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kitler53 on 09 August 2011
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mrstickball said:
sethnintendo said:
mrstickball said:
thranx said:
makes sense to me. If the feds want to raid the gas tax for other uses (suprise suprise the feds just doing what they want with your taxes) why not just take that money away and leave it up to states like it should of been in the first place. I hope the states start trying to get more power from the feds.

Thats generally the mantra of the Tea Party. Less federal government, and more state power.

If you are unfamiliar with mass transit in America, it is a boondoggle. I understand it works in countries such as Europe, but due to population densities, most systems incur significant losses. For example, the government has been covering Amtrack's losses for decades, costing taxpayers billions of dollars a year in what amounts to nothing more than subsidies.

States are the ones that invest in infrastructure. Each state has its own gas tax, and is directly responsible for administration of roads, and their populace.

Let me just inform you what Texas does for their road construction.  They use tax payer money to build new highways / expand existing highways.  They then turn them into toll roads and sell them to private companies/governments (Spanish company I think owns most).   So basically the citizens are taxed two times.  They are taxed to build the road and then taxed to use the road which the money goes out of country to a foreign business.  Does that sound like good road management to you? 

I won't even address mass transportation.  I can understand a private company spending their own money building a road/highway then having it a toll road.  I can't understand using US tax payer money to build roads/highways then selling them to foreign companies to turn into toll roads.  I want your views on state's selling their highways to foreign companies after building them with US tax payer money. 

Let me respond to your question with a question, hehe:

Is the government screwing up the roads they are turning over to a private entity or not? If they are running fine and maintaining proper revenue, then I think it is indeed stupid - as you said, a double tax on the citizens.

However, there are times that its better to turn over to a private entity and cut your losses. In Ohio and the surrounding states, we have a massive tollroad that stretches from Illinois through PA - I-80. The government charges money to drive on it, in addition to the taxes taken to build the thing in the first place. Not only do they charge for it, they are losing money (we're about $500 million in debt from our portion of the turnpike)....So the tax payers get screwed three ways in Ohio: They paid taxes to build the roads, they pay to drive on it, and they pay interest on the debt that the road still has.

So in that kind of case, I do believe its better to just cut your losses and sell to a private entity. In the case of Ohio, the government is making about $3 billion from leasing the tollroad to a company based out of Australia. This company leases the tollroad in Indiana as well, and their tolls are about 30% cheaper than Ohio, so the taxpayers recover some losses in this situation - the $500 million debt is paid off, the $2.5 billion goes into balancing the budget (which resulted in lower state income taxes for the middle class), and we get cheaper toll roads.

But I digress, Ohio is a FUBAR'ed situation. Texas may not be that way, and they are doing something. My belief is that if it works well, don't break it. If the Texas roads are doing fine under government control - great. If they are not, then other alternatives should be considered. Additionally, I would question what the government is doing with the revenues from selling/leasing the roads: are they lowering taxes which may re-coup taxpayer money being spent on these roads, or are they using it to pay off favored constituents, ect? I fear I have more questions than answers in the case of Texas, as I do not live there, and don't fully know the situation. I could see it being potentially abhorent, or potentially logical.

i'm confused by this entire train of thought.

the federal government does not fund tollway interstates, tolled interstates are funded by the state via bonds and pays for those bonds with tolls.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/tollroad.cfm