ViewPoints 9-

The Underlying flaw in our Transportation Sector

Our transportation system is a hybrid between a market system and a government bureaucracy. The market provides the vehicles that drive on the roads, while government pays for and builds those roads. But a persistent subsidy of the private product--the car--results when government uses anything but the gasoline tax to pay for the roads and their external costs.

This subsidy promotes congestion and the pollution accused of altering climate. Meanwhile we miss the chance to let the market go to work to solve our immense & increasing problems. The subsidy of the roadway for cars & trucks increases pollution & congestion while making it more difficult for any type of mass transit product to turn a profit.

Subsidies of transit such as this bus are very visible & are easy for folks to complain about. Ironically these subsidies are made more necessary by the subsidy of cars and trucks which is largely built into the way we do things and is mostly below the radar.

 

What are the elements of the

subsidy of cars & trucks?

 

1 Tax money raised from non-user sources to pay for the roadway.

(Note: This component would be vastly increased in Seattle by Mayor Nickel's ballot proposal, which would raise non-user-fee taxes like property tax to pay for roads. Presumably, the Regional tax (RTID) which may yet show up on the ballot this fall would do the same.)

Much of the money for county and city roads is raised from general taxes such as property and sales tax. As I understand it in King Co. at the county level alone we spend in the neighborhood of $72 million on roads that comes from sources other than the user fees (gasoline tax and tabs, etc). In what is getting to be a dated source, James MacKenzie et al estimates the national total of such expenditures to be 29 billion in 1989 (I'd love to have newer numbers for this).

If you live in CALIFORNIA, the amount of this subsidy is even worse. According to the California DoT, the gas tax covers only 62% of the cost of roads in that state.

 

2 In Washington state, sales tax is waived on gasoline, yet it is levied on other consumer products.

At first glance this seems so logical & fair, since gasoline suffers the gas tax, but if the gas tax is seen as the user fee it really is, then it becomes clear that this waiver is actually a subsidy. (Anti-tax conservatives, bear with me here, I'm not asking for a net addition to government revenue. The rate of the sales tax should be reduced so that the change--adding the sales tax to gasoline--is revenue-neutral.)

 

A train, which pays property taxes, crossing the Nisqually River. It must compete with trucks that don't have to pay any property taxes on the land they use.

3 Cars and trucks pay no property tax for the land they use, while railroads must pay this tax.

Again, I have no interest in increasing governmental budgets, just redistributing the tax obligations to create a level playing field for all market participants. Trains, which are mainly privately owned and operated, have suffered as competitive losers to the car and truck for the last 100 years. Why should they pay the property tax when their competitors, by fiat, don't have to. Property taxes could be paid through the mechanism of the gas tax, and other tax burdens, such as sales and property tax rates, should be decreased so the change is revenue neutral.

Kemper Freeman & others keep trying to push their nightmarish vision of a new freeway--"I-605"-in Eastern-Western Washington that would pave over land like this. Such a freeway would be massively subsidized by eminent domain.

4 ( subsidy) Eminent Domain is a subsidy for cars whenever it is used for the roadway.

This is a factor in some cases of road-widening and the paramount issue when it comes to building any all-new highways, such as I-605, that bad idea that refuses to die. (It would be an all-new North-South highway at the foot of the Cascades in Western Washington.) Without the massive subsidy of eminent domain such a huge land grab could not even have been conceived, since acquisition of the needed land would be prohibitively expensive if accomplished in the free market. Like most people, I do not want to see eminent domain entirely eliminated, but I'd like to see its use limited, restricted and decreased rather than expanded and increased.

 

5 The Roadway infrastructure returns no profit to its owners.

Here in America, we have contradictory views on whether publicly owned assets should return a profit to us. Alaskans think it makes perfect sense (as they certainly should) that their state government sends them a big check every year simply because their state owns oil fields. Here in Washington, we citizens also take it for granted that our government should reap a return from its management of our forests to pay some of our taxes, in this case underwriting most of our school construction budget. But their is little cognitive disonance when at the same time we not only make no money but operate the public air waves we own at a loss, or when we have to actually pay taxes to keep our public Port operating here in King County even though it is a business sitting on a couple billion dollars worth of land and assets, or when we are constitutionally prohibited from getting a return on the vast roadway for cars and trucks that we as citizens own.

Why should we pay taxes when user fees can raise the money instead, and in the process restore a level- playing field to the market, thus allowing for greater efficiencies in our entire economy? Again, following through on this idea would result in lower tax rates but a higher gas tax--the first part hard to implement, and the second nearly impossible as the gas tax is certainly a reviled tax.

(Tolls are seductive for all players & could help in returning a profit to the roadway owners, but should be avoided because they'll bring a new level of unfairness to the system)

The difficulty of raising the gas tax has caused DoTs to covetously eye other forms of raising revenue for the roadway. Oregon is testing a per-mile tax, while DoTs everywhere are working on getting us in the public to accept tolls. Ironcially, tolls represent the best chance of giving the public a profit for it's ownership roll. Tolls are appealing to some sections of the public because they shift costs, and some in the public feel they will avoid the costs completely, while others who want a certain bridge or roadway feel tolls will at least get it done. But tolls for one replace a simple straightforward tax, the gas tax that costs very little to collect, with a tax that will bring us practically a whole new bureaucracy necessary just to enact and collect the tax. Plus tolls could create a whole new class of criminals--or should we just call them scofflaws. But the bigger problem of tolls is that no matter how you slice them, they are unfair. Expedience of raising capital or operating funds is the only reason people will have to pay to go from A to B and not from A to C. Unfairness is a terrible foundation for a taxation system, and I predict this unfairness will lead to all kinds of negative unintended consequences if the public gives in and lets the DoTs pursue tolls aggressively.

 

5 Car & truck users don't reimburse us for the external costs they impose upon us.

An external cost is a cost not borne by the market. Noise pollution is a classic external cost. If I set up a manufacturing operation next door to you and make you listen to loud factory noises all night, then sell my product wholesale to department stores, the buyer of my manufactured product pays me not you. Your cost is "external" to the transaction. This is where government in a free market must act as a referee, either through legislation or through the civil courts, so that the payer of external costs is either reimbursed or freed from them. Liberals and conservatives alike have misinterpreted this function by overusing the word "regulation," when "refereeing" is more appropriate.

Automobiles have some serious external costs, which at this point are mostly not being addressed.

 

Cars replacing industry as Sounds Worst foe, says the Sub head of the Seattle Post Intelligencer's lead story on Aug. 16, 2005 . Not only are cars becoming the leading cause of pollutants in the Sound's sediments, they also are leaders in creating atmospheric pollutants that scientist say are forcing changes in the world's climate systems. (Ed get specific %)

Some people claim not to care or “believe” in global warming, but there is an issue not often enough raised that could make whether we "believe" in it or not a moot point, and could affect something that concerns us all.

Reason to care about Global Warming, regardless of whether you believe in it

 

The perception that counts regarding global warming is not ours but the rest of the world's. These folks are our business & trading partners--and hopefully our friends--in our free-trading, world-traveling future. Warming is putting US taxpayers at huge risk of serious financial obligations for tort-based damages, since we are far and away the world's #1 producer of greenhouse gases. How much will we owe the Micronesians when their nation becomes a lighter green area of the Ocean? How much would we want if another nation took the land we call America out from under us? Does it matter if the legal structures are there to require us to make these payments if the majority of the world sees it as a simple moral obligation? It also doesn't matter whether science can ever prove that any change which has occurred was anthropogenic (caused by humans) or not. Because this question is so inherently complex, science no doubt will never possess the capacity to resolve it to everyone's satisfaction.

 

It is critical that the US, and Washington state and Seattle at least require of automobiles a reimbursement for the external cost of Carbon Dioxide and other gases being injected into the atmosphere. Again, these externality fees should be collected at the pump and be offset by reductions in regular tax rates such as for taxes on property and sales.

6 Parking construction requirements are gov't mandates that act as a subsidy for cars

Parking construction requirements of developers are a non-monetary "tax" on anyone who is building housing in urban areas of the country. In Seattle, developers must normally provide 1.5 parking spaces for every apartment unit they construct. Mnay people are delighted to hear this because they feel this will help them find a parking spot near their favorite restaurant. But it's a vast contributor to the escalating price of housing, and it thwarts pioneering individuals from receiving the savings due them for attempting to build a new car-free urban lifestyle. It locks us into relationship with the car that was borne of the 50s and 60s and prevents the market from helping us to solve the problems of urban auto congestion that are now plaguing us.

7

Zoning & construction height restrictions--at the risk of getting far afield & into a can of worms-- also act as subsidies for the car

Zoning is a strange phenomenon in America. Zoning was never voted in, it just came to be. It's widely viewed as a protection for the environment, but it probably has massive negative effects on the environment along with positive ones. On a recent radio show the author of This Land, a book deploring urban sprawl, suggested he might snap his fingers if it would get rid of all zoning. But no, I'm not making some kind of quixotic call for it's demise, and no one else seems to be doing that either. In fact, I remember going to a Hearing for a proposed new tree ordinance in Seattle and afterwards talking to a group of developers and realtors who had come to oppose it because it represented more governmental intereference in the market and in their livlihoods. I asked them what they thought of zoning, and they waved me away: "You gotta have zoning," said one and the others impatiently nodded.

But in many ways I would argue that low zoning densities near urban cores are a mandate and a hidden subsidy of the automobile. By severely limiting urban density, parking receives a non-market protection and transit, a natural competitor to cars, is handicapped. And sometimes there is no doubt that zoning and building codes favor the automobile. When Delia and I wanted to renovate and somewhat convert our garage into a building that we could enjoy, rather than one that only an automobile could enjoy, we discovered we would have to become lawbreakers to do it.

(Efforts to remove various types of land use regulation, such as Oregon's measure 37, inevitably end up affecting only the un-built, and not the already-built areas. With 37, this was explicit: an urban landowner had no recourse under 37 if they were disallowed from building a tall tower, but a rural landowner does have recourse under 37 if told not to subdivide. Therefore these measures don't un-do the negative effects of land use regulation on the environment, only the positive effects of land use regulation on the environment. That's not to say there isn't some issue here that needs to be addressed: for one thing, I strongly believe the electorate should be willing to pay, in the form of forgoing property tax receipts as a basic, for private land that government forbids developement on.)

 

The picture above is of Washington Park Plaza, a 22 story residential tower in the Madison Park neighborhood of Seattle. It offers a clue to what Seattle would look like if the market for housing in Seattle was more of a free market. Built before any regulations were there to stop it, the Madison Park Plaza looks almost out of place now to drivers on the 520 bridge. Had citizens and politicians not rushed in to change the rules, it would probably now be one of the smaller towers around Lake Washington and in neighborhoods like Capitol Hill and Wallingford. Of course I'm cringing, as many of my readers no doubt are, at the thought of all those imaginary towers around the lake, but on the other hand, think of how many other things would be different as well, and many of the differences would be for the better. One difference would be that housing prices would be lower, because there would be more alternatives to moving out to the suburbs and the price of land, bid up inflexibly under the current system, would be much less a factor in the cost of apartments or condos in these towers. Another is that the outlying areas would be greener. People who lived in those towers wouldn't be sprawling out into the relatively tiny area that is the still-undeveloped lowlands of Western Washington.

 

 

 

"Highway projects pass neither market nor electoral tests but happen anyway..."

In market capitalism, a project must pass a test in order to come into existence--it must win financing in the private sector--and then, unless it has a "sugar daddy," it must pass another test--profitability--in order to continue in existence. Thus a restaurant on the corner that used to be so convenient is gone, replaced by a bank or a Krispy Kreme. But with road construction and road widening, a bureaucracy is making the judgement about whether the project is desirable. The road never has to turn a profit in any sense, and nor does it normally have to pass any electoral test. The people who live in the communities south of Sea Tac airport probably will not get to register an opinion on whether a southern extension of State Route 509 will be built, the DoT would rather just do it. Similarly, the DoT gerrymandered the election district until it could find the right size boundaries to give it the yes vote it insisted on to build the 2nd Tacoma Narrows bridge.

 

So what is the result of all this subsidy?

"Our subsidy of cars, the winners in the market place, guarantees that the losers, such as transit, will have an even more difficult time of it, &, ironically require greater subsidies themselves."

Our subsidy of cars costs us twice as taxpayers. Once to pay for the subsidy and then again we have to dig in our pockets to pay for the extra cost of subsidizing transit.

When we decide which to take-- transit or a car--price is one of the things we factor in. When the price of driving is artificially lowered because the roadway is supported by taxes rather than user fees, we notice that it is usually not cheaper or not much cheaper to take the car. All this means that if we want transit, we have to subsidize it even more than we normally would, because fewer people are going to buy the product. In Seattle, an astonishing 75 cents of every dollar it costs to operate a bus is paid for by taxpayers. If more people used transit, investments like the monorail would look even better than they do now and we could move toward transit investments that allowed transit to turn an operating profit, and we'd all be better off.

Some people question the need for transit in the first place, but government has a natural law obligation to provide some kind of transit option for people. Why? Because driving is something that large categories of people can not or should not do. My mom quit driving this year. Us baby-boomers have about 20 more years to go before we start complaining about the lack of transit. And when people prove emotionally incapable of driving--incorrigible speeders and drunk drivers--the lack of transit options can exert pressure on them to defy driving-bans that have been placed upon them, representing horrible danger to us all.

 

Post Script 1:

Why there'll always be a perception that highways need to be widened

In the figure above, a traditional supply and demand curve, B is the price of a good that is subsidized. A would be the "natural" price of the good, where the supply and demand curve intersect. B is lower than A by virtue of the subsidy. The quantity at C represents the amount that will be supplied, and the quantity at D represents the quantity that will be demanded. Essentially, people are sitting at D, looking down at C, and saying "that's not near enough." At a recent hearing on putting playing fields in Magnuson Park, athlete after athlete got up to say there were not enough althletic fields in the City. (Athletic fields would probably cost something like $500 per player per soccer game if they were not subsidized, just an idle guess). Meanwhile, a report commissioned by a City Council subcommittee found that Seattle had vastly more athletic fields than any city of anywhere near comparable size in the entire country. The two facts are not contradictory: there will never be a perception that we have enough of a popular good if it is subsidized.

That's why we could do with a little cynicism when motorists complain incessantly about lack of highway lanes. They always will, no matter what we do.

 

 

 

Postscript 2

Th human conflict of interest regarding global warming

The thermostat pictured is turned to 70. It could be 68, it could be 72, but that's where we humans feel comfortable, and that's with clothes on. We are a tropical species, one that arose in equatorial Africa if you choose evolution or came from the Garden of Eden if you choose creationism-- it doesn't matter: both are tropical places. People say they love the cold weather, and I don't doubt them. They might even climb Denali in the wintertime, but they'd be at huge risk of hypothermia if they had to spend just one January night out, naked, with no built-shelter just about anywhere in the temperate zone.

This is by no means true of all animals. Polar Bears experience legendary discomfort when it gets over 60 degrees Fahrenheit. The zoo's Gyrfalcon, not the one they have now that's an escape artist, but the previous one, always used to get a "cold" in the summer and finally died on a miserably hot summer day.

If we step back and look at global warming in terms of the big picture, humans are remaking the earth into a tropical place, because they are a tropical species and they can. I have a fear that if global warming were on the ballot running against no global warming, it would win. Michael Creighton even wrote a book were the Martin Sheehan character, who believes we should take action against global warming, dies a horrible and, according to the book, deserved death. (Remember, death in fiction is murder by the author). I guess you don't mind a little heat, do you, Michael?

On the other hand, if our pollution were making the world colder, we'd get on it right away.

Our concern and willingness to take action about global warming therefore has to come from our sense of moral responsibility, rather than from any visceral fear of the new warmth: we don't have any. We all have a conflict of interest in this regard, and pity the animals and plants that have to depend on our good judgement--it will only come from our brains, not our hearts. Well, that's all I'm going to write on this right now, I need to get up and find a jacket to put on.

PS. The reason to act now on global warming in my opinion should not be based on predictions derived by scientists from models, either. They are a great achievement, and may turn out to be perfectly accurate, but neither the scientists nor the public should be deluded into thinking that anyone so understands the world that they can completely and confidently predict the future. The reason to act should be based on currently observed phenomena, and on a morality that takes responsibility for the consequences of our actions.

Post Script 3

Don't head into the political cul-de-sac of attacking "Price Gouging"

In the Middle Ages it was "usury." The ban on participating in "usury" held up economic development and viciously poisoned social attitudes until the reality of economic forces mostly pushed it aside. To villify usury is to say that the market should not be able to treat money as a commodity to be traded, yet money needs to be traded for the efficient functioning of the market system, in which the trading of other commodities was taken for granted.

Now we have an attack on "price gouging," whatever that is supposed to be. The fact that price gouging can not be defined for the dictionary (is it a certain percentage of increase in prices over time, which would implicate any Dept. Store that ended a sale, or is it exceeding some arbitrary profit percentage on a given unit of commodity, which would implicate entire high profit industries such as the software & drug industry?) should make everyone immediately uneasy about this new witch-hunt, which has already resulted in the fining of 5 hapless gas station owners in the state of Missouri.

At it's base, the words "price gouging," should disturb everyone. "Price Gouging," and I say this without any satirical intent, is exactly how capitalism works. When there is an unrequited need for something, the price of that something goes up. This is the universal signal for anyone in a position to produce that product to ramp up production or to make available any inventories they are sitting on, as the higher price makes this activity more lucrative than it formerly was. The increased supply that results from this signal then drives the price back down, and if there were productivity increases associated with this ramping up of production, the price will go lower than it was prior to the spike. This is what has been going on in our market economy since Day 1, and it's why we live in such a wealthy society, (among other less savory reasons.)

There are several misconceptions about gas prices in particular that are leading to charges of "Price Gouging." One is the false notion that gasoline is terribly expensive. $3 a gallon is quite reasonable for something that has to be dug out of the earth and transported from far away. Adjusted for inflation, gas has been about this price forever, and it hasn't increased in nominal price more than most or many other commodities, and less than some other commodities.

Having said all this, I should admit there are exceptions. When there is an airtight barrier to entry into a market by new producers, prices can be manipulated upward and we in society can point to something that actually can be termed as "evil." But the key factor here is the barrier. There has to be a barrier to entry, and there has to be one or so few producers that they might easily "club" together. Ususally these conditions are provided by government in markets such as electricity, telecommunications, or other utilities where the state has awarded one or a few producers sole access to a market, as was the case with Enron in California.

Some conservatives have cited the inability to build new refinery capacity in the U.S. as just such an unfair barrier, but this ignores the fact that gasoline can be imported already-refined and ignores the fact that refineries can be expanded and also leads them down a bad road of trying to "legislate away" legitimate objections to having a refinery built next to one's house. As is so often the case, this is a matter of not recognizing the huge issue of external costs. The reason citiizens oppose a new refinery next door is that they will have to pay the medical bills when their kids get sick, and they won't be reimbursed for breathing the new air, and they won't be reimbursed in any way for engaging in a grand experiment involving whether or not they eventually get cancer. These are costs that the oil and gas industry completely evades even as the current administration lavishes it with ever more subsidies and freebies. What is called NIMBYism by unsympathetic observors in these instances is merely the political crystallation of real external costs that this industry had hoped to never have to pay for.

 

Safety and highway widening

A lot of good citizens will vote against 912 (this was an initiative that was defeated in Nov 2005)out of a concern for safety, and these folks are to be commended for their concern about this important issue. Many people see the Viaduct and the Evergreen 520 bridge as our Northwest versions of the New Orleans levies, and some letters to the editors have expressed quite a bit more than impatience with those of us who are planning to vote for 912. I respect their view, and am glad they're tuned in to the world and to the meaning of citizenship.

But in my opinion, the DoT is manipulating the safety issue, waving a traffic cone of safety in front of our eyes while they drive a cement truck's worth of highway widening behind it, hoping no one will notice. The push to widen roads is always done under the banner of safety, but widening and safety are not as closely correlated as the DoT desperately wants you to believe. In King County, traffic fatalities have been falling for years as congestion has increased, resulting in the gift of life to many who would be dead without our dear and wonderful friend TC (traffic congestion). In the case of the Viaduct and 520, both are said to be imminent safety concerns, but the reality is that in neither case has Seattle, by which I mean neither the government nor the people, even begun to decide on what course of action to embark upon when it comes to replacing or fixing them. In the case of the Viaduct, the state was doing nothing more or less than playing poker, since the state DoT desperately favors a rebuild that is rumored to cost about $4 billion (can we believe that?) and came up with just $2 billion, publicly hoping that Seattle would "ante up its share." But we don't live in a monarchy, so exactly how does that happen? The reality is that we are more divided even than it looks right now. If a tunnel gains momentum, people will begin asking if an under-sea-level tunnel is even more dangerous than an old Viaduct in a big Earthquake. And if a total rebuild gains momentum, a coalition of two groups will rise to fight it hard: the people who think it's too expensive and the people who think the Viaduct, with its deafening noise and huge land grab ruins a potentially spectacular Seattle waterfront. A very cheap but still reasonably safe fix that will buy 20 years is all that's left, and that means we don't need the gas tax hike anyway. And in 20 years, I predict, we'll be at a point where we realize we can survive without the Viaduct. In the case of the 520 bridge, there is only money for a study at risk in the 912 vote. And it's extremely important to remember that if anyone really thinks that either 520 or the Viaduct is an immediate significant danger to people, they should be advocating that we close them right now. We could close both tomorrow without spending an extra dime, by moving a few Jersey Barriers around.

 

The Viaduct south of downtown. As time progresses, what to do with it will become even more controversial than it seems to be now

But I risk sounding glib. either now or sooner or later, one or another piece of expensive infrastructure will become a serious risk and something will have to be done about them, both here in Seattle and around the state. That's why I'd like to see the DoT quit chasing the mirage of congestion relief and start putting 100% of its budget into true safety projects. And the projects don't have to be expensive. On dangerous stretches of highway, we don't have to wait for an allocation of millions of dollars and years of planning to simply lower the relevant speed limit. Lowering speed limits and enforcing them is too cheap a method of problem-solving to appeal to the DoT, and its politically risky, but it's so much better than the current strategy of picking dangerous stretches of highway around the state, and then going through the long process of planning and executing repaving projects for them while leaving them in the exact same dangerous shape until the project is begun. Why not invest serious energy into biggger and more creative and convincing speed limit signs that could vary with conditions. I've driven on November nights on Washington roads when 50 mph was an unsafe speed. And on I-90 between the Pass and Easton, there are usually no painted lines visible on the road, but a high speed limit. With totally-faded painted lines,(which are relatively cheap to provide), a high speed limit, (which would be cheap to change) and montane weather conditions, you are going to get fatalities. Now the relevant DoTs say this is an extremely dangerous section of highway, and they are planning a major construction job. Fine, maybe the road should be upgraded, and it's certainly great to see those wildlife corridor bridges that are planned. But does this performance bespeak a real commitment to safety on the part of the DoTs--which might involve more courage and less money, or is the commitment evidenced here more to planning and executing big fancy projects?

 

 

 

Citizens should make a profit from their ownership of the roadway

 

 

 

Conservative Charles Krauthammer, in an opinion piece that ran on Nov. 14, 2005 in the Seattle Times, argued for a similar idea-- instituting a gas tax immediately that will keep the price of gas at least at $3.00 "The beauty of the gas tax at $3," wrote Krauthammer, is that it obviates the waste and folly of an army of bureaucrats telling auto companies what cars in which fleets need to meet what arbitrary standards of fuel efficiency."

 

 

Why do we expect the public asset shown below to turn a profit,

WA state forest land. Our ownership of this asset makes us a tidy profit, which goes into a school construction fund.

But roadway, whether federal, state or local, is a big money sump for taxpayers. These built-&-paid-for assets should be paying your taxes, not costing you.

We think it's perfectly normal that citizens of the State of Washington get a return from their ownership of the state forest lands. We think nothing of it when we hear that citizens of Alaska get a check in the mail because they, through their state government, own lands containing oil wells.

roadway we all ow: We not only don't make a profit on it, the user-fees don't even cover it's full costs and we tax ourselves for owning it.

Yet by contrast we expect nothing in return for our ownership of the entire road and highway infrastructure that is bought and paid for. The roads, like the Port of Seattle, the air waves, and aquaculture sites, not only don't turn a profit, they actually cost the taxpayer more money simply to own.

 

A possible roadblock to this solution in WA state

It's worth noting that the Washington State Constitution appears to explicitly forbid this solution to our current predicament, by stating that all revenue earned by the gas tax must be used for the cost of road-building and maintenance. At the risk of sounding like President Clinton (that depends on the meaning of the word "is") I'd like to point out that the word "cost" could be interpreted to include a reasonable profit. The "cost" of a shovel, restaurant meal, or any other product produced in the private sector as a matter of course includes a profit for the maker and seller. If that understanding of the word "cost" of the roadway cannot prevail legally, this solution in the state of Washington would require a constitutional amendment as well as a change of heart on the part of may voters.

And one other perception problem:

The one argument against this solution that has any merit, in my view, is that it is potentially regressive. The gas tax is admittedly among the most regressive of taxes, although, as I continue to point out, it's actually a user-fee and not a tax. However, people might have a hard time supporting this solution if they felt that it would hurt the poor. The answer is that making the market more efficient through fair refereeing will ultimately help, not hurt the poor. To do this, tax rates need to be made less regressive, but user fees need to stand.

An example of a problem in the U.S. of regressive tax rates that needs to be addressed is the social security and medicare tax: it has a ceiling but not a floor, thus protecting the rich while inflicting maximum damage on the poor, including those living in poverty. This is a tax rate (and not a retirement-system-user-fee, since the revenue from this tax has been merrily lumped with other government revenue for years) and should be changed. User fees are different, and are essentially prices for a good or service, the same as are charged for private sector goods or services. Poor people may buy more peanut butter than rich people, but it is not good public policy to try to charge everyone less than it really costs to make a jar of peanut butter because the poor buy peanut butter. It's complicated, innefficient, creates unintended consequences (too many Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwiches!) and not a very effective way at arriving at fairness. Let's let user fees fall where they may on the issue of regressivity, and address these issues only in the arena of tax rates and other government policy.

For the truly poor, an increase in the gas tax will ultimately be a critical boon, as it will boost the profitabilty and therefore the efficiency of using transit. Anyone who is truly poor by definition has no car or an unreliable one, and the availability of good transportation to where jobs are is probably the single most important factor in their ultimate success or failure in the job market.