Cars, Highways, and the Poor

...In his June 2009 Senate testimony, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood said that the White House would “oppose a gas tax increase during this recessionary period,” but provided no clues as to how he would fund his agency...

...The current decline in car use spells disaster for the Fund...

...Tolls also have the hard-to-manage tendency to increase traffic on other roads nearby...

...Conservatives defend highway spending because it “pays for itself...

...Key Democratic lawmakers have blasted it as a violation of personal privacy because it would require the installation of satellite-linked GPS units or the imposition of mandatory odometer checks...

...In contrast, only 33 percent of New York’s population drives to work...

...Progressives like the ecological advantages of limiting driving by increasing its cost...

...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS Cars, Highways, and the Poor YONAH FREEMARK The infusion of money into highways through gasoline taxes and the suburban exodus of the middle class and their adoption of the automobile as the primary mode of transportation profoundly altered the nation’s landscape over the past fifty years...

...Having already obligated billions to states ready to build new roads and transit systems, Congress in 2008 had no choice but to dip into the general treasury and authorize an $8 billion infusion of income tax revenues to fill the Fund’s emptied coffers...

...Ironically, the federal transportation system’s emphasis on highway construction has produced a car-dependent class whose members cannot afford any hike in commuting costs...

...In the short term, Congress will likely continue to rely on fill-up money from the general treasury...

...The city-state has used the funds to expand public transportation to handle 66 percent of intra-island travel, compared with only 40 percent thirty years ago...

...Despite criticism that the fee would hurt the poor, middle- and lower-income commuters would be minimally affected because they already have access to an extensive network of cheap bus and rail connections that would only be improved with the help of new funding...

...Although progressive transportation activists hail this decline, they must face the challenge of advocating policies that do not adversely affect the poor, who now live mainly outside of inner cities and rely on cars for access to jobs, food, schools, and services...

...Progressive proponents of user fees, however, overlook a massive demographic shift: the poor have moved out of cities...

...For decades, U.S...

...But the failure of the fuel tax to cover the costs of the transportation system suggests a more general failure: the current system does not meet the needs of a modern America in which rich and poor alike increasingly live in the suburbs...

...The difference shows in the deterioration of our roads and bridges...

...transportation policy prioritized the completion of the Interstate Highway System, whose multi-lane freeways now span out across the country like a spider’s web...

...They are the only places whose urban poor would be the least affected by any reform that emphasizes higher automobile fees...

...Where will the money come from...

...The system was self-reinforcing: the more people in cars, the more concrete could be laid...

...Places like Phoenix and Arlington are the rule rather than the exception...

...The first quandary is how to fund desperately needed road improvements while simultaneously pushing for changes that will make mass transit more feasible in suburban areas...

...New revenue could be used to expand public transit, one of the major objectives of the Left’s transportation policy...

...One option is the vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) tax, which would charge drivers for their use of the roadways...

...A case in point is Phoenix, Arizona, where sprawling suburbs and a relative dearth of bus and train service force nearly 90 percent of commuters to use their cars—this despite the fact that 16 percent of that city’s inhabitants live in poverty...

...But most of the political world is against it...

...Washington is mired in debt, but cutting funding for transportation is not an option...

...In the short-term, the gas tax is the only realistic option,” Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution told me, citing its current use and the ease with which it could be raised...

...In 2006, for the first time, more of the nation’s impoverished families lived in the suburbs than in central cities—not to mention the millions living in sprawling municipalities whose form replicates suburbia in all but name...

...Hybrids and small cars are replacing gas-guzzlers...

...These people, who lack access to alternative modes of transportation, would be the most penalized by any approach that advocates user fees...

...Neither solution would encourage the purchase of fuel-efficient vehicles, in contrast to the gas tax...

...Another possibility is widespread tolling of the kind already seen along highways in the Northeast, but it is considered politically suicidal to charge people to drive on roads that were once free...

...In the early 1990s, Congress twice increased fuel charges to make up gaps in the system, and that solution beckons again...

...For fifty years, the idea that a user fee of some sort should lie at the heart of the funding for any transportation project reigned supreme...

...At last count, the network was more than 45,000 miles long...

...the United States spends only 2 percent of GDP on infrastructure compared to 5 percent for most European countries and 10 percent for China...

...Raising user fees would reduce the number of cars on the road...

...As a result, this recent switch to income-taxderived funds is a paradigm shift—and a great opportunity...

...really needs to learn more from the best global experience,” said Michael Repogle of the Environmental Defense Fund in an interview, citing Singapore as a model for American policy...

...When gas hit four dollars a gallon in 2008, however, something exceptional happened: for the first time in history, the number of miles driven in passenger vehicles dropped...

...But Congress has yet to find a long-term way to replenish the Fund...

...The U.S...

...The program was easy to understand: drivers paid taxes on their gasoline consumption, Washington replenished the Highway Trust Fund, and revenues were redistributed to the states to construct new roads...

...A recent study by the American Society of Civil Engineers projects a five-year shortfall of more than $750 billion in the expenditures necessary to maintain today’s ground transportation system...

...Any of these options would raise a political firestorm, but the user fee approach—whether based on gas consumption or road use—remains most attractive because it has garnered support on both ends of the ideological spectrum...

...The trend seemed inevitable: America would be a nation of drivers residing in unwalkable, monofunctional neighborhoods far from city centers...

...We can now imagine revenues being raised in a way that would encourage the development of a more equitable and environmentally conscious society less reliant on the automobile...

...For years, New York City has considered implementing a similar congestion charge system that would assess a fee on car owners entering or driving in the central business district south of Manhattan’s 60th Street...

...In worst-case Arlington, Texas, population 400,000, there is no bus service at all, despite the city’s 10 percent poverty rate...

...If it was once accurate to stereotype Amer...

...Though fuel prices have declined, the reduction in gas consumption is a long-term trend...

...eventually, electric vehicles that use no taxable fuel at all may become the norm...

...There is no easy answer...

...This lesson can be generalized to other cities—rare as they may be—that have a strong public transit system...

...Yet alternatives are just as difficult to propose during an economic downturn...

...In 2009, facing the same difficulties, the government repeated the action—twice...

...That country’s use of an electronic toll on cars entering downtown has allowed it to reduce traffic congestion significantly since 1975, even as citizens have “increased their motor vehicle ownership by three times...