We know that one of the key reasons that raising the gas tax was never considered an option as legislators (read: re-electable politicians) knew that the public doesn’t trust them to use additional tax money purely for highways and bridges.
So how would you feel about toll money (and there may be more tolls booths in our future as we struggle to fund our transportation infrastructure) went not to roads but to trains. Or even to non-transport projects?
It’s happening.
The New York Times gets a variety of opinions on the toll money and where it goes topic, and they pretty much cover the spectrum. And they are something of a must-read because of the above-mentioned probability that toll money is going to be called on to do a significant chunk of what the fuel-tax funded Highway Trust Fund used to do.