Policy Study

Defederalizing Transportation Funding

Executive Summary

Airports, highways, and mass transit systems are primarily state and local responsibilities. They are developed and operated by state and local governments (with increasing private-sector involvement) and funded primarily from state and local sources. Yet the federal government, by collecting transportation user taxes and using them to make grants for these systems, both raises the costs and exerts significant control over these state and local activities.

Congress should devolve transportation infrastructure funding and responsibilities to cities and states, ending federal grant programs and their accompanying restrictions. Cities and states have been open to privatization, and most would welcome the flexibility and freedom from costly federal regulations which devolution would give them. Devolving transportation funding would lead to more-productive investment, greater intermodalism, more innovation, and new capital from the private sector.

Conventional wisdom suggests that 21 states are net donors to the federal highway program and the rest are net recipients. But this paper’s analysis, taking into account the real costs of federal funding and regulations, concludes that 33 states get back less than they contribute in highway taxes and would be better off if the funds were left in their states to begin with. By adding such major states as Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia to the donor-state category, this assessment could change the political dynamics in favor of devolution.

Abundant evidence now exists that federal transit programs have stimulated investment in unviable rail systems and have needlessly boosted transit system operating costs. The flexibility created by repeal of federal transit regulations would permit changes (such as competitive contracting of transit operations) that could save enough to offset much of the loss of federal operating subsidies. It would be up to cities and states to decide whether to continue to invest in non-cost-effective rail transit.

The only truly federal role in aviation is ensuring safety and facilitating the modernization of the air traffic control system. The latter can best be accomplished by divesting ATC to a user-funded corporation, as 16 other countries have done. Airports should be defederalized; all sizes of commercial airports could make up for the loss of federal grants with modest per-passenger charges. States could decide whether to subsidize unviable general aviation airports.

Overall, the federal government would retain certain coordination and safety-regulation functions in transportation. But it would henceforth leave investment and management decisions to state, city, and private decision-makers.

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