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Try again. The gas tax was supposed to be used for one thing: roads. But since 1983, money has been siphoned off for things other than roads.
The transit boosters always talk about how the highway trust fund is out of money. It's out of money because the money is being spent on transit pork barrel projects everywhere. If that money hadn't been wasted on trains and streetcars, it would be available for use to fix the roads.
Here's a thought I had about the gas tax: I don't know if this is the logic the feds use, but IMO, some gas tax funds are used for transit/alternate forms of transportation, to make the gas tax less regressive. After all, the rich and poor pay the same tax on each gallon of gas they buy, but that tax is a larger percentage of the poor person's overall budget. So, using some of that gas tax to help pay for other forms of transportation could give the poor person an alternative to driving.
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And I welcome differing perspectives.... and you illustrate in the starkest terms possible that not everybody can simply get behind the wheel and drive. I could easily expand that to include seniors, minors, a broad range of disabilities, and people who choose not to drive (insert your reason here).
And, being the US, one shouldn't need a reason to not want to drive.
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Drivers - through federal gas taxes, State gas taxes, license fees, plate fees, use tax on the cars, registration tags, inspection fees, etc. - are more than enough to sustain the road network and necessary administrative expenses.
No, they are not. They don't even cover the full cost of the roads they're intended to pay for, let alone all of the local roads that these aren't intended to pay for.
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I've never sought to deny anyone access to transportation. However, I am sick of the tired narrative that "drivers are subsidized, we need more mass transit". The opposite is true - despite spending hundreds of billions dollars nationwide on "transit", we have made no appreciable difference in traffic congestion or any percentage change in miles traveled by various transit.
This statement doesn't make sense. It's like saying "I pay my electric bill every month, but I still get a new one the next month!"
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I forget the exact number, but we spend something like 18% of all our transportation money on transit, and it only accounts for 1% of all miles traveled. As an economic investment, it is a sinkhole of unimaginable proportions.
I'd be interested to see your source, because I've read that user fees only cover about 50% of the cost of highways.
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Now does that need to be balanced with the need to provide alternative transportation for people who cannot drive? Absolutely, and they should be supported. But I'm tired of the "drivers are being subsidized by transit users, and transit needs more money" mantra.
While the bolded statement is technically true, it's a silly argument because, as I've said before, all transportation systems are subsidized.
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Is that any different from the person who has to pay for a new bus pass monthly? Or how about the sales or property taxes levied that pay for the transit? That extra quarter percent adds up quickly.
If you can't afford a monthly bus pass, you definitely can't afford to own and operate a car!
Location: livin' the good life on America's favorite island
2,221 posts, read 4,394,149 times
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Originally Posted by 1watertiger
Still waiting for someone to list Hillary Clinton s. Accomplishments during the past 8 months... @joe,swoh, you and I would be in jail for what she has done. And yes she and the state dept. Lied about Benghazi .(remember we were told the muslims were mad about a film?).. But I am very interested why people would vote for her instead of a kasich or another candidate...
these dems couldn't come up with a Hillary accomplishment
Forget about Hilary. She couldn't beat Obama, and now she's got her State Dept. e-mail server and "Clinton Cash" scandal hanging around her political neck, let alone Monica Lewinsky lurking in the woods waiting for revenge.
You know who might be an easy bet to become the first woman President? The other NJ Christie.
Christine "Christie" Todd Whitman, if she finally would abandon the crazy Republicans, largely now the puppets of the fossil fuel industry and social conservatives (do we really want a President who refuses to say that it's inanity to believe that dinosaurs and humans co-existed 6,000 years ago?), and run as a conservative Democrat might be an overwhelming force in a general election. The issue would be how many Republicans and Independents would register as Democrats in open primary states to enable her to win the Democratic Party primary.
It would be great fun if Whitman decided to take a page from the Ross Perot handbook and run on long-overdue change.
Say what you want, but he'd make a damn good candidate (from the video, not the article)
And no I don't agree with everything he says (or even most of it) but he is.... presidential. Honestly presidential. The only Republican candidate that seems like would be a fit for the White House.
The single most effective way to close the highway trust fund deficit without raising taxes is to stop subsidizing mass transit which, for years, has enjoyed billions of dollars of investment at the expense of drivers - and has made no appreciable dent in traffic congestion anywhere in the nation.
So, for all the talk the streetcar and transit boosters like to have about "their subsidizing drivers", let's have a real talk about how many transit programs wouldn't even exist if they weren't constantly subsidized by drivers.
And here's something about Kasich and the Cincinnati streetcar - namely, one of his first acts when in office was to pull the state funding because the state had an $8 billion deficit and zero money left in the rainy day fund (thank Ted Strickland for that one):
[The money was obviously pulled. Rep. Steve Chabot, from Cincinnati, went on to insert a provision into the federal budget preventing any federal dollars from being sent down that rabbit trail... Guess what, Mark Mallory came up with the money anyway. I'm not sure how, but I can bet it was done by raiding the pension fund or gutting local services... Maybe someone from Cincinnati can contribute here and tell us what kind of smoke and mirrors game allowed the city to come up with $150 million?]
Thanks for the research. But of course I have my caveats.
1. Kasich on the Streetcar - he made a statement, but it wasn't his decision. Here's the quote there (from the same article):
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Originally Posted by Mayor Mallory
"I'm hoping that the process will be true to its intent," Mallory said earlier this week.
2. Mass Transit Source - from Reason.com..... heavily right-wing publication. Let's take a look at the title:
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House Aims to Stop Highway Robbery
An effort to fix the Highway Trust Fund makes liberals stop worrying and love Reagan.
Maybe I view things differently but I haven't taken any form of public transit since the day I turned 16 and had my driver's license. Within a week of having a license I had bought a car in cash... I had been working as a bag and cart boy at Kroger's for the past year with the specific intent to save money for a car.
Why? Because I hated the idea of relying on others to accomplish my most basic tasks. Yes, I came of age the first time gas hit $3 a gallon and it was a real pain in the ass to keep gas in the car. Many times the car was parked due to lack of gas, with the exception of going straight to work and back. But I stuck to my word, and I haven't taken any form of transit since. The only exceptions to that have been when I was on vacation.
I hate the idea of having to wait on a bus that may or may not show up. Many times, they are known to keep driving and ignore the people waiting at the bus stop if they're running late, because they know they'll be written up if they are too late in running their routes. They serve to clog traffic on city streets as people wait for the bus to load or unload. They all require extensive subsidy to even exist (as an example, Dayton's RTA depends on subsidies for 86% of its operating budget). Transit all across the world faces similar issues.... being constantly dependent on subsidy just to survive.
I don't view owning a car as particularly expensive. I've paid as little as $400 for cars in good running condition that had little or nothing wrong with them. Haggling goes a long way towards finding a good deal, which is a lost art in America.
Liability insurance is fairly inexpensive (to add another car to my policy would typically only add $10-20 a month to my bill). Gas is... well, gas, but today's cars are far more fuel efficient than even 20 years ago, and this continues to be the trend. And a little know how goes a long way towards performing basic maintenance on cars. That's also a lost art, our society has become so codependent on each other people that many would just throw up their hands and call for help... and gladly fork over $80 an hour for a mechanic's labor when 80% of jobs you can do yourself with basic hand tools.
And before you think I'm an old guy... I'm 25. I'm smack in the middle of the "millenial" generation that's supposed to be all about walkability, living in the city, sustainability, carlessness, etc... In my generation I don't see it to be nearly as widespread as the bloggers make it out to be. Maybe a quarter, or a third, of all the people I know want to live that lifestyle. In all my recent history I've had between two and four cars titled in my name. I currently have three, and all of them are paid for and run great. It's not changing any time soon.
Try living in NYC or Chicago w/ that many vehicles...Mass Transit is far more convenient in both cities.
While I don't ever intend to give up my car, I'm also for adding as much mass transit as possible to give people multiple options...if one wants to live car free...they should be able to and not be totally hindered in a city...
If one wants Made in America again...we need to end all Free Trade agreements which sent our jobs to Mexico and over seas...we need to put stiff tariffs on all imports, especially imports from countries w/ cheap labor
Try again. The gas tax was supposed to be used for
one thing: roads. But since 1983, money has been siphoned off for things other
than roads.
The transit boosters always talk about how the highway trust fund is out of
money. It's out of money because the money is being spent on transit pork barrel
projects everywhere. If that money hadn't been wasted on trains and streetcars,
it would be available for use to fix the roads.
Um, even your own link says that the gas tax originally came about as one of the measures to help balance the budget during the Great Depression, and then continued as a general revenue source for at least the next 20-25 years. It says nothing about it being for roads from the beginning. In fact, the link goes on to suggest that road/oil interests even lobbied against the tax through the early 1950s. It doesn't appear that it was put towards roads until Eisenhower's Interstate System came about and needed construction funding.
The 1982 split of the tax put 8 cents into the Highway Fund and 1 cent in the Mass Transit Fund for every 9 cents per gallon. Ironically, this was under liberal socialist Ronald Reagan... oh wait... (does anyone believe Reagan could be elected by today's Republican standards?) But by 1982, the gas tax had already been diverted from its original purpose, anyway, and was still receiving 8x more funding than transit. This indicates pretty obviously that roads were NOT self-sustaining or financially successful in their construction, or they would never have needed that diversion of money. A situation that is only worse today because there are a hell of a lot more roads now than there were 60 years ago. Transit... not so much.
So yeah, you should really read your links first.
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And I welcome differing perspectives.... and you illustrate in the starkest
terms possible that not everybody can simply get behind the wheel and drive. I
could easily expand that to include seniors, minors, a broad range of
disabilities, and people who choose not to drive (insert your reason here).
Which makes it interesting why you think investing in mass transit is a complete waste of money while simultaneously acknowledging that everyone either can't or doesn't want to be dependent on the car.
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Drivers - through federal gas taxes, State gas taxes, license fees, plate fees,
use tax on the cars, registration tags, inspection fees, etc. - are more than
enough to sustain the road network and necessary administrative expenses.
No, they're actually not. Even if you removed all transit funding, there are simply too many roads to pay for them all... and they're still being built.
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I've never sought to deny anyone access to transportation. However, I am sick of
the tired narrative that "drivers are subsidized, we need more mass transit".
The opposite is true - despite spending hundreds of billions dollars nationwide
on "transit", we have made no appreciable difference in traffic congestion or
any percentage change in miles traveled by various transit.
Drivers are subsidized, that is a fact whether or not you want to admit it. Transit systems in almost every place they exist are FAR too small to make huge impacts on auto traffic. There are only a handful of systems nationally that are extensive enough to make a wide scale impact on traffic, one being New York. And hundreds of billions where? And over what period of time?
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I forget the exact number, but we spend something like 18% of all our
transportation money on transit, and it only accounts for 1% of all miles
traveled. As an economic investment, it is a sinkhole of unimaginable
proportions.
I would love to see a citation for that claim.
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Now does that need to be balanced with the need to provide alternative
transportation for people who cannot drive? Absolutely, and they should be
supported. But I'm tired of the "drivers are being subsidized by transit users,
and transit needs more money" mantra.
I'm sure the truth is pretty exhausting.
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Is that any different from the person who has to pay for a new bus pass
monthly? Or how about the sales or property taxes levied that pay for the
transit? That extra quarter percent adds up quickly.
I don't deny the economy is **** which forces people to make decisions like
that, though.
Ohio's economy is not that bad. All of Ohio's major cities have unemployment rates below the national average. This is one of those examples where Ohioans always believe things are worse in their state than they really are. We seem to be a negative bunch.
If one wants Made in America again...we need to end all Free Trade agreements which sent our jobs to Mexico and over seas...we need to put stiff tariffs on all imports, especially imports from countries w/ cheap labor
That's never going to happen and people need to move on from this idea. The world is too connected, too economically interdependent. And I'm not sure Americans would really be willing to pay much higher prices for all their poorly-made crap.
That's never going to happen and people need to move on from this idea. The world is too connected, too economically interdependent. And I'm not sure Americans would really be willing to pay much higher prices for all their poorly-made crap.
Well, it may not be as poorly made, but you're right that most Americans would be unwilling to pay for it.
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