Yes, you are still very much in the United States, where everyone demands things like good roads from the government but doesn’t want to pay for them. Road construction and maintenance is funded primarily by gasoline taxes, which haven’t been adjusted to compensate for decreasing purchase power (inflation) in a long time, and gasoline as a motor vehicle fuel is on its way out in the long term due to increasing vehicle efficiency and electric vehicles, and sooner or later there just won’t be enough oil left in the ground that can be economically recovered. Bottom line, gas taxes alone are insufficient to meet the current and future transportation infrastructure investment needs. The need for highways isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and the best options to fund them for as long as Americans desire to continue relying on personal automobiles for most transportation needs seems to be some form of mileage based fee, or toll roads. How else would you propose to fund transportation infrastructure?

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV