in road accidents equivalent to a jumbo jet crash every month.[/url]

 

Per month?  Try per day.

 

^-Apparently the benefit of mobility is still so high that it outweighs the risk. I have a book from the 1930's that addresses the risk of autombile travel, and it says that a person who nearly dies in a car crash will not hesitate to get in another car and continue driving.

 

 

Why not make it a percentage of the purchase price rather than a fixed amount?

 

For the congestion charge?  Sure, sounds good to me.

 

For fuel costs. If the tax is not a percentage of the purchase price, then the value of the tax declines with respect to inflation affects road construction costs. The highway system is at risk of falling into a death spiral because rising gas prices causes reduced driving and therefore less gas tax revenues. And rising oil/gasoline prices causes higher construction and materials costs for roads. It's a big reason why the federal Highway Trust Fund had to be bailed out four times by Congress since 2008 totaling more than $34 billion.

Why not make it a percentage of the purchase price rather than a fixed amount?

 

For fuel costs. If the tax is not a percentage of the purchase price, then the value of the tax declines with respect to inflation affects road construction costs. The highway system is at risk of falling into a death spiral because rising gas prices causes reduced driving and therefore less gas tax revenues. And rising oil/gasoline prices causes higher construction and materials costs for roads. It's a big reason why the federal Highway Trust Fund had to be bailed out four times by Congress since 2008 totaling more than $34 billion.

 

I completely agree.  My point was that it probably would be more palatable, politically, to do so by starting with a percentage that is close to the current fixed price relative to the current cost.  I don't think that that percentage is sufficient, however, it needs to increase over time.  Having the increases kick in automatically also might be easier politically.

 

At current gas prices, the $0.17 tax per gallon is only $0.17/4.00 - 4.25%.  So set the gas tax at 4% (which would be an immediate cut).  Set it to automatically increase at .1% per year or .02% per year or some other small amount.  The increase will be small enough that we can all adjust and we (or our grandchildren) will be able to plan for a future when the gas tax is much higher.

 

Getouttamyway!: Thoughts on Traffic Congestion and Pedestrians

By Robert Krulwich for NPR

 

More at: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/06/14/137149713/getouttamyway-thoughts-on-city-traffic?sc=fb&cc=fp

Though it's an Amtrak story....it seemed to be a better fit here, because it speaks to the need to diverify our transportation options...

 

Riding the rails: It's the only way to fly

By Hawes Spencer | [email protected]

Published 5:05am Wednesday Jun 22, 2011 in issue #1025

 

It's late afternoon, and I'm standing inside New York's JFK airport with over a dozen of my favorite relatives, when we suddenly learn that the flight back to Reagan National has been canceled due to a severe weather system in the nation's capital. Even worse, the storm has knocked out the rest of the day's flights as well.

 

As frequent travelers know, when weather grounds planes, there's no free ride and no free hotel--- just the prospect of lining up a set of hotel rooms (each of which can easily run $500/night in Gotham City) or scrambling to find a squad of large, luggage-ready rental cars and enough drivers willing to launch a five-hour (traffic-willing) trek to the DC area.

 

But now there's another way. Thanks to the 2004 opening of a rail link, JFK has easy access to Amtrak. For $8.50 per person and about 30 minutes of our time, the combination of the "AirTrain" and the Long Island Railroad took our voluminous group of cousins, in-laws, and tired children to Manhattan's Penn Station. And that gave us myriad options to ride Amtrak back to the D.C. area. While we chose the high-speed, high-priced Acela, which was pretty peppy, the point of this story is that America needs a transportation system with lots of pieces, pieces that fit together.

 

Read more at: http://www.readthehook.com/66989/essay-riding-rails-its-only-way-fly

This is a very interesting thread and has provoked a bit of questions in my head about how we think about transit in the US.

 

I live less than 5 miles from work. I occasionally take public transit depending on weather and mood, and last year I probably drove at most 1,750 miles commuting between home and work and home. But here's the thing I'm embarrassed to admit, I drove 16,000 miles last year. Yep, that means commuting to and from work only made up about 10% of my yearly driving.

 

The problem with the automobile is that it has given so many Americans the freedom to move/travel/explore the world - incredibly cheaply. Since the interstate highway system has been built and a car in everyone's driveway, we've grown accustomed to this freedom.

 

In 1920 an average family wouldn't just say, "hey, let's go to Columbus for the weekend and site see." But today, it's commonplace for so many people every weekend to take day trips that are 100s of miles from home to see a play, ball game, hike, go to a beach, museum, see grandma, etc. The United States is huge, and well, people want to go out and see it. And for the most part, the only way to do that is through the automobile.

 

The title of this thread "rethinking transport in the USA" really got me to think. How do you remove the automobile out of the equation and still let people explore on their own? I look at my own personal situation. Is there ever going to be some way to get me from Cleveland, Ohio to the Poconos to go on a hiking trip without getting in the car? If I want to go have an afternoon in Amish Country, how will I ever do that without my car? I want to go to Mackinac Island for the weekend, how do I do that without my car?

 

The automobile really "drives" the American economy. When a person gets in a car, they're likely to be spending money. Removing people from the car takes a huge chunk out of the economy, especially the travel and tourism industry.

 

I guess my point is that while we try to rethink transport, we have to think about why people are getting in their car and where they are going outside of commuting. If a person still needs to own a car to do all their fun stuff on the weekends, it's much harder for them to leave it in the garage during the workweek. How do you get people to all the places in the US without a car? Before the car people DIDN'T need to visit every place in the US. But, today, the car has given the expectation and created the demand and pleasure of being able to visit every place in the US. A whole economy has been built up around this which is why it's so difficult to replace car with some other feasible mode of transit because it was never needed in the past.

 

Maybe I'm the exception to the rule, but I have no problem paying more for gas or more taxes to drive. I admit my car is my biggest form of entertainment, and I would cut many other expenses before I give up my hobby of road tripping.

^Rethinking transportation in America is not about eliminating the car, it's about limiting our dependence on the car. The ideal would be to limit how much one uses the car for everyday activity (commuting, transporting kids to school, running errands, etc.) and to do that we need to make public transportation, biking, walking and other forms of transportation more viable. Doing so would result in less need for an automobile; some people would decide to go car-less and just rent a car (or join a car sharing group) when/if they need one and others could reduce the amount of cars they own (4 car family down to 2 or one).

 

As a side note, your post seems to suggest that everyone today owns a car, which is simply not true. There are plenty of people who can not afford a car, can not drive, or choose not to drive and rethinking transportation also aims to help those people my increasing their opportunities to do things without a car.

WestBLVD -- your message contains a fundamental flaw: that driving is incredibly cheap. While it's cheaper to drive a car in America than it is other parts of the civilized world, the costs your driving incurs don't cease to exist. They are externalized to other means of payment, such as:

 

> the purchase price of the shirt you bought at Target, Kohl's or Wal-Mart, even though you did not pay to enter the  parking lot built for the superstore. The parking lot was free (the person who took the bus to buy things at the same the superstore, BTW, was kind enough to help subsidize your use of the same parking lot).

 

> The city also did not charge the developer/store an impact fee for the extra storm sewer capacity and retention basins for all of the impervious surfaces the store added to the community. Had it, the parking and the store would probably be built more vertically and the parking would probably not be free. Because it is free, the cost of car dependency is transferred to your sewer bill.

 

> So then you pull out of the parking lot on to the crappy roads that should be replaced from the soil up every few decades but haven't been because the government agencies undercharge you (and all the truckers) for their use. If they did, your gas taxes would double, and/or there would be a congestion fee in lieu of adding and maintaining lanes to handle only the peak traffic which exists only four hours a day.

 

> But since we don't charge per each use of road, we cannot use price to regulate a free market equilibrium between supply and demand. Only road supply can regulate road demand, so we end up with a bloated, underpriced highway system that fosters urban sprawl, urban decay, crime, poverty, overextended government services and infrastructures, oil dependency, massive transfers of American wealth overseas, military expenditures and environmental degradation.

 

Those costs don't go away because you don't pay for them every time you drive. Perhaps they should be internalized into the cost of each car trip. But it would have to be done over a period of 10 to 20 years to transition the American economy away from its over-dependency on the car. If we immediately put $15 to $20 worth of tax on every gallon of gas to pay for these auto-incurred costs (or about $1.40 per mile), America's economy would collapse.

 

Try these calculations to measure your cost of driving.....

 

http://www.commutesolutions.org/calc.htm

  "If we immediately put $15 to $20 worth of tax on every gallon of gas,..."

 

  Ok, KJP, I've heard your argument many times. Drivers do not pay the full cost of the highway system, including parking lots, storm sewers, etc.

 

  May I ask, then, who is it that is paying for these items?

 

  In the United States there are ~300 million people and ~150 million cars. So, on average, there is one car for every two people. Are you inferring that the non-drivers are subsidizing the drivers? I agree that they are, but using the simple ratio of 2:1 then it should cost ~$1.00 per mile to drive instead of ~$0.50. That is STILL incredibly cheap.

 

To demonstrate just how cheap that is, suppose that you commute 1 mile to work and you make $6.00 an hour. You could walk that distance in about 15 minutes, or drive in 2 minutes. If you drive, you save 13 minutes. If you spend that 13 minutes working, you make $1.30. So, you are actually making money by driving instead of walking, EVEN if the costs of driving are doubled! Considering that most people make significantly more than $6.00 an hour, it is evident that the car is very hard to beat.

 

Taking transit is not much better for most conditions, though in certain situations taking transit will do better than driving, especially if there is a cost for parking.

 

I had the chance to visit a second-world country where the cost of driving is about the same, but the average person only made the equivalent of $1.00 per hour. As to be expected, automobile ownership was much lower. By my own estimate, only one of 10 people owned a car. This ratio is manageable, and the urban areas were not surrendered to the automobile as American cities are.

^ ^

I understand where you are coming from. Cheap is a relative term. I know what I spent out of pocket last year for my personal vehicle expenses and it was a drop in the bucket. But, yes that calculator shows some of the externalities, even though I disagree with a lot of the calculations ... 11.9 cents per mile for travel time? PSHAW, that's pure pleasure.

 

I was just trying to gauge whether there's a difference between total miles driven versus the types of trips taken? Someone who takes a round trip from Cleveland to Indianapolis will log about 680 miles over a weekend. Is that impact the same as a suburbanite who logs 680 miles by making 34 shopping trips at Walmart, driving across the street to another store, etc for a total of 20 miles each time?

 

Or to put it in other terms. Sometimes driving is the most fuel efficient way to travel / get a task done.

 

If you are trying to get to a remote area of the country, driving is probably the most fuel efficient way to go. You could fly and rent a car, but you'd probably do more harm. You could take a train or bus to the nearest major city, but then you'd have to hire a taxi to get you to your final spot which isn't any better.

 

Or lets say you need to get a few items at the store:

You could drive to a walmart

You could walk to a walgreens

You could take a bus to the store

You could bike

 

in this case driving isn't the best option. So the question is, is total mileage the best gauge of externalities? If two people put the same amount of miles on their car, but one does so in a way that is the worst choice and the other does so in a way where driving was the best choice, should they pay the same?

 

 

And it didn't mean to jump on you. I often hear from people how cheap it is to drive, and it is. But it's cheap only because we externalize most of the costs.

The costs may still be born by drivers, but not directly.  Property taxes, sales taxes, costs of goods and services, maintenance and healthcare, etc. are all increased due to driving.  Yes it's very unfair that a lot of people who don't drive subsidize those who do, but the real problem is that the costs of driving are born indirectly through all these other ways that people don't know about.  Even if the direct costs of driving increased to $1.00 per mile, that still ignores all the costs that are externalized to other non-driving tasks. 

June 26, 2011

Europe Stifles Drivers in Favor of Alternatives

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

 

ZURICH — While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear — to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.

 

Cities including Vienna to Munich and Copenhagen have closed vast swaths of streets to car traffic. Barcelona and Paris have had car lanes eroded by popular bike-sharing programs. Drivers in London and Stockholm pay hefty congestion charges just for entering the heart of the city. And over the past two years, dozens of German cities have joined a national network of “environmental zones” where only cars with low carbon dioxide emissions may enter.

 

Likeminded cities welcome new shopping malls and apartment buildings but severely restrict the allowable number of parking spaces. On-street parking is vanishing. In recent years, even former car capitals like Munich have evolved into “walkers’ paradises,” said Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at Stanford University who specializes in sustainable transportation.

 

“In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving,” said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. “Here there has been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars.”

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/science/earth/27traffic.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

Yeah....the Dispatch.... the same paper that has editorialized in the past against transit and passenger rail projects.... now views this story like it's "breaking news"....

 

Highway fund is falling into holes

Monday, July 4, 2011  03:08 AM

By Robert Vitale

 

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

 

After more than half a century, the federal fund that built many of the nation's highways and paid to keep them in order is going broke.

 

And the possible solutions could mean a rougher ride - or a more-expensive one.

 

Some in Congress want to shift more of the funding burden for highway construction and upkeep to state and local governments, which warn that they already don't have the money to fix a deteriorating system.

 

Some outside of Congress want to raise the 18.4-cents-per-gallon federal gasoline tax for the first time since 1993. That's already been ruled out by the White House and House Republicans.

Read more at: http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/07/04/highway-fund-is-falling-into-holes.html?sid=101

It certainly is old news. So this sounds like a politically motivated story. Someone (probably a slimy political operative like Mike Dawson) encouraged an editor at the Dispatch to run this story now to provide the basis and motivation for leasing the Turnpike.

Long article but worth reading....

 

High gas prices, rough economy raise demand and challenges for aging public transit systems

07-05-2011 09:17 AM EDT |By BOB SALSBERG, Associated Press

 

BOSTON (Associated Press) -- On a chilly evening last February, a commuter train bound for Worcester, Mass., broke down outside Boston, transforming passengers' usual 80-minute commute into a four-hour nightmare.

 

The train's failure was among the winter lowlights for the Boston-area commuter rail system's fleet of 80 aging locomotives which, among other woes, have had trouble starting, keeping auxiliary power functioning for lighting systems and maintaining enough air pressure for braking systems, according to transit officials.

 

"I can't rely on it at all," said Frank Summers, who has been commuting to Boston from suburban Ashland for about seven years and believes service is declining. "It's always jammed-packed and rarely on time."

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/high-gas-prices-rough-economy-raise-demand-and-challenges-for-aging-public-transit-systems/2011/07/05/gHQAtyRvyH_story.html

Interesting article about a successful small-vehicle BRT system in Morgantown, WV (they call it "personal" rapid transit)

http://www.governing.com/topics/transportation-infrastructure/personal-rapid-transit-system-morgantown-west-virginia.html#next

 

^ The PRT is just incredible.

Bank plan would help build bridges, boost jobs

Bill gains traction, but foes fear another Fannie-Freddie disaster

By Anika Anand

msnbc.com contributor msnbc.com contributor

 

China announced last week that it opened the world’s longest sea bridge and added a line to the world’s largest high-speed rail network. Meanwhile, on this side of the Pacific, the United States is struggling to address its crumbling roads and creaky bridges.

 

A bill wending its way through Congress looks to change that, and by doing so create jobs and fund projects, such as a high-speed rail line.

 

..American has fallen to 23rd in infrastructure quality globally, according to the World Economic Forum. It will take about $2 trillion over the next five years to restore the country’s infrastructure, says the American Society of Civil Engineers.

 

Read more at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43606379/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/#

Public Perceptions on Transportation Characteristics of Livable Communities

 

PDF

Contact

DOT 89-11

Dave Smallen

202-366-5568

 

Friday, July 15, 2011 - The Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), a part of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, today released Public Perceptions on Transportation Characteristics of Livable Communities, a special report presenting the findings of a 2009 survey asking participants the importance of different transportation features for their communities. The most important of the eight characteristics defined in the survey, supported by 94 percent of respondents, was major roads or highways, followed closely by adequate downtown parking, pedestrian-friendly downtown streets, safe sidewalks, and easy access to airports. Reliable long-distance bus or rail transportation, bike lanes, and local transit were found to be important by over two-thirds of respondents. BTS surveyed about 1,000 households for this report.

 

Link to pdf of report at: http://www.bts.gov/press_releases/2011/dot089_11/html/dot089_11.html

Dukakis: Invest in Future by Spending on Infrastructure

Bob Edmonson | Jul 19, 2011 6:07PM GMT

The Journal of Commerce Online

 

Former Massachusetts governor and presidential canidate Michael Dukakis said to invest in the future spending on infrastructure is key  — even if requires increasing the fuel tax during the economic recovery.

 

Besides, there was a recession on in 1993 when President Bill Clinton last raised the fuel tax, he said. The federal fuel tax is 18.4 cents per gallon.

 

Read more at: http://www.joc.com/infrastructure/dukakis-invest-future-spending-infrastructure

 

Video at: http://www.joc.com/government-regulation/michael-dukakis-transportation-bill

Why Are Our Bridges Made In China?

Rebuilding our infrastructure right here in America, instead of outsourcing projects overseas, could put us on a track toward economic recovery

 

By Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

 

In my first piece for The Atlantic, I talked about the breakdown of our infrastructure based on my experience with the Washington DC Metro: the broken escalators, the slow Orange line, the unscheduled stops in the middle of tunnels. Today I'd like to add my complaints about the Maryland Area Regional Commuter line, MARC, where delays are not uncommon, and Amtrak's Acela, which sustained a speed of 0 mph for two straight hours in New York's Penn Station during one of my recent trips.

 

I choose the quiet car, because I don't want to hear the curses that greet one delay after another. But then I think, Is passivity really the American way? Aren't we supposed to take action, do something, get the job done? Americans solve problems. What's going on when I read that China is launching a new line of fast trains and we aren't even able to get our slow trains going? 

 

So I took it personally when Congressman John Mica, a Florida Republican and head of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee -- rather than embracing the idea of an infrastructure bank that had the backing of John Kerry (Democrat) and Kay Bailey Hutchinson (Republican), the Chamber of Commerce, and the AFL-CIO -- proposed to decrease infrastructure funding even beyond what Paul Ryan had proposed. Mica wants a 40 percent cut, to outdo the Tea Party's cut of 30 percent.

 

Read more at: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/07/why-are-our-bridges-made-in-china/242115/

Carnegie Endowment Releases Plan to Reform Transportation Funding

By Daniel Ferry on July 21, 2011 

 

A strategy to address the nation's infrastructure needs through increased funding and institutional reform, Road to Recovery: Transforming America's Transportation, has been released by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Leadership Initiative on Transportation Solvency. The non-partisan plan was developed by former Senator Bill Bradley, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, and former Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office David Walker -- a Democrat, Republican, and independent, respectively. The authors seek to address the chronic underfunding and disinvestment that has caused American transportation infrastructure, once the best in the world, to sink to 23rd in international rankings.

 

Currently, the National Highway Trust is insolvent and relies on frequent bailouts by taxpayers to make ends meet. The Carnegie plan advocates restoring transportation spending to a sound financial footing, and returning to a "pay-as-you-go" model in which capital investments are paid for immediately, as opposed to the current practice of "deferred maintenance." The authors refer to deferred maintenance as nothing more than "a hidden tax, with interest," as delaying needed repairs or improvements only raises the total project cost for taxpayers, often relying on borrowing money. The authors point out that consistent majorities of Americans believe we should invest more in our transportation infrastructure, and they lay out a strategy for raising additional revenue to do so immediately, rather than relying on deficit spending.

 

READ MORE AT: http://www.america2050.org/2011/07/carnegie-endowment-releases-plan-to-reform-transportation-funding.html

America's Coming Infrastructure Crash

By Michael Mandel

Jul 25 2011, 12:30 PM ET

 

Forget about "shovel-ready" projects. We need bigger, better thinking about moving people and products across the country

 

When President Obama took office in January 2009, he promised that " to lay a new foundation for growth....we will build the roads and bridges." And in his 2011 State of the Union address, he promised to "put more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges."

 

But as all attention is focused on the debt ceiling battle, here's what's happening on the infrastructure front. Highway, street, and bridge construction jobs through the first five months of 2011 are running 18% below 2007 levels, and the stimulus money is fading. House Republicans are proposing to cut future federal infrastructure funding by roughly one-third. And any defaults among state and local governments would raise borrowing costs for infrastructure bonds across the country and in some cases make the bonds unsellable.

 

In short, a difficult infrastructure situation is about to turn worse. The U.S. seems likely heading for an infrastructure crash that will terribly damage both our prospects and those of our children.

 

Read more at: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/07/americas-coming-infrastructure-crash/242489/

Leave it to the Onion to come up with something like this.....

 

Al-Qaida wanted to destroy our transport infrastructure, but it's in such bad shape to begin with they chose not to: http://onion.com/pyLnSN

 

EDIT: Here's a much more serious piece by The Washington Post which reports that decrepit infrastructure is costing Americans $129 billion per year in terms of travel delays and added cost to operate vehicles, according to a report by the American Society of Civil Engineers. If nothing is done, within the decade this number could balloon to $430 billion per year. I think this is a great soundbite – if these numbers are even close to accurate, it means that it would be considerably cheaper to spend money on infrastructure than not to, which is a devastating broadside to the “boondoggle” argument......

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/decaying-infrastructure-costing-us-billions-report-says/2011/07/27/gIQAAI0zcI_story.html

Senators Introduce Bill to Allow States to Opt Out of Federal Highway Program

http://www.fedsmith.com/article/3031/senators-introduce-bill-allow-states-opt.html

 

Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) and 11 more Senate Republicans have introduced legislation which would empower states to free themselves from "wasteful mandates and heavy-handed interference from the federal government" by enabling them to opt out of the Federal-Aid Highway and Mass Transit Account (MTA) programs.

 

Under the current system, the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) often spends more than it receives in user taxes, which has resulted in Congress bailing out the fund three times since fiscal year 2008 for a total of $35 billion. Hatch said a large part of the problems with the fund is due to the fact that Congress keeps expanding the type of projects eligible for HTF revenues. Further exacerbating matters, Congress often links the release of the funds to mandates – beautification projects, museums and landscaping projects, for example – that are unrelated to transportation needs. This causes significant delays and drives up the cost of transportation projects.

 

States opting out of the HTF under the State Transportation Flexibility Act would give up their annual authorization from that fund in exchange for their share of the 18.3 cents per gallon federal gas taxes collected within their boundaries. The states would then be free to use that money to set and finance their own transportation priorities, subject only to their pledge to abide by certain federal safety and maintenance standards.

Senators Introduce Bill to Allow States to Opt Out of Federal Highway Program

http://www.fedsmith.com/article/3031/senators-introduce-bill-allow-states-opt.html

 

 

This sounds like a bill to establish a negotiating stance on another bill -- the six-year surface transportation renewal that has been languishing for two years. Either way, opting out of a national transportation system weakens the federalist approach to governing, and for which more than 600,000 Americans died in creating a unified nation instead of states rights. Or do these characters want to fight the Civil War all over again??

Senators Introduce Bill to Allow States to Opt Out of Federal Highway Program

http://www.fedsmith.com/article/3031/senators-introduce-bill-allow-states-opt.html

 

 

This sounds like a bill to establish a negotiating stance on another bill -- the six-year surface transportation renewal that has been languishing for two years. Either way, opting out of a national transportation system weakens the federalist approach to governing, and for which more than 600,000 Americans died in creating a unified nation instead of states rights. Or do these characters want to fight the Civil War all over again??

 

Um ...

 

Well, I can't say I quite get the point of balkanizing highway spending, but I think it's going a little bit far to suggest that decentralizing control over highway revenue is a step towards refighting the Civil War.

Yes, it is an exaggeration. But it's also more than decentralizing control over highway revenue. Much more.

 

Europe realizes the route to peace and stability is to take down regional barriers of finance, culture, economy, etc. including using transportation to unify the EU. Their investment in high-speed rail is a key strategy to create unity, which improves economic health and political stability. I see America becoming more balkanized in politics, culture and economic well-being. Balkanizing a transportation system which accounts for 90 percent of all intercity travel is not a very good way to reverse this trend. Instead, it will only accelerate it.

I'm not quite as pessimistic about it. From my perspective, it seems more about states getting all their transportation funds back, rather than some states supporting others. I don't think it's a great idea, but if it allows states to get funds faster, with less review, and saves a little money, it might not be the worst idea around.

Think of it as regionalism on a larger scale.  Devolving power from the federal government to the states isn't so different (from a 10,000-foot vantage, anyway) than devolving power from states to regions.  I think Keith's point about keeping tax dollars local and not subsidizing other states is valid.

 

Heck, a ton of those distributed transportation dollars go to pay for massive, wasteful highway projects across Alaska, Montana, and other large empty states (which are perennially on the list of the states getting the most federal dollars per capita, simply because the denominator is so low).  I forget where Ohio is on that scale (I think Alaska is almost always first), but I'd guess we're somewhere in the middle of the pack, so if we had an arrangement like that here, we probably wouldn't gain or lose all that much overall.

It's a very anti-rural bill, which is odd to see coming from Republicans. States like Alaska and Wyoming could really suffer if many states signed onto this.

Yes, it reduces the "Blue states subsidizing the red states" phenomenon, at least in the transportation sector.

 

Europeans are rapidly becoming more hostile to the EU's decision-making and power. Think about how the Germans view money and finance as compared with Italy or Greece. In Germany, a business bankruptcy is shameful, but in Italy, businesses are constantly going in and out of it. You never know if motorcycle manufacturers Bimota and Moto Morini are bankrupt or back on any given day.

Of course this might be their motivation...

 

Nearly All States Received More Funding Than They Contributed in Highway Taxes Since 2005

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10780.pdf

 

 

Europeans are rapidly becoming more hostile to the EU's decision-making and power. Think about how the Germans view money and finance as compared with Italy or Greece. In Germany, a business bankruptcy is shameful, but in Italy, businesses are constantly going in and out of it. You never know if motorcycle manufacturers Bimota and Moto Morini are bankrupt or back on any given day.

 

The Germans are also getting a little sick and tired of being the piggy bank of the EU, and the feeling is largely shared even by the people the Germans are subsidizing.  The primary benefit of the euro for Germany has been a solid boost for German exports, because a lot of other countries in the European periphery who would have gotten more competitive (at in the short term) by devaluing their currencies against the Deutschmark cannot do so under the euro.  Also, the euro trades lower than the Deutschmark probably would right now, since it's weighed down by non-German economies.  A fair number of average-Joe (average-Hans?) Germans, and their Bundestag delegates, seem half-willing (or more) to give up that export edge in order to get rid of the Greek baggage.  (They probably figure that Greece might gain a competitive edge against German exports by devaluing the drachma, but they also figure that just having a discount-rate currency doesn't mean that Siemens is going to fire all its German engineers and hire a bunch of cheaper Greek ones.  They're probably right.)

Maybe they can go a step further and eliminate the 18-cent federal gas tax. Who needs a national highway system, anyway? That should be left to the states, right? Of course, that would mean less transportation money to the states, but they could always raise their own gas tax.

Cross-posted from the "Road is a road to socialism road" thread.......

____________

 

This is also a cautionary tale for the debate on leasing the Ohio Turnpike. This road (below) was built as a public-private partnership but is now wholly government-owned/maintained (like nearly all others) because the price for motorists to use the privately owned road was too high for it to be sustained privately. Perhaps the title of the article should instead be: "Americans don't love their cars at the free market price." How many other roads in the U.S. would never have been built or remained open if the free market was the actual determinant?....

 

San Diego County regional government to buy bankrupt toll road

July 30, 2011 |  9:34 am 

 

A San Diego regional government organization has agreed to purchase the bankrupt State Route 125 toll road near the U.S.-Mexico border for approximately $345 million.

 

Opened in November 2007, the 10-mile toll road in southern San Diego County was described initially as an example for Los Angeles and other traffic-beset regions on how a private-public partnership could build new roads and ease congestion.

 

Instead it became a cautionary tale about risky assumptions, and the stubborn opposition of motorists to paying tolls. In March 2010 the road's operator filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, noting that traffic counts were less than 50% of projections.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/07/san-diego-regional-government-to-purchase-bankrupt-state-route-125-toll-road.html

 

Read more: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,21719.30.html#ixzz1TtPnMPHR

Maybe they can go a step further and eliminate the 18-cent federal gas tax. Who needs a national highway system, anyway? That should be left to the states, right? Of course, that would mean less transportation money to the states, but they could always raise their own gas tax.

 

That's not really a bad idea.  If the feds won't take any initiative, then state and local governments should.  Most state gas taxes are already higher than the federal tax anyway.  We're a long way off from this, but it would be nice for municipalities to be able to just pay for their own stuff rather than have to beg Washington to get their own citizens' taxes back. 

  We're a long way off from this, but it would be nice for municipalities to be able to just pay for their own stuff rather than have to beg Washington to get their own citizens' taxes back. 

If we went that far, we'd be encouraging sprawl because suburbs without many roads (or with new roads) would have lower road maintenance costs than cities with older roads.

Except that they don't.  Not for the amount of tax dollars taken in for a given length of road.  There's been a collective failure to do proper cost/benefit analyses for infrastructure in all levels of government.  The main reason for that is because so much of the tax revenue used to pay for it is just mixed together in a big pot and then dolled out based on some arbitrary formula.  The reality is that suburban taxes would need to be doubled or tripled just to cover the ongoing maintenance costs of the roads alone, never mind the sewers and water system. 

Here's the problem for those of us who believe that transportation is more than just roads -- Ohio's state constitution prohibits the spending of state-levied taxes on road users on anything other than building and maintaining roads. There is no such restriction on federal funds. So some federal gas taxes are used to fund public transit capital and operating costs. If federal funding of transportation stops and is turned over to the states, public transportation in Ohio will be seriously affected. Gone will be 50 to 80 percent of funding for new bus purchases, rail improvement projects in Cleveland, new bus garages, new bus rapid transit projects, and more. Gone will be operating assistance to small-city and rural transit agencies, most of which will likely cease some or all operations.

 

That is the reality. Here are two articles showing what the Tea Party wants to do now that it is has put the FAA in a tailspin (see: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,14912.msg570486.html#msg570486).....

 

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60450.html

 

http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2011/08/now-republicans-know-they-can-play-hostage-taker-and-win-%E2%80%93-what-will-be-next-hostage

And........

 

Updated on August 01, 2011

Policy Updates in Regional Mobility

Federal Gas Tax Set to Expire

 

The current extension of the surface transportation authorization, SAFETEA-LU, isn’t the only component of national transportation policy set to expire at the end of this federal fiscal year.  According to a Joint Committee on Taxation report, several federal Highway Trust Fund excise taxes will expire on September 30, 2011.  These taxes include the following:

 

+ All but 4.3 cents per gallon of the gasoline, diesel, kerosene, and alternative fuels taxes.

+ Reduced rate of tax on partially exempt methanol or ethanol fuel.

+ Tax on retail sale of heavy highway vehicles.

+ Tax on heavy truck tires.

+ Annual use tax on heavy highway vehicles.

 

(As a reminder, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration presents the following summary [http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/safetealu/factsheets/htft.htm] of federal highway user taxes.  The federal gasoline tax is currently 18.4 cents per gallon.)

 

Although renewing the Highway Trust Fund excise taxes has typically been a routine affair, observers at Politico, DC.StreetsBlog, and the Council of State Governmentsquestion whether this case will be different.  Given the continuing debate over the federal debt ceiling and surface transportation reauthorization bill, compromise may be harder to reach in time, as evidenced by the current Federal Aviation Administration partial shutdown.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.cmap.illinois.gov/moving-forward-in-detail/-/asset_publisher/Q4En/blog/federal-gas-tax-set-to-expire/276584?isMovingForward=1

For all the imbedded links, see: http://allaboardohio.org/2011/08/03/ohio-public-transit-services-in-serious-jeopardy/

 

Ohio public transit is in serious jeopardy

 

If Congress fails to extend the current federal surface transportation spending authorization by Sept. 30, 2011, numerous public transportation services will cease. If the recent ideological fight in Congress over the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization, which will terminate 4,000 FAA workers and 80,000 construction jobs, is any indication, a similar and much more serious debacle is coming to surface transportation this fall.

 

Without public transportation, thousands of Ohioans will lose their only way to reach their jobs, which is the same as a layoff. Indeed, the Ohio Department of Transportation says more Ohioans (500,000) use public transportation each day than fly in and out of Ohio’s airports (fewer than 130,000). According to the Ohio Public Transit Association, six out of 10 public transit riders use transit to get to work. Others use transit to visit the doctor, go to school, get groceries and make other trips.

 

Federal surface transportation taxes due to expire Sept. 30 include the following:

 

+ 14.1 cents of the total 18.4-cent per gallon of the gasoline, diesel, kerosene, and alternative fuels taxes.

+ Reduced rate of tax on partially exempt methanol or ethanol fuel.

+ Tax on retail sale of heavy highway vehicles.

+ Tax on heavy truck tires.

+ Annual use tax on heavy highway vehicles.

 

(As a reminder, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration presents the following summary of federal highway user taxes.)

 

Although renewing the Highway Trust Fund excise taxes has typically been a routine affair, observers at Politico, DC.StreetsBlog, and the Council of State Governments question whether this case will be different.  Given the continuing debate over the federal debt ceiling and surface transportation reauthorization bill, compromise may be harder to reach in time, as evidenced by the current Federal Aviation Administration partial shutdown.

 

Some in Congress see this as an opportunity to sharply reduce or eliminate a federal role in funding transportation programs. While this may seem tempting considering that gas tax-donor states like Ohio send more money to Washington than they get back in funding, turning over transportation funding control to states could devastate public transportation that hundreds of thousands of Ohio families depend on for their livelihoods.

 

The reason is Ohio’s Constitution (Article XII, Sec. 5a) which prohibits the spending of state-levied taxes on road users for anything other than building and maintaining roads. There is no such restriction on federal transportation funds. So some federal gas taxes are used to fund public transit capital and operating costs. If some or all federal funding of transportation stops and/or is turned over to the states, the quality and quantity of public transportation in Ohio will be seriously affected.

 

Gone will be the federal funding share (up to 80 percent of project costs) for new bus purchases, rail improvement projects in Cleveland, new ore rebuilt bus garages, new bus rapid transit projects, and more. Big-city transit providers may have to cannibalize some transit operations to fund capital costs to keep other services functioning safely. Gone will be operating assistance to small-city and rural transit agencies, most of which will likely cease some or all operations.

 

How many Ohioans are affected?

 

The Census shows 8.5 percent of Ohio households have no car — that’s 1 million people! And there are 1.2 million one-car households where 3 million Ohioans live and are forced to share cars to reach work, health care, shopping, school or to vote. Lastly, 2 million Ohioans are 65 years or older, many of whom may have cars but can no longer drive them safely, the Census shows. Rising gas prices, reduced interest by young people in driving everywhere and an aging populace means we need more funding for transit, not less!

 

You don’t have to accept this…

 

Contact your Congressperson

Contact your Senator

 

Please don’t forget to support All Aboard Ohio! Help us in reaching our $5,000 goal for the $250 NOW Campaign — we are only $1,000 away. Even if you don’t have $250 to help All Aboard Ohio, please donate whatever you can afford. Please visit our Pay Online feature. Or kindly send checks payable to “All Aboard Ohio” to 309 South 4th Street, Suite 304, Columbus,  OH 43215-5428.

 

Together we can win this fight for more and better transportation choices in Ohio!

8/8/2011 9:30:00 AM    Federal Legislation

 

Transportation impacts varied under new debt deal, APTA says

 

An initial analysis of the new Budget Control Act signed by President Obama last week reveals “no specific impact” on transportation accounts or the Highway Trust Fund/Mass Transit Account (HTF/MTA), according to a legislative analysis conducted by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).

 

The act treats spending under the HTF/MTA as mandatory spending, and as a result, is not subject to the legislation’s discretionary caps, APTA determined. The new law does not provide any additional revenue, “and thus does nothing to ensure the solvency of the HTF/MTA,” APTA officials said in the analysis, which is posted on the association’s website.

 

Read more at: http://www.progressiverailroading.com/prdailynews/news.asp?id=27547

Rendell: "Super Committee" May Boost Transport Spending

R.G. Edmonson | Aug 8, 2011 7:53PM GMT

The Journal of Commerce Online - News Story

 

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said Monday a congressional “super committee” appointed to find ways to cut the federal deficit may find that spending more on U.S. infrastructure a worthy investment.

 

“It’s our hope that sometime between now and Thanksgiving when the special super committee reports that it will look at not just deficit reduction, but what we need to keep America competitive, and what we need to create jobs,” Rendell said. “If they do, we hope they will recommend this kind of long-term program.”

 

Rendell has been a vocal advocate for infrastructure investment at $10 billion for 10 years. The amount would cover improvement to such infrastructure as the national electric grid, telecommunications, and water resources in addition to transportation.

 

Read more at: http://www.joc.com/infrastructure/rendell-super-committee-may-boost-transport-spending

Hmm, that would be nice! Though $10b in 10 years seems a bit low.

Bloomberg, Schwarzenegger: U.S. Must Modernize Its Infrastructure, Invest In High-Speed Rail

The Huffington Post  Alexander Eichler 

First Posted: 8/11/11 10:31 AM ET Updated: 8/11/11 10:46 AM ET

 

With GDP languishing and job-creation rates well below what’s needed to put the economy back on track, the key to recovery lies with American infrastructure, says a bipartisan group headed by Michael Bloomberg and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

 

U.S. infrastructure, far from being the best in the world, is due for an overhaul, says the Building America’s Future Educational Fund, a coalition that Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California, co-chair with former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell. If the country’s infrastructure isn’t modernized, they say, the U.S. will lose its competitive edge.

 

“If we are going to maintain our economic dominance, we have to get on the stick and get on it fast,” Rendell said earlier this week.

 

On Monday, the BAF Fund released a report calling upon policymakers to invest $200 billion a year in infrastructure for the next 10 years, a plan it says could create nearly 5 million jobs over the next decade.

 

READ MORE AT:

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/11/infrastructure-bloomberg-schwarzenegger-high-speed-rail_n_924280.html