pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
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join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
| reply to mcmillan
Re: Utopia In The Hole
said by mcmillan  :Any person who does not wish to be breathing contaminated air can simply stop breathing. The availability of public transport makes it a difficult solution. The article made no mention of pollution from vehicles. It only erroneously compared the buildout of the road network to that of Utopia. When it comes to simply paying for roads, the people who do not drive or do not own vehicles do not end up paying for these roads. Contrast this with Utopia, which if it does fail (being $100m in the hole is not a good start), the taxpayers, including those who do not use the service are going to be socked big time.
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Only SHATNER is Kirk. |
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mcmillan
join:2001-04-15
West Bloomfield, MI | I am sorry. I edited my post. The pollution was my example. |
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Ahrenl
join:2004-10-26
North Andover, MA
 ·Verizon FIOS
edit:
June 15th, @01:01PM
| reply to pnh102
Where'd they get all those gas and vehicle taxes before the highways were there? They must have pre-taxed all the people who thought about driving, and then built it out that way.
By the way, nice ridiculous assumption of $100m in the hole.
Like any business in the development stage, revenues are expected to increase substantially every year. If they increased at the same rate (1000% I believe I saw from your link) they'll be making $150 billion dollars in revenue a year by year 6. In year 7 they will represent 10% of the US GDP. :P |
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wierdo
join:2001-02-16
Tulsa, OK
 ·Future Nine Corpor..
·Teliax VOIP
 ·Cox HSI
| reply to pnh102
said by pnh102 : When it comes to simply paying for roads, the people who do not drive or do not own vehicles do not end up paying for these roads. That's not in any way true, unless all the roads are toll roads. Gas taxes make up a part of road funding, but not nearly all, at least not in any state I'm familiar with nor on the federal level. |
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pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
| said by wierdo :That's not in any way true, unless all the roads are toll roads. How is it not true? In most states, the road budget comes entirely from gas taxes, tolls (for toll roads only), registration fees and other road-specific funding sources. These not only cover the costs of roads, but they subsidize transit and other government programs as well. If anything, roads are underfunded in this country.
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Only SHATNER is Kirk. |
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rahvin112
join:2002-05-24
Sandy, UT
| reply to wierdo
Then you aren't familiar with any state. Gas taxes comprise a 100% of funding in nearly every single state in the union. You pay close to $0.50 a gallon in federal and state gas tax (depending of course on your state's gas tax), all of the federal money is collected in the highway trust fund and expended by congress. This money generally goes back to the states at a 1:1 ratio to what residents in the state pay. The exceptions are Montana and Alaska, Montana received around $2 for every dollar of gas tax collected, and Alaska received nearly $4 for every dollar. Most won't be surprised that Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska is the head of the Senate transportation committee and Montana up until recently held the seat in the house of representatives.
BTW the 2006 funding bill was the first time in the history of the interstate system that congress fully allocated the highway trust fund to roads and transit, rather than stealing a significant percentage to fund pet projects like the Dan Quayle train museum in the Midwest. 2006 was also the first year that the larger states such as California actually got back from the feds what their residents paid in gas tax.
If Congress had conserved the highway trust fund, instead of robbing it every year for the past 50 years there would be over a trillion dollars of unspent gas taxes that could actually be allocated to rebuilding the national highway system. As many of you are probably aware the highways were built in the 50's and 60's with a 50 year life span. That life span is up, and repair of just the interstate system will cost 100's of billions.
In fact there are 260,000+ bridges in this country that don't meet safety standards and can't be repaired because the money isn't allocated to fix the infrastructure. As a result the states and FHWA have moved into preventative failure mode where bridges are only fixed when they absolutely must be (such as a large chuck of the deck falling out), rather than when they should be (such as when an engineer inspects the bridge and notes that the rebar that provides strength to the structure has rusted away). |
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wierdo
join:2001-02-16
Tulsa, OK
·Future Nine Corpor..
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| said by rahvin112 :Then you aren't familiar with any state. Gas taxes comprise a 100% of funding in nearly every single state in the union. You pay close to $0.50 a gallon in federal and state gas tax (depending of course on your state's gas tax), all of the federal money is collected in the highway trust fund and expended by congress. This money generally goes back to the states at a 1:1 ratio to what residents in the state pay. The exceptions are Montana and Alaska, Montana received around $2 for every dollar of gas tax collected, and Alaska received nearly $4 for every dollar. Most won't be surprised that Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska is the head of the Senate transportation committee and Montana up until recently held the seat in the house of representatives. No, they don't. In my own state, we recently spent a couple of billion dollars over a few years from bonds backed by sales tax revenue to fund many needed road repairs.
In Oklahoma, the lion's share of the road budget (which is not nearly enough given that they literally have the worst bridges in the country, bar none) comes from tolls generated by the turnpike system, so you are at least partially correct. The rest does indeed come from fuel taxes, although they do also have many projects funded by sales tax and income tax revenue from time to time, especially in the case of city streets.
In fact, in every state, the lion's share of the road mileage is in cities, and in most cases the vast majority of the funding for maintenance and new building of that road mileage comes from city sales taxes, property taxes, or other non fuel tax funding sources, depending on the state.
Again, fuel taxes do pay for much of the maintenance on our highways, but by no means all. Even at the federal level, many road projects are funded out of general revenues, not the nearly depleted highway trust fund. Highways and Interstates are by no means the bulk of the road system in this country.
Once again, since I apparently need to repeat myself several times for some here to understand what I'm saying: Fuel taxes make up a large part of the funding formula for roads in this country, but not all of it. If you count city streets, it probably doesn't even come to half. |
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