How to pay for roads 4374John F. Carr In essence, motorists decided that it was inconvenient for them to obey their own laws, and so the motoring majority changed...
Brent P
Look for the summary.pdf file.
See below for more info on this subject.
What government agency doesn't spend every dollar it takes in? I am only concenrned with the money spend to build and maintiain roads. Not the money for other items. Define usuable. Raleigh (my home town) spends hundreds of thousands of dollars of road tax money landscaping roads and buiding sidewalks. This is not increasing the usability of the roads for motor vehicles. Other road tax money is spent on studying (not even buildig or operating) a light rail system. This isn't increasing the usability of the roads either.
So if there were no cars, there would be no need for police? No need for snow removal? I am talking about where the money comes from for building and maintining roads. Using your logic, I suppose we could include the NASA budget as justification for bike to use the highways.
Your cite of the Streets and Sanitation is for the garbage men (mostly). So you are saying that bikes have a right to use the streets becasue property tax is used for garbage collection and snow removal? Besides if you actually look at the summary tables significant chucks of the motor vehicle revenue is diverted to both the police and sanitation departments (and several others as well).
For Chicago both the Dept of Transsportation and Streets and Sanitation are supported by non-property tax funds.
Vehicle Tax Fund Revenue - 158,259,000 Motor Fuel Tax Fund Revenue - 88,490,000
Streets and Sanitation got 63,115,329 from the Vehicle Tax Fund Chicago Department of Transportation only got 31,800,442 from the Vehicle Tax Fund Streets and Sanitation got 44,895,68 plus 19 from the Motor Fuel Tax Fund. Chicago Department of Transportation only got 28,280,685 from the Motor Fuel Tax Fund.
In general the Chicago Streets and Sanitation budget dwarfs the Chicago Department of Transportation Budget. Only a small fraction of Streets and Sanitation's Budget is for "Street Operations." By far the largest part is for garbage collection. The Burea of Electricty, which is under Steets and Sanitation, gets almost as much money as street operations. The snow removal budget was only $18 million. Pavement and Bridge maintenance was only $28 million. Since Streets and Sanitation got more than $100 million from vehicle and fuel taxes, I think even you can see that Motor Vehicles are paying for the roads and much more - at least in Chicago. I think if you will carefully review the budget, you will see that motor vehicle revenues are being diverted to pay for other servies, instead of Property Tax revenues being diverted to pay for roads - at least in Chicago.
Regards,
Ed White
