Survey: Americans Continue to Support Higher Gas Taxes, Especially for Maintenance

Americans are willing to pay more at the pump in taxes if the revenue is used for specific transportation purposes, according to the results of a new Mineta Transportation Institute national telephone survey. The report, What Do Americans Think About Federal Tax Options to Support Public Transit, Highways, and Local Streets and Roads? Results from Year Eight of a National Survey,reveals that more than twice as many Americans would support a 10¢ gas tax increase dedicated for road and highway maintenance as would support that same tax increase if the money were dedicated for unspecified transportation purposes. 

The survey is year eight of an annual series that asks the same questions each year. This year’s results continue the trend that shows that support for raising gas taxes is growing.

The study, available for free PDF download at http://transweb.sjsu.edu/project/1728.html, was conducted by Asha Weinstein Agrawal, PhD, and Hilary Nixon, PhD. 

“The U.S. transportation system requires critical – and expensive – system upgrades,” said Dr. Agrawal. “This survey shows that a supermajority of Americans support a federal gas tax increase if the revenue is dedicated to maintaining streets, roads, and highways.” 

Key 2017 findings related to increasing taxes include:

• Seven of the ten transportation tax options tested had majority support.
• Linking tax increases to safety, maintenance, or environmental benefits increased support by at least ten percentage points among almost every sociodemographic group.
• Support levels varied considerably by the type of tax. When taxes were described with no information other than the tax type, a new sales tax was much more popular than either a gas tax increase or a new mileage tax.

Key 2017 findings specific to public transit include:

• A large majority (83 percent) said that expanding and improving transit services in their states should be a high or medium government priority.
• Only 58 percent of respondents knew that fares don’t cover the cost of transit, and only 41 percent knew of the federal government’s role in funding public transit.
• More than two-thirds (68 percent) supported spending current gas tax revenues on transit, and 48 percent supported increasing gas taxes to improve transit.