Don’t bleed tax revenue to alternate transportation

In your [Oct. 13] editorial, “Transportation takes many forms,” you seem to be for improving state roads and bridges while funding other “non-road” programs.

In a world with no limitations and limitless tax revenues, I wouldn’t disagree. But after alternative transportation modes get their due, how will this be funded?

Here is another question: When the current system of roads and bridges were constructed, didn’t you think funding of the maintenance and improvement of these roads and bridges should be accounted for? One last question: Doesn’t it make sense to keep in good repair the infrastructure we have now before we go to other modes?

I recently attended the Indiana Motor Truck Association meeting in French Lick and several important members of our state legislature were there. Those of us in the audience were told by these forthright public servants that to adequately fund the upkeep of our current infrastructure, an increase in the state’s fuel tax of 22 cents per gallon would be adequate. This doesn’t include what the feds are contemplating on a national level.

Transportation modes are all expensive and their infrastructure is a huge piece of it. If millennials are so desirous of, let’s say a modern public transportation system for central Indiana, perhaps they might be willing to fork over a significantly higher percentage of their income to fund it. The rest of us will be digging deeper just to pay upkeep on the roads and bridges we have.

I suggest we continue to find ways to cut waste from state government as Gov. Pence has and Gov. Daniels did before him. Perhaps when the state does the necessary things it is supposed to do more efficiently we can fund more adequately current infrastructure and look to new transportation modes as well as long as there is a return in the form of a growing economy.

John L. Sorg,

McCordsville