Comments on: Brookings: Feds Should Stop Giving Transit Projects the Run-Around

By: Anon.

Anon. — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:16:44 +0000

Tom Rubin should think a little harder. The federal road money is no longer funded by fuel taxes by road users: we just ran out of 'em. Now they're asking for general fund taxes. Of course, a vast amount of the existing road system was funded from general fund taxes, not from fuel taxes: federal general fund subsidies to road-building started out big in the 1920s and only became small in the 1970s. Furthermore, state and local road funding is largely funded out of general taxation.

As for freight, indeed freight rail is so much more efficient than trucks that the freight railroads can pay *property taxes* on their rail lines and most of them don't go bankrupt. Of course, several of them did go bankrupt in the 1970s, and the federal government had to pay for them -- remember Conrail? This was *still* a better use of money than endless, endless road widening.

I think nobody disputes that local last-mile roads need to exist; cars and trucks are the most efficient means of moving small numbers of people and small amounts of freight over long rural distances.

But for mass transportation of large quantities freight *or* people, highways are a ridiculous waste, from an energy-efficiency, land-use, and economic efficiency point of view. Especially for freight. Truckers are well documented to not pay enough gas tax to cover even the maintenance costs of road damage caused by trucks: they are living off a vast government subsidy (paid by property taxes, state income and sales taxes, and drivers of cars). Most truckers would go bankrupt if they had to pay their full costs -- in fact this is why they do things like avoiding toll roads.

By: Tom Rubin

Tom Rubin — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 17:36:08 +0000

Before we get real far into how much Federal policies need to be changed, it might be good to remember that the Federal transit program is almost completely funded by fuel taxes on road users -- which, of course, means that these revenues generated by road users doesn't go for road purposes, that over 20% of the total Federal roads+transit money goes for transit, and that the total national transit passenger-miles (and I'm even including Amtrac) is about .7% of what is carried on roads, and a lot of the transit passenger-miles are buses, demand-responsive, etc., that use the roads. Also, transit's contribution to carrying freight -- which roads carry a lot of -- is virtually non-existant.

By: niccolo machiavelli

niccolo machiavelli — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 23:56:32 +0000

Good questions surely. I continue to be amazed at how little blogging interest this piece drives. All the while relatively low gas taxes nationwide pay for tanning beds in Anchorage. Curious.

By: Dan Doran

Dan Doran — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:57:58 +0000

I found this to be really insightful and interesting. I've often wondered, what with the billions of dollars of federal highway funding thrown about, how some of it doesn't get tied up in alternative transportation projects. Now, a further question would be - does this reality have something to do with the DoD/National Security functions our highways serve, or is because detroit/auto lobbies and/or construction lobbies are trying to preserve the status quo? When looking at the fact that this discrepancy exists, I'd like to know more about why it exists. Or is the simple explanation that constituencies are very vocal about more/bigger/better roads.

We need to know the answers to learn where to focus our efforts! Thanks for the interesting piece!