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[quote user="V.Payne"] Sam, What you are saying might be right if there was one (Federal) owner of all roads. But remember, there are private (parking lots), Private land developers, city, county, and state owners each of which is contributing non-user revenue to the system. For example my neighborhood road has a Federal tax though it was paid for by my mortgage. The genius of the Federal HTF was that it was made to appear politically like the users paid for the Interstate when in fact it was merely a broad tax, a land tax essentially, with a proxy through fuel taxes. New build intercity toll roads, even when benefiting from muni type bonds, charge $0.12/VM + a gas tax of $0.013/VM. So how is it that you pay your way on the rest of the interstate if you just pay gas tax? One "free" interstate project I am on will  cover 5% of its capital and mill-pave costs alone, for a subsidy of $0.21/VM for an automobile but few are the wiser. The HTF was a political construct and it had quite a bit of opposition in the day. [/quote] The U.S. Treasury, which covers the gap between what is collected in federal fuel taxes, license fees, excise taxes, etc., transfers monies to the HTF, which in turn transfers money to the Mass Transit Administration and other special interests. It gets its money from the taxpayers!  Or it has to borrow money. It does not create money out of thin air. Only the Federal Reserve, through its Open Market Committee, can create money.   There are approximately 210 million motorists in the United States, most of whom pay some form of federal taxes. They are the largest block of taxpayers in the country, and they are paying for the nation's roads. Amtrak's problem is that it probably has fewer than 18 to 20 million customers.  Oh, it claims 30 million riders, but many of its riders are repeat riders, ala my last paragraph, whereas motorists are not counted as repeats. The tax base for motorists is huge compared to the tax base for Amtrak. And this is the fundamental reason why Amtrak requires a much greater passenger per mile subsidy than alternate modes of transport. As I have state on numerous occasions, motorists don't see the true cost of driving at the pump or other price points. A substantial portion of it is hidden. They should see it! But it is a political nonstarter, and it is not likely to happen. Upper income taxpayers, who pay a disproportionate share of the federal taxes (the top 12 per cent pay 75 per cent of the federal personal income tax), as well as state, county, and local taxes, either directly or indirectly, subsidize lower income motorists through transfer processes.   I know that the federal highway system is only one component of the nation's roads. State highways, county roads, local streets, etc. are the other components. They are funded through a variety of user and licensing fees, sales taxes, excise taxes, property taxes, federal and state transfers, etc., all of which are paid for by motorists, although most of them are probably unaware of how roadways are funded.  I worked in the electric utility business for many years. Our city customers subsidized our rural customers, although neither group knew it, because it was decided that their doing so was the optimum system. No one in our company believed that there was anything wrong with the arrangement.  Neither did the regulators.  At the time the system was created we did not have the computer capability to bill each customer depending upon how far he lived from a power plant and, therefore, how much it cost to serve him vs. the customer closer to the power plant. That is likely to change with smart meters. Moving people and goods from one point to another is a transportation problem. Passenger rail may be the optimum solution in some places. My view is that it makes sense in relatively high density, short corridors where the cost of expanding the air and highways systems is prohibitive. I am tired of the subsidy and cross subsidy argument. I only responded to this thread because of the expressed view that the users of the interstate highway system are getting a free ride or words to that effect. This is not true. And it is not true that motorists don't pay for the roadways. They do! But as pointed out in numerous posts, whilst they should, they don't see the full cost at the pump or other price point interfaces. And they are not likely to as long as the system is larded with politics. When the advocates for expanded passenger rail show me realistic plans for marketing and financing it, other than raiding the federal treasury, I will buy into it. This is really the key point.
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