I expect my government to lie to me, but still there are times when the shear audacity of the bureaucrats and politicians leaves me speechless. Luckily this not one of those times. On several streets in my neighborhood there are currently large orange signs that read, "End Construction", and it's a lie. It has always has been a lie. I've been reading "End Construction" signs all my life and I'm always running into more road construction. I have begun to suspect that the biggest budget item for the Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration is the cost of "End Construction" signs. The Federal Government could probably save billions of tax dollars if they just combined the sign budgets for all government departments and bought signs that read, "We're Lying". And wherever you saw one, on the road or walking into an IRS office, you would know that something bad was about to happen to your plans and hopes and dreams, at least in the short term, and you could lower your expectations.
Governments have been lying about road construction since the Twelve Tables were published in 450BC .These set the latitude legtima of all Roman roads as 8 feet wide. But of course archeologists have found the actual widths varied from 3 feet 9 inches to 24 feet wide, depending on the terrain and the level of collusion between politicians and local contractors. Paying for filling the literal pot holes fell on those whose land were crossed by any of the 53,000 miles of concrete Roman Viae. This rather depressed property values immediately along the roadways, or at least they did until 410 AD, when Alaric, king of the Visigothics, visited the Roman Forum with fifty thousand of his close friends and they all skipped town without paying their parking tickets.
Every mile of America's 50 year old national interstate highway system contains about 3 million tons of concrete, and is officially built to last only 25 years. Primarily because of truck traffic it actually lasts closer to 20 years. But in a rare sign of progress, today we pay for filling the potholes replacing concrete and rebuilding the 55,000 bridges along the interstate system, in fact on construction and repair on all of our highways and roads comes at least in part from the Highway Trust Fund, created by the 1956 Highway Revenue Act, through a tax set at 2.86 cents on every gallon of gasoline sold.
However over the last fifty years inflation has pushed up the cost of concrete and labor and the gasoline burned by the maintenance equipment the workers must use while those 3 pennies have remained constant. To raise the tax rate would violate the "No New Taxes Code."
The situation was made even worse in 1998 when the Republican Congress decreed that the HTF should no longer earn interest on those funds held in trust. In order to help pay for their "No New Taxes" lifestyle, the Republicans (with Democratic help) required the HTF to deposit the funds held in trust into non-interest paying Federal (non-market) securities. In other words the HTF was forced to loan the Federal government some three billion dollars every year, for free.
It makes paying at the pump a virtual Aesop's fable on the myth of No New Taxes, being in fact the worst kind of tax; one which makes you pay twice as much because you pay twice; once at the service station and once at the hospital or the auto repair shop.
Every year some 43,000 Americans die and some 3 million are injured on our highways, and the American Auto Club estimates that about one third of those deaths and injuries are due primarily to badly designed or badly maintained roads. That means that each year about 15,000 people die and another one million are injured because we are playing politics with the funding for our infrastructure. This is the New Orleans levees on a national national scale.
I have a dream that someday highways will talk to cars, warning them of traffic or weather congestion ahead and slowing them or redirecting them to save fuel, lives and time. I hope that some day cars will talk back, notifying highways of their preferred routes and of any developing mechanical problems so the road can direct them to repair shops and fueling stations. Speeding or erratically driven cars could be slowed or stopped by the roads itself, perhaps right in front of a police station. Such a system would cut insurance rates, freeing billions of dollars for more productive investment. Such a system would mean fewer new highways would be needed as our current roads were made more efficient. Such a system would cut emissions, saving our air and water. Such an investment would save billions in foreign debt and free our nation from the obligation to intervene in the Middle East. Such a system would extend the life of the internal combustion engine, allowing alternative fuels to come on line more naturally. Such a system is possible with current technology and current construction meathods.
But to fund such a system would the American public be willing to trade the current HTF 2.8 cents per gallon tax for a higher, percentage of sale tax? I doubt it. But those "End Construction" signs are just an expensive slight of hand, while the real bargain may be to invest in some "Road Construction Ahead" signs, and do it soon.