[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by RWebb

highways are an oil subsidy - think about it

No they are not, YOU think about it.
you've made that same statement over and over but it just is not true.


70% of the cost of maintenance and construction of the national highway system IS PAID FOR by gasoline and diesel excise taxes.
Kind of hard to claim that the highway system subsidizes the oil industry when EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE IS TRUE.

The interstate highway was first and foremost a tool developed for military purposes. Eisenhower got the idea from hitler who built the autobon so he could move military equipment and supplies quickly.

The highway system was also used as a form of worknig welfare, giving people jobs like FDR's socailist new deal.
it also helped the US auto industry.

The highway system was meant to improve the economy through improving the efficiency of interstate commerce and improve the standard of living of the US citizens.

The Interstate Highway System had been lobbied for by major U.S. automobile manufacturers and championed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was influenced by his experiences as a young Army officer crossing the country in the 1919 Army Convoy on the Lincoln Highway, the first road across America.

Initial federal planning for a nationwide highway system began in 1921 when the Bureau of Public Roads asked the Army to provide a list of roads it considered necessary for national defense. This resulted in the Pershing Map.[3] Later that decade, highways such as the New York parkway system were built as part of local or state highway systems.

As automobile traffic increased, planners saw a need for such an interconnected national system to supplement the existing, largely non-freeway, United States Numbered Highway system. By the late 1930s, planning had expanded to a system of new superhighways.

In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave Thomas MacDonald, chief at the Bureau of Public Roads, a hand-drawn map of the U.S. marked with eight superhighway corridors for study.[3] In 1939, Bureau of Public Roads Division of Information chief Herbert S. Fairbank wrote a report entitled Toll Roads and Free Roads, "the first formal description of what became the interstate highway system," and in 1944 the similarly themed Interregional Highways.[4][5]

Eisenhower gained an appreciation of the German Autobahn network as a necessary component of a national defense system while he was serving as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II.[6] He recognized that the proposed system would also provide key ground transport routes for military supplies and troop deployments in case of an emergency or foreign invasion.


Assisting in the planning was Charles Erwin Wilson, who was still head of General Motors when President Eisenhower selected him as Secretary of Defense in January 1953.

In the contiguous United States, Interstate Highways are funded federally with money shared among the states. The H Interstates in Hawaii and the "paper" Interstates in Alaska and Puerto Rico are funded in the same way.

About 70% of the construction and maintenance costs of highways in the U.S. are covered through user fees (net of collection costs), primarily fuel taxes collected by the federal government and state and local governments, and to a much lesser extent tolls collected on toll roads and bridges. The 1956 Highway Trust Fund, established by the Highway Revenue Act, mandated a three-cent-per-gallon tax, soon increased to 4.5 cents.

The rest of the costs are borne by general fund receipts, bond issues, and designated property and other taxes. The federal contribution is overwhelmingly from motor vehicle and fuel taxes (93.5% in 2007).


Interstate Highway System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia