Gas Taxes cover only a fraction of costs
Adron has a post on his blog where he attempts to calculate how high the gas taxes would have to be to actually cover all costs associated with road construction and maintenance. His conclusion:
In no scenario does the gas tax cover roadway maintenance except in certain circumstances. Even on the vast majority of the interstates gas taxes don’t cover the costs. If they where to cover the costs the taxes would have to increase from 10-35 cents per gallon to about 60-80 cents per gallon minimum. In addition to that if new construction and maintenance where factored in for ongoing expansion of roadways that would have to increase somewhere to the tune of $1.20-2.00 per gallon.
[Quoted from Transit Sleuth : Gas Taxes for Roads?]
The main take from this should be the following: a lot of people in politics and elsewhere complain about the fact that public transportation (especially Amtrak) is not “self-sufficient” - this calculation hear clearly shows that road-based transportation is also not “self-sufficient” and I believe a similar calculation applied to air traffic would show the same. What follows is that no means of transportation is currently “self-sufficient” (i.e. pays its own costs), but rather relies on certain subsidies to be paid out of general tax monies.
Posted in: Finance, Policy, USA | January 14, 2007 9:49 pm
4 Comments »
Adron, on January 15, 2007 @ 7:46 am
Love the new layout, thanks for the link.
Marcel Marchon, on January 15, 2007 @ 8:20 am
Thanks. I think the comment area needs some more work. But I’m quite happy with the rest.
Adron, on January 15, 2007 @ 1:24 pm
Hell, I even dig the comments area.
btw - Just to note. If Amtrak was run the same way as Virgin, they’d make 80-200 Million a year in profits AFTER infrastructure costs. I’ve got the write up coming online soon… finishing the touches on it.
Needless to say, it speaks VOLUMES for those that are pro-passenger railroad vs. auto transportation.
Marcel Marchon, on January 15, 2007 @ 2:02 pm
Sounds interesting - I’ll be sure to read it…
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