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Jon Boyd's avatar

"But distance is an interesting thing. At the moment there's a heated discussion going on in many places around the country about what to do with the gas tax as it loses value due to reduced VMT and vehicle electrification."

The US and states have already been shifting away from reliance on the fuel taxes. Each reauthorization of STP is including greater shares of general revenue. TX is one state that has followed suit with Prop 1 and Prop 7 funding.

The Overhead Wire by Jeff Wood's avatar

That’s true, it’s moving towards general funds lately. But at some point people are going to push back on that I think. Seems having a more comprehensive discussion about surface transportation would be worth having associated with how we fund it.

Jon Boyd's avatar

Insiders are aware of the shift; the general population is not. That’s why explaining funding to a wider audience is important. The City of Yes noted an awareness on the part of TxDOT:

https://www.ryanpuzycki.com/p/when-just-one-more-lane-runs-out

Jon Boyd's avatar

"A recent paper by Dana Rowengould and Harry Schukei in the Journal of Transportation and Land Use found that rural transportation is influenced more by regional access versus urban transportation more concerned with local access."

How does the paper define and measure "local access" and "regional access"?

The Overhead Wire by Jeff Wood's avatar

I fixed the link to the study.. https://jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/2671

But basically they stated...

"The first built environment (BE) measure, which we termed “local access,” captures community or neighborhood-level density, measured as the natural log of jobs and households per acre in the CBG.

The second BE measure, we termed “regional access,” represents the spatial accessibility

of the larger region, and is measured as the natural log of jobs accessible within a 45-

minute drive.

The third BE measure, “transit access,” represents transit access, measured

as a binary variable that indicates whether there is a transit stop within ¾ mile of the

CBG centroid."

Jon Boyd's avatar

Thanks for the link and the summary.