There was a transportation panel at last week’s Illahee symposium, “Oil Water and Oregon”. Of course the gas tax came up. As the gas tax loses buying power to inflation and greater fuel economy, the funds available for maintenance continue to get squeezed.
One panelist opined that the message voters were sending in voting down gas tax increases was that voters didn’t want more roads. I’m not sure that’s entirely true, I suspect some portion of them just don’t want to pay…
But the eye-opener for me was to hear a panelist from ODOT say that they actually have a planning process to look at what facilities they will abandon if they can’t maintain all the roads.
I have a hard time imagining that it will ever come to that, but the fact that they feel compelled to think about is pretty sobering.
3 responses to “When the Money Runs Out”
But the eye-opener for me was to hear a panelist from ODOT say that they actually have a planning process to look at what facilities they will abandon if they can’t maintain all the roads.
Good! Maybe they can get ahead of the curve and unload, now, the huge parcels of land they have locked up in our neighborhood, in the Central Eastside Industrial District.
I have lived in Hosford-Abernethy for 18+ years now, and for all this time to have massive parcels of land sitting vacant across the river from downtown, generating no property taxes, with broken sidewalks and fenced-off vagrant-and litter-attracting land…what’s the point? Is part of ODOT’s mission to land bank valuable industrial-zoned properties, and keep them off the tax roles?
Decommissioning the Marquam Bridge and Eastbank freeway would make available some of the most valuable land in the region for redevelopment.
This is part of the problem of subsidized systems also.
While people get used to paying a lower price even though it costs far more for something (roadways, trains, mass transit) etc. it makes them much less likely to want to fund something in the future because they are A: spoiled and B: under the false impression that something costs less than what it really does.
In turn people place a lower and lower priority on transportation funding and act as if it is something that is “owed” to them by society. The method of higher and higher subsidies continues and perpetuates this idealogy which is VERY bad for the market and for ANY possible resumption of the transportation industry actually being given BACK to the people and allowing businesses/people/trusts/concerns to run these things again under a self sustaining plan.
The best I can hope is that the prices for travelling start to recuperate from this egregarious subsidization & over reliance on roadways. With that transportation increases in price, the cost is actually defrayed and real interest will be created for society in general to be involved in these matters again.