General Infrastructure

So. What are the real implications if question 1 passing (as it did)?
 
So. What are the real implications if question 1 passing (as it did)?
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State House has to figure out a new way to drum up some more funding. In all honesty, between changes in driving habits and improvements to mpg, revenue from the gas tax was going down regardless of indexing or not. MassDOT deserves a solid, bankable revenue source that's predictable from year to year. Wether that's more tolling, per miles driven tax, increased excise tax... we'll see.
 
Here's what happened with Question 1. Key heavily democratic auto-centric cities defected.
In order:
1. Lawrence
2. Lowell
3. Worcester
4. Brockton
5. Fall River

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There is more likely to be an economic divide on this issue as well. Western Mass which is presumably very car centric due to the rural settings voted in favor of indexing. The cities that voted against are generally known to be poorer. All things considered, excise taxes are generally regressive and more likely to significantly increase someone's total tax burden. Someone making $100K a year will notice increases a lot less than someone making $30K a year.

What is astonishing is that I didn't see any of the proponents explaining how insignificant the increase would be to the average consumer. Tax is currently ~$.25 per gallon. The law would have increased it half a cent to a cent a year. For an average car user driving buying 600 gallons of gas per year this equates to an incremental ~$5 PER YEAR. (Someone please check my math?) Further, for anyone who gets a COLA in the given year, its a wash in terms of real value.
 
One silver lining may be that this is finally a good excuse for Baker to outright cancel South Coast Rail once and for all.

But, alas, it's still probably too useful as a political tool for stringing the South Coast voters along.

What is astonishing is that I didn't see any of the proponents explaining how insignificant the increase would be to the average consumer. Tax is currently ~$.25 per gallon. The law would have increased it half a cent to a cent a year. For an average car user driving buying 600 gallons of gas per year this equates to an incremental ~$5 PER YEAR. (Someone please check my math?) Further, for anyone who gets a COLA in the given year, its a wash in terms of real value.
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I did hear that but I don't know how well the campaign spread the message outside the Boston area, if at all.
 
Is there any chance this paves the way for a VMT? Or a gas tax as a percentage of the cost of gasoline or something of that variety?
 
bigeman312 said:
Is there any chance this paves the way for a VMT? Or a gas tax as a percentage of the cost of gasoline or something of that variety?
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Baker won't support it, and most Democrats in the legislature are too timid to ever do anything. They'll probably be too scared to revisit the issue for decades.

My guess is that this paves the way for the next twenty years of transportation funding to be as dysfunctional as the past twenty years.
 
Matthew said:
One silver lining may be that this is finally a good excuse for Baker to outright cancel South Coast Rail once and for all.
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Never occurred to me, but I like your thinking.

Of course, I like your thinking because I believe F-line once mentioned that re-directing funds from SCR could pay for Red-Blue, BLX-Lynn, AND GLX mini-extension to Porter, and that probably won't happen either way.
 
bigeman312 said:
Is there any chance this paves the way for a VMT? Or a gas tax as a percentage of the cost of gasoline or something of that variety?
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There is inherent difficulty in pricing an excise tax as a percentage of the value. To start with, it would have to be recalculated every day/week as the price of gasoline changes. Probably more difficult to audit/verify by the and therefore prone to intentional or accidental reporting of taxes levied. Volume based are much easier to deal with as a result.

I'd like to see a much clearer link between gas tax and transportation related projects. The money should never touch the general fund.
 
Deetroyt said:
Never occurred to me, but I like your thinking.

Of course, I like your thinking because I believe F-line once mentioned that re-directing funds from SCR could pay for Red-Blue, BLX-Lynn, AND GLX mini-extension to Porter, and that probably won't happen either way.
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Why is nobody advocating for that? Baker is supposedly a "bang for the buck" guy. I would say trading SCR that will serve barely a few for all those project serving many is a good trade.
 
ant8904 said:
Why is nobody advocating for that? Baker is supposedly a "bang for the buck" guy. I would say trading SCR that will serve barely a few for all those project serving many is a good trade.
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The thing is that SCR has been sold as this boon for the South Coast, that it deserves rail service, etc. So politically, it won't be popular down there if you say "okay we're going to take your train and spend the money on Boston instead", even if that does in fact benefit more people.
 
Seems like its time to start thinking about open road tolling on I-93 again. When you have a highway that's stop-and-go for miles for several hours every weekday, and an under capacity commuter rail line traveling the same route, it seems like your cost incentives are out of whack. This would also finally place some of the cost of the big dig on the people who use it the most.

For the record, I still think the gas tax is far more logical than tolls. It costs next to nothing to collect. It incentivizes people to drive less and drive more fuel-efficient cars. It charges for the use of all roads, not just select highways in certain parts of the state. Heavier cars, which cause more damage to roads, pay more in tax. If revenue starts to fall, you simply raise the rate. I don't see how electric cars not paying the tax is a problem either - aren't these the same cars we're trying to encourage with massive tax credits, use of carpool lanes, tax breaks to battery makers, etc? But, for whatever reason, the price of gas really hits a nerve with a large segment of the population.
 
underground said:
State House has to figure out a new way to drum up some more funding. In all honesty, between changes in driving habits and improvements to mpg, revenue from the gas tax was going down regardless of indexing or not. MassDOT deserves a solid, bankable revenue source that's predictable from year to year. Wether that's more tolling, per miles driven tax, increased excise tax... we'll see.
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You know... whatever way they come up with will be subject to the same demagoguery that Question 1 represents.

The problem is that ultimately, people want infrastructure... but they don't want to pay for it. Even in such a imperceptible, inoffensive way such as indexing, which only seeks to counter inflation.

Not surprising, really. They've been able to demand goodies for a long time without paying the price, why start now? Heck, the whole basis of the suburban experiment relies on relentlessly expanding infrastructure while indefinitely postponing the bill. The pattern of voting on the map is no coincidence.
 
Deetroyt said:
Never occurred to me, but I like your thinking.

Of course, I like your thinking because I believe F-line once mentioned that re-directing funds from SCR could pay for Red-Blue, BLX-Lynn, AND GLX mini-extension to Porter, and that probably won't happen either way.
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Well, SCR has been allocated $2.3b and Red-Blue was cancelled due to its $0.75b price tag. So if the money were diverted, it could easily fund some critical downtown expansion.
 
I voted no, of course. However, I can understand a lot of the yes vote, and I don't think it has to do with "not wanting to pay for infrastructure". The no taxation without representation was a good tagline (although I think it was absurd, we don't get to vote on inflation rates), but the main argument I heard for repealing the tax was that the money touched the general fund. People didn't like that they couldn't trace the gas tax to a specific project, and saw it as going to fund other programs they did oppose. We do somehow have one of the better funded DOTs and yet abysmal quality roads.

I think if an incentive was put forth which clearly, directly went into transportation infrastructure maintenance, and couldn't be used for anything else, the balance would shift towards it. As it was, it was a really close vote.
 
You know... whatever way they come up with will be subject to the same demagoguery that Question 1 represents.
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Taxes and fees get introduced, go up, and go down all the time. Just because one of them became a ballot question doesn't guarantee that all future ones will as well.
 
I think the ship is finally turning on infrastructure investment. Really ever since the Minnesota bridge collapse in 2007, folks of all stripes are amenable to maintenance projects -- and pols are less antsy about getting the funding for them. This comes at the expense of less demonstrably tangible causes (welfare, mental health programs, environmental projects).

I don't think this question passing alone means critical infrastructure projects will go unfunded. If they do, it will be because of a lot of other reasons. Of course, this doesn't help.
 
Hahahahaha. Just lol'ed at my desk.

Also, we should probably organize the discussion in this and the BLX thread into a Question 1 thread.
 
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