Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to Okay. Here's how it is on highways.

Two things:
Mary Anne — (archived)

Unless I have missed something, these reports talk about highway funding in general, not the interstate system in particular, even though the reports are issued by the Federal Highway Administration.

Second, "general fund" is the source of 16.2% of the funding. 15.8% is listed as "other" on the pie chart. (On Table HF-10, "General Fund Appropriations" accounts for 14.48%.) Where I come from, "general fund" sources for government projects come from the general tax revenues, which in the case of the United States includes personal and corporate income taxes. I don't know where "Other" comes from, but it's not too much of a stretch to think that some of that might come from taxes. It might also come partly from tariffs and other levies on imports.

If the expenditures have gone up, and they have, barely (which I said in my post to Tech), but the bridges are still falling down and the roads are still falling apart, the expenditures haven't gone up enough. If I've spent more of my income on my children's medical care, but one of them still has an abscessed tooth, the question asked of me would be why I didn't have the tooth taken care of, not the amount of money I've spent on her care.

Also, to quote the executive summary, "Private sector investment is playing an increasingly important role in highway finance". I want to know who these people are and what the nature of their investment is. If certain private sector groups are involved, I want to know their level of liability. I also want to know what they get for their investment.

Your implication that using less gas makes us less secure because Prius users don't contribute enough to the upkeep of the highway system is a distraction. The highways need to be fixed. Using more gas so we can use the tax revenue for highway repairs puts money in the pockets of regimes you claim to detest. Spending more money on gasoline will only keep them in power. It will also line the pockets of Mr. Bush's oil friends, but oh well. If we can have either safe roads or efficient cars, we need a new way to pay for our roads.

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