A fine idea. Yet, politically impossible.

Insurance_EE_guy: A fine idea. Yet, politically impossible.

I agree

So, submitter, share with us your plans to maintain and extend America's crumbing roadway infrastructure. Difficulty: no dollar-pooping unicorns allowed.

Snot Monster from Outer Space: So, submitter, share with us your plans to maintain and extend America's crumbing roadway infrastructure. Difficulty: no dollar-pooping unicorns allowed.

Well I can only speak for what I see down here, but they seem to have already found a solution. Toll roads.

There isn't one major project going on in Houston that isn't a toll road.

JacksBlack: There isn't one major project going on in Houston that isn't a toll road.

Yeah... fark that.

Bailouts dont pay for themselves.

p the boiler: Insurance_EE_guy: A fine idea. Yet, politically impossible.

I agree

Same here. Especially if they tag the revenue to go towards alternative energy research and development.

CrankMyBlueSax: p the boiler: Insurance_EE_guy: A fine idea. Yet, politically impossible.

I agree

Same here.

Our foreign oil dealing masters don't like it when we try to wean ourselves off our addiction. Then there's the domestic auto market to think of. If gas stays around $1.40 it won't be long until those SUVs look good again. Combine the two, and the tax (or a floor price) will never pass.

CougarJeff: JacksBlack: There isn't one major project going on in Houston that isn't a toll road.

Yeah... fark that.

Personally, I'd rather deal with toll roads then getting socked all the time at the pump, especially on roads that I don't use at all.

Most of my driving is on local 2 lane roads, and I can deal with toll roads whenever I come across them on the major routes which wouldn't be terribly often.

Let the small towns fight over the big federal dollars to rebuild their crumbling roads and wait years for it to be completed.

damageddude: Our foreign oil dealing masters don't like it when we try to wean ourselves off our addiction. Then there's the domestic auto market to think of. If gas stays around $1.40 it won't be long until those SUVs look good again. Combine the two, and the tax (or a floor price) will never pass.

The way I look at it, is what will they do when we have significantly weened ourselves off of oil/gasoline to power our vehicles? Then they'd either have to move towards toll roads later, or find a new way to tax the hell out of us.

Snot Monster from Outer Space: So, submitter, share with us your plans to maintain and extend America's crumbing roadway infrastructure. Difficulty: no dollar-pooping unicorns allowed.

Right now, 47% of gas taxes collected are spent on things not related to transit. My solution: increase spending on things relevant to transit infrastructure by 47% and decrease spending on unrelated crap by 100%.

EatHam: Snot Monster from Outer Space: So, submitter, share with us your plans to maintain and extend America's crumbing roadway infrastructure. Difficulty: no dollar-pooping unicorns allowed.

Right now, 47% of gas taxes collected are spent on things not related to transit. My solution: increase spending on things relevant to transit infrastructure by 47% and decrease spending on unrelated crap by 100%.

Care to spell out which budget priorities fall under your rubric of "unrelated crap" so we can point out that your prescription is almost certainly politically impossible or socially irresponsible? Or do you think you know of some secret part of the budget that is getting billions of dollars spent on it and yet which no major political constituency really cares about?

Carbon Tax for the Win.

Snot Monster from Outer Space: Care to spell out which budget priorities fall under your rubric of "unrelated crap"

"Bikes and Hikes", museum renovation, a lot of it goes towards a variety of transit museums, federal land management, air quality research, "enhancement" meaning landscaping, and the big one, "Transit". Sure, I like mass transit, I use it every day, but roughly 20% of gas taxes go toward it. This is patently unfair to the majority of people in Idaho who have farkall chance to use it, but are paying me to ride it.

EatHam: "Transit". Sure, I like mass transit, I use it every day, but roughly 20% of gas taxes go toward it. This is patently unfair to the majority of people in Idaho who have farkall chance to use it, but are paying me to ride it.

That's a bad analogy, Idaho (and every other primarily rural state) is a net recipient of federal tax money. While primarily urban states that use a lot of mass transit are net providers of federal tax money. If it was the other way around I might agree with you, but as it is, rural states get significantly more money per capita than they really need or deserve.

EatHam: Snot Monster from Outer Space: Care to spell out which budget priorities fall under your rubric of "unrelated crap"

"Bikes and Hikes", museum renovation, a lot of it goes towards a variety of transit museums, federal land management, air quality research, "enhancement" meaning landscaping, and the big one, "Transit". Sure, I like mass transit, I use it every day, but roughly 20% of gas taxes go toward it. This is patently unfair to the majority of people in Idaho who have farkall chance to use it, but are paying me to ride it.

So...your brilliant plan for getting money for roadway maintenance and construction is to cut funding for public transportation, thereby putting more people onto the roads and increasing the amount of money that will need to be spend to maintain those roads and increasing demand for new roads.

I wouldn't bother sending in those Mensa applications any time soon.

Snot Monster from Outer Space: So, submitter, share with us your plans to maintain and extend America's crumbing roadway infrastructure. Difficulty: no dollar-pooping unicorns allowed.

You see, there's this unnecessary war that is costing a buck or two currently happening that could be stopped...or it could be escalated and we could take the oil.

Snot Monster from Outer Space: So, submitter, share with us your plans to maintain and extend America's crumbing roadway infrastructure. Difficulty: no dollar-pooping unicorns allowed.

Its not that we never had enough money to fix roads and maintain infrastructure, as gas tax revenues has always risen, but rather the idiots in charge spend it on some other pet projects.

Code_Archeologist: Carbon Tax for the Win.

I think carbon taxes are the way to go -- partly because they are up front and obvious (government of course preferring hidden taxes where they can whistle innocently if anyone complains about prices).

There is of course a cost from volatility, too. I'm not sure if they should just say "It costs fifty cents a gallon to fund roads, another buck to pay for carbon emissions -- let's just shoot for a $4/gallon national average price for regular gasoline (or whatever), and adjust accordingly."

Then again, just letting the price float might be preferred. Any studies done on this?

Snowflake Tubbybottom: Snot Monster from Outer Space: So, submitter, share with us your plans to maintain and extend America's crumbing roadway infrastructure. Difficulty: no dollar-pooping unicorns allowed.

Its not that we never had enough money to fix roads and maintain infrastructure, as gas tax revenues has always risen, but rather the idiots in charge spend it on some other pet projects.

Note that your chart is "cents per gallon," which is hardly a useful metric for making comparisons between real values across time. What percentage of the real cost of maintaining a road network does the gasoline tax take of 2008 represent, I wonder, compared to the gasoline tax take of 1960, say? Everything I read suggests that the real take (as opposed to the meaningless "cents per gallon" figure) is dropping.

Working the system on a "cents per gallon" basis is incredibly counterintuitive: its a big disincentive for Congress to be tough on CAFE standards, for example.

EatHam: Snot Monster from Outer Space: So, submitter, share with us your plans to maintain and extend America's crumbing roadway infrastructure. Difficulty: no dollar-pooping unicorns allowed.

Right now, 47% of gas taxes collected are spent on things not related to transit. My solution: increase spending on things relevant to transit infrastructure by 47% and decrease spending on unrelated crap by 100%.

This.

Code_Archeologist: Carbon Tax for the Win.fark that and the horse it rode in on.

I really do not have an issue with this.

I wish that the entire road system was funded through nothing more than a combination of use taxes and build fees for new construction.

Using funds from the general fund is retarded. All it does is subsidize building in the suburbs and exurbs. If you want to live in the Styx, get a compact car, motorcycle or a glass of shut-the-fark-up.

Since I'm in the road building business, I agree with any tax that assures my future employability

/remember you can always walk.

Snot Monster from Outer Space: Note that your chart is "cents per gallon," which is hardly a useful metric for making comparisons between real values across time. What percentage of the real cost of maintaining a road network does the gasoline tax take of 2008 represent, I wonder, compared to the gasoline tax take of 1960, say? Everything I read suggests that the real take (as opposed to the meaningless "cents per gallon" figure) is dropping.

Compare that chart with this or this and I'm sure you can easily conclude that along with higher gas taxes per gallon and ever increasing use of gas, until now, that we have indeed have had more money for infrastructure use year to year since its inception.

So again the problem is not that there isn't any money for road infrastructure it's just how its been allocated.

I wish we could build better roads, that could last longer, etc.

Allocation of funds is sure a biatch for governments.

Thanks to the spending of the last eight years, we're running immense, enormous deficits. They have to be paid for eventually. Cutting spending now won't make any difference in the trillions we already owe. Taxes are going to rise, get used to it.

Hate paying taxes? Don't run up debts.

Da Bum: Personally, I'd rather deal with toll roads then getting socked all the time at the pump, especially on roads that I don't use at all.

Most of my driving is on local 2 lane roads, and I can deal with toll roads whenever I come across them on the major routes which wouldn't be terribly often.

Let the small towns fight over the big federal dollars to rebuild their crumbling roads and wait years for it to be completed.

As long as you don't really have to contribute...

Snowflake Tubbybottom: Snot Monster from Outer Space: Note that your chart is "cents per gallon," which is hardly a useful metric for making comparisons between real values across time. What percentage of the real cost of maintaining a road network does the gasoline tax take of 2008 represent, I wonder, compared to the gasoline tax take of 1960, say? Everything I read suggests that the real take (as opposed to the meaningless "cents per gallon" figure) is dropping.

Compare that chart with this or this and I'm sure you can easily conclude that along with higher gas taxes per gallon and ever increasing use of gas, until now, that we have indeed have had more money for infrastructure use year to year since its inception.

So again the problem is not that there isn't any money for road infrastructure it's just how its been allocated.

I'm sorry, but your charts simply don't provide enough info to back up your statements.

Vote them out if they do.

I guess they need to havemore money to hire more dudes to stand around and watch one guy work.

Snowflake Tubbybottom: Its not that we never had enough money to fix roads and maintain infrastructure, as gas tax revenues has always risen, but rather the idiots in charge spend it on some other pet projects.



Sadly, this theory has been recently disproven. Farkin Somalians.

Snot Monster from Outer Space: So, submitter, share with us your plans to maintain and extend America's crumbing roadway infrastructure

Using the money that's collected from the gas taxes already in place for roads, as opposed to putting them into the general funds?

Argh2: Thanks to the spending of the last eight years, we're running immense, enormous deficits. They have to be paid for eventually. Cutting spending now won't make any difference in the trillions we already owe. Taxes are going to rise, get used to it.

Hate paying taxes? Don't run up debts.
.



ALl of this. The time to biatch was years ago with the cuts and the refunds and Reagan telling you deficits don't matter. Do you guys call the credit card companies and demand to know why they bill you every month when you charge shiat?

Cause that woul dbe just as stupid as what you do when you NOW biatch about taxes.

All taxes are going up. States are completely broke, municipalities are broke, everybody is broke. You lived in the lie of an ever-growing economy if only taxes on the wealthy and businesses were lowered, never, ever wondering where the money to run a country would come from.

Gas taxes will go up, sales taxes, ect. The war was also brilliant.

Snot Monster from Outer Space: So, submitter, share with us your plans to maintain and extend America's crumbing roadway infrastructure. Difficulty: no dollar-pooping unicorns allowed.

I wonder how many infrastructure projects are like mini-versions of the Big Dig. Just maybe, the existing money is not being spent very well.

This would all be moot if we had flying cars.

atlanta_ufo: I wonder how many infrastructure projects are like mini-versions of the Big Dig.

Great. Everyone grab a helmet...

PascalsGhost: I'm sorry, but your charts simply don't provide enough info to back up your statements.

So gas usage has gone up every year, except this one, and the per gallon tax has increased hugely since its inception and you somehow don't think that you can extrapolate from that the total gas tax revenue has increased from year to year? Really?

The only variable not listed is the cost of renewing the infrastructure and we all know that will always increase as well. But since government is involved and seems to spend two dollars for every one needed I'd say you would have to look first at this area of the problem rather than the increasing revenue portion for any real solution. But thats just a common sense approach that has no place in governmental budgeting.

First, that shows that gas taxes aren't successfully keeping up with inflation. 4 cents in consumer prices in the early 60s is 30 cents or more today, not 18. More, because road budgets are necessarily American labor prices, not outsourced.

Second, the cost of maintaining thousands of miles of freeway and 4-level-stacks, etc, really is hard to compare to the piddling 2-lane curvy, hilly roads of the 1930s and 40s.

If they raise it 5 cents a gallon I'm cool with that.

Code_Archeologist: EatHam: "Transit". Sure, I like mass transit, I use it every day, but roughly 20% of gas taxes go toward it. This is patently unfair to the majority of people in Idaho who have farkall chance to use it, but are paying me to ride it.

That's a bad analogy, Idaho (and every other primarily rural state) is a net recipient of federal tax money. While primarily urban states that use a lot of mass transit are net providers of federal tax money. If it was the other way around I might agree with you, but as it is, rural states get significantly more money per capita than they really need or deserve.

That's a bad argument.

Federal tax dollars aren't spent on individuals, the majority are spent to maintain Federal lands and functions. Using per capita is meaningless and not contextual.

Furthermore, that Federal land is unavailable to the states to be used to generate their own income through development, thus increasing the apparent disparity.

Federally owned or administered lands constitute some 24 percent of the total land area of the United States; of this federal land, 89 percent is in the American West, and such lands constitute almost one-half of the total land area of the eleven most western states. 63 percent of Idaho is federal lands. Four agencies control more than 99 percent of all federal lands.

In contrast, something like 90+% of the lands and waters of, say, Delaware and Illinois and the rest of the East, are not in Federal hands and are thus available to those states to use to pay their own way.

When you adjust the Federal spending per state for the amount spent on solely federal land and functions without immediate benefit to the states or individuals, the disparity becomes much less.

In any event, the per capita comparison is functionally useless for anything but fueling parochial snarky comments.

It's funny how "free market" conservatives object to tax schemes which attempt to correct market failures by capturing unallocated costs.

bartink: Sadly, this theory has been recently disproven. Farkin Somalians.

Haven't you been paying attention? They're only CALLED pirates by the 24/7 news media trying to attract eyeballs on the coattails of that Johnny Depp franchise.

In REALITY dark skin + Middle Eastern location + guns = terrrrrrrst, not pirate. So the graph is still accurate.

remember, though, there are more cars (hence more fuel>>more rev) then in the 30's

basicly what you all are looking for is a comparison of marginal cost of maintaince of roads per car vs the inflation-adjusted tax rate. correct?

JacksBlack: Snot Monster from Outer Space: So, submitter, share with us your plans to maintain and extend America's crumbing roadway infrastructure. Difficulty: no dollar-pooping unicorns allowed.

Well I can only speak for what I see down here, but they seem to have already found a solution. Toll roads.

There isn't one major project going on in Houston that isn't a toll road.

Same all over Texas...

Shhhh...that's not raising taxes! Tax breaks for 95% of you, except those who buy gas!

The current Federal gasoline tax rate is 18.4 cents per gallon, of which 15.44 cents is dedicated to the Highway Account of the Highway Trust Fund, and 2.86 cents is dedicated to the Mass Transit Account. The tax rate on diesel fuel is 24.4 cents, of which 21.44 cents is deposited to the Highway Account, and 2.86 cents to the Transit Account. One-tenth of a cent of both gasoline and diesel fuel taxes goes to the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund.

According to the U.S. Treasury, federal Highway Trust Fund revenues will have grown from $22.2 billion in 1995 to $39.7 billion in 2007, a 12-year increase of 79 percent. In 1998, fuel tax revenues from the 4.3 cent increase was recaptured by the Highway Trust Fund. While the increase was passed in 1993, Congress had used the funds for the national deficit reduction. The 4.3-cent increase is one of the factors which enabled the significant increase in revenues over this period. _{http://www.transportation1.org/tif4report/highway_immediate.html}


Nope, no increase there for infrastructure at all.

matthew8762: Code_Archeologist: EatHam: "Transit". Sure, I like mass transit, I use it every day, but roughly 20% of gas taxes go toward it. This is patently unfair to the majority of people in Idaho who have farkall chance to use it, but are paying me to ride it.

That's a bad analogy, Idaho (and every other primarily rural state) is a net recipient of federal tax money. While primarily urban states that use a lot of mass transit are net providers of federal tax money. If it was the other way around I might agree with you, but as it is, rural states get significantly more money per capita than they really need or deserve.

That's a bad argument.

Federal tax dollars aren't spent on individuals, the majority are spent to maintain Federal lands and functions. Using per capita is meaningless and not contextual.


Complete horseshiat. you have fed funds matching education, infrastrcuture, ect. This statement is complete bullshiat.

Furthermore, that Federal land is unavailable to the states to be used to generate their own income through development, thus increasing the apparent disparity.

Federally owned or administered lands constitute some 24 percent of the total land area of the United States; of this federal land, 89 percent is in the American West, and such lands constitute almost one-half of the total land area of the eleven most western states. 63 percent of Idaho is federal lands. Four agencies control more than 99 percent of all federal lands.

In contrast, something like 90+% of the lands and waters of, say, Delaware and Illinois and the rest of the East, are not in Federal hands and are thus available to those states to use to pay their own way.

When you adjust the Federal spending per state for the amount spent on solely federal land and functions without immediate benefit to the states or individuals, the disparity becomes much less.

In any event, the per capita comparison is functionally useless for anything but fueling parochial snarky comments.

LOL, I will give you that is an eloquent, if incorrect, way of trying to get around the fact that many states can basically exist due to the charity of other states.


Stop feeding Alabama fed money from CA and NY, and it turns into a Mad Max movie in a few weeks. Deal with it.

Snowflake Tubbybottom: PascalsGhost: I'm sorry, but your charts simply don't provide enough info to back up your statements.

So gas usage has gone up every year, except this one, and the per gallon tax has increased hugely since its inception and you somehow don't think that you can extrapolate from that the total gas tax revenue has increased from year to year? Really?

The only variable not listed is the cost of renewing the infrastructure and we all know that will always increase as well. But since government is involved and seems to spend two dollars for every one needed I'd say you would have to look first at this area of the problem rather than the increasing revenue portion for any real solution. But thats just a common sense approach that has no place in governmental budgeting.

Bingo. Wasn't being an asshole, just your charts proved ro disproved nothing.

They should have indexed the tax to inflation in the first place.

Snowflake Tubbybottom: PascalsGhost: I'm sorry, but your charts simply don't provide enough info to back up your statements.

So gas usage has gone up every year, except this one, and the per gallon tax has increased hugely since its inception and you somehow don't think that you can extrapolate from that the total gas tax revenue has increased from year to year? Really?

The only variable not listed is the cost of renewing the infrastructure and we all know that will always increase as well. But since government is involved and seems to spend two dollars for every one needed I'd say you would have to look first at this area of the problem rather than the increasing revenue portion for any real solution. But thats just a common sense approach that has no place in governmental budgeting.

You need a chart that compares total fuel tax revenue in constant dollars (or "real dollars") with total maintenance/construction costs in constant dollars. Just because the numerical value of the fuel tax has increased, doesn't mean that that increase is keeping pace with inflation. So, no, an increase in the number of cents per gallon combined with an increase in total miles driven does not necessarily equate to an increase in real dollars available per mile of roadway.