Badger InstituteBadger Institute
  • Home
  • Issues
    • Taxes
    • Education
    • Crime & Justice
    • Spending & Accountability
    • Economy & Infrastructure
    • Federalism
    • Licensing
    • Healthcare
    • Civil Society
  • Mandate for Madison
  • Research
  • Magazines
    • Diggings
    • Wisconsin Interest
  • Events
  • Media
    • Podcast
    • Fact Sheets
    • Viewpoints
    • Press Releases
    • Badger in the News
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Testimony
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • Board of Directors
    • Team
    • Visiting Fellows
    • America’s Future
    • Careers
  • Newsletter
  • Donate
  • Contact Us

Subscribe for Updates

Get the latest news and updates from Badger Institute.

What's New

Latest crime figures show a Milwaukee in trouble

March 23, 2023

Wisconsin lawmakers in the dark on broadband

March 16, 2023

The underfunded part of Wisconsin public schooling

March 16, 2023
Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn Instagram
TRENDING:
  • Latest crime figures show a Milwaukee in trouble
  • Wisconsin lawmakers in the dark on broadband
  • The underfunded part of Wisconsin public schooling
  • If we don’t pay for roads, we don’t get mobility
  • Foreseeing the Future of Wisconsin’s Flat Tax
  • Wisconsin voters will be asked about welfare work requirements
  • A state without convictions
  • Why Wisconsin Needs a Flat Tax and Education Reform
  • Donate
  • Newsletter
  • Contact
Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn Instagram
Badger InstituteBadger Institute
SUPPORT OUR MISSION
  • Issues
    • Taxes
    • Education
    • Crime & Justice
    • Spending & Accountability
    • Economy & Infrastructure
    • Federalism
    • Licensing
    • Healthcare
    • Civil Society
  • Mandate for Madison
  • Research
  • Magazines
    • Diggings
    • Wisconsin Interest
  • Events
  • Media
    • Podcast
    • Fact Sheets
    • Viewpoints
    • Press Releases
    • Badger in the News
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Testimony
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • Board of Directors
    • Team
    • Visiting Fellows
    • America’s Future
    • Careers
Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn
DONATE
Badger InstituteBadger Institute
Home » Viewpoints » Those who pay for pavement set the width
Viewpoints

Those who pay for pavement set the width

By Patrick McIlheranJanuary 26, 2023
Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest
To ensure road policy prioritizes roads’ users, replace Wisconsin’s fading gas tax
Drone photo of downtown Milwaukee’s highway system

The other morning, drumming my fingers on the wheel while westbound traffic oozed along I-94 from downtown Milwaukee toward the stadium — the Wisconsin Department of Transportation says this now is usual — I pondered how much of the argument over I-94’s rebuild isn’t about making the freeway more useful for the people who paid for it.

Instead, oddly, a bunch of critics seem determined to make the I-94 user experience worse on the grounds it’ll make users give up.

Not the DOT: It proposed that as the worn-out 1961 freeway is rebuilt, it be widened by one lane from downtown through Wood National Cemetery. If we don’t, the DOT calculates, congestion in both directions in morning and evening peaks will get worse, going from severe today to extreme in 2050.

In recommending another lane, the agency is paying attention to the evident need of people in Wisconsin to travel from one side of metro Milwaukee to another.

By contrast, opponents who want the road kept narrow, a hodgepodge of anti-growth greens, anti-suburb activists and social justice attention-seekers, do not much argue with the DOT’s numbers. Instead, they offer distractions:

  • Expansion is merely a convenience for suburbanites commuting to downtown jobs, they claim. Though, as one DOT official put it in 2021, much of I-94’s traffic is Milwaukeeans going to and from neither downtown nor Waukesha County. “It’s not just Joe Suburbanite using this road,” said the official, but people starting and ending in-between.
  • Drivers should instead abandon cars, say opponents. Just take the (not yet open) bus rapid transit from Wauwatosa to downtown, said the “Fix at Six” plan for a “sustainable alternative” to an adequate freeway. Or take the not-yet- planned commuter rail, which the report incredibly claimed would be “much more flexible than highways.” Sure, it’s not flexible enough if neither your job nor home are near the rail line, but the report also suggested a wholesale reordering of society so people, pushed into different jobs and homes, can “get to the places they need to go within a 15-minute walk or bike ride.”
  • Expanding I-94 “continues a racist legacy,” the ACLU of Wisconsin said, because a different freeway once was built through Milwaukee’s historically black Bronzeville neighborhood. Which was nowhere near I-94, but perhaps this made sense to the ACLU somehow.

All these excuses amount to studiously ignoring what the people of metro Milwaukee are saying with their driving: I-94 is the state’s busiest stretch of road because it is so flexibly useful — getting you from the north side to New Berlin or from Butler to the Menomonee Valley, wherever and whenever you need.

Instead, road opponents put other priorities — promoting transit, discouraging suburbia, avenging Bronzeville — first. They turn highway policy into a weapon of other revolutions.

This is why an old principle of highway finance in America — the principle of user-pays/user-benefits — is so important. The arguments against making I-94 more useful rest on the premise that the project’s budget is simply state money that can be repurposed to serve preferred aims — to subsidize transit fares or to “promote racial equity,” as Fix at Six touted.

“But it’s our gas-tax money,” jammed-up drivers might say, and for now, they’d mostly be right. But only mostly: In recent years, Wisconsin has been transferring money from the general fund into the transportation fund. And for many years, every projection has shown that gas tax revenue likely has peaked and henceforth will decline as cars get better mileage and as more electric vehicles hit the road.

Last summer, legendary transportation expert Robert W. Poole Jr. of the Reason Foundation estimated for the Badger Institute that by 2050, Wisconsin’s fuel tax revenue will have suffered a long, slow slide even before adjusting for inflation. That was his mid-range estimate. At worst, we could be down 44% from business as usual. That means a lot of money for roads would have to come from general taxation, severing the user-pays/user-benefits principle.

That’s bad. “It’s vitally important to retain the users-pay/users-benefit principle,” he tells me. “In Europe, fuel taxes go into the general fund, and highways are seriously underfunded. So as we select a replacement for the fading gas tax, the new user fee must be dedicated to highways.”

Poole and Badger Institute visiting fellow Benita Cotton-Orr laid out how to replace the gas tax in “Future-Proofing Wisconsin’s Highway Funding System,” part of our “Mandate for Madison.” You can read it here.

It’s a clear plan for how a mileage-based user fee can replace — not supplement, but replace — the gas tax. Wisconsin can phase in such a shift, piloting it on the planned rebuilds of aging freeways and interstate highways, using no-stop transponder technology, and adding in surface highways as best practices become clear from our experience and that of other states.

As Poole and Cotton-Orr make clear, any transition should offer options to drivers to ensure their privacy and to be fair both to urban and rural users. Above all, Wisconsin should make transparent to all what their fees are funding. Drivers are paying; drivers should benefit — and should be able to evaluate whether we’re getting good value.

Such a restoration of the user-pays/user-benefits principle wouldn’t end freeway fights. People who move into well-off neighborhoods next to freeways that were built before they were born will still feel entitled to despise the passing drivers. Greens will still loathe everyone else’s automobility.

But disentangling road funding from the sharp-elbows stewpot of general state taxation will give Wisconsinites more power to demand that roads be kept useful for those who use them.

Patrick McIlheran is the Director of Policy at the Badger Institute. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Telegram Email
Patrick McIlheran

Related Posts

The underfunded part of Wisconsin public schooling

March 16, 2023

If we don’t pay for roads, we don’t get mobility

March 9, 2023

Assembly Speaker calls for tolling to fund Wisconsin infrastructure

March 2, 2023
Categories
Top Posts

Local pols filling old budget holes with massive COVID aid

December 8, 20221,454

This is not four years ago

November 10, 20221,287

A state without convictions

January 12, 2023647

Billions in federal spending in Wisconsin unaudited; results never measured

November 9, 2022491
Archives

Sign Up for Top Picks

Our weekly e-Newsletter with the latest items and updates

Connect with Badger Institute
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
About Us
About Us

The Badger Institute is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit institute established in 1987 working to engage and energize Wisconsinites and others in discussions and timely action on key public policy issues critical to the state’s future, growth and prosperity.

Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube LinkedIn

Sign Up for Top Picks

Our weekly e-Newsletter with the latest items and updates

What’s New

Latest crime figures show a Milwaukee in trouble

March 23, 2023

Wisconsin lawmakers in the dark on broadband

March 16, 2023

The underfunded part of Wisconsin public schooling

March 16, 2023

If we don’t pay for roads, we don’t get mobility

March 9, 2023
© 2023 Badger Institute | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer | Sitemap

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

This site uses functional cookies and external scripts to improve your experience.

Privacy settings

Privacy Settings

This site uses functional cookies and external scripts to improve your experience. Which cookies and scripts are used and how they impact your visit is specified on the left. You may change your settings at any time. Your choices will not impact your visit.

NOTE: These settings will only apply to the browser and device you are currently using.

CRM Software

Customer Relationship Management Software

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our Service. This data is shared with other Google services. Google may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.

You can opt-out of having made your activity on the Service available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js, and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about visits activity.

For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms web page: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en

Powered by Cookie Information