I just did the math, and showed my work. Cars and trucks pay hundreds of billions in taxes annually, which more than covers the cost of creating and maintaining the infrastructure.
1. When Eisenhower founded the national highway system, roads were built to provide for the common defense, and to provide the economic foundation upon which practically our entire economy is based (see trucking figures I quote above). At a cost of $500 billion (that's inflation adjusted) [1] I believe it was the single greatest investment ever made in human history in - terms of total dollar return on investment.
2. State & Federal funding of highways currently totals approximately $175 billion per year. I think inflation adjusted that has been fairly steady of the last half century. It's one of the few things where government spending has actually remained constant. [2] Income from fuel taxes has been reducing over the last decade, while income from sales & excise tax has been increasing.
It's reasonable to project that for the last several decades that infrastructure costs have been more than covered by vehicular income, and will continue to be covered for the forseeable future. Setting policy for today and tomorrow should be based on the facts of today and tomorrow.
It would be claiming more than I need, to state that vehicular direct revenue has always exceeded direct expenses, when we can at least clearly state this was true for the last decade, and the next. Economically speaking, it would be extremely costly to reduce the utilization rates for infrastructure we have already paid for, for example, in terms of infrastructure cost per passenger-mile.
One aspect which will eventually need reform is gas taxes will continue to drop with the spread of EVs, so a new form of usage-based billing will need to be developed -- hopefully one that doesn't involve a national tracking system, but I digress. It's fortunate that roads are so profitable that we haven't needed to raise the Federal fuel tax rate in over a decade, and have ample time to develop a solution.
3. The cost of 'free parking' is a relative rounding error in the $175 billion/yr we're talking about. Don't confuse the theoretical economic value of selling parking, or the potential value of re-purposing the space, with what it cost to build it.
There may be a subsidy here, even possibly a large one, but that's not based on the cost of building the spot, but more the perceived theoretical value in renting it. Again, we've gotten into externalties and strayed away from the basic cost analysis.
In reality, most parking costs are paid for by the parking consumer in one way or another. For example, at the mall, while you might not pay a fee to park, the store's rent includes the cost of building and maintaining the parking, and the prices of the goods at that store cover that rent. At your place of employment, you might not pay to park out back, but rest assured that the profit margin of the business includes the rent on the building, leaving less room in the P&L for salary. Again, whether the parking "benefit" is taxed as income to the employee is a different discussion as to whether roads pay for themselves.
4. You're getting into externalities here, without considering the positive ones. Police use the roads to prevent and respond to crime, which includes vehicular crime. Don't underestimate how much money is collected by governments through fines, fees, and forfeitures. In D.C. it works out to over $200 per person. Yes, it turns out, highways are overall very lucrative for the police. [3]
reply