Study: Drivers don’t pay full cost of roads
BUSINESS RECORD STAFF Oct 29, 2015 | 3:42 pm
1 min read time
292 wordsAll Latest News, Transportation|
A report published earlier this year confirms that drivers don’t come close to paying for the costs of the roads they use, The Atlantic reported.
Published jointly by the Frontier Group and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, “Who Pays for Roads?” exposes the myth that drivers pay fully for the roads they are using.
The report documents that the amount that road users pay through fuel taxes now accounts for less than half of what’s spent to maintain and expand the road system.
The resulting shortfall is made up from other sources of tax revenue at the state and local levels, generated by drivers and non-drivers alike. This subsidizing of car ownership costs the typical household about $1,100 per year over and above the costs of gasoline taxes, tolls and other user fees.
While congressional bailouts of the Highway Trust Fund have made this subsidy more apparent, it has actually never been the case that road users paid their own way. Not only that, but the amount spent on roads that comes from sources other than driver or fuel fees has steadily increased in recent years. The share of the costs paid from road-user fees has dropped from about 70 percent in the 1960s to less than half today, according to the study. |
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