Public Acceptance of Local Government Transportation Sales Taxes: A Statistical Assessment

Increased traffic congestion in the United States has been magnified by shortfalls in transportation funding, which have limited government agencies' ability to adequately maintain existing trans portation facilities, implement new policies, expand existing facilities, and construct new facilities to mitigate the effects of greater transportation demand. The need to address the worsening traffic congestion problem has received national attention. For example in 2005, the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Effi cient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users authorized the funding of $244.1 billion in transportation improvements. How ever, this amount was considerably less than the $375 billion initially considered by Con gress and much less than the estimated $860 billion needed to maintain the surface trans