Keith Wrote:
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> It is my understanding that the gas tax (user fee)
> is unable to cover the costs of the highways...?
> Several years ago I was told that of all the money
> spent in the US each year on highways, only 62%
> came from the gas tax. The rest of the money was
> general fund money moved into highway funding.

You have to divide the federal portion from the states' portion. Most of the federal dollars come out of the HUTF, which in turn is funded by fuel taxes and trucking fees. You do get some "economic development" grant money from the feds that comes out of the general fund and benefits road construction. What I read is that only 80% of the HUTF goes to roads, with the rest going to things like transit, light rail, bike paths, that sort of thing.

Most of the states split up their share between gas taxes/trucking fees, sales taxes, property taxes, et al depending on what is most politically pallatable for them. I'm not sure what the average fed/state split is now, but wasn't the Interstate funding share 80% fed/20% state or something like that?

What's really killing most highway projects today (as well as any new railroad or transmission project) is the environmental regulations. Projects that used to cost in the hundreds of thousands now are costing in the billions. It is fortunate the railroads were built when they were, as I doubt anyone could afford to build a new Transcon today even with the land grants.

It
> would be interesting to see how people would
> respond to a policy that actually restricted
> highway spending to only what is in the HUTF. I
> bet we would see a gas tax increase in short
> order...

I agree, and why not? As long as ALL HUFT funds go to roads and not to non-road projects.....


> If Amtrak has to make a profit, then require
> airlines and highways to also make a profit...!

Remember, Amtrak is a government-run rail transportation service running over private infrastructure, so the equivalent of Amtrak would be an Ambus or an Amjet. Since there is no other federal government-run transportation service besides Amtrak, a comparison to airlines and highways is moot. And Amtrak doesn't necessarily need to make a profit, being a government run program, it just has to cover it's costs via it's ticket revenues. And it's not that extreme to ask Amtrak to cover it's costs, since the average subsidy per rider is only about $100, more on some routes (some are over $300 per rider), less on others (the Empire Builder manages a per rider subsidy of only $68). Why not just raise the ticket prices to the break-even point, or at least as close as possible without losing ridership?