Ask different questions

There's not enough money to maintain, let alone expand America's roads.

There are plenty of disagreements to be had about transportation infrastructure funding. Scenario brainstorming about how to fund roads is common:

• Should it be funded by taxpayers, regardless of their driving habits?

• Should it be funded by charging users per mile?

• Since heavy trucks tear apart roads, what if users paid according to weight?

• What if roads were privatized, and we let the owner/operators figure out funding? 

Most people leap right over the part where there's a massive funding gap. 

The Highway Trust Fund is a transportation fund in the United States which receives money from a federal fuel tax of 18.4 cents per gallon on gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon of diesel fuel and related excise taxes. It currently has two accounts, the Highway Account funding road construction and other surface transportation projects, and a smaller Mass Transit Account supporting mass transit. (Source: Wikipedia)

The Highway Trust Fund has been in a state of bankruptcy for the past decade. 

According to the Eno Center for Transportation, Congress has bailed out the fund to the tune of $143.6 billion to keep it afloat. 

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report titled The Status of the Highway Trust Fund: 2023 Update  says that federal spending on highways totaled $52 billion in 2022, with most of those outlays being for grants to state and local governments to support their spending on capital projects. Historically, most federal spending for highways has been paid for by revenues from excise taxes on gasoline, diesel, and other motor fuels. 

But for more than 20 years, the feds spend more than the fund receives, prompting transfers from the Treasury’s general fund to make up the difference. A third of federal dollars that go to DOTs and MPOs are subsidies because motorists don’t pay enough in taxes to fund the highways they use.

The CBO projects that balances in both the highway and transit accounts of the Highway Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2028. If the taxes that are currently credited to the trust fund remained in place and if funding for highway and transit programs increased annually at the rate of inflation, the shortfalls accumulated in the Highway Trust Fund’s highway and transit accounts from 2024 to 2033 would total $241 billion.

If this was treated like personal budgeting, the first questions would be:

• How can we reduce expenses?

• How can we increase revenue?

• If we can’t afford to even maintain what we have, how quickly can we stop new spending?

• What mobility options exist that work within the existing built systems?

It’s particularly important for urbanists to have some awareness of the financial disaster surrounding transportation infrastructure. Every time a state DOT or local public works department pitches a new road widening project, somebody (or a group of somebodies) could be articulating a counter-proposal that begins with “You don’t have the money to pay for this, and neither do the Feds.”