A national transportation commission, with the scary sounding name of “National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission,” released a report last week known as Transportation for Tomorrow. This report calls for, among other things, raising the gas tax by 40 cents in five years, creating a new federal bureaucracy, imposing federal regulations on states ability to draw private investment in things like Public-Private Partnerships, and adding a federal transit tax on every transit ticket sold.
Ouch. Let’s look at this thing piece by piece. My first thought on the gas tax was that it wasn’t too bad of an idea. The Federal Highway Trust fund is expected to be short $4.3 billion in 2009, so a higher gas tax would solve the immediate problem. But U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters and two other commission members released a dissenting report, where they point out some serious problems with the federal gas tax. First, the federal government already plays too large of a role in transportation funding. Since the feds redistribute the wealth between states,
The second problem with increasing the gas tax is that it is a flawed system. With more fuel efficient cars and even a few electric cars on the road today, some users are not paying as much as others for the same service. As Secretary Peters pointed out, we need a new alternative. All users should pay for using the road, whether it be at a toll booth or using some kind of GPS mileage system or whatever. But now is a good time for change, as several states are already looking into alternative funding sources. If the federal gas tax is left alone, the shortfall in funding will gradually force states to seek alternatives such as these.
Creating more bureaucracy is a bad thing, especially at the federal level where it will only strengthen the federal control of transportation. Telling states what they can and cannot do with private investment will only hurt projects like I-595 and the
Taxing transit tickets is sheer lunacy. Thankfully, Peters also comes out against this. Transit agencies set prices to cover as many costs as they can while still attracting the number of riders they need. If the federal government throws a tax on every ticket (the actual commission report says “all trips,” which would apply to free trips like the Miami MetroMover), that will only upset the balance the transit agency has reached between revenue and ridership. They would be forced to sacrifice their ridership or reduce fares and eat the cost of the tax themselves. The tax money would go to the general fund, where it could go towards paying for new highways or someone else’s transit system. So the chances are good that it will take away money from transit agencies. I will personally write to any congressman who dares to introduce such idiocy into a bill and I hope that the thousands of transit riders would also join us in opposing such an idea.
If you want to know who was responsible for this, read their names here. Every commissioner but Mary Peters, Maria Cino, and Rick Geddes supported the report. We’re grateful these three retained enough sanity to dissent.
The gas tax is a fine system. It is ok that we are funding roads outside our prime areas of interest because we travel and when we do we want to have the same ‘quality’ roads we have here.
If anything gas taxes should be higher so that transit were more on the forefront, and given greater funding.
Taxing transit though is no solution.
The gas tax does not provide the same quality of roads from one state to the next. Many states, such as Florida, set their state roadway standards higher than the federal standards. So our state roads are great. Try going to another state, such as South Carolina or Alabama, and you’ll find such oddities as stop signs on interstate on-ramps and turn lanes that are nearly impossible to distinguish from added thru lanes. All the gas tax does is allow other states to be able to build a road when they might not otherwise afford it. That said, we’re not advocating removing it in its current form. Just an alternative to raising it.
The donor state problem isn’t as big an issue as the problem that the revenue is insufficient. We can continue raising the gas tax to fund highways for a few more years, but what do we do when 75% of vehicles are electric or hydrogen powered? Long before that point, the gas tax is useless. So Peters and the other dissenters are looking to the future and suggesting, since we have to change something, to change the system now before it breaks. It’s rare to see preventative measures like this taken in any kind of bureaucracy or politics, but it would help to see more.