Streetsblog New York City

Today on the Streetsblog Network, a post from Aaron Renn on New Geography about the anti-urban bias in transportation spending. Renn points out that when it comes to the amount of taxes they contribute and the amount of funds they get back from the government, the nation's cities all too often get the short end of the stick -- to the ultimate detriment of regional economies.

It's a complicated question, and we suggest that you go and read his very thoughtful post in full. Here's a taste:

Too many roads to nowhere. (Photo: Peter Zarria via Flickr)

Among urban and rural areas, who subsidizes whom?

It's methodologically difficult to measure net taxation, but the studies that have been done suggest that, contrary to the belief of some, urban areas are big time net tax donors. For example, a recent Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute study found that Indiana's urban and suburban counties generally subsidize rural ones...

Exhibit A is transportation. Two-thirds of Americans live in large metro areas, yet less than half the federal transportation stimulus funds are going to the top 100 metro areas. Missouri is spending half its stimulus money on 89 small counties that account for only a quarter of the state's population. In Ohio, the state cancelled plans to spend $100 million in stimulus funds on the crumbling Cleveland Inner Belt bridge in order to divert them to paying for a $150 million bypass around Nelsonville -- a town of only 5,000 people. This is part of a plan to construct a four-lane divided highway into sparsely populated southeast Ohio as part of a “build it and they will come” economic development plan. Mecklenburg County, NC, the state's largest and home to Charlotte, received only $7.8 million out of the first $423 million in projects in that state. The Atlantic Monthly described this as a contest between a “mayor's stimulus” and a “governor's stimulus” -- and the governor won.

State after state has rural “roads to nowhere.” Without any legitimate economic development strategy on offer for depressed rural areas and small industrial cities, salvation is said to lie in access to four lane highways. The logic is that until every county in America is crisscrossed with these things, somehow residents are deprived of their due. This plays well to rural resentment, allowing people who are by nature proud believers in self-reliance and dismissive of welfare to claim instead that they've been cheated out of their “fair share” of transportation money...

Regardless, a lack of transportation investment is crippling our cities, many of which have congested, crumbling roads and shaky bridges... [G]overnance reform at the state level is critical to bring transportation funding allocations in line with real population and economic development measures. That's not to say that rural areas should get no funding. There are many areas where legitimate state funding is warranted, such as replacing substandard bridges or correcting roads with dangerous geometry. But that doesn't mean states should spend huge amounts of money on large rural expansion projects of dubious value that rob urban areas of the funds needed for projects with genuine transportation merit and real economic development potential.

More from around the network: Westside Bikeside has problems with a plan to use federal funds for a $30 million bike path along the beach in Los Angeles. Biking in LA sees it another way. And Bike Delaware News has an open letter asking Rep. Mike Castle to support the Active Community Transportation Act.