[awalton]

It's fun that nobody ever includes the cost of the Interstate Highway System into these throwaway calculations, as if the roads just magically appeared and are maintained by faeries. As if the roads, car companies, and the airlines aren't "massively subsidized" with energy (fuel and corn->ethanol) subsidies.

We spent half a trillion dollars building the IHS over five decades, and have historically thrown at least a few billion a year at US oil producers - is it really surprising to anyone that driving is cheap? We keep bailing out the airline industry repeatedly - we already gave them $25 billion in grants this year because of the coronavirus, and they're still asking for more.

But, dare we build an alternative to those systems, one that could be more ecologically and financially sound? Nope, too busy feeding our sunk cost industries. Keep blaming Amtrak for being terrible while refusing to give them their own run of rails so they don't constantly get stuck behind freighter traffic. Keep shuting down High Speed Rail projects around the country because the billionaires don't want it in their back yards.

[supportlocal4h]

I am often guilty of ignoring real costs of car travel. You didn't even mention the purchase price of the car which is included in the rail ticket. Or the rest of the $0.55/mile in tire maintenance, insurance, oil changes, battery replacement, etc.

[jandrese]

For a personal calculation it is a moot point. You're paying the taxes to maintain those roads even if you take the train or a plane.

A true market based solution would be to make all major roads toll roads and use the funds collected to maintain said roads. With EZ-Pass/SmartTag/etc... this could be practical. The problem with toll roads is that local governments tend to use them as a piggybank so you end up with poorly maintained expensive road.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

While this looks good at first sight, it reminds me of robbery, wegelagerei/highwayman when thinking longer about it. I mean you need roads anyways, always, if only for emergency- and utility services. Are they exempt, priced in? What about bicyclists? Will there even be roads accessible to bicyclists between cities in such a system? Or can they simply fuck off, because no market for it? What about freedom of movement?

[pg_bot]

We raise ~36 Billion dollars in fuel taxes per annum. That's why no one complains about the Interstate Highway System, it pays for itself.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2016/f...

[bobthepanda]

From the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, hardly a negative source about highways: https://www.artba.org/about/faq/

> Highways: The FAST Act provides $45.3 billion for highway and bridge improvements in FY 2019 (the fiscal year from Oct. 1, 2018 through Sept. 30, 2019) and grows this amount to $46.4 billion by FY 2020. Most federal highway investment is used to upgrade and maintain the nation’s core highways, including the Interstate Highway System, and to repair and replace deficient bridges.

> An additional $3.4 billion was provided for highway and bridge investments as part of the final FY 2019 spending bills signed into law Feb. 15, 2019.

> Since 2008, revenues to the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) have been insufficient to fully support the level of federal highway and transit investment authorized by Congress. Prior to enactment of the FAST Act, the annual investment gap was nearly $15 billion. Congress has not increased the federal motor fuels tax since 1993, but federal highway and public transportation spending has grown substantially over the last 26 years. It should surprise no one that holding the trust fund’s inflow of revenues constant while attempting to address the nation’s growing transportation needs would lead to an unsustainable situation.

It is quite clear that even just the Interstates do not "pay for themselves." There's also the issues with the fuel taxes, namely that motorists are not necessarily the only ones paying those taxes, and in addition to the depreciating value from a flat fee not tracking inflation, the value of the tax is continuing to diminish as some motorists switch to alternative fuels and others are driving ever more efficient vehicles.

[awalton]

Hm, using your own link, I see "Federal aid to highways" totaled at $43,421,077,419, and I see "Total excise taxes" at $42,329,411,402. I do a subtraction and I see a $1,091,666,017 deficit. Seems to suggest that, in fact, the Highway System does not pay for itself, but rather we pay for it, no? (It get worse if I just use gasoline taxes and ignore the rest.)

I do see their balances coming up positive though, thanks to a very massive balance transfer from the General Fund per the FAST act (https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/22), straight from US taxpayers' wallets.

I also see no mention to climate impact anywhere. $36 billion dollars of gas taxes at 18.3 cents per gallon suggests sales of nearly 200 billion gallons of gasoline were burned. That's a hell of a lot of climate damage that everyone's being forced to pay for.

So, you were saying about us not subsidizing the IHS?

[pg_bot]

The budget for the highway system is managed by the Highway Trust Fund. The trust fund had been solvent until 2008, but has since needed additional funding to meet outlays. Prior to that the system had been working as outlined in the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. So yes the taxpayer has been subsidizing the highways for the last 12 years.

So the system is broken, but it has a simple fix, just raise the gas tax. We haven't done that since 1993 and it isn't indexed to inflation. This is something that should have been fixed years ago, but alas I don't control congress.

If you want to go even further and discuss the environmental impact, again the solution is more taxes.

[skolsuper]

Your simple fix would change the calculus when comparing road & rail travel, which I think is the point of the person you were disagreeing with.

[pc86]

Which is a fair argument, but using the current math it's about half the cost of rail. So even if you need to increase the gas tax in order to "make it pay for itself," you're absolutely not going to do that so much so that you double the cost.

It's hard to make an argument that rail is cheaper than driving without getting into a lot of mental gymnastics, and I really like taking the train when able.

[skolsuper]

I don't think "cars cost more than just the price of gas" is mental gymnastics, but an exact $ figure we can all agree on will be tough.

Once they become a thing, the price of an autonomous taxi between the cities should approach the real amortized cost of road travel.

[bobthepanda]

Inflation-indexing might help for a bit but there are longer term issues on the horizon.

Namely, as fuel efficiency increases and some drivers switch to alternative fuels, people will need less gas for the same amount of driving.

[ceejayoz]

> So the system is broken, but it has a simple fix, just raise the gas tax.

Given the latency on legislatively fixing things in the USA these days, any work at fixing stuff now should probably include the likelihood of a major shift to non-gas vehicles in the next couple decades.

[riffic]

conveniently ignoring the external costs of driving.

[pc86]

And the external costs of rail.