Why transit? Skyrocketing Highway Construction Costs
Every time you fill your car's gas tank, you learn a bitter new lesson about the price of fuel. Our governments feel the same pain when they price the cost of highway construction.
And just as taking transit helps you stretch your household budget, building more transit and transit-oriented communities helps governments stretch their transportation budgets.
Why? Because transit reduces the need for driving, and less driving means less road use and lower road costs.
Rising construction costs
According to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, highway construction costs have climbed more than 46% percent in the last 5 years. Everything used in highway construction-steel, cement, petroleum, aluminum-is growing scarcer and more expensive because of exploding global demand.
Unfortunately, the federal motor-fuel tax revenues that pay for America' s highways haven't kept pace. They've actually begun to decline as people drive smaller cars and drive less, and inflation has eroded their value.
Recently, a federal commission suggested a 40-cent federal gas- tax increase to close the gap. Illinois may need to add another 10 to 20 cents. That means gas taxes need to go up 50 to 60 cents per gallon just to maintain the historic pace of highway rebuilding.
Legislators feel they are faced with bad choices: raise fuel taxes, let highways continue to deteriorate, or find other revenue, such as expanding gambling. They may even choose a mix of all three.
But whatever they decide, expanding transit will reduce the highway bill because a dollar invested in transit moves more people than a dollar invested in roads. When transit is strong, fewer people drive and less revenue needs to be raised to support highways. Without transit, taxpayers and lawmakers faced with rising highway costs face a bitter choice: Pay them or postpone them--pay now or pay later. Transit offers taxpayers a third way to deal with rising highway costs: managing them.
Act now
Lawmakers need to know you want the transit option. Ask them to invest properly in the transit capital programs Illinois needs!
