When cities require off-street parking with all new residential construction, they shift what should be a cost of driving—the cost of parking a car—into the cost of housing. A price drivers should pay at the end of their trips becomes a cost developers must bear at the start of their projects. Faced with these minimum parking requirements, developers may build less housing, and the housing they do build may be more likely to include parking. Parking requirements could therefore reduce both the amount and variety of housing in a city.

 

https://www.accessmagazine.org/spring-2014/parking-requirements-housing-development-regulation-reform-los-angeles/

OK, this is the best metaphor I've ever seen -- why transportation in America is like free ice cream day. Induced demand told through ice cream economics....

 

The Ben & Jerry’s crash course in transportation economics

http://cityobservatory.org/benjerry-2018/

Why highways have to be an exercise in socialism to survive.....

 

TOLL LANE LOSSES: MARKET FAILURE OR MARKET SIGNAL?

Charging tolls will give feedback about whether these roads were an efficient land use to begin with.

https://marketurbanismreport.com/toll-lane-losses/

 

 

Edited December 9, 20186 yr by KJP

 

Oldie but a goodie....

 

Road Funding as a Prisoner's Dilemma

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/2/6/road-funding-as-a-prisoners-dilemma

Not sure if there is a better place to put this so I'm throwing it in here...

 

Ohio out of money for new road projects, prompting talk of gas tax hike

 

COLUMBUS — 

Within weeks, new Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and state lawmakers will face a huge challenge that impacts every Ohioan every day: how to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for road and bridge building and maintenance projects.

 

https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/local/ohio-out-money-for-new-road-projects-prompting-talk-gas-tax-hike/yGZbB7uirxSZIYBJLnf7wO/

 

I thought this was a nice place for it.....

 

The federal highway trust fund is broke. It's time to either raise gas tax or dramatically cut back on highway expansion.

 

 

44 minutes ago, taestell said:

The federal highway trust fund is broke. It's time to either raise gas tax or dramatically cut back on highway expansion.

 

 

1

 

Acknowledging the problem is only the first step.  Unfortunately, neither of your proposed solutions would go far enough.  I'd say that the gas tax needs to be increased signficantly (and pegged to inflation for automatic increases in the furture), there needs to be a federal vehicle registration tax, we need to dramatically cut back on highway expansion, AND we need to put more money into interstate passenger rail and public transit.  

 

The funding shortfall from a almost-never-increased gas tax can't be made up by increasing the gas tax.  The increase would have to be so large to come close that electric vehicles would quickly become very popular. But they still use the road and their use on the road deteriorates the road, so there is a basis for applying a vehicle registration tax -- preferably one based on weight (sorry truckers).  To keep our roads in better state of repair, we really should find ways to ship more goods by rail for longer distances.  That may mean some federal subsidies to private railroads but that is justifiable to balance out the subsidies (underfunded roadways and reduced gas taxes) provided to trucking companies.  And improving the rail lines would also help passenger rail, which would get more cars off the roads.

 

Not to mention the efficiency gains of trains over cars and planes, and the reductions in pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from having fewer cars and trucks on the roads.

 

We already have more lane-miles of roadway and more bridges than we can afford to maintain (and I say that in the face of much grumbling about current taxes), so just cutting back on expansion won't reduce our costs, it will only make future increases slower.  We may need to take steps to reduce the overhead (get rid of excess lanes, narrow lanes, abandon or sell off some rights-of-way).

 

We also should mandate that maintenance costs be included in the decisions about whether to add more lanes/build more roads/bridges.  You can't just build it, cut the ribbon, celebrate, and walk away -- when you invest in infrastructure you have to protect that investment with maintenance (no one enjoys paying for a new roof or cleaning the chimney, but it has to be done to maintain the property).

Tax by the mile! We already have Echeck facilities that could easily take your mileage once a year. Working downtown and living in a status sub-development Avon or Solon may not look so attractive at that point.

E Check doesn't exist in most of the state.

 

Also, what about all of the people who drive on Ohio roads, but don't live in Ohio? I'm thinking particularly of people in Kentucky along the river who commute into the state every day. Wouldn't they essentially be driving for free? Right now, at least if they buy gas, they do support the roads.

Mileage taxes should probably be collected on a national level if possible, to eliminate the cross-state issue while also not having to rely on GPS tracking equipment.  If that's not possible, then from a revenue generation standpoint it's probably a wash.  People who are using the roads but aren't paying for them are mostly balanced out by those who are paying for the roads but driving elsewhere.  Those northern Kentucky residents currently don't pay for Ohio roads if they buy gas in Kentucky but drive over here, and they still have to drive on Kentucky roads to get here in the first place.  Still, my point is that they're just as likely to be balanced out by Ohio residents doing the same thing in Kentucky. 

 

Anyway, what we need is BOTH a gas tax and mileage tax.  The gas tax should be used to pay for the externalities of burning gas, not for funding roads.  Put the money to pollution cleanup, military protectionism, climate change, and the like.  Then you don't need special gas for offroad use and you're not taxing lawnmowers and generators for road building.  That's what the mileage tax is for, which I think should be as simple as a yearly odometer reading and a fee based on vehicle axle weight.  The rate itself shouldn't be based only on weight though.  Cost of roads and highways isn't so much about pavement depth as pavement width.  Yes it costs more to engineer a roadbed to handle an 80,000lb tractor trailer than typical passenger cars, but the cost doesn't scale linearly with the amount of damage.  Also, it's the passenger cars that are demanding ever more lanes and signals and new capacity.  Lightweight economy cars don't solve that problem, no matter their power source.

How is a mileage tax supposed to be enforced?  Sounds like opening the door for invasive surveillance.

13 minutes ago, tklg said:

How is a mileage tax supposed to be enforced?  Sounds like opening the door for invasive surveillance.

 

I imagine when you renew your tags you could report your current mileage on your vehicle, and pay taxes based on that. You could also pay taxes on mileage any time you sell your vehicle or transfer your plates to a new one.

EDIT: But this would only be enforceable at the state level. I don't think the federal government could require the state DOT's to record this info, but if they attached funding to this requirement, I'm sure just about every state would do it.

 

 

On ‎2‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 11:03 AM, jjakucyk said:

Mileage taxes should probably be collected on a national level if possible, to eliminate the cross-state issue while also not having to rely on GPS tracking equipment.  If that's not possible, then from a revenue generation standpoint it's probably a wash.  People who are using the roads but aren't paying for them are mostly balanced out by those who are paying for the roads but driving elsewhere.  Those northern Kentucky residents currently don't pay for Ohio roads if they buy gas in Kentucky but drive over here, and they still have to drive on Kentucky roads to get here in the first place.  Still, my point is that they're just as likely to be balanced out by Ohio residents doing the same thing in Kentucky. 

 

Anyway, what we need is BOTH a gas tax and mileage tax.  The gas tax should be used to pay for the externalities of burning gas, not for funding roads.  Put the money to pollution cleanup, military protectionism, climate change, and the like.  Then you don't need special gas for offroad use and you're not taxing lawnmowers and generators for road building.  That's what the mileage tax is for, which I think should be as simple as a yearly odometer reading and a fee based on vehicle axle weight.  The rate itself shouldn't be based only on weight though.  Cost of roads and highways isn't so much about pavement depth as pavement width.  Yes it costs more to engineer a roadbed to handle an 80,000lb tractor trailer than typical passenger cars, but the cost doesn't scale linearly with the amount of damage.  Also, it's the passenger cars that are demanding ever more lanes and signals and new capacity.  Lightweight economy cars don't solve that problem, no matter their power source.

The thing is that roads and has never been a federal responsibility and I am not sure the feds even have Constitutional jurisdiction to have a federal mileage tax.

Roads are maintained by the state, licensing and taxing is all state regulated. The state controls their roads. Yes, Feds can give money with strings attached, but legally they probably could not administer a national mileage tax program. THis would be solely at the state level.

Aside from the Commerce Clause.... It, along with military/defense, was used to justify federal leadership in the development of the Interstate & Defense Highway System, even though interstate travel and military shipments represent a very small part of the Interstate highway system's usage. The interstate system started out by building it with 95 percent federal funding!

 

Most highway travel is local. I'd love to use an interstate example but I don't have one. But I do have an intrastate Ohio example to show just how localized Interstate Highway travel really is. When the 3C rail program was being development, it found that, of the 250,000 +/- vehicles driving on I-71 each day between Cleveland and Columbus, a heavy majority (170,000) of that was within the metro areas of Cleveland and Columbus. Only 5,000 mostly single-occupant cars traveled the entire distance between Cleveland and Columbus each day. Of that, the 3C trains were projected to attract about 25 percent of those drivers. There are also many thousands of trucks, but most of those aren't long-distance either. Half of all trucks travel less than 50 miles from their points of origin and three-fourths stayed within their base state. Less than 10 percent of trucks travel to places more than 200 miles away, according to the FHWA.

 

So it makes me angry when the Trump administration and its DOT secretary from the Heritage Foundation wants to eliminate federal funding for public transportation and rail while leaving federal funding intact for highways (only half of which come from user fees). So yeah, interstates 270, 271, 275, 280, 471, 475, 480, 490, 670, 680 and other urban/metro area highways are maintained with 80 percent federal funds while transit and rail are routinely threatened with elimination by demagogues and self-interest johns masquerading as policy-minded bureaucrats.

1 hour ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

The thing is that roads and has never been a federal responsibility and I am not sure the feds even have Constitutional jurisdiction to have a federal mileage tax.

Roads are maintained by the state, licensing and taxing is all state regulated. The state controls their roads. Yes, Feds can give money with strings attached, but legally they probably could not administer a national mileage tax program. THis would be solely at the state level.

 

LOL -- sure, roads are not a federal "responsibility" but remove the federal funding and the interstate system collapses in short order.  The states control their roads, sure, but they are dependent on federal funding. 

 

How do you suppose the 71/75 bridge over the Ohio River is going to be paid for? And when?   I cannot foresee any way that the states would pick up the slack for federal funds, and that bridge is a prime example.

Coordinating between states for major infrastructure projects is a nightmare. I recall there was a bridge project on the Ohio River at either Steubenville or Point Pleasant that was stalled for years because the states of Ohio and West Virginia couldn't agree on a funding arrangement. It wasn't until the federal government stepped in and offered 80 percent federal funding, with each state kicking in 10 percent, that the project moved forward.

 

Here's another one -- the USDOT wanted only one train linking Chicago and New York City as part of the original Amtrak system in 1971. The governors of Ohio and New York protested, wanting service on the former New York Central mainline through Toledo and Cleveland (which had 15 daily round trip passenger trains daily as recently as 15 years earlier). So both states agreed to fund a new train through Amtrak's 403B (state support) program. It was called The Lake Shore and it began service on May 10, less than two weeks after Amtrak started on May 1. While Ohio came through with its funding share, New York did not, citing its as-yet incomplete statewide passenger rail plan. So the train stopped running on Jan. 5, 1972.

 

It wasn't until 1975 when Amtrak chose the Chicago-Boston route (with a section to New York City) as one of its three new experimental routes that would be 100 percent federally funded. It was called the Lake Shore Limited and it was an immediate hit, ridership-wise. Since then, thanks to federal leadership and 400,000 riders per year (1,100+ riders per day), it has been one of the top-5 Amtrak routes served by a single round trip in the USA.

56 minutes ago, Foraker said:

 

LOL -- sure, roads are not a federal "responsibility" but remove the federal funding and the interstate system collapses in short order.  The states control their roads, sure, but they are dependent on federal funding. 

 

How do you suppose the 71/75 bridge over the Ohio River is going to be paid for? And when?   I cannot foresee any way that the states would pick up the slack for federal funds, and that bridge is a prime example.

 But when you have government, oftentimes process matters just as much if not more than the result. Yes, without the federal funding the states lose the ability to fund the roads, but, the fact is the Feds can only give grants to the states to administer on how to build the roads and maintain them. Yes, they can have strings attached to them but their recourse if the state does not comply is to yank funding. The Feds cannot come in and take over the system themselves. They would need to use the carrot and stick approach to get the states to comply

 

To do a mileage tax, the Feds would need to require that all cars in the US built after a certain date have a way to track this. They would then need to mandate to the states that if the states did not keep track of this or refuse to renew tags to cars that do not have the capability to track mileage, then they would lose highway funds. It could be doable but it is a herculean task that could take years to implement.

 

I wonder if the hybrid and E-vehicle crowd would go down fighting against this since they often are free riders on the gas tax right now.

23 hours ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

I wonder if the hybrid and E-vehicle crowd would go down fighting against this since they often are free riders on the gas tax right now.

 

 

Both the federal government and the states have routinely "replenished" their highway funds with general revenue funds (which is primarily income tax receipts) -- and on that basis I would argue that there are no free riders. 

 

Let's also consider the fact that heavier vehicles do more damage to roadways than lighter-weight vehicles.  But even the gas tax does not accurately impose the costs of using the roadway because the weight of the vehicle is not a factor in the tax imposed.

Hybrid and electric car drivers are only "free riders" if you believe that the only purpose of a gas tax is to fund roads. If you consider the gas tax a "sin tax" that discourages the burning of fossil fuels, it is working exactly as intended...we just need to find a different way to fund highway infrastructure going forward as hybrids and electrics make up a bigger and bigger percentage of total vehicles.

Non-plugin Hybrids really only get about 3-5 MPG better above 35 miles per hour than an equivalent gas-only model. On the highway the difference can be almost zero. I wouldn't put much thought into them regrading this issue.

19 minutes ago, taestell said:

Hybrid and electric car drivers are only "free riders" if you believe that the only purpose of a gas tax is to fund roads. If you consider the gas tax a "sin tax" that discourages the burning of fossil fuels, it is working exactly as intended...we just need to find a different way to fund highway infrastructure going forward as hybrids and electrics make up a bigger and bigger percentage of total vehicles.

Gas taxes have never been seen as "sin" taxes. They were an efficient way to fund roads because, 1) for a long time it was the only way to measure mileage. Give or take a car will only get a certain MPG. The heavier the car, lesser MPG it gets and more damage to the road, therefore, it pays "higher" taxes. 2) within reason, a galloon of gas will get on avg 25-40 MPG, less if you have a truck or heavier vehicle. While non-exact, the gas tax gives a rough idea of how many miles people drive. 

 

Only with today's technology can we determine things more accurately

8 hours ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

They were an efficient way to fund roads

 

They were an efficient way to fund roads until we decided that gas taxes don't need to fully cover the cost of roads, and that we should continue to increase highway spending without increasing gas tax revenue accordingly.

And don't forget, like I've said many times before, that the local street network sees little to no gas tax revenue, it's paid for out of general funds.  Of course, a lot of people burn gas while driving on those streets, so they're double-subsidizing the highways. 

There used to be more tolls, as well. Like the Roebling was tolled until the Brent Spence was built. The gas tax wasn't looked at as a sin tax when it was originally conceived (the externalities of burning gas were little understood at the time), but it also wasn't seen as the user fee to replace all user fees. I think it's fallacious to pick and choose intent behind the origin of any of these things and use that to invalidate evolved conceptions. None of it was ever static.

 

The current funding scheme is Big Government at its worst: full of perverse incentives and unintended consequences.

 

 

Seems appropriate today...

 

Whenever the government provides opportunities in privileges for white people and rich people they call it “subsidized” when they do it for Negro and poor people they call it “welfare.” The fact that is the everybody in this country lives on welfare. Suburbia was built with federally subsidized credit. And highways that take our white brothers out to the suburbs were built with federally subsidized money to the tune of 90 percent. Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all to often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. That’s the problem.

 

Martin Luther King Jr, February 1968

 

http://cityobservatory.org/dr-king-socialism-for-the-rich-and-rugged-free-enterprise-capitalism-for-the-poor/

 

 

Here's a recently uploaded film from the '70s about I-64 and I-77 cutting through black neighborhoods in Charleston, West Virginia:

 

 

 

 

 

Why is gasoline so cheap in the USA? To encourage you to drive more, to reshape our communities around the car, and to be dependent on the car for every little trip. That's why special interests got your lawmakers to subsidize oil. So that we'd become addicted to it.

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/15/united-states-spend-ten-times-more-on-fossil-fuel-subsidies-than-education/

 

Yup

 

From 2015, but still apt for today

 

This is our system: one big Ponzi scheme attempting to prop up a rolling development extravaganza of strip malls, big box stores, fast food and cheap housing. You want to spend more on this?

No New Roads

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/5/no-new-roads

"We have to begin to look at alternatives,” House Transportation Chair and bill sponsor Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) told POLITICO in the run-up to the bill's passage in June. "You can’t pave over the whole country."

 

The highway lobby will fight this, of course, but change has to come. Motor vehicles are the single greatest contributor to Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, which causes global warming and too many states are mired in "highways-uber-alles" policies which do nothing but promote more and more driving.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/18/democrats-states-highways-transportation-499906

 

11 hours ago, KJP said:

"We have to begin to look at alternatives,” House Transportation Chair and bill sponsor Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) told POLITICO in the run-up to the bill's passage in June. "You can’t pave over the whole country."

 

The highway lobby will fight this, of course, but change has to come. Motor vehicles are the single greatest contributor to Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, which causes global warming and too many states are mired in "highways-uber-alles" policies which do nothing but promote more and more driving.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/18/democrats-states-highways-transportation-499906

 

 

There may be a better way to do this without creating the ruckus with state DOTs.  It could also do an end-run around highway interests.  Because car-centric development patterns are incapable of generating enough tax revenue to cover the maintenance of the infrastructure that serves them, the way to do this may be to change federal regulations governing municipal accounting to require that city-owned infrastructure be listed as liabilities rather than assets.  Streets, for example, carry significant and perpetual maintenance obligations, making them liabilities.  Did anyone step up to buy Detroit's streets, sidewalks, sewer system, etc. when the city filed bankruptcy?  No, because again, these are liabilities. It may be best to do this and give maximum flexibility to cities for spending federal transportation dollars rather than by top-down regulation of transportation dollars.  This approach has been suggested by Strong Towns.

Edited July 19, 20213 yr by gildone

On 7/19/2021 at 8:14 AM, gildone said:

 

There may be a better way to do this without creating the ruckus with state DOTs.  It could also do an end-run around highway interests.  Because car-centric development patterns are incapable of generating enough tax revenue to cover the maintenance of the infrastructure that serves them, the way to do this may be to change federal regulations governing municipal accounting to require that city-owned infrastructure be listed as liabilities rather than assets.  Streets, for example, carry significant and perpetual maintenance obligations, making them liabilities.  Did anyone step up to buy Detroit's streets, sidewalks, sewer system, etc. when the city filed bankruptcy?  No, because again, these are liabilities. It may be best to do this and give maximum flexibility to cities for spending federal transportation dollars rather than by top-down regulation of transportation dollars.  This approach has been suggested by Strong Towns.

Related: 26 states ban or do not have provisions for government agencies to file for bankruptcy. I assume this means that austerity is de facto required in these states whereas local governments just lapse on maintenance. This seems like the default everywhere though.

Funny that conservatives and libertarians will often criticize investment in public transportation as a "social engineering" effort by liberals. In reality, there was no bigger social engineering program in American history than the federally-funded demolition of neighborhoods in cities across America for the construction of interstate highways, which in turn allowed developers to transform rural cornfields into suburbs:

 

 

1 hour ago, taestell said:

"Funny that conservatives and libertarians will often criticize investment in public transportation as a "social engineering" effort by liberals."

 

They label auto-centic development "traditional" even though we all know that didn't become popular until the 1950s whereas good urbanism has existed for millennia. I hear them do it all the time.

Edited November 23, 20213 yr by GCrites80s

Exactly, the 1950's-and-beyond style of American suburbia could not exist if it had to be fully built/funded by the free market — it required massive government intervention to create. This is something that has been thoroughly covered by Strong Towns' writings on "The Suburban Experiment".

You can win people over by pointing out the market-centric and pragmatic benefits of public transit. The hard argument I'm afraid is convincing them that the government will invest our money wisely, because most of the time they simply don't. 

 

https://seattletransitblog.com/2021/10/18/a-libertarian-case-for-robust-transit-investment/

From Edsel to Ishtar the private sector screws up all the time too.

Driving is a huge entitlement in the US, and motorists want expensive infrastructure as long as someone else foots the bill: 

https://www-planetizen-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.planetizen.com/blogs/115395-roadway-expansion-paradox?amp

 

@GCrites80sspeaking of the private sector screwing up:    In a 2014 article in an embedded link in the above called "The Great Traffic Projection Swindle", I didn't know that a well-known consulting firm was the subject of a class-action lawsuit by investors who bought into various tollway privatization projects based on traffic projections provided by the firm that the investors claim were inflated.  It appears the lawsuit was settled.  

  https://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/11/20/the-great-traffic-projection-swindle/

Edited December 3, 20213 yr by gildone

Time for the federlal government to exit the highway business?

 

Don’t Pause the Gas Tax, Redirect It

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/7/25/dont-pause-the-gas-tax-redirect-it?utm_content=buffere384a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 

Excerpt:

"The solution is devolution. Congress should leave highway taxation and spending to the states. We should commensurately remove federal red tape and regulations on highways, beyond a minimum standard of safety, so that states and cities can use their dollars to address local mobility with organic solutions. The federal gas tax should remain but be used, instead, to subsidize locally sponsored projects that promote walkability, micromobility, and transit. 

 

"The benefits of reforming federal highway funding and changing the way we spend the federal gas tax would be swift and tangible. First, giving states and cities more latitude will encourage local innovation, helping us find better transportation solutions and root out failed practices. Second, it will compel honest accounting of the cost of car-centric infrastructure. Right now, federal gas tax revenue incentivizes states to build and build without thinking about the compounded costs of maintaining an ever-expanding roadway, which are paid for by our children in the form of federal debt."

22 minutes ago, gildone said:

Time for the federlal government to exit the highway business?

 

Don’t Pause the Gas Tax, Redirect It

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/7/25/dont-pause-the-gas-tax-redirect-it?utm_content=buffere384a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 

Excerpt:

"The solution is devolution. Congress should leave highway taxation and spending to the states. We should commensurately remove federal red tape and regulations on highways, beyond a minimum standard of safety, so that states and cities can use their dollars to address local mobility with organic solutions. The federal gas tax should remain but be used, instead, to subsidize locally sponsored projects that promote walkability, micromobility, and transit. 

 

"The benefits of reforming federal highway funding and changing the way we spend the federal gas tax would be swift and tangible. First, giving states and cities more latitude will encourage local innovation, helping us find better transportation solutions and root out failed practices. Second, it will compel honest accounting of the cost of car-centric infrastructure. Right now, federal gas tax revenue incentivizes states to build and build without thinking about the compounded costs of maintaining an ever-expanding roadway, which are paid for by our children in the form of federal debt."

Wouldn't devolution be contradictory to the stated goals? Part of the reason we are in this hole is because the Feds do not require prioritizing maintenance for the funds they send to the states, so they squander the majority of it on expansions. That requirement was in the infrastructure bill but it got pulled out of the Senate version.

9 minutes ago, gildone said:

Time for the federlal government to exit the highway business?

 

Don’t Pause the Gas Tax, Redirect It

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/7/25/dont-pause-the-gas-tax-redirect-it?utm_content=buffere384a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 

Excerpt:

"The solution is devolution. Congress should leave highway taxation and spending to the states. We should commensurately remove federal red tape and regulations on highways, beyond a minimum standard of safety, so that states and cities can use their dollars to address local mobility with organic solutions. The federal gas tax should remain but be used, instead, to subsidize locally sponsored projects that promote walkability, micromobility, and transit. 

 

"The benefits of reforming federal highway funding and changing the way we spend the federal gas tax would be swift and tangible. First, giving states and cities more latitude will encourage local innovation, helping us find better transportation solutions and root out failed practices. Second, it will compel honest accounting of the cost of car-centric infrastructure. Right now, federal gas tax revenue incentivizes states to build and build without thinking about the compounded costs of maintaining an ever-expanding roadway, which are paid for by our children in the form of federal debt."

An interesting idea, and I certainly see a resemblance to a "traditional" conservative position that the states and local governments are better judges of where money should be spent.  But I also think that true interstate highway routes need federal regulation and funding to ensure interstate connections and consistent standards on interstate highways.  

 

I agree, however, that the slush fund of federal highway dollars has led to an overbuilt highway system.  For example, do we really need all of I-90, I-480, and I-271 in the Cleveland area as "interstate" routes governed by and funded by federal dollars? 

 

But just transferring those federal dollars to the states won't change the current spending pattern.  We're a car-centric society and almost our entire built environment is centered around having a personal car to get around -- and people think that that is what they want and the way things should be, because very few people have ever experienced anything different or really understood the true cost.  Ohio Republicans have shown a distinct lack of interest in finding and funding transportation alternatives, and they look likely to control the legislature for the foreseeable future.  So just giving them more money won't change anything.

 

If we're going to see transportation funding go to something other than highways and states are going to try to maximize the value from their transportation dollars, the federal government is going to have to use their funding and regulatory powers to encourage alternative investments.  I'd start by redefining the federal highway system and cut some of the spurs from the federal funding system, and I'd redirect some funding to a planned interstate rail system and Amtrak.  Unfortunately, I also think that alternative investments in local transportation systems might lack sufficient ties to interstate commerce to justify federal interference.