While I am on the subject of dealing with the decrease in gas tax revenue, USDOT has released a plan to deal with the situation:
http://www.fightgridlocknow.gov/index.htm (The word "bicycle" is entirely absent from the materials on the site.) I would note that a key focus is on "dealing with congestion" as opposed to simple maintenance. It occurs to me that a congestion-centric focus is obsolete in these times of safer roads and less traffic. The video on the home page is a real hoot. In it, Mary Peters suggests that reducing our fossil fuel dependence somehow hinges on utilizing private sources of funding for highway projects. I guess if you believe that the amount of fossil fuel consumed by congestion, if saved, would be sufficient to give us energy independence, then this makes sense. The problem is that historically, increased capacity has lead to increased driving and fuel consumption via a phenomenon called "triple-convergence". And one more tidbit I'd love to know more about: Why is the highway trust fund going to run dry in 2009, yet there's $8 billion sitting there unused in the transit fund? We have news reports of overloaded transit systems and it seems the feds are dragging their feet on funding the improvements to make mass transit in this country more efficient. _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
