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new Viewliners -- possible sleeper route assignments ?

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The average federal subsidies per passenger mile and vehicle miles traveled were reversed.  It should have read .012 for highways and .009 for commercial air. According to "Highway Statistics 2010, Table HM-20", as presented by the American Road and Transportation Builders, federally funded (directly and indirectly) highways consist of the Interstate Highway System (1.2%), the National Highway System (2.9%), and other federal-aid highways (20.4%). These percentages add to 24.5% of the total.   According to National Transportation Statistics for 2010, total vehicle miles traveled were 2,966 billion or nearly 3 trillion miles. Of these 963.8 billion (32.4%) of the vehicle miles traveled were on federally funded highways. During FY11 the federal government transferred $14.7 billion to the Highway Trust Fund.  After adjustment for HTF internal transfers for mass transit and other activities, it appears that approximately $11.4 billion benefited federal highway users. In addition, I calculated an annual proforma benefit to federal highway users because of the TIFIA loans and added it to the transfer amounts. I did not attempt to assign a value to any externals.  They are difficult to estimate under the best of circumstances. Thus, the net transfer appears to be approximately $11.4 billion. Dividing this number by the estimated federal highway vehicle miles traveled generates .012 cents per vehicle mile traveled.   The federal government also directed some of the ARRA funds for highway projects, as well as railways projects, in FY11. These are one-offs, and I don't have access to the exact amount. Therefore, I did not factor them into the so-call federal subsidy for highways. These are relatively high level estimates; one could refine them if he had access to all the relevant data bases as well as sufficient time and computer horse power to work with the numbers.   If one wants assumes that the vehicle miles traveled on federally funded highways is equal to the percentage of the federal highways to total highways, the average federal subsidy per vehicle mile traveled would be 1.6 cents.   Better yet, if one takes the total vehicle miles for all roads, since the total road system is intertwined with the federal highway system, the federal transfer should be divided by the total vehicle miles traveled, which would produce a very small number. One can spin the numbers seven ways come Sunday, but no matter how a reasonable person does it, the average federal subsidy per passenger mile for Amtrak is many times greater than the average federal subsidy per vehicle mile traveled. I did not use travel on all roads to calculate the estimated average federal subsidy per vehicle mile traveled on federally funded roads. By the same token I did not restrict it to just the Interstate Highway System, since the federal government provides funding for all federal highways. It is important to keep in mind that most of the numbers for air travel and highway travel are a function of statistical sampling, whereas the numbers for Amtrak are taken off its audited financial and operating reports. For most transportation statistics the feds use a 90 per cent confidence level for their sampling construct.  However, for traffic safety statistics they use a 95 per cent confidence level. This means is that there is a 10 per cent probability that the results of the sample will not be reflected in the population, i.e. the range of results will be greater than or less than the results of the sample when projected to the population. Accordingly, what they should publish with respect to most outcomes, i.e. vehicle miles traveled, is a population range instead of a number.  It is incorrect to project the results of a sample - a whole number - to the population. However, given the fear that many Americans have a mathematics, that would be a heck of a risk.  In addition, whereas federal subsidies for Amtrak go directly to the operator, most of the federal subsidies for air and highway, as well as waterways, go for the construction, maintenance, and operation of the facilities, thereby making them indirect subsidies. And making it difficult to determine who are the biggest beneficiaries. Again, what has been consistently ignored by many, whenever it is convenient to do so, is the fact that the 210 million motorists in the U.S. pay all the costs for the highway system.  The monies transferred from the general fund to the HTF came from the taxpayers, albeit more from upper income tax payers than low income motorists, as well as corporate taxpayers, that pump money into the general fund, which is then transfered to various agency funds, including the HTF.  Even in the case of borrowed money, which the feds have been particularly adept at over the last 35 years, the debt service is ultimately paid by the people, either directly or through monetization of the debt.
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