Poll: 73% of Americans Say Transportation Spending Is Inefficient, Would Prefer to Pay for Highway Repairs With Tolls Rather Than Taxes

Air travelers are worried about missile strikes and don’t think
new airport security fees will increase safety, but are confident
in the TSA  

The new Reason-Rupe national telephone poll of 1,000 adults
finds 73 percent of Americans believe the government spends
existing transportation funding inefficiently. Just 21 percent of
Americans think government spends transportation money
efficiently.

Nevertheless, 46 percent of Americans think the federal
government needs to spend more money on transportation
infrastructure than it does today, 30 percent think the government
needs to spend about the same amount as now, and 21 percent believe
the federal government should spend less on transportation.

Reason-Rupe finds 85 percent of Americans oppose raising the
federal gas tax. Mileage-based user fees are often discussed as the
future of transportation funding, however 72 percent of Americans
tell Reason-Rupe they oppose eliminating the gas tax and replacing
it with a fee based on the number of miles driven. Only 23 percent
favor replacing the gas tax with a mileage fee.

When asked about a specific funding challenge: paying for needed
repairs and the expansion of existing Interstate highways, 58
percent of Americans say they’d rather pay for those projects with
tolls, while 32 percent would prefer to pay for them by raising the
fuel tax.

When asked to choose their top priority for transportation
spending, a majority of Americans—55 percent—chose highways and
streets, but a large number (38%) ranked transit first, and 5
percent put bicycle and walking trails atop the list.

Air Travel

As the investigation into the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 crash
in Ukraine continues, 47 percent of Americans say they are
“somewhat” or “very” worried that terrorists might shoot down a
passenger plane in the United States.  Fifty-two percent say
they are “not too” worried or “not at all” worried about missile
attacks on US passenger planes.

Forty-two percent of those surveyed say they’d be willing to pay
higher airline ticket prices to arm US passenger planes with
anti-missile technology, while 54 percent would not be willing to
pay higher ticket prices.

Reason-Rupe finds that Americans don’t believe the recent
increase in airport security fees will result in an increase in
safety: 74 percent say giving the Transportation Security
Administration more funding “wont make a difference” in safety.
Twenty-one percent say the higher fees will make air travel “more
safe.”

When it comes to the TSA’s ability to find knives, guns and
bombs, 52 percent of Americans say they are “somewhat” confident
that the TSA would find the weapons, 24 percent are “very”
confident in the TSA, 14 percent are  “not too confident,” and
9 percent are “not at all confident” in the TSA’s ability to spot
weapons.

With some US airports now using private airport security
screeners instead of TSA screeners, 46 percent of Americans think
the private screeners will be about the same as TSA screeners, 31
percent think private screeners will be more cost-effective than
the TSA, and 18 percent feel private screeners will be less
cost-effective than TSA.

The Reason-Rupe national telephone poll, executed
by Princeton Survey Research Associates International,
conducted live interviews with 1000 adults on cell phones (500) and
landlines (500) August 6-10, 2014. The poll’s margin of error is
+/-3.7%. Full poll results can be found here,
including poll toplines (pdf) 
and crosstabs (xls).