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[quote user="blue streak 1"]   <blockquote> <div><img src="/TRCCS/Themes/trc/images/icon-quote.gif" /> Sam1:</div> <div>.   Fuel taxes are user fees.  They should be devoted exclusively to supporting the infrastructure and services required by motorists. <div style="clear:both;"></div>   </div> </blockquote>   Would that include all police, ambulance, fire etc items going to roads??  This is where many of us posters disagree with your philosophy.  There should be a transportation department that receives transportation taxes. ( both Fed and state ) This department would disperse transportation tax funds as needed not to the highway lobby. I cannot understand why transportation (all segments ) is so fragmented when we have the FCC, Dept of Justice, Agriculture, public health, etc that is integrated with revenue and disbursements.  <div style="clear:both;"></div> [/quote] Motorists should pay for the police and fire services that are incurred by them.  In most cases ambulance fees are billed directly to the person needing them and are paid by insurance or other third party payer, depending on whether the beneficiary can afford to cover the cost of the emergency services. The federal government, as well as each state, has a transportation department.  Amongst other things, at least at the federal level, as well as in Texas, the departments collect fuel taxes.  They use them for a variety of transportation projects.  Actually, they receive the fuel tax payments from refiners, which in turn re-capture them from motorists at the pump.  The DOT manages the Highway Trust Fund, which is intended primarily to fund the federal road system.  TXDOT does the same for Texas, and I assume that most other state departments of transportation act accordingly. Not all fuel taxes are used for highway construction and maintenance.  Of the 18.4 cents levied on a gallon of gasoline by the federal government, two cents goes to the Mass Transit Administration, and approximately four cents goes to the U.S. Treasury for deficit reduction.  Recently, as described in Trains latest issue, the feds have granted funds to the railroads to improve their infrastructure to accommodate more double stack trains. If you think that a bureaucrat in Washington or Austin is in a better position to determine what should be grown in the panhandle of Texas, then you probably think that a centralized, top down transportation department or function is the way to go.  I don't.   Behavior is a function of its consequences.  If users see the true cost of their transport options, they are likely to choose the one that will do the least damage to their pocketbooks, although there are numerous other factors that guide their decision.   If the government would price the true cost of transport at the price point, people would tend to select the most viable option within the framework of their value system. In this case, I believe that passenger rail could be competitive in relatively short, high density corridors.  Unfortunately, as long as transport is heavily influenced by politics as opposed to economics, the politics, including the highway lobby, will continue to influence unduly transport decisions in the United States or around the world for that matter. Most western economics treatises argue that properly regulated, competitive markets do a better job of allocating scarce resources than planned, centralized economies.  This means that the free market should be allowed to operate wherever it can, with appropriate regulation, under a relatively loose framework.  The best example of a top down, centralized economy failure is the late Soviet Union.    My views relate to commercial activities, i.e. transportation, communications, postal services, etc.  I am not arguing that the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, are regulator agencies overseeing commercial activities.  Clearly they are not.  On the other hand, in the case of commercial activities, I favor a market based approach.  From what I have seen it beats a political approach.
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