I’m curious to see how far this proposal to raise the federal gas tax goes before the Republicans completely kill it and then complain about how Democrats don’t have any proposals to fix America’s crumbling transportation infrastructure.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) is introducing legislation that would nearly double the 18.4-cents-per-gallon federal gas tax to help pay for road and transit projects around the nation.
Carper’s bill would increase the gas tax by 4 cents per year for the next four years, resulting in a 16-cents-per-gallon increase by 2020. The legislation would offer tax credits to offset the impact of the gas tax hikes on drivers, according to Carper’s office.
The Delaware senator said the failure of Congress to pass a long-term transportation bill this summer showed it is time to raise the gas tax, which has not been increased since 1993.
“Rather than lurching from crisis to crisis, increasing country’s debt, and borrowing more money from foreign governments to pay for our transportation system, I say it’s time to do what’s right,” Carper said in a statement, referring to the three-month transportation funding patch that was approved by Congress before lawmakers left for recess last month.
“At a time when gas prices are some of the lowest we’ve seen in recent memory, we should be willing to make the hard choice to raise the federal gas tax,” Carper continued. “To balance the 16-cent cost of a gas tax hike, I’ve suggested making permanent certain expiring tax cuts that will directly benefit hard-working Americans.”
Naturally, since this is a reasonable attempt at actual governance, it will immediately explode into flames along with several highways and bridges before the end of the year.
We have hundreds of billions, if not trillions in infrastructure repair and rebuilding needs in this country, and nobody in charge seems to want to actually do anything about them.
Oh wait, President Obama did, but that plan was instantly killed by the party we rewarded with control of Congress. That seems like that’s working out.
Jeffro
If Carper wants this increase to pass, all he has to do is ask Obama to oppose it.
SFAW
@Jeffro:
And, in keeping with the transpo subject: if Obama has any sense at all, he’ll speak out against drinking anti-freeze.
srv
Americans finally get a break from Obama’s oil prices and all y’all want to do is raise taxes… typical.
LWA
Ironically the commuter trains here in So Cal run on private rail lines (BNSF) who, being rational, spend freely to maintain and improve their rails.
Dunno if this is how it works nationwide but it would be interesting if, as freeways crumble, mass transit became the superior option.
Or even if not, to just plant the meme that freeway neglect= Soshalism!!
jonas
Is there a way we can harm poor people and minorities AND fix our crumbling infrastructure? That’s what the GOP Congress wants to know.
SFAW
@srv:
Why would American want a break from low oil/gas prices?
c u n d gulag
This makes way too much sense, so it’ll never happen.
Waldo
@srv: And, hey, as long as gas is cheap we can just take alternate routes around the collapsing infrastructure.
boatboy_srq
@LWA: Amtrack’s Eastern operations – including the NE Corridor Acela – run on CSX lines. CSX hasn’t exactly been the best caretaker. YMMV.
SFAW
@jonas:
Soylent Green, except instead of food, they get turned into pothole filler?
boatboy_srq
@Waldo: Bumper sticker seen in NoVA: “paved roads are an example of wasteful government spending.” On a Jeep. I think the driver took the message seriously.
boatboy_srq
@SFAW: if enough of them get run down, sure.
CONGRATULATIONS!
You don’t do this in an election year. What kind of idiot is this guy?
WereBear
It sounds so awful to say this, but I swear the Fox News viewing cluster can’t become apathetic soon enough.
SFAW
@Waldo:
Another Lie-beral canard. Why, just a few weeks ago, I drove over a bridge that wasn’t falling down, so that proves there’s nothing wrong.
Teach the controversy, my friends.
Oatler.
I prefer to mock the decaying infrastructure the Reason Magazine way with the misspelled ROADZ. Libertarians think infrastructure is a button on their game controllers.
SFAW
@boatboy_srq:
Maybe, but that’s the current state. I’m talking about mass production, not that a commie like you would know anything about those capitalistic concepts. Supply and demand, too – there’s an increasing supply of poor people, and the demand for poor people is static or dropping, so the price point will be pretty sweet. And if they don’t like being ground up — don’t be poor, ya slackers!
RaflW
Well, yes. But Democrats do need to propose sane legislation, even if the GOP will be screaming hyenas about it. Actually, because of that. Ron Fournier will cluck his bitter, centrist tongue about how Dems are just crazy (16 cents! In 4 years! Unprecedented spending! Etc, crapdoodle, lies…), but I think the case is continuing to be made that only one party can currently govern.
The other is looking more and more like the apes leaping around the monolith in the film 2001.
RaflW
@srv: You mean Exxon/PB/Shell/Chevron/Koch’s oil prices, right? Lets look at the profitability of those companies during the price gouge years.
Oh, wait, we have to slavishly blame Obama for what the oil oligarchy does, because that keeps the natives restless and ready to vote against their own interests.
Also, too, I live in Minnesota, and we take quite personally the toll in lives that comes with the Republican version of road maintenance.
SFAW
@RaflW:
Not sure if this was your underlying point, but: you do realize that the monolith was a teaching machine, don’t you? I just can’t see the Rethugs wanting to be taught (or learn) anything.
dedc79
@LWA: There’s a widespread, harmful misconception that if public transportation doesn’t turn a profit, it’s a failure. I think a lot of people frankly don’t give all that much thought about how much it costs for us all to have the ability to drive anywhere we might want to go (often by ourselves).
SFAW
@RaflW:
Oh, bullshit.
Are you trying to tell me that Big Oil’s profits skyrocketed – without anything approaching a commensurate increase in demand – due to them goosing up their price per gallon? Why, that’s almost as if you’re saying they don’t have the best interests of the Common Man at heart. Fie! For shame!
redshirt
I shoot myself in the foot and blame you for my limp.
shell
@srv: Hmmmm, I must have missed that when Obama was made worldwide Oil Czar.
Davis X. Machina
Opposition to federal expenditure on internal improvements was part of the Democracy’s (ante-bellum Democrats) platform for 40 years. Since those people are now Republicans, this position has now been essentially unchanged for almost 200 years.
Not quite as old as their position on race issues…..
RaflW
@SFAW: Teaching machine/indoctrination device. YMMV.
It was really about the image of unevolved brutes leaping about that I had in mind thinking of the 21st century GOP.
Davis X. Machina
@dedc79: You can’t sell public transportation in a country where half the political nation doesn’t believe the noun ‘public’ has any actually-existing real-world referrent.
RaflW
On a more serious policy note, one of the many things that leaves me scratching my head about “pro-business” establishment conservatives is that our economy is highly predicated on an efficient road network. A good chunk of our commerce is truck-dependent and relies on just-in-time inventory.
Sure, a hike in fuel taxes costs truckers more money and may eat into Exxon-Koch’s profits a tiny bit, but snarled traffic, flat-tired trucks, and the occasional massive detour around a city’s collapsed interstate bridge have costs as well. They can’t be documented as lazily as “tax=bad!” but they are real production and sales costs.
Of course, business execs are clearly not geniuses, so I guess why the bleep should they care – their competitors are hamstrung by the same logistics problems.
srv
@jonas:
Well, all these smug gliberals driving around in their soda can hybrids certainly aren’t going to be hurt by this tax.
Who do you think is going to pay? Poor people who can’t afford Teslas, and working folks who need SUVs or trucks.
Peale
@shell: Look. All I know is that Bush had managed to get gas prices down to 1.86 per gallon after they’d shot up to $4.00 per gallon. But he worked hard to get them down again. Sure, demand had collapsed because the economy was in a free fall, but that seemed like a small price to pay.
Mike J
@LWA:
Freight trains have the right of way. It’s a two hour trip from Seattle to Portland. I once sat on the last bridge, 5 minutes from the station, because freight had all the rails occupied.
gratuitous
Oh noes! Taxes! Aaaaaaahhh! Run for your lives! This will make the cost of a 12 gallon fill-up skyrocket by . . . $1.92? The week-to-week price float is more than that. Nobody would notice a month after it was passed, and we’d have a lot more money to pay people to build, repair and improve our road system. And those people would have more money to support their local businesses. And those businesses would have more revenue to hire more workers.
Clearly, this is an idea that must be strangled in the cradle, because it makes conservatives and Republicans look incredibly stupid.
SFAW
@RaflW:
Indoctrination? Hardly. Unless teaching someone/thing to use tools, etc., is now considered indoctrination. Be that as it may …
I kinda figured that, which was why I thought the monolith ref was inapt. Because I don’t think our “modern” Rethug Partei has any intention to evolve. Well, unless God does it for them or some such, since Darwin is History’s Greatest Monster (after Obama and Hitlery, of course).
RSR
Raising the gas tax is too efficient, plus it’s a government program.
Instead, look for the GOP and neo-liberal, ed reform-loving dems to instead push a mileage tax, as that will require all sorts of privacy-invading, data-mining, gizmo-selling, budget-skimming, patronage job-filled private organizations between your car and the gov’t.
srv
@LWA:
Or you privatize the roads and stop being dependent on some bureaucrat in Washington DC giving you your own tax dollars back.
SFAW
@srv:
See, now you’re not even trying.
“working folks who need SUVs or trucks.” ?
Right. Because the only ones who work are those salt-of-the-earth, truck-drivin’, liberal-hatin’, hard-drinkin’,
sister-porkin’REAL PEEPUL! ‘Murica, FUK YEAH!Moron.
oldgold
After watching last night and, more generally, watching the decline of our politics over the past few decades, I wonder if selecting candidates by a few insiders in closed rooms is not a better process than primaries and caucuses.
Jay C
@Davis X. Machina:
Beg to differ: the problem is more that half the political nation DOES have a “real-world referent” for the term “public” – it’s just that that referent (at least as far as transportation is concerned) usually translates as “Those People” and “Not Us” – Real Americans are supposed to revel in the FREEDOM! of being able to drive our own cars around anywhere and everywhere.
How this squares with a general unwillingness among large swaths of the public to even support infrastructure spending on roads baffles me, though: but then, IANAR – I think about political and fiscal issues.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
This has no prayer of passing at the Federal level but it is starting to happen at the state level. Iowa raised their’s by 10 cents a gallon back in February. I almost died of shock.
Here in Misery where the wingnut state legislature desperately tries to out-Kansas Kanas in batshit insanity, they tried to raise it by a measely 2 cents a gallon earlier this year and even that couldn’t pass. My guess is their next approach will be to pave the road with the corpses of the poor. That won’t help with bridges but one step at a time.
jonas
@RaflW: I think a lot of business interests — particularly transportation — are indeed pushing for improvements to our roadways, even if it means raising the gas tax a little bit. But they’re not as powerful as Grover Norquist, apparently.
Why we can’t have nice things, Part 1 million.
Paul in KY
@shell: It was at the 7th Presidium.
SFAW
@srv:
If you’re that much of a libertarian, move to Somalia already, and quit whining. I’m sure they’ll welcome you with open arms, because you obviously have your head screwed on right – at least as far as hatin’ on the idea of common good, asshole concepts like that.
Paul in KY
@oldgold: Seem to have gotten a better Repub candidate that way. Our Democratic candidates have all been sterling (whether anybody voted for them or not).
dedc79
@srv: It’s not so much the stupidity and laziness of thought that bothers me, as it is your absolute disingenuousness. If you actually gave a damn about taxes falling harder on the poor than the wealthy, you’d be supporting democratic candidates.
boatboy_srq
@SFAW: Repealing the jaywalking and vehicular-homicide laws for places that need resurfacing, are we? It’ll certainly make the driving more interesting. Let me know when I need the Kevlar body panels and the reinforced front bumper.
srv
@SFAW: And this is the state of civics in America – gliberals think the values of our Founding Fathers are more apropos for Somalia than their own country.
Jesus and Jefferson wept.
RepubAnon
@jonas: The idea is to make private toll roads popular. Privatization is the Republican dream for all public infrastructure, because it is a more efficient method of allocating public funds to much-needed programs.
Consider a public agency dedicated to maintaining roads. 100% of that agency’s money goes to maintaining the roads, typically with minimal administrative costs. Such a waste of money!
Consider the far more efficient method of privatizing that agency’s functions: not only are the administrative costs raised by a factor of 10 or more (including a 7+ figure salary for the CEO), but some of the private company’s budget can be used for campaign donations. It offers a more efficient retirement plan for well-connected politicians as well, as they can be hired by the company to lobby their former colleagues for more funds.
If there’s any money left over, perhaps some maintenance work (in the right sections of town) will be performed.
In short, privatization is clearly a far more effective means of important programs, such as channelling money away from wasteful things such as infrastructure repair, and into the pockets of the rich and powerful (with a small portion re-invested as political donations). Best of all, unlike bribery, it’s perfectly legal!
(/snark) (hopefully you spotted that earlier.)
WereBear
Of all the things people are irrational about, gas prices are probably in the top five.
I’ve seen them idling in long lines on “bargain” day, where they are burning up whatever money they save before they even buy the gas. I’ve seen them fuss over shopping at a grocery store that costs them far more than the little discount with their gas cards. They drive over an hour in their giant SUV to get to a big box store to “save money” on shoes for Suzy and underwear for Dad and now the whole family needs to eat because they are an hour away from home.
I give up.
Belafon
@jonas:
Toll roads.
dedc79
@Belafon: There are now whole stretches of highway in the DC area where riders can pay for access to express (i.e. less trafficked) lanes. The poor get left behind in standstill traffic. I don’t have a sense of how widespread this is elsewhere in the country.
Belafon
@dedc79: DFW is becoming the model for how to build new roads to keep the poor off them.
While I badmouth the NTTA a bit, they are the only reason any road construction is happening around here, and they negotiated with Oklahoma so I can use my toll tag on their toll roads as well.
WereBear
@dedc79: Here in NY, you can pay the tolls on the freeway or take the backroads all over heck and gone.
The toll roads aren’t pricey, and I figure most will burn more in gas on the back roads. Thruway has 24/7 washrooms and access to food and drink, while the back roads are a gamble. And yet, the whining.
There’s a whole group of people who figure they’d be rich if they just didn’t have to pay for anything. How this is supposed to be accomplished I don’t know.
Mike J
@dedc79: HOT (high occupancy/toll) lanes, also known as Lexus lanes, are spread around the US, but still haven’t taken off to the extent their supporters hoped for.
Belafon
@Belafon: And one more thing, they have been building a rail system around here. I can get from Rowlette to the DFW airport and back without driving.
Matt McIrvin
@srv: Because having toll roads everywhere won’t cost those salt-of-the-earth pickup-truck drivers at all.
SFAW
@srv:
Founding Father? Check
Jesus? Check
Jefferson? Check
You’ve managed to hit the trifecta of wingnut bullshit references. Lat I checked, by the way, Jesus wasn’t a Founding Father. And the Founding Fathers were more concerned with the common good than with rich folks being allowed/abetted to rule the country.
But, that’s America’s Founding Fathers. You think their values are better served in Somalia, then MOVE THERE ALREADY, you whiner. You talk a lot, like more Reichtards, but you’re not very good at walking the walk/talk – unless you have a gun and the others don’t of course.
Right-wing Whiners. There’s no end to them.
Joel
@WereBear: The tolls in PA are annoying because they take cash and/or express pass. Driving a rental without the EZ-pass means that it’s damn hard to scrounge up the cash for an expensive toll. And when the bill readers are down, fugghedaboutit.
vtr
According to my inflation calculator, if the federal fuel tax had been been pegged
to general inflation, we’d be paying $0.225 per gallon today.
Xantar
Serious question:
If we move to mostly electric cars in the long run, then how do we pay the upkeep on highways? It’s all well and good to raise the gas tax now, but soon enough we just won’t be using gas. What then?
WereBear
@Xantar: Hopefully, we will also be using lighter vehicles and fewer road-pounding trucks.
PurpleGirl
@srv: Is it fun developing these contrarian comments?
dedc79
@WereBear: I was up in New Hampshire a lot for work for a two year period. There was a $1 toll I had to pay when taking the highway from the airport in Manchester to get to Concord.
Having grown up in the NJ portion of the NY Metro area and spent the past 12 years in the DC area, let’s just say I’ve grown accustomed to paying tolls that make $1 seem like pennies. So I was amused to learn how many NH locals take the extra time to take the exit before the toll and spend extra minutes driving through backroads to come back out on the other side of the toll.
Matt McIrvin
@Joel: Hertz rentals all have toll accounts and, where applicable, transponders on them (out West, they have some toll roads where the automatic collection is just keyed on an OCR scan of your plate, so there are no transponders there).
Of course, they charge extortionate fees for using the toll-payment service over and above the actual tolls, because they can. But at least there’s a way.
Roger Moore
@RaflW:
The underlying problem is that movement “conservatism” denies cause and effect. They literally can’t see that there’s a relationship between the government spending money on maintenance and the state of our infrastructure. Their ideology blinds them to the connection, which enables them to simultaneously complain about the poor state of our roads and about any attempt to do something about it.
C.V. Danes
16 cents is chump change. We should be raising it by 50 cents and utilizing the bonus for energy research.
Brendan in Charlotte
@dedc79: We’re being told here in Charlotte that we’re going to find out. Because our idiot governor says it’s “too late” to stop the toll road that will be run by a foreign company. Curiously, there are no toll roads in Raleigh, because that’s where the politicians are…
japa21
I have, for quite a while been trying to figure out if srv is really a conservative troll or a Colbert wannabe. Some days it is hard to tell. But the comments today are so asinine it has to be the Colbert wannabe . And a poor attempt as well.
kc
I know gas prices are low-ish now, but they’re gonna go up when we invade Iran.
KG
@Xantar: well, hopefully, it will mean we won’t need to invade foreign countries over oil, so maybe we’d actually be able to cut the military budget to a reasonable level (rather than more than the next 8 countries combined).
Belafon
@Xantar: Some places are proposing adding a fee to the car tax you pay if you have a hybrid or electric vehicle.
Michael G
The real reason those bridges are on the verge of collapse is the unions keeping Rearden Metal off the market.
WereBear
@dedc79: Oh yeah! Because a penny saved is a frickin” PENNY, you idjits.
john b
@Brendan in Charlotte: 540 is a toll road in Raleigh.
WereBear
@Roger Moore: Short version: those liberals can’t possibly be right.
JPL
@Belafon: GA has an additional fee for hybrid cars. We don’t call fees taxes, because we don’t raise taxes.
Matt McIrvin
@Xantar: That’s already an issue: there are some state legislators trying to put a special tax on hybrids and electrics because they’re not paying their share of the road upkeep through gas taxes.
Personally, I think gas taxes, and similar carbon taxes that are supposed to function as a Pigovian incentive to burn less carbon, should not be used as a source of revenue. They should be rebated, in either a flat or a more-progressive-than-flat way, so that those working-class people srv was complaining about get their money back, but the incentive to be more efficient still applies. Fund the highways through general income taxes, because we think they’re worthwhile, if we do think they’re worthwhile. Using the Pigovian tax as a source of government income just creates distorting incentives to punish people for doing the good thing that the tax is supposed to encourage.
Paul in KY
@Xantar: There’ll be a tax on any electric version of a service station.
JPL
@Michael G: lol
dedc79
@Brendan in Charlotte: I’m convinced the reason the old Washington DC taxi system lasted as long as it did was because it was set up such that politicians could take cabs all over capitol hill and back to their homes all while staying in a single zone. The system sucked for nearly everyone else, but for a long time “everyone else” equaled black people. What finally prompted a change was an influx of affluent whites into neighborhoods that would require cabs to drive through 2 or 3 zones (even though the distance driven was short), with resulting high cab fares.
KG
@Matt McIrvin: here in Southern California, because of our serious drought, we’ve had government agencies and politicians telling us to save water and reduce use (don’t wash cars, shorten lawn watering and don’t do it every day, etc)… and now that people have done that, the water companies/districts are raising rates. It’s the sort of thing that just pisses people off.
gvg
Private interests can’t do roads or trains without government intervention. Its a matter of right of ways and imminent domain. If a government is not interested or doesn’t exist there is no process to decide who has right of way, or to condem land, or even to enforce private contracts. Its the enforcement of contracts that the libertarian and small government fools don’t appreciate at all. The US has been mostly law abiding for so long that they can’t envision what happens with any contract if their is no neutral party with force to enforce it (ie government). Anybody can sign anything, but then just walk away and not fulfill a contract. The result is no one does anything. And everyone becomes landlocked on their own property, but can’t go to a store, a job, or school etc. You can’t get materials to do value added and you can’t sell it if you could because no one but your direct neighbors can reach you. Everyone charges (tolls) to go over their land which gets prohibatively exspensive fast. We all starve and don’t even know why. Even money depends on law enforcement and an active government.
The tolls on passing through goods example comes from at least medieval times and is the origin of the term Robber Barons. Our own “robber baron” era is named after that past.
In my own school days they explained this somewhere around late elementary, early Jr. High, in order to teach us what a big deal it was when our American government made policies that caused canals and then railroads to be built. True it was private companies building much of it (and getting rich) but there was extensive use of subsidies and gifts of land from the government (with conditions). Sometimes the government had to take the land, other times it just saved some out of “new” territories. Sometimes I get the feeling its not being taught anymore. At the time it seemed like ordinary public school instruction.
Sherparick
@srv: The Libertarian Stupid, it burns, it burns. It is a typical, wonderful libertarian unicorn of an idea, another of their wonderful ponies, that has been a disaster whenever it has been tried, either as an extortionate, rent seeking monopoly or ending in bankruptcy and leaving the public ultimately responsible. http://blogs.reuters.com/muniland/2013/01/19/are-private-toll-roads-a-losing-idea/
Of course for the private equity John Galts who manipulate these deals and frauds, it works out wonderfully to fund their new mansion in the Hamptons.
Mike in NC
They’re fighting this battle over in SC as well. Even the wingnut legislature is aware that the roads are among the worst in the nation and something needs to be done, but prom queen Nikki Haley refuses to countenance even raising the gas tax by a penny, because that would be government tyranny. Also, too, bad roads mean more business for tire dealers and auto repair shops!
Sherparick
@gvg: Well, you got back to the ways of Rollo of Normandy and hire some bad ass Vikings to enforce that contract or else. Libertarianism is neo-feudalism: maximum freedom for the very few, slavery for every one else.
Tripod
@boatboy_srq:
Amtrak owns the Northeast Corridor except the CONNDOT segment. (Connecticut only maintains it to 90mph standards.)
@Mike J:
Legally Amtrak has priority. Practically, if the route doesn’t have the needed capacity and infrastructure for passenger rail it’s gonna be a slow go. Freight operators have the expectation that state, local, and federal funds should be available to cover a portion of those infrastructure costs.
Mike E
@john b: 540 is free to drive from the airport, however. Other sections are tolled.
Hybrids and electrics are charged a yearly fee in NC, I believe, and annual registration fees are now higher for all drivers thanks to our glorious GOTea overlords. Srv is a frustrated comedian, apparently… he’s trying to kill irony singlehandedly.
boatboy_srq
@dedc79: Precedent in DC: the Dulles Toll Road / Greenway out past Leesburg. Drivers on that road are predictably ars#h0lish. Note that the road to Dulles from DC is inside the toll road (in its median, effectively) with no access on/off. I understand the turf war over building the two was something to behold.
john b
@Mike E: I’d be much happier with toll on I-77 (CLT area) if they would extend the light rail as planned into the northern suburbs so that there’s an option aside from 77 to get into / out of Charlotte
boatboy_srq
@Tripod: I must be thinking of the southern segment (Auto Train country).
ThresherK (GPad)
@WereBear: The need for right wingers to put The Poors in front of their arguments is predictably pathetic. Gas taxes that keep up with a tenth of inflation. Fees for toll road actual users. If you look around, without much trouble you will find it applied to curbside parking, and urban design .
boatboy_srq
@Xantar: Gas tax serves two purposes. First, infrastructure maintenance and improvement. Second, disincentive to own and operate less efficient vehicles (see tobacco tax for a similar example). The second part is what makes the Reichwing squeal so loudly: it goes smack against their commitment to conspicuous consumption. Trouble is the US is far more addicted to petroleum in general and gasoline in particular than it is/was to tobacco. Chances are that by the time electric vehicles become the norm there will be alternate taxation in place to fund infrastructure – and there’s a part of me that expects pork in the treetops before the majority of US vehicles are battery (or grid) powered.
RaflW
@SFAW: They are going to have to evolve, or their precious movement will die out, or at least be a rump party.
RaflW
@srv: So which roads do we privatize? All of them? Just the interstates? What about two-lane rural US highways or state aid highways?
Folks toss out “privatize” for roads as if the product is as neatly packaged as a diamond HOV lane. For most road uses most of the time, it just isn’t. And for that, a user tax is the most logical and fair. Gas has been the best proxy for use. Hybrids and all-electric cars are changing that, but for now a gas tax plus license tabs seems the most manageable.
The commenter who railed against invasive mileage tracking, well what about private businesses tracking your every move for rate-paying? Then again, our phones are telling private companies our locations all the time as well.
Mike E
@john b: If the rail corridor/right of way can accommodate this, they should go for it. We in the Triangle are chomping at the bit for these options, but Raleigh is geographically impinged by narrow and/or over-developed rail corridors, so Hello, bus!
/sorry for the atrios rant
dedc79
@boatboy_srq: The ICC in maryland is another one. In VA, they are at least aggressively pushing ridesharing on I-66. My understanding is that you can’t even use that road during rush hour unless you’ve got more than one person in the car.
Paul in KY
@Sherparick: Had to wiki ole Rollo. Didn’t know he was 1st Duke of Normandy.
Ben
@Brendan in Charlotte:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Expressway
Roger Moore
@Xantar:
Vehicle licensing fees, hopefully indexed to weight. People here in California are actually talking about adding an extra fee for electric and plug-in hybrids to make up for them not paying the gas tax.
Doug Gardner
@srv: You’re really not even trying anymore. I wasn’t aware that Obama controlled oil prices, as it is a global commodity. Here’s a cookie – go away.
SFAW
@RaflW:
I’ve been hearing that for awhile, hasn’t seemed to have affected them that much. as long as they can keep the electorate stoopid, then they can pass whatever restrictive laws they want, or gerrymander (more subtly than those instances where they’ve been caught, of course) large states, then they’ll be driving the bus.
I hope I live long enough for your prognosis to come to pass, but I doubt that I will. Maybe my grandchildren (if I ever have any).
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore:
See, what they perhaps should do is charge everyone that fee, and then turn the gas tax into a rebated, revenue-neutral tax.
The problem is that the gas tax is overloaded with two purposes that are to some degree at cross-purposes: it’s a disincentive to consume a lot of gasoline, but it’s also functionally a fee for consuming something other than gasoline (the roads), so responding pro-socially to the one function makes you a free rider on the other.
A guy
Here in West Virginia, perfectly fine and functional road signs, milepost signs and light poles are being replaced. The roads still crumble but the signs are bright and shiny