Drivers Pay Secret Road Tax in $15 Billion for Car Repair

As the summer continues to blister along not only at a rapid pace but also from extreme weather conditions, the nation's road repairs are certainly under way as well.  This Bloomberg story takes at look at the high toll that our nations roads are extracting on both our autos and pocket books.


With more efficient vehicles on the road ways and Americans scaling back their driving due to higher gasoline prices, collection in taxes to repair for all of the much needed road repairs comes up short.


It would be extremely unpopular on either political side of the isle to increase the tax.  However there is no way that the current system will be able to keep up with the both the need and increasing costs of repair.


Full story here

•   The U.S. Highway Trust Fund, which helps pay for road and transit projects in Washington and all 50 states, has been bailed out by Congress three times since 2008 for a total of $34.5 billion. The gasoline tax that supports the fund hasn’t been raised in 19 years, and with the cost of materials such as steel and asphalt on the rise, the fund is expected to have a deficit of about $10 billion this year.
• Motorists pay $67 billion annually for increased fuel consumption, body dents, worn tires and premature wear wrought by pitted roads, according to The Road Information Program, a Washington-based research group. The group’s board includes representatives from construction-equipment makers Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) and Deere & Co. (DE), as well as Vulcan Materials Co. (VMC), a Birmingham, Alabama-based asphalt and concrete producer.
• That works out to $324 per licensed driver, says Frank Moretti, TRIP’s director of policy and research. The figure is an average of all vehicles and can vary widely between cars and large commercial trucks, which are prone to costlier damage, he says.

Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

• Justin Nisly, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation, said in an e-mailed statement that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has often stated that “America’s transportation infrastructure is in desperate need of repair, which is why it is so important that Congress pass a transportation bill.”
• “The key is passing a long-term funding bill,” says Michael Green, a spokesman for the American Automobile Association, a non-profit motor club and leisure travel organization with 53 million members in North America. “Without that, states and counties can’t implement projects.”
• Still, to match Clinton-era purchasing power, the gasoline tax would need to rise to 29 cents, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.
• The funding crunch has been magnified in recent years by a decline in gasoline tax proceeds as consumers drive cars with better mileage and curtail gasoline purchases. Fuel taxes raised a total of $33.7 billion for road projects in 2006, compared with $30.1 billion in 2009.