How much will this cost us?

......

Quote:

"FTA obligated about $24 billion—about 17 percent of the total obligations—from the HTF, almost all of it through grants to local and state transit agencies and governments to provide transit service, including grants for capital projects, planning, and operating assistance."

Think about it!

24 BILLION of the fuel taxes, DUH, that's 24 thousand million dollars! It went to mass transportation and NOT to roads and bridges where it was supposed to go. What would or could that amount of money done for roads and/or bridges? One mile of NEW Interstate highway averages 1 million dollars to construct per the DOT Interstate construction report. Therefore, 24 billion dollars would be enough to build 24,000 miles of Interstate or enough to build 8 Interstates from New York City to Los Angeles. Interstates are ROADS. Now just think and imagine how many miles of 2-4 lane ROADS it would build or resurface or how many BRIDGES it would replace or repair! QUIT wasting out fuel tax monies on local mass transit!

I rest my case your Honor!

Not taking any sides here. Just presenting info.
This summary is exactly quoted from GAO (Govt. Accountability Office) for FY 2009-2011; page 3, GAO-13-193R Highway Trust Fund Obligations

During fiscal years 2009 through 2011, four administrations within DOT obligated about $144 billion from the HTF.10

FHWA obligated the largest share—about 81 percent—of this total, specifically: FHWA obligated $116.7 billion from the HTF.
A majority—about 81 percent—was obligated to construct and maintain highways and bridges.
The remainder was obligated for other purposes such as safety, debt service, traffic management and planning and utilities, and for transportation enhancements.

FTA obligated about $24 billion—about 17 percent of the total obligations—from the HTF, almost all of it through grants to local and state transit agencies and governments to provide transit service, including grants for capital projects, planning, and operating assistance.

NHTSA obligated about $1.9 billion from the HTF mostly in safety grants to states and localities.

FMCSA obligated about $1.6 billion from the HTF for motor carrier safety grants to states and localities and to support their efforts to enforce federal commercial motor carrier safety standards.

Link to full report

We ALL pay more than enough to have GOOD highways, BUT much of the gasoline and fuel taxes are siphoned off to pay for MANY OTHER projects and programs other than highways.
NOW THAT is the PROBLEM! If we could just allocate ALL funds that are intended for highways to be spent ONLY for highways! Anybody heard of mass transit, etc. high speed rail? Intercity bus service all these siphon off fuel tax money!
NO MORE TAXES!

BuckBarker wrote:
RG, the roads are maintained with fuel taxes and overall, we are driving less and the vehicles are getting better mpg, so the funds need to come from somewhere. What would YOU suggest?

I would suggest the Fed and states take the fuel tax money they already collect and use it to fix the roads instead of raiding the fuel taxes collected to pay for welfare and other not highway use expenditures. If they did that, there would be plenty of $$$ for highway funds.

I would have had no problem with the Federal fuel Tax being indexed to inflation as that only makes reasonable sense. However it and all fuel taxes collected must only go only for roads and bridges on roads as the siphoning off billions upon billions of dollars to be used for mostly frivelous local mass transit projects is just not right. The mass transit projects are only a possible benefit to local residents of the area they are in and leave the rest of the population in the vast majority of the real country's problems in the lurch and sucking fruitlessly for needed road upkeep etc funds.

Loading a bus (mass transit) with people means there's only one vehicle use of the roads and further drastically decreases fuel tax revenues collected. Anything that runs on rails doesn't use the roads at all so why are they getting road/fuel tax help? Fuel road tax is supposed to be for roads not willy nilly pet projects.

Cities/areas should be selling bonds like they do for other local projects and have private businesses compete for the building and operation of mass transit paid for by collected fares not citizens buying fuel on the other side of the country. The local community residents should be paying for their own wants or needs. Cities/districts have to build and maintain their cities local roads, schools, public buildings, infrastructure, etc as it's an asset and for use almost exclusively by the local residents not the residents of far away or even the next city/community. Why not have those residents be responsible for their own mass transit that's desired or wanted? Why are the people who live 1,000, 2,000, or 3,000 miles away and never will use or even see the mass transit in a local population area financing local in the city/area projects? It's not as if it's a road to get around the USA! States have their own fuel taxes they collect.

Add in the getting rid or wasteful usless programs is even more important and when combining with road tax being used for ROADS as it's was enacted for would provide the X times the funds for superb highways and other national roads as all states have their own fuel taxes for local region and state roads.

I don't like having to use this term but it's so true! Stop the waste, fraud, and abuse now!

valhalla360 wrote:

bid_time wrote:
Increasing the load by 12.5% increases the road wear by 42% - BULL!!

THERE IS NO STATISTIC TO BACK UP THAT HYPOTHESIS.
"Some Road Planners say the toll is higher". Who are these road planners? The NCAT has a test track in Alabama. These use real world pavements and test them with real world trucks. They use real world tests to ASTM standards, to compute real live data - NOT "some road planners" talking out of his butt with nothing but hot air to back it up.

Not sure about the exact percentages but they look right.

Back in school in our pavement design courses, we reviewed studies done back in the 50's. The govt built test tracks and paid drivers to drive them 24/7 with trucks of various loads.

The common number thrown out is that a fully loaded interstate semi does 10,000 times the damage of a typical passenger car and the relationship increases with the square of the weight, so a truck that is twice the legal limit (Michigan allows that as an example) won't do 20,000 times the damage of a typical car but 40,000 times the damage.

When we design interstate pavements, we don't even consider passenger cars. They are such a tiny percentage of the calculation that they don't matter.

If you want to see an example, find a weigh station (it must be in regular use and that's often not true as cutbacks leave many closed for long periods) and watch the pavement was you go by it. What you often see is a pavement that was in bad shape suddently get visibly better as soon as you pass the exit ramp and as soon as you pass the entrance ramp it goes back to being bad.

Now to take a step back, that doesn't mean the average semi should pay 10,000 times the taxes. Roads need to be repaired and replaced due to two distinct failure mechanisms:
- Heavy trucks beating the snot out of them
- Simple age: If you prohibit any vehilce larger than a smart car and give it 20-30yrs, you will find the pavement starts to show failures. They will be somewhat different in nature but failures none the less (the exact type depends on the pavement type and the environment).

On top of that, the average freeway can accomodate all the trucks in a single lane per direction, easily. It's the multitude of passenger vehilces that create the need for 2,3,4 or more lanes in each direction. If you built and maintained a truck only roadway, you could cut the costs drastically.

Taxes related to trucking should go up from where they are now but passenger vehicles should still make up the bulk.

As far as the idea that consumers will pay more for goods...they already are, it's just that that you will see the direct cost rather than having it hidden in taxes.

Every thing you say is technically correct. However, you did not take into account the design load of the pavement. Now,you have to decide what your definition of the term "damage" is. Now a 1 lb load on a pavement with designed for a 80,000 lb load will have nill effect on the pavement, you can increase that 1 lb load by a thousand, and it still will have nill effect. Until you start talking about design load vs. actual load there is no correlation in load vs. damage.

So I will say it again. On second thought, forget it, this is a nonsense discussion; and was all started by some un-identified "road planner, with no background, no data, and no basis in fact. I'm done.

The U. S. Federal gasoline tax has stood at 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993. What would it be now if it was indexed for inflation? If it had been raised a penny a year it would be 38.4 cents.

For interstates what is the Fed/State split in costs? I think it's 90/10 so that's why there has been the prohibition of tolls on the interstates except where, I believe, the road existed or was funded primarily by state funds, i.e. the Penn Turnpike.

bid_time wrote:
Increasing the load by 12.5% increases the road wear by 42% - BULL!!

THERE IS NO STATISTIC TO BACK UP THAT HYPOTHESIS.
"Some Road Planners say the toll is higher". Who are these road planners? The NCAT has a test track in Alabama. These use real world pavements and test them with real world trucks. They use real world tests to ASTM standards, to compute real live data - NOT "some road planners" talking out of his butt with nothing but hot air to back it up.

Not sure about the exact percentages but they look right.

Back in school in our pavement design courses, we reviewed studies done back in the 50's. The govt built test tracks and paid drivers to drive them 24/7 with trucks of various loads.

The common number thrown out is that a fully loaded interstate semi does 10,000 times the damage of a typical passenger car and the relationship increases with the square of the weight, so a truck that is twice the legal limit (Michigan allows that as an example) won't do 20,000 times the damage of a typical car but 40,000 times the damage.

When we design interstate pavements, we don't even consider passenger cars. They are such a tiny percentage of the calculation that they don't matter.

If you want to see an example, find a weigh station (it must be in regular use and that's often not true as cutbacks leave many closed for long periods) and watch the pavement was you go by it. What you often see is a pavement that was in bad shape suddently get visibly better as soon as you pass the exit ramp and as soon as you pass the entrance ramp it goes back to being bad.

Now to take a step back, that doesn't mean the average semi should pay 10,000 times the taxes. Roads need to be repaired and replaced due to two distinct failure mechanisms:
- Heavy trucks beating the snot out of them
- Simple age: If you prohibit any vehilce larger than a smart car and give it 20-30yrs, you will find the pavement starts to show failures. They will be somewhat different in nature but failures none the less (the exact type depends on the pavement type and the environment).

On top of that, the average freeway can accomodate all the trucks in a single lane per direction, easily. It's the multitude of passenger vehilces that create the need for 2,3,4 or more lanes in each direction. If you built and maintained a truck only roadway, you could cut the costs drastically.

Taxes related to trucking should go up from where they are now but passenger vehicles should still make up the bulk.

As far as the idea that consumers will pay more for goods...they already are, it's just that that you will see the direct cost rather than having it hidden in taxes.

Francesca Knowles wrote:

bid_time wrote:
Increasing the load by 12.5% increases the road wear by 42% - BULL!!

THERE IS NO STATISTIC TO BACK UP THAT HYPOTHESIS.

Well, yes, there is/are; though it's not a "hypothesis", it's a plain fact. If anything, it actually understates the impact. I s'pose there are national variables due to weather etc.

For those who understand enough engineering/"non linear" math to absorb the data, here's a link to a fully annotated/backed up document. It's from Minnesota, and represents one of the studies that finds the damage increase to be even greater than that estimated above. Do please note the language per "geometric rate". Damage isn't straight-line related to beginning number.

A conventional five-axle tractor-semitrailer operating at 80,000 pounds gross vehicle weight (GVW) is equivalent to about 2.4 ESALs.
If the weight of this vehicle were increased to 90,000 pounds (a 12.5 percent increase), its ESAL value goes up to 4.1 (a 70.8 percent increase), because pavement damage increases at a geometric rate with weight increases.

Link to source

Maybe you can direct me to the table that says 12.5% increase in Load causes 47% more damage to the road. Because an increase in ESAL does not cause a straight line increase in damage. There are hundreds of varialbes. The easiest one for you to comprehend is pavement thickness. A 1000 psi load on a 48-inch thick, 6000 psi concrete pavement won't cause any more damage than a 890 psi load (12.5% increase). Before you start talking about ESAL you need to know something about CBR.

That would be like saying if you drive your smart car over your driveway its safe. If you drive your pickup over your driveway (whichs weighs double) it'll crack. It doesn't work that way.

Sorry, but your ESAL is all about load. There is no correlation that says a increase in load increases damage.

Now I'm going to repeat it for you:
Increasing the load by 12.5% increases the road wear by 42% - BULL!!