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of highway fees to mass transit totaled nearly $50 billion
in 1995 dollars.24 (States diverted another $80 billion to
their general funds, and since 1991, the federal government
has diverted about $35 billion to deficit reduction.)25
Many cities that are building rail transit systems are
actually spending more of their transportation funds on
transit than on roads, even though most of the funding comes
from road users and transit typically carries well under 10
percent of local trips. In Portland, for example, total
government capital and operating expenditures on rail and
bus transit outweigh federal, state, and local expenditures
on roads two to one. Since Portland has an ambitious rail
construction program that will last well into the next
century, that ratio is not likely to change. Yet Portland
planners say that rail transit is unlikely to ever carry
more than about 2 to 3 percent of Portland-area trips.
ISTEA Redistribution
One of the major issues of ISTEA reauthorization is
protests by states that get far less than their residents
pay into the highway account of the highway trust fund (so-
called donor states). Yet the disparity for mass transit is
far worse than for highways.
Most states get between 80 and 130 percent of what
their residents pay into the highway account. In 1995, for
example, only one state, South Carolina, received less than
70 percent of what its residents paid into the highway
account and only three states, Alaska, Massachusetts, and
Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia received more
than 200 percent of what they paid in.26 That disparity has
been enough to create a major controversy over ISTEA reau-
thorization.
Because transit makes sense only in the largest cities,
the difference between donors to and recipients of the
transit account is far more serious. Since passage of
ISTEA, more than half the states have received less than 40
percent or more than 200 percent of what their residents
paid into this account.27
· Eight states and the District of Columbia received
more than twice what they paid into the mass transit
account: Connecticut (207 percent), Hawaii (216 per-
cent), Illinois (225 percent), Massachusetts (271
percent), New Jersey (384 percent), New York (504
percent), Oregon (388 percent), Pennsylvania (215