Bicycle Birtherism

In Jan of 2014, The Tax Foundation published this study that showed that user fees on cars only paid 51% of road construction costs.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-user-fees-pay-only-half-state-local-road-spending

This was bandied all over the Internet by the usual suspects as proof that auto-mobiles are a losing proposition and that non-drivers property taxes are subsidizing the drivers' lifestyle.

For what it's worth the original study was true, but they construed user fees pretty narrowly (MFT, tolls, licenses). That is like saying that the news stand price doesn't cover the cost of publishing magazines. Everyone knows that, like roads, other revenues makes up the bulk of their income.

In fact, the Tax foundation's previous study showed that cars only covered 1/3 of road costs because the felt that licenses and the Federal Motor Fuel Tax were not dispersed proportionately and shouldn't be called user fees.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-tolls-pay-only-third-state-local-road-spending

A more in depth study from 2007  looked at a much wider range of revenue sources like sales taxes, fines and income taxes and corporate taxes from the auto and gasoline industries, and even this study showed that income and expenses were pretty close to even until you started adding intangible expenses like the wars in the Middle East.
http://ti.org/delucchiinpress.pdf

That may be how it plays in Peoria, but I'm here to tell you that's not the Chicago way.

Here in the Windy City, the auto-mobile is a major cash cow and my bona fides are as close as the city's 2015 budget.
http://chicityclerk.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/2015OV.pdf

I didn't try to track the path of the MFT or the City sticker revenues to their final destinations. That would be a fools errand, and frankly I don't care how the Department of Buildings justifies 6 full time employees being funded by the Illinois motor fuel tax. My approach was simply X amount of income comes from auto-mobile related sources and Y amount is spent on maintaining the roadway.

Income sources include, State, Federal and Municipal Fuel taxes, City sticker revenues, impound fees, Fines for parking and red light/speed camera infractions and a variety of taxes on taxis, parking lots, etc,. I ignored less verifiable sources like sales taxes on gasoline and cars, and property taxes on gas stations and parking lots.

Expenses are simply the gross budgets of CDoT and Streets and San, including infrastructure and administrative costs, minus trash pickup, rat abatement and those infrastructure projects solely for pedestrian, transit or bicycling. Certainly there are other costs, like fire and police calls related to autos, but these departments benefit from the roadway as well. The Fire Dept's budget would be a lot different if they had to limit each stations range to a distance they could transport their equipment on a rickshaw. A few years ago, (to double check a private traffic study), I took a series of rush hour traffic counts on North Ave. An unexpected observation was that 10% of all vehicles and 25% of all heavy vehicles, belonged to the city. Buses, garbage trucks, police cars, Water Dept dump trucks all depend on the pavement to do their job.

But enough of that, Here are the numbers.

Expenses:

+$258,865,234   Streets and San Total budget
- $156,645,516   Less Solid waste (but including street sweeping)
+$598,286,287   CDoT Total budget
 -$206,643,000   Less Bike, Transit, Pedestrian improvements

  $493,863,005  Total Auto spending


Income:
    $99,100,000 State MFT
  $205,100,000 Vehicle tax(Sticker, towing, impound)
  $188,000,000 Transportation taxes (City MFT, Garage, Taxi)
      $6,400,000 Motor Vehicle Lessor Tax
     $4,100,000 Municipal auto rental tax
     $6,400,000 Municipal Parking
  $256,000,000 Fines, Forfeitures, Penalties (auto related)
  $298,800,000 Infrastructure Grants (sourced from Fed or State MFT)

$1,063,900,000 Total Income

$570,037,000 Profit

Just for perspective, top income sources listed in the Budget are:
$1,299,000,000 Airports
$1,150,400,000 Water and Sewer
  $831,500,000 Property Tax Levy

So, the gross revenues collected, make the auto-mobile Chicago's 3rd highest income generator and the profits are on par with the $647,900,000  the city hopes to receive from its share of the State and local Sales taxes.

Paul K. Dickman