Highway and mass-transit funding crunch

We've been telling you that it seems Americans are cutting back or changing their driving habits because of high gas prices, and now the Federal Highway Administration has confirmed it - 40 billion miles worth of cutbacks to be exact. That's equal to driving the length of the equator more than one and a half million times!

And that's just over the past 7 months, with 9.6 billion of those miles lost this past May alone. While this is easing the demand for fuel and reducing emissions, it's not all good news - it's been seriously cutting into the tax funds available for highway maintenance, and that's not a plus for anyone, whether you drive a lot these days or not.

1) Keeping up with the wear and tear of the nation's roads. The pavement across the country has been rated "not acceptable" on one out of every seven miles of road, according to the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission.

2) Bridge maintanace. This came roaring to the forefront of the DOT's agenda when a Minneapolis bridge collapsed last summer, killing 13 people. Even still, about 25 percent of bridges in the U.S. remain either "functionally obsolete" or "structurally deficient."

3) Upkeep of rail networks and expanding mass transit. Taking mass transit has been a good alternative to high gas prices, but with less people driving, there isn't as much money coming from gasoline-tax revenue allocated to mass transit to help fund necessary expansions; and that's a problem, because the American Public Transportation Association reports increased mass-transit ridership of at least 30 percent in some areas.

So it seems to be a pretty vicious cycle - we are driving less because of high gas prices but in doing so we are hurting our other options, like mass transit, as well as our safety with less funding for projects like updating bridges. Construction costs are already higher to begin with, thanks to the high price of asphalt and other materials.

The National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission estimates a needed $225 billion a year just to meet the country's transportation needs; right now, we are spending at around 40 percent of that number. Congress is working on legislation that will provide some aid to these construction projects, such as the $1 billion for bridge repair that was passed on Thursday.

But when the estimated amount the DOT needs is 225 times that, it might just be too little too late.