MARTA’s had a lot of bad press lately, thanks to a sales tax shortfall and a do nothing legislature, so I thought it would be only fair to give a little equal time to our insolvent highway fund.

This morning’s NY Times reports that the Federal Highway Fund is insanely low on cash and desperately needs to be revamped, since it’s no longer paying for itself.  However, it’s still unclear whether Congress will make the change.

The most contentious question – how to pay for it all – took on a new urgency this week when officials announced that the source of most transportation money would run dry this summer for the second year in a row.

The bulk of the money in the federal Highway Trust Fund comes from the federal gasoline tax, as well as from a tax on truck sales. Lawmakers said they might be forced to bail out the fund in August with $5 billion to $7 billion from general tax revenues, just a year after they provided it with an $8 billion bailout.

Oh, and here’s the best part!

The federal gas tax is not a percentage of the amount of money spent, like a sales tax, but rather a flat 18.4-cent tax levied on each gallon of gasoline sold. It has not been raised since 1993, even as the price of gas has doubled. Officials also say inflation has eroded about a third of the tax’s purchasing power since 1993.

Unlike MARTA, the Federal Highway Fund can be bailed out quite easily by it’s namesake, avoiding much of the press and criticism that comes with having to publicly appeal to an unsympathetic legislature.  Thank goodness!  Now everyone can go on thinking that roads just pave and build themselves, while scorning public transportation for being the supreme model of high costs and low efficiency.