Tom Warne Report, 1 June 2013
As federal lawmakers continues the pursuit of new funding for roads and bridges, a recent study has found many Americans do not know how much they are paying for them now. Forty percent of respondents to an advocacy group’s survey said they did not know, and a quarter guessed they were paying twice as much as the $46 per month estimated by the Federal Highway Administration that the average household pays in gas tax.
One of the top challenges facing Congress and the Obama Administration is getting American taxpayers to agree to new ways to fund transportation, as the majority of people do not know how the current system works, and why it is collapsing.
The survey by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) was performed last month and results were released Tuesday. The group reported that 78 percent of respondents said driving was an important part of their daily activity, and 21 percent said they rely on public transportation.
We usually assume that the public is better informed on our transportation issues than they are and the new ARTBA study bears this out. We live and breathe the policy and finance issues in our industry but for the average citizen, it’s not something they pay a lot of attention to. Even when catastrophic things happen like the collapse of the I35W bridge in Minnesota, the attention to infrastructure is short-lived and then it’s back to the other issues of the day. TW