Streetcar skeptic to believer (Columbus, Cleveland: mattresses, buyer, pros and cons)

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Wilson513

There is something called the Highway Gas Tas which you pay every time you put the hose in your tank. Its $.184 per gallon. For a 20 gallon tank, that would be $3.64.

That would be 263 million vehicles paying for it, more or less.

Except the highway trust fund keeps getting bailed out by Congress since they refuse to raise the gasoline tax to reflect inflation and the improving fuel efficiency of cars and trucks. This artificial crisis is being used to open the door for hedge funds and other mysterious entities to do P3 partnerships and other tolling schemes. So the public loses control of something built with public money and cigar-chompers line their pockets.

[Wilson513]

The politicians repeatedly have raided the trust find for their goofy projects having nothing to do with highway travel.

The Mass Transit Account expends about 15 percent of spending and funds transit projects, such as rail, buses, and streetcars.[6] However, at least 25 percent of fuel tax funding is diverted to non-highway projects, which is discussed later in this paper

http://www.heritage.org/transportati...ation-spending

[jmecklenborg]

The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and all of those are funded by the fossil fuel industry, especially the Koch Brothers, who inherited their multi-billion fossil fuel empire from their dad. Being born into billions wasn't enough -- they need more. In short, the Heritage Foundation, etc., are propaganda generators disguised as "think tanks" or "foundations" or whatever. It's junk food for people who seek out media that affirms the myths they love.

Here is the actual text of the 1982 bill that added 1-cent to the federal gasoline tax for mass transit purposes:
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/97/hr6211/text

The Mass Transit portion of the trust fund was established primarily to fund ADA-compliance. Otherwise local transit agencies would have had to cut deeply into conventional route service in order to buy all-new ADA-compliant buses and provide point-to-point service for the poor in wheelchairs who have no way to get to medical appointments. These federal dollars go to rural counties along with city transit systems since counties operate a paratransit service just like Queen City Metro does.

Now if you actually dig into the law you will see that the portion pertaining to bicycles and mass transit is a tiny fraction of the voluminous text. Page after page of highway earmarks and just one tiny earmark for mass transit:

PUBLIC LAW 97-424—JAN. 6, 1983 96 STAT. 21153 FEASIBILITY STUDY SEC. 314. (a) The Secretary of Transportation shall make a grant Grant. to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to conduct a feasibility study to examine the possibility of replacing either any or all three of the existing electric trolley bus lines (and thereby eliminating the overhead power lines) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the more advanced and equally environmentally sound electric bus technology that is being developed in the State of California for the Santa Barbara transit system. (b) Notwithstanding section 21(aX2) of the Urban Mass Transpor- tation Act of 1964, of the amount made available by such section Ante, p. 2140. 21(aX2) for the fiscal year ending September 30,1983, $500,000 shall be available only to carry out this section and such amount shall remain available until expended.

It looks like the Heritage Foundation, etc., are using this obscure earmark's mention of the word "trolley" to insinuate that the mass transit trust fund, which as I noted primarily funds bus ADA compliance and paratransit today as it did back in the 80s, is paying for the current wave of streetcar construction. The recent FTA grants of the sort Cincinnati received were funded through the 2009 stimulus bill, which did not draw from the federal gasoline tax.

[cincydave8]

The history of the highway system is very interesting. But yes, Ike gets way too much credit for it. If you're interested in the whole history from The National Road, to how they picked where the highways would go to battles to stop highways from destroying neighborhoods (I-70s end at the Baltimore city limits) then you need to read The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways https://www.amazon.com/Big-Roads-Vis.../dp/0547907249

[jbcmh81]

Originally Posted by bjimmy24

I actually would make that argument against the highway systems, which I think we agree, basically ruined a lot of our inner cities.

Yes, they did, but I think you'd see a LOT less road building if they were privatized or expected to make money like transit is. Suburban sprawl expansion would disappear virtually overnight.

[jbcmh81]

Originally Posted by WILWRadio

The Interstate highway system was the idea of Ike aka President Eisenhower who devised it and started to build it as a means to move military hardware across the nation in the event a World War broke out. That was a fact of life during the Cold War years with the former Soviet Union. That was how it was born and why we have it. Borrowed from the Autobahn concept in Germany.

Yes, but Eisenhower never intended for the highway system to punch through the cores of cities and actually opposed such construction. It's too bad that no one listened.

[jbcmh81]

Originally Posted by Wilson513

The politicians repeatedly have raided the trust find for their goofy projects having nothing to do with highway travel.

Highway Trust Fund Basics: A Primer on Federal Surface Transportation Spending | The Heritage Foundation

The gas tax was not originally supposed to be used for highways and road building in the first place, actually. It's original purpose was to fund capital improvements in cities and to plug budgetary holes. It began to get raided for roads afterwards when it became clear they were expensive and couldn't pay for themselves.

[Wilson513]

Originally Posted by jbcmh81

The gas tax was not originally supposed to be used for highways and road building in the first place, actually. It's original purpose was to fund capital improvements in cities and to plug budgetary holes. It began to get raided for roads afterwards when it became clear they were expensive and couldn't pay for themselves.

Where do you people get this nonsense.

Prior to the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 and the establishment of the Highway Trust Fund, roads were financed directly from the General Fund of the United States Department of the Treasury. The 1956 Act directed federal fuel tax to the fund to be used exclusively for highway construction and maintenance.

Wiki.

Don't make me use Lexis to quote the preamble to the Act. Comments like the above waste enough of our time as it is.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Wilson513

Where do you people get this nonsense.

Wiki.

Don't make me use Lexis to quote the preamble to the Act. Comments like the above waste enough of our time as it is.

The federal gasoline and state gasoline taxes all predate the Interstate Highway act by decades. Each were enacted in the late 1910s or early 1920s. If you page through state law books from the 1920s, half of the laws passed are all road and automobile-related. The laws passed in each state are very similar because the automobile industry lawyers wrote them. Then lobbyists were paid to promote them to legislators and the public.


If the interstate act hadn't been passed in 1956, the states would have continued to build turnpikes -- roads that might turn a slight profit or at least break even (although it should be noted that the West Virginia turnpike did default). Instead, when the 1956 money poured down, all sorts of money-losing roads were built. That's why the gasoline tax struggles to pay for maintenance of what we have -- we built tons of rural bypasses and excess urban capacity that would have never, ever been built if the states would have continued their piecemeal toll road construction.

[Wilson513]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

The federal gasoline and state gasoline taxes all predate the Interstate Highway act by decades. Each were enacted in the late 1910s or early 1920s. If you page through state law books from the 1920s, half of the laws passed are all road and automobile-related. The laws passed in each state are very similar because the automobile industry lawyers wrote them. Then lobbyists were paid to promote them to legislators and the public.


If the interstate act hadn't been passed in 1956, the states would have continued to build turnpikes -- roads that might turn a slight profit or at least break even (although it should be noted that the West Virginia turnpike did default). Instead, when the 1956 money poured down, all sorts of money-losing roads were built. That's why the gasoline tax struggles to pay for maintenance of what we have -- we built tons of rural bypasses and excess urban capacity that would have never, ever been built if the states would have continued their piecemeal toll road construction.

Cite a federal tax statute for imposition of any fuel tax before 1930 or withdraw this comment.