1. the caltrans budget is only a small fraction of statewide spending on roads … it *does* include most highway spending, but no local streets.

2. direct user fees (gas tax, vehicle registration, tolls, and fines) do NOT cover the full cost of either the Caltrans portion (highways) or the other parts (local streets and roads). over the past 15 years or so, we’ve come to rely much more upon general sales tax (i.e., the sales tax applied to all taxable goods) and on the state general fund (to repay bond indebtedness). note, however, that this is not a conspiracy, it is an explicit choice that the voters of the the state and of various counties have made. (it’s also, to my way of thinking, a mistake, but that’s the risk that comes along with democracy).

3. the sales tax on gas used to go the the state general fund and now is dedicated to transportation, but this tax should nonetheless be considered a direct user fee, not a subsidy.

4. people also point to other forms of subsidy for roads (free land for roads, free parking required by planning codes, etc). obviously you won’t find these numbers in any state or local budget.

I did the search for subsidy a few days ago in the context of a FB discussion with a friend in the renewables & alternatives energy business. We were trying to figure identify what would make alternatives more attractive.

Eric, The $8.9B number includes fuel taxes, vehicle license and registration, but not the sales tax. Sales tax on autos is not broken out from other sales taxes in the budget summaries. Total state sales tax is about $30B, so around $2B seems reasonable for the sales tax on vehicles. Here is the link for revenue:
http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/BudgetSummary/BS_SCH8.pdf

Whether it is appropriate to allocate the auto sales taxes to roads is not my point. My point that car owners pay enough as part of the direct costs of driving a car to cover the bulk of highway costs. Appropriateness is a political question, not financial.

If you believe what it says at the top, 2008-2009 Caltrans expenses are $14.3 billion dollars. Elsewhere it is claimed that fuel, vehicle registration and vehicle sales taxes total $8.9 billion. The Caltrans budget says that $3.6 billion comes from the Federal Trust Fund. That seems to leave $1.8 billion unaccounted for and coming from some other source.

(This is also assuming that it is appropriate to spend all vehicle-related revenues on vehicle-related expenses. Other sales taxes aren’t automatically spent on infrastructure for the things that are sold.)

Nope.

Auto-related expenses which are not covered by fuel taxes, registration/license fees, etc., include police, fire and emergency services (a large percentage of which have to do with cars) etc., etc. Not to mention that the current CalTrans budget does not cover the “deferred maintenance”–CalTrans is way in the hole because of worn-out roads, bridges, and so on.