The Newspaper reports that the California state legislature has blessed AB3021, a measure that will expand toll roads throughout the Golden State. The CA trip A ain't too pleased with the provisions contained therein. "We support the use of tolls as one option to pay for new infrastructure; however, because the very broad toll authority proposed in this bill is not limited to new construction and because revenue from the tolls could be used for a wide array of transportation and related efforts (well beyond the roads, streets, and highways used by toll payers), we must oppose the bill. Those goals should not inappropriately be placed on the shoulders of motorists by allowing the widespread tolling of facilities already paid for by existing taxes without clear and direct benefits for the toll payers." In other words, the cash cows will graze freely while providing precious little milk for the motorists paying through the nose for the farmers' livelihoods. Or something like that.
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
On one hand yes it’s yet another tax revenue stream coming out of the tax payer’s hide and the freeways were already paid for by taxes (mostly Federal at that). That said there are on going maintenance costs and putting a cost on using may help control urban sprawl.
This right response might be to lower taxes for roads, but make them partially toll supported. But don’t even bring that up to a politician in a budget strapped state.
Yeah, but what about the huge amount of noise and pollution generated by cars and not paid for by anybody? Those elements should be taken into account as well.
Nothing new here. The gas taxes paid in this state for the maintenance of the roads and new construction rarely makes it past other pet projects and social spending. If any of the oney raised by these new taxes makes it to actual road maintenance and construction it will be for one or two projects that will be trumpeted from the proverbial mountaintops of Sacramento. Meanwhile, 80% of the money will go to unrelated expenditures.
AKM:
Yeah, but what about the huge amount of noise and pollution generated by cars and not paid for by anybody? Those elements should be taken into account as well.
By MY account, one or two billionths of the federal excise tax on gasoline – about fifty bucks a year – should be enough for the whole country…
I haven’t been around a whole long time in my 27 years, but does it seem to anyone else that governments all over this country are starting to look at all of us as money-makers? We hear about speed cameras, light cameras, $600 work zone fines, these toll roads, property taxes, increased sales taxes, etc. How was it that society seemed to work just fine back when these things didn’t exist, or speeding tickets were a reasonable $75? Why all of a sudden do they need to find more things to tax and increase the rate they’re taxed? Why did it work then, but even with all these new money-grabbing schemes they’re still short of money??
I’ve always been of the opinion that for too long we’ve been financing our infrastructure with “imaginary” money. That is, we just finance it and figure it will be up to the mayor/governor/president/congress 20 years down the line to figure out how to pay for it. That’s what’s always bugged me is they just push the buck and by the time we gotta worry about it, they’ll be out of office. Now it seems we’re already getting taxed more and more for the same services while complaining we can’t pay for new stuff.
Its gotta come home to roost sometime, but I’d rather we didn’t finance these types of things, that cash had to be in the system to build it. Otherwise we get low taxes for those of a certain few decades while 20 years from now our taxes will be outrageous just to pay for worse services.
I’m not necessarily against taxes (we gotta pay for what we have) but I am having a serious issue that we are constantly being analyzed and prodded by the government to figure out ways for them to suck more money from us, then blow it on worthless projects given to friends and family contractors and pay for an extremely bloated and overpaid government structure.
I’m getting really tired of it. Especially in a real dumper of an economy when we’re all feeling the pinch anyway, now the government wants to squeeze even more.
What happened to the govt providing basic services and that was that? Roads, water, garbage, sewer, schools, police & fire and not much else?
By MY account, one or two billionths of the federal excise tax on gasoline – about fifty bucks a year – should be enough for the whole country…
Between comments like this, the D3 bailout and the Freddie/Fannie “loans”, it looks we’ve entered the era of “fake” capitalism (privatize profits, socialize costs) and lack of any responsibility. And here I thought the U.S. were a country where individual responsibility mattered and was even held in high regard.
Gas taxes are assessed on all miles driven, yet don’t even pay for the small fraction of miles of roadway they’re eligible for. If anything, gas taxes need to be raised _AND_ tolls imposed _AND_ something like the Federal 90% rule put into place at the state level (mandating that cities get back at least 90% of what they pay in).
The existing road funding mechanism in this country is a giant subsidy for suburban sprawl paid for by urban drivers and even non-drivers.
M1EK: “The existing road funding mechanism in this country is a giant subsidy for suburban sprawl paid for by urban drivers and even non-drivers.”
There are plenty of people who agree with you. For that reason, after the November election the National Transportation Infrastructure Finance Commission is going to recommend a shift from gas taxes to toll roads to finance future road construction. However, I seriously doubt that gas taxes will drop as toll roads are implemented.
Once again, whether we like it or not, it looks like California is a harbinger, and we should all be paying attention.
Ah, the American way. Income, sales and property taxes are the work of Satan, but usage tolls are perfectly acceptable.
And you wonder why the health, education and infrastructure systems are crumbling.
Gas taxes are assessed on all miles driven, yet don’t even pay for the small fraction of miles of roadway they’re eligible for.
More like, they don’t pay for the roads because bureaucrats spend them on subways, bike paths, and anything but roads.
The existing road funding mechanism in this country is a giant subsidy for suburban sprawl paid for by urban drivers and even non-drivers.
Unless you’re talking about the gas tax paid by people filling up their lawn mower, non-drivers are the ones being subsidized. They get the benefit of the roads (how do you think goods get to the store?) without paying any gas tax.
During the late 90’s California was raking in loads of tax money do to the roaring economy. Somehow, instead of paying down debts and funding known future obligations, the state decided to create even more programs. Now, with the economy tapering off we have more programs to fund and less money coming in.
If all the carpool lanes were converted into toll lanes where tolls were proportional to the amount of congestion, I think we could have a worthwhile use for toll roads. Right now we have the opposite: commuters being rewarded for driving during the busiest times of day with carpool lanes and free bridge crossings. There’s nothing quite like a bunch of colleagues saying “we need to leave work now because we don’t want to miss rush hour” to drive home the lunacy of the current road system.
RichardD, not even close. Most road spending is for the benefit of suburban commuters, not freight delivery traffic (which manages to get by just fine in countries that don’t excessively subsidize suburban sprawl). And, no, the tiny amount siphoned off for mass transit doesn’t come close to making up for the amount folks like me pay folks like you when we do our 90% of urban driving on roads that never get any money from the gas tax.
Gas taxes are assessed on all miles driven, yet don’t even pay for the small fraction of miles of roadway they’re eligible for.
Then how is the California state government able to “borrow” billions of dollars every year from the highway fund, which comes from gas taxes, to pay for General Fund obligations? Only a fraction, 50%-75% of the gas taxes, collected in California actually go to road maintenance and construction, despite the fact that the taxes were supposed to be dedicated to the maintenance of infrastructure from the beginning and despite the fact that the people of California twice voted for changes to the state constitution requiring that this money be spent on the roads for which it was intended. This is one instance where the people are not getting the government that they voted for.
Jerome10:
It seems that you have grasped something that most voters, in California at least, have not. Every year their are several Bond measures on the state ballot for infrastructure improvements, VA loans, etc., and every year most, if not all, of the Bond measures pass. What this means is that ever increasing portions of the state budget are dedicated to paying back these bond measures, such that $500M in improvements cost the state $1B in taxes collected in the future. On the federal level, it’s even worse. At the rate that our government spending is increasing, borrowing sums of money that were unimaginable 10 or 20 years ago, soon over half of the federal budget will be debt service. Worse still is who holds this debt, foreign companies and countries, not all of whom are friendly to the US. If they dump their holdings of US Treasuries and dollars on the money markets, we’ll have nearly instant inflation like this country has never seen, 20+%.
There’s nothing quite like a bunch of colleagues saying “we need to leave work now because we don’t want to miss rush hour” to drive home the lunacy of the current road system.
Yep, because outside of commute times, anybody can legally use the carpool lane and it gets clogged as well. I agree it’s crazy. Rising gas prices are doing more to promote carpooling than carpool lanes ever did.
M1EK, You said (a) non-drivers are subsidizing drivers and (b) gas tax doesn’t cover maintenance costs.
Both statements are demonstrably false. Follow the link and there’s a PDF with the source:
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/14/1494.asp
Motorists paid $40.3 billion in gas tax, registration fees, and tolls in 2005. Gas tax was $20.5 billion. Only $13 billion was spent on state and local road construction and maintenance. Therefore, gas tax is covering the real expense and motorists are subsidizing non-drivers.
As for urban drivers vs. suburban drivers, that probably depends on how your state divides the loot. I have no idea where you live.
RichardD, you’re dead wrong.
http://www.cnu.org/node/2329
“you’ll appreciate the candor of the Texas DOT in this posting to its Keep Texas Moving website. TxDOT answers the question “Do Roads Pay for Themselves?” with a simple “no,” using a very straightforward calculus to demonstrate that the gas tax receipts generated by any given stretch of highway fall far short of the combined construction and maintenance costs of that highway. In other words, highways require those dreaded ongoing subsidies, mile after mile, year after year.”
Then how is the California state government able to “borrow” billions of dollars every year from the highway fund, which comes from gas taxes, to pay for General Fund obligations?
Because of huge subsidies from sales and property taxes TO highway construction, and because the gasoline tax, once again, is assessed on every mile you drive, whether it’s on a road which receives funding from the gas tax or (more likely) one which does not.
M1EK,
Interesting link, but TxDOT is making a bogus calculation based on several wild assumptions. There’s no need to assume anything — the money has been collected and spent and is listed as a line item in public budgets. What matters is the bottom line: a lot more money was collected from drivers at the state and local level than was actually spent on road construction and maintenance.
Unless you dispute the FHWA budget numbers, there’s no way around it.
Lumbergh21-
I know of what you speak. I lived in CA for 3 years. I was amazed at how hugely these bond measures would pass. I’m the type of guy whoe will glady pay/donate for good programs, but I always did my research on the bond issues and would usually vote yes maybe 25% of the time. Yet year after year, I’d say 90%+ would pass, and by double digit margins.
If you read into all the items, you’re spot on regarding the costs. They were pretty much double by the time the full amount was paid. $1million project cost pretty much $2million at the end of the bond period. It was INSANE to think about how many bonds over how many years were out there, and then add up the interest payments on them. $5billion for flood control resulted in $10 billion gone by the time it was paid off. Who wants to pay $5 billion in interest payments?!
If the money isn’t there, you shouldn’t be able to spend it. Instead just use a bond to pay off a bond to pay off a bond. Hell, thats the American way right?
I wish I could remember some of the more ridiculous propositions that passed, or the ones that should have and didn’t.
Anyway, wait till it gets really bad, people will get sick of the taxes, move out, leave CA in an even worse position to pay off debts, and they’ll go to some “low tax” state that is just beginning their massive borrowing initiative, they’ll benefit, then people will leave that state once their taxes start going up, until every last state and the entire federal government is up to their eyeballs in debt and there’s nowhere else to go.
Its interesting to me that the oldest states in the union are the ones with the “high taxes” while everyone talks about how glorious it is in the “low tax” states. Its just that those “low tax” states haven’t had enough time for the same bone-headed financial practices to to catch up with them like it has in NY, PA, NJ, MA, IL, MI, OH, and now CA.
Richard, actually, the disconnect proves exactly what I said – the FHWA only covers expenditures made on ‘highways’ – i.e. signed and numbered components of state highway systems (including US and interstate highways) – but NOT including major arterial roadways funded at the local level (or non-major roads, but those cost a lot less money) – because they simply don’t have the data collection tools available to go to every single jurisdiction in this country and get those numbers.
It turns out that the driving urban drivers do on roads which don’t get any gas taxes pays a big chunk of the missing money, and a big remaining chunk comes from sales and property taxes.
For instance, using my driving, the FHWA would see all the gax tax collected from me (easy to tabulate) but not see how 90% of my driving miles are paid for – because 90% of my miles are outside the state highway system (I live in just about the oldest most urban part of Austin; the vast majority of even our major arterial lane-miles are locally funded).
What the TXDOT study shows quite conclusively is that without this subsidy from urban drivers, the whole system collapses – suburban roadways don’t pay for themselves. (Suburban drivers do spend a far larger proportion of their driving on roads which receive gas tax funding, in other words). To say nothing of the property/sales tax funding (my local taxes pay for state highways around here as well as all of those major arterials which aren’t getting the gas tax bucks).
M1EK: RichardD, you’re dead wrong.
The Congress from New Urbanism is hardly an unbiased source. Reading what the Texas Department of Transportation says is quite illuminating, but it doesn’t quite prove their point.
For instance, we get this tidbit:
State motor fuel tax is collected from all over the state and goes into a single pool of revenue—about one quarter of which goes to fund education, and about three-quarters of which goes to the state’s highway fund, where it is spent on transportation uses and some non-transportation functions of government. (emphasis added)
First, it is talking about STATE motor fuels taxes, not federal taxes, which I assume you are talking about when you reference the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Let’s stick to one or the other, please.
Second, if you are concerned about Texas gas taxes not supported the roads you use, I’d suggest that you visit the nearby state capitol in Austin (I’ve been there – it’s quite nice) and ask why a substantial chunk of these funds are being diverted to education and other uses.
Third, we get to this:
The significant point here is that historically the fuel tax paid in any locality of the state is unrelated to the road projects in that locality.
That’s an administrative (i.e. pork barrel) problem – the most powerful legislators get to direct funds for new projects. It’s based on power and seniority, not actual need, or the source of the lion’s share of the revenues.
M1EK: What the TXDOT study shows quite conclusively is that without this subsidy from urban drivers, the whole system collapses – suburban roadways don’t pay for themselves.
Based on that statement, I guess similar concerns could be voiced regarding mass transit systems, as every study conclusively shows that they don’t pay for themselves, either. The same with bike paths, as they definitely are not supported by user fees.
As per federal law, mass transit systems receive money from the federal Highway Trust Fund, which, in turn, receives tax revenues from the sale of motor fuels (gasoline and diesel) and certain vehicular products.
When it was created, the Highway Trust Fund focused solely on highways, but later the federal government determined that a portion of the revenues from highway-user taxes dedicated to the Highway Trust Fund should be used to fund transit needs, resulting in a 5 cent increase in the gas tax, of which 1 cent would go towards the Mass Transit Account, which was created on April 1, 1983.
If anything, at the federal level, drivers are subsidizing mass transit systems and bike paths (which were added in later versions of the highway spending bills).
M1EK: For instance, using my driving, the FHWA would see all the gax tax collected from me (easy to tabulate) but not see how 90% of my driving miles are paid for – because 90% of my miles are outside the state highway system (I live in just about the oldest most urban part of Austin; the vast majority of even our major arterial lane-miles are locally funded).
You’re a sample of one. Extrapolating your experience to everyone does not necessarily present an accruate picture for the entire system.
Please note that the majority of people live in the suburbs or in the country, and they do most of the driving (I thought that living the city meant less need to drive everyhwhere, which means less tax revenue paid and collected). They are paying the lion’s share of the federal gasoline taxes.
M1EK: (Suburban drivers do spend a far larger proportion of their driving on roads which receive gas tax funding, in other words).
And they pay a higher proportion of federal and state fuels taxes, because they do more driving.
M1EK: To say nothing of the property/sales tax funding (my local taxes pay for state highways around here as well as all of those major arterials which aren’t getting the gas tax bucks).
Every state has a gasoline tax, too. How each state utilizes this revenue stream is up to its respective state government.
Here in Pennsylvania, a portion of our sales tax goes to mass transit systems. Since everyone in the state pays the sales tax, but the biggest recipients of sales tax revenue are the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) and Pittsburgh Port Authority, it’s safe to say that residents in rural Bradford or Franklin counties are subsidizing transit riders in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh metropolitan areas.
If you have a problem with how Texas pays for its roads, that is one thing. But to suggest that a Texas problem is a national problem is something else. Each state is expected to shoulder a large part of road and bridge construction and maintenance, and how it pays these expenditures is up to the respective state government. Your ire needs to be directed at Austin, not Washington, D.C.
geeber, no, the FHWA stats include state and federal gas taxes, and the general equation holds (to greater or lesser degrees) in every state at which I’ve looked, including Pennsylvania (in that a much larger portion of the major arterial network in urban areas is locally-funded and usually not eligible for gas taxes).
geeber, no, the FHWA stats include state and federal gas taxes, and the general equation holds (to greater or lesser degrees) in every state at which I’ve looked, including Pennsylvania (in that a much larger portion of the major arterial network in urban areas is locally-funded and usually not eligible for gas taxes).
Additionally, your logic is critically flawed – my figures about proportionality were per mile driven, meaning, per dollar of gas tax assessed. In other words, for every dollar of gas tax I pay, I get far less benefit than does the suburbanite for every dollar of gas tax he pays. This is a per-dollar equation that holds no matter how much or how less he drives compared to me.