Title: Who Pays For Roads? | U.S. PIRG
Headings: Report:
21st Century Transportation

Report: 21st Century Transportation
Who Pays For Roads?
New Report Finds Drivers Pay Less Than Half the Cost of Roads
Webinar to Explain Why Raising Gas Taxes Won’t Necessarily Solve Problems

Content: Release date: Tuesday, May 5, 2015
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New Report Finds Drivers Pay Less Than Half the Cost of Roads
Webinar to Explain Why Raising Gas Taxes Won’t Necessarily Solve Problems
As Congress struggles to renew the federal transportation law, a new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund [U.S. PIRG Education Fund] and Frontier Group finds that drivers currently pay less than half the total cost of roads, and argues that while increasing gas taxes could fill the shortfall, it would leave other problems unaddressed. The new report, “Who Pays for Roads? How the ‘Users Pays’ Myth Gets in the Way of Solutions to America’s Transportation Problems” exposes the widening gap between how Americans think we pay for transportation – through gas taxes and other fees – and how we actually do. The authors of the report will cohost a live webinar today at 1pm [EST] to explain the report findings and answer questions (click here to register and attend). The new report comes with just a month left before expiration of the federal transportation act, and with the federal Highway Trust Fund on the brink of insolvency. Revenues from gas taxes and other user fees this year are expected to come up $16 billion short of the level needed to maintain current federal transportation spending, leading to the need for urgent congressional action. “Congress is stuck in an endless loop,” said Phineas Baxandall, Senior Analyst at U.S. PIRG and coauthor of the report. “ Either Congress will have to raise gas taxes to the high levels that would be needed to fully pay for the costs of highways or it will have to admit that the ‘users pay’ system no longer exists and needs to be reformed.” “Congress faces important choices about transportation,” Baxandall continued. “