Tolls, Not Taxes: How Americans Want to Fix Traffic Jams

“Communist China has way more cases where the private sector is involved in building roads than the United States does,” says Reason Foundation transportation economist Adrian Moore.

Moore sat down with Reason to discuss transportation policy in general and the results of the January Reason-Rupe poll in specific. The Reason-Rupe poll is a quarterly national survey of Americans and the latest iteration focused on transportation issues.

Among the main results:

-Nearly 50 percent of respondents say that for them congestion has worsened over the last five years, and over 50 percent think it will get even worse in the next five years.

-Only 12 percent use transit with any regularity and the number who telecommute is about the same
as those who carpool.

-65 percent think the government generally spends transportation funding ineffectively.

-77 percent oppose raising the federal gas tax.

-58 percent think new lanes or new highways should be funded with tolls rather than tax increases, and 59 percent say they would pay a toll if it would save them a significant amount of time.

The full results, along with an explanation of methodology and analysis by poll director Emily Ekins, is online here.