Transit vs Roads-Who Pays?

An Arizona Republic letter writer attempts to discredit my earlier editorial opining that the light rail looses huge amounts of taxpayer funds and will do so forever. He does this by opining that taxpayers also subsidize roads and highways; stating that “taxpayers pay almost all of the trillion-dollar costs of building and maintaining them.”

His statement is extremely misleading because those taxes he refers to are paid by USERS of the roads and highways in the form of gas tax, vehicle license tax, etc. In the case of light rail, such taxes are not paid by USERS of light rail but rather by through tax revenues unrelated to light rail.