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Pavement management processes from medieval Europe
Published in Maxwell Lay, John Metcalf, Kieran Sharp, Paving Our Ways, 2020
Maxwell Lay, Metcalf John, Sharp Kieran
Technical pavement issues associated with turnpikes were discussed in Chapter 3. Given that most road usage had been free, the turnpike system was never popular with toll-paying travellers and began to decline in the middle of the 19th century with the new railways siphoning off much of its more profitable business.232 Rather than establish a national agency to manage the highways and major local roads, the British government reverted back to the failed earlier system of putting roads in the control of local agencies. This decision was administratively simple and aligned to the political opposition to centralised expert control then being advocated by the libertarian and free-market political movements.233 Pavements again deteriorated, and the situation was only reversed by the irresistible pressures of the new motorcars at the beginning of the new century. Fuel tax became the new revenue source for building and maintaining roads and their pavements.
Transportation, Energy, And The Environment
Published in Dušan Teodorović, The Routledge Handbook of Transportation, 2015
Fuel tax (or gas tax) is an excise tax imposed on the sale of fuel. The first gas tax was enacted in Oregon in 1919; by 1929, every state had adopted such a tax (Black, 2010). Currently, the fuel tax consists of a federal excise tax at $0.184 per gallon of gasoline and $0.244 per gallon of diesel, plus state and local taxes. The intent of the tax is to raise funds for highway construction, operation, and maintenance (placed in the Highway Trust Fund (HTF)) but also to reduce emissions and energy use. While this tax promotes changes in driving intensity and provides an incentive for energy efficiency (RAND Corporation, 2009; Small, 2012), it is not sufficient to cover the financial needs of the surface transportation system; the federal tax has not been increased or indexed to inflation since 1993, vehicle fuel economy has improved, and the market penetration of alternative vehicles is increasing (Government Accountability Office, 2006). Supporters of a fuel tax raise argue that it will both boost the HTF and serve as an incentive for greener vehicles and reduction in travel (Litman, 2013; Small, 2012).
Air transport and the challenge of climate change – how aviation climate change policies work
Published in Frank Fichert, Peter Forsyth, Hans-Martin Niemeier, Aviation and Climate Change, 2020
Frank Fichert, Peter Forsyth, Hans-Martin Niemeier
There is a long and ongoing debate on the taxation of the air transport industry. First, a distinction has to be made between taxes on the air transport service itself (including Value Added Taxes as well as specific “ticket taxes”), taxes on fuel, and taxes on emissions. Due to the proportional relation between fuel burn and CO2 emissions, a fuel tax is basically the same as a tax on carbon emissions (only with a different tax rate). Other emissions, like NOx and noise, are not directly linked to fuel burn.
Highways as coupled infrastructure systems: an integrated approach to address sustainability challenges
Published in Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, 2022
Marco A. Janssen, John M. Anderies, Andres Baeza, Hanna L. Breetz, Tomasz Jasinski, Hoon C. Shin, Sechindra Vallury
Highways are provided by local, state and federal governments who collect tax to fund the construction and maintenance of highways. There is reasonable documentation of the financing of construction and maintenance at the various levels of governments. At the federal level, the Federal Highway Administration’s Highway Trust Fund functions as the mechanism to generate revenue, mainly from fuel taxes, and distribute the resources to approved highway projects across the USA. In the 1990s the Clinton administration increased the federal funds for highway construction and highway safety, but the actual amount of funds appropriated hinged upon money received by the Highway Trust Fund (Karnes, 2009).