4 ms·

The park is not part of infrastructure. It is a perk that the government decided to be responsible for that is a vestige of urbanized planners taking cues from

by Agustus 10y ago

The park is not part of infrastructure. It is a perk that the government decided to be responsible for that is a vestige of urbanized planners taking cues from New York and Philadelphia. Your street is part of a system that was put in place through the urban planners and is probably maintained by the municipality, if you would like to volunteer to not have them maintain it, you can always ask them to. * Streets are paid for in the United States through the gas taxes collected from the distribution of fuels. It is a user tax. * Water and electricity are maintained and run by utilities through their use rates. I will pre-empt the discourse and note that water is heavily subsidized by the government and creates weird incentives (I am looking at you Arizona with your green lawns). * Transit, bicycle, and pedestrian movements are subsidized by the gas tax. In this case, your statement would be true.

jacobolus 10y ago
> Streets are paid for in the United States through the gas taxes collected from the distribution of fuels. It is a user tax. This is not the whole story. http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-user-fees-pay-only-half-state-local-road-spending http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-user-fee... (ignore the advocacy here, just look at the numbers)
- Agustus 10y ago
  The way this is set up means that the content creator has no idea how funding works. 1. Toll revenue goes to toll facilities. Private public partnerships (PPP's) need to be repaid and the tolls collected go directly to the repayment of the bonds, maintenance, and general operations. 2. Transit siphons monies away from the use tax. Transit exists only because of the user tax. While people see autos as bad, they fund the transit that provides movement for poor individuals. I am okay with this. 3. State and local roads is oddly worded in this phrase and brings a warning to my periphery review. Most states have amendments and/charters that require fuel funds to be allocated to the roadways, Wisconsin (http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Finance/fueltaxes.htm http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Finance/fueltaxes.htm), Florida, and a number of others that do not take money from other sources. In fact in Florida, the highway funds are raided yearly to fill in budget gaps. The best I can come up with on how this chart was made to get the 50% concept is that FHWA provides matching funds for projects, the reason is that they want to provide a carrot to meet federally required mandates, such as interstates and state roads on the National Highway System. If you kick in these monies, which is free money, then you can get there. However, this is an advocacy program. One last note. The writing is on the wall for the gas tax long term. The federal level is already having a shortfall in revenue because of the CAFE standards increase. This is why states like Oregon are trying out the Vehicle Miles Traveled tax, because they need to switch out how the roadways are paid for.

by Agustus 10y ago

jacobolus 10y ago

> Streets are paid for in the United States through the gas taxes collected from the distribution of fuels. It is a user tax. This is not the whole story. http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-user-fees-pay-only-half-state-local-road-spending http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-user-fee... (ignore the advocacy here, just look at the numbers)

Agustus 10y ago
The way this is set up means that the content creator has no idea how funding works. 1. Toll revenue goes to toll facilities. Private public partnerships (PPP's) need to be repaid and the tolls collected go directly to the repayment of the bonds, maintenance, and general operations. 2. Transit siphons monies away from the use tax. Transit exists only because of the user tax. While people see autos as bad, they fund the transit that provides movement for poor individuals. I am okay with this. 3. State and local roads is oddly worded in this phrase and brings a warning to my periphery review. Most states have amendments and/charters that require fuel funds to be allocated to the roadways, Wisconsin (http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Finance/fueltaxes.htm http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Finance/fueltaxes.htm), Florida, and a number of others that do not take money from other sources. In fact in Florida, the highway funds are raided yearly to fill in budget gaps. The best I can come up with on how this chart was made to get the 50% concept is that FHWA provides matching funds for projects, the reason is that they want to provide a carrot to meet federally required mandates, such as interstates and state roads on the National Highway System. If you kick in these monies, which is free money, then you can get there. However, this is an advocacy program. One last note. The writing is on the wall for the gas tax long term. The federal level is already having a shortfall in revenue because of the CAFE standards increase. This is why states like Oregon are trying out the Vehicle Miles Traveled tax, because they need to switch out how the roadways are paid for.