Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

How To Pay For Transportation? A Survey Of Public Preferences, Jennifer Dill, Asha Weinstein Agrawal

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

States around the nation are scrambling to find new sources of revenue to maintain and expand their transportation systems. The traditional major source of funds, state and federal fuel taxes, has rarely kept pace with inflation. In most cases state legislatures have been unwilling to raise fuel taxes high enough to cover desired levels of expenditure, thus pushing state and local governments to look for new sources such as sales taxes and tolls. Another outcome of legislative reluctance to raise fees and taxes that generate transportation revenues has been to put any potential revenue measure before the voters, as a …