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Re: Senate committee approves repeal of 65 mph limit
Jim Mork (jpmork@primenet.com) wrote:
: Rene Chaddock (umchadd0@CC.UManitoba.CA) wrote:
: : I may be mistaken, but my impression is that any state can set any limit
: : it wants, as long as it is at or below the federally mandated limit. I
: : believe also that any state could as things stand now put their speed
: : limit higher, but that the federal government responds by pulling their
: : highway funding (which is a bad thing).
: Not a good thing if your a states-rightist? Build your own highways and
: thumb your nose at Washington. I'm not a rightist, but somehow it seems
: to me this ought to be what they'd want to do.
But the fact is that states can only opt out of the receiving end of
the federal road money pipeline. If they could also choose to opt out
of the *giving* end of the pipeline (the federal gas tax which funds
all federal road projects), this might make sense. But no state
legislature is going to vote itself into a position in which it has
to tell its citizens "sorry, but all of the federal gas taxes you
pay will be used exclusively to fund roads in *other states*."
Even when they play the game, some states still lose out to others.
For instance, North Carolina only gets back in federal transportation
funds 80-something cents of every dollar that North Carolinians pay
in fuel taxes. If NC could kiss both federal road money *and* federal
gas taxes goodbye (and hike state gas taxes and highway spending
accordingly), it could actually get more money than it does now -- and
it wouldn't have to put up with tiresome federal requirements like
the national speed limit law.
Face it: the interstate highway system is essentially complete. While
huge federal highway expenditures might have been appropriate in the
1950s through the 1970s (when most of the system was being built),
that era has ended, and federal road projects are now apt to be
approved for spurious pork-barrel political reasons rather than for
real transportation needs.
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Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation
goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive
+1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA
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