Transportation Demand relative to Money
The irony of changing long term transportation patterns is that government jurisdictions have difficulty tearing down what infrastructure there is, because so many people use it as it is.
Parts of I-25 have over 200,000 vehicle passages per day. Likewise I-70, the Boulder Turnpike, and I-225 have very large traffic volumes.
Consequently, both for political and practical reasons, in Denver (and in other US and arterial dominated foreign cities), the highest priority is basic road service maintanence on high usage roads. This includes snow removal, signage upkeep, lighting, and, surface repair.
The costs of maintanence for road maintanence (and construction) is following the same escalating cost curve that public transportation maintanence (and construction) is facing. As the total basket of available funding continues to drop in real dollars, the political competition for money between the two naturally will continue to increase.
Adding mode usage and the politics that usage implies, highway maintanence- including resurfacing- will have highest priority for the the transportation dollar in the foreseeable future.
Lastly, the vast proportion of the highway grid is public property which insulates DOTs across America from property speculation, while isolating these organizations from the political expression of popular will. Usage is perceived as free by the users, and, the right to this perception of freedom is very entrenched in the American psyche.
So based upon these axioms, we can assume that the LAST part of the transportation equation that will be seriously cut back will be highway maintanence. This will be true even if the current economic decline continues until our per capital income is 50% or even 25% of what it is in 2011.
Of course the condition of the secondary streets and the condition of major infrastructural pieces that cannot be repaired with a 4-6" layer of asphalt will become hellish.
A last stick in the mud
In real dollars, the federal and state gasoline tax has been dropping for many years. As real costs continue to rise at a fast (and likely accelerating) rate, the gap between desired funding and real needs will continue to widen. IMO to fill the gap now would require an additional $.50 tax for both diesel and gasoline, and, that is in our current eroding dollars. Also, IMO, this tax will be among the last taxes that will be increased, so the US can look forward to highways decaying even more rapidly than now.
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