Road Builders Total Up Job Losses From Gas Tax Cut
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 05. 6.08
The American Road & Transportation Builders Association has prepared a study of the impact on each state if the gas tax is cut for the summer. They predict that it will blow a $9 Billion hole in the transportation budget. Executive Director George Dondero says "It would deplete an already oversubscribed highway trust fund, making a bad situation worse, We're trying to get the government to generate more money for transportation, not less." Of today's primary states,Indiana would lose $183,722596 and 6,390 jobs; North Carolina $203,319,748 and 7,071 jobs. (See pdf of list here)
A candidate who does not support cutting the gas tax recently said " We are going to be having a lot of conversations this summer about gas prices. And it is a perfect time to start talk about why we don't have better rail service. We are the only advanced country in the world that doesn't have high speed rail. We just don't have it. And it works on the Northeast corridor. They would rather go from New York to Washington by train than they would by plane. It is a lot more reliable and it is a good way for us to start reducing how much gas we are using. It is a good story to tell."
This is the opposite of what we really need. Higher gas prices have caused the largest shift into green thinking and alternative sources of energy that we've seen since the 70s gas crisis. Huge amounts of money are being spent developing new alternative energy systems that would not take off without the need generated by high gas pricing. Think about the benefits to global climate change and the political costs of continued oil use.
Second, the road infrastructure is both critical to the economy and to the thousands of workers who maintain it. You don't improve an economy by scaling back, you improve an economy by putting money into new jobs and infrastructure. Look at how much money developing nations such as China is putting into its national infrastructure.
The short-term pain of higher gas pricing is well worth the long term gain in alternative energy sources.
Cutting the gas tax for a couple months is like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. It is a minor fix that is thrown out there by the political parties that are vying for everyone's votes in the upcoming elections, similar to the tax credit.
A more long range alternative needs to occur instead of grandstanding. We need to tell big oil that their days are numbered.
Think that projects with transportation, infrastructure and green energy production would start to be linked.
Our highways and rail lines have millions of square miles of air rights and open spaces adjacent that are linear and tied to the existing utilities network.
As solar and wind become more econoical to build they are the natural place to expand the system. Rechargeable electrical cars will allow for a transition in the transportation system while allowing the use of fossil fueled vehicle suspension and controlled costs for transportation of food and other essentials.
Public development and cost control of private systems might even produce equitable, humanitarian and justice issue results through the exisiting framework.
Who knows some day we might even have electrified railways?