A report published earlier this year offers some intriguing solutions to the quagmire that is funding and project implementation between local, state, and federal departments of transportation. Projects often take decades to begin, and in the age of autonomous vehicles, that just won’t work anymore.
The author, Nashville, Tennessee councilman Robert Swope, suggests a fascinating approach that he calls “human transit” instead of “mass transit” and allows people to maintain some levels of car-ownership but also works towards creating a demand for a new option.
Currently, the federal government (USDOT) is relied upon to provide upwards of 80 percent of all transportation infrastructure funding in each state across America.
If the human transit model of autonomous vehicle implementation were to succeed on even a conservative basis, it would mean a total reversal of how roads, bridges, and all other infrastructure were funded moving forward. Rebuilding America would be accomplished in far less time than the current USDOT – state – local funding model, and in a far more efficient and effective manner.
Knowing that local governments are far more in touch with the needs and issues within their communities, human transit posits a change in this current funding scenario.
According to The Federal Highway Administration, in 2016, Americans drove a total of 3.17 trillion miles on US roads. If a mere 25 percent of this total were to be traveled in the human transit model, it means that 792.5 billion miles would be revenue generating for each municipality that participated.
At the same revenue estimate of $.03 per mile, paid by a P3 (public private partnership) fleet operations partner, a total of $23.77 billion dollars would be raised for local governments infrastructure annually. Additionally, if the top 50 cities in America, per census population metrics, were to save the same mass transit subsidies as Nashville, an estimated $50 million per year; that equals another $2.5 billion dollars in realized local revenue. This creates a total of $26.27 Billion annually without any form of tax increase either local, state or federal.
While no hard numbers exist to relate the real-world value of federal dollars versus local dollars spent, it has been surmised in countless studies that federally funded projects cost an average of 30 percent more than the same initiatives funded on a local basis. With that in mind, and comparing apples to apples, the same $26.27 billion in local dollars equates to $34.14 billion dollars in a federal spend.
What this means is that with a modest 25 percent of the country utilizing autonomous vehicles within the human transit model, half of the total DOT budget for infrastructure nationwide will be generated and invested on a local basis annually, without raising one dime in taxpayer funding. Imagine what would happen if 50 percent or more of society embraced the technologies of the future? At that moment, most all infrastructure needs would be enacted on a local level, and the current $72 billion being spent annually by the USDOT could now be used to directly reduce the ever-increasing US national debt.