"Ron Ruff" <
[email protected]> writes:
> Tim McNamara wrote:
>> Or most anywhere in the US with a developed infrastructure. Roads are
>> expensive to build and maintain, and hence taxes are commensurate.
>
> I hear a lot about how expensive roads are... but somehow lower
> middle class people in sparsely populated central Illinois farm
> country (where I grew up) are able to afford nice paved roads on a 1
> mile grid.
Because they are only paying part of the real cost. Given what roads
cost to build and maintain, it's unlikely that the handful of farmers
and small town residents in the area could bear the burden of paying
those costs.
> The guys who build and maintain these roads are locals who are hired
> by the township. A portion of the property taxes pays for it all.
Probably only partially paid for by property taxes. In most states
roads are paid for in large part out of the general fund (e.g., income
and sales taxes) and whatever money can be gotten from the Federal
government (e.g., pork).
> The roads to population ratio is much lower in most parts of the
> country... so why are they so "expensive"?
Roads cost a lot to engineer and build. There are lots of costs: land
aquisition, surveying and layout, engineering, construction, etc.
Asphalt is made in part from oil, which ain't cheap anymore, and there
are over 2 million miles of asphalt roads in the US. According to
Chevron's Web site, a barrel of oil yields about one gallon of tar
after refining into all the various products that can be extracted
from the oil.
There are regional variations of course. In Arkansas, for example,
estimated construction costs for a new two lane rural road are $2.1
million per mile. In the mountains, $2.25 million per mile. In urban
areas, $2.45 million per mile. Of course, reconstructing an existing
roadway is much much cheaper- $800,000 per lane mile (so $1.6 million
per mile for a two lane road).
http://www.ahtd.state.ar.us/Roadway/Costs per Mile.pdf?Record_Number=8
In 1996, costs for highway construction apparently averaged about $1
million per mile:
http://www-pam.usc.edu/volume2/v2i1a3s2.html
In Washington State, costs are higher that Arkansas:
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/accountability/2005GasTax/QandA.htm
Drivers are insulated from the actual costs of driving by diffusing
the costs over a variety of funding mechanisms (vehicle taxes, fuel
taxes, property taxes and assessments, state general funds, federal
funds, etc). This prevents the per-mile cost of driving from being so
high that only the rich can afford to drive. Interestingly enough,
all the "total driving cost" Web sites I could find only included the
individual costs of driving (buying a car, insuring it, fueling it,
etc) and left out the infrastructure costs or environmental damage
costs.
