Posted on 10/04/2010 10:37:28 AM PDT by Willie Green
The United States is saddled with a rapidly decaying and woefully underfunded transportation system that will undermine its status in the global economy unless Congress and the public embrace innovative reforms, a bipartisan panel of experts concludes in a report released Monday.
U.S. investment in preservation and development of transportation infrastructure lags so far behind that of China, Russia and European nations that it will lead to "a steady erosion of the social and economic foundations for American prosperity in the long run."
That is a central conclusion in a report issued on behalf of about 80 transportation experts who met for three days in September 2009 at the University of Virginia. Few of their conclusions were ground-breaking, but the weight of their credentials lends gravity to their findings.
~~~SNIP~~~
The key to salvation is developing new long-term funding sources to replace the waning revenues from federal and state gas taxes which largely paid for the construction and expansion of the highway system in the 1950s and 1960s, the report says.
A major hike in the federal gas tax, which has remained unchanged since it bumped to 18.4 cents per gallon in 1993, might be the most politically palatable way to boost revenue in the short term, the report said, but over the long haul, Americans should expect to pay for each mile that they drive.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The money’s there. Tell ‘em to quite pi$$ing it away on bike paths.
I agree 1000%. Government at all levels should immediately stop the practice of siphoning fuel tax revenue from road maintenance into non-road related projects. Putting that revenue, paid for by the driving public, back into road maintenance, would make an immediate positive impact on the quality of roads in the USA.
We already do. The farther one drives the more gasoline one uses, therefore the more gas tax one pays.
What kind of brain dead, mouth breathing, drooling morons write this crap? More importantly what kind of leeches post this crap on FR?
You know you have a winning argument when the WAPO agrees. NOT - MACACA ALERT.
I have been watching political news for several decades now and I see massive transportation spending bills--at both the federal and state level--passed on a regular basis. The last "stimulus" was a transportation boondogle that funded a number of questionable road expansions in my area.
And yet the interest groups still claim that transportation is "decaying and woefully underfunded." To these groups, enough will NEVER be spent. To paraphrase the old CCR song, "When the taxpayer asks, how much should I give for transportation, they just keep saying 'More More More.'"
exactly they need to use the money to fix and build roads before they even consider anything else.
“New sources of revenue”, “High-speed rail”, “liveable communities”... why am I not surprised? Did I really expect to read anything new about the subject in the WaPo?
Congress plundering our highway funds for purposes other than highway maintenance is a long-known problem.
On the state, county and municipal level the “crumbling of America” is the result of spending ever greater percentages of budgets on phat public employee wages and pensions.
Norm Mineta, Clinton Cabinet Appointee. Yea, I'd put that on my resume. NOT.
Sam Skinner-RINO extraordinnaire, Government leech.
Jeff Shane, a former Transportation Department official and a member of the panel. Another Government leech.
So here's the big, shocking BOLD HEADLINE: Government Leeches In Favor Of More Tax Money So they Never Have To Get Real Jobs!!!
Scumsucking bottomfeeding trash the lot of 'em.
I’m sure the “bipartisan panel of experts” consists of people who work for highway construction companies and manufacturers of rail systems.
Abolish the DOT, let the States keep the taxes and watch bridges and highway repair flourish at least in the Red States!
Obama has already done it, we could have $1.00 a gallon gasoline if we had term limits.
Americans should expect to pay for each mile that they drive.
That idea deserves the same pineapple up the cornhole response we gave the 55MPH speed limit.
Good grief.
It appears that a journalism degree recipient is incapable of understanding anything.
What a bunch of maroons.
Wonder how America got started without govt transportation.
How can we claim to have "overbuilt" our highways when traffic just keeps getting worse and worse and worse? If anything, our highways need to be expanded. As for oil, that is a self-inflicted problem.
We need to upgrade our passenger rail systems instead.
Well, even if the government is going to do this, why not insist that the riders of these services pay the full costs of their operation, just as those who drive do so with roads? And that doesn't even factor in the extra money paid by drivers that gets spent on things that are not related to roads at all.
Because Willie is a Socialist, that's why. It's not your money. Willie and his Merry Band of Government Thieves will take as much as they like, for whatever they like, and you'll keep quiet about it, prole.
L
Actually if you go to the link they're almost all "Government experts". Shocking I know....
And toy "lite rail" trains, and empty busses, and $100K per year bus drivers, and hiking trails, ad nauseum.
You are exactly right. Our transportation money is pissed away on trendy socialist BS that our obergruppenfuehers have a woody for. NOT for what moves the country.
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