Funding transportation

Marc Fisher has a column, "Kaine Should Try Alternate Route To Transportation Financing," in today's paper (Washington Post) on the ongoing transportation infrastructure funding crisis in Virginia. His column makes a number of good points, that there are really (at least) three issues:

1. It's unreasonable for Northern Virginia to keep sending most of its state tax revenue to other parts of Virginia, that NoVA has clear financing needs best met by using this revenue stream closer to home.

2. That investment in transportation infrastructure benefits the entire state, so that it is reasonable for RoVA (the rest of Virginia) to fund improvements in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, since these two areas are the economic centers of the state as a whole.

3. That all who use the roads should pay extra to help finance transportation fixes. That means raising state gasoline excise taxes, which hasn't been raised since 1986.
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(Plus a lot of people buy gas in Virginia traveling up and down I-95 and the other Interstate highway corridors. Tag them/us...)

And people still fail to accept that 50% of the cost of roads generally is subsidized from state and local tax revenues. Drivers do not pay their way.