Federal Department of Transportation Funding

Image from Transit Miami.

I have been meaning to write about Mary Peters' op-ed in the Washington Post from a couple weeks ago about how we don't need to raise gasoline excise taxes--despite the fact that the fund is supposed to be dissipated by 2009--in the face of perceived increased highway infrastructure needs, because so much of the money spent is expended on wasteful earmarks, and if only those could be eliminated, there would be beaucoup bucks...

(See "The Folly of Higher Gas Taxes.")

A week before the Peters piece ran, the Wall Street Journal ran a great piece, with lots of numbers, about the state of the federal excise tax for gasoline, "The Gasoline Tax: Should It Rise?" (8/18/2007), but it isn't available online as open access.

The blog Transit Miami created and ran this graphic, which illustrates the truth of the matter.

Maybe there is a bunch of money in that funding stream expended on walking and bicycling, but of the 97% of spending on transportation, I can't imagine it's all that big a percentage... And sure there are wasteful earmarks, like bridges to serve 300 people, but overall most of the earmarks are likely doing reasonable things, just changing (often not for the good) the priority and timing of the improvement.

This isn't the WSJ piece I was referring to, "Fuel-Efficient Cars Dent States' Road Budgets," but it's interesting nonetheless.