Amtrak Gateway Tunnels

Gilbert B Norman wrote:Mr. Arlington, the only Amtrak train to cross the NC/13th CD is the Crescent with stops at Greensboro, High Point, and Salisbury.

Ooops, I must have been looking at past or future boundaries.

I'd say the point remains: the best way to remind the folks of NC, SC, GA & FL of the value of Gateway would be point out the obvious that their money-losing trains would be cut first, or be run as coach only extensions of NEC trains, or given off-hours slots if the system had to be run from a single existing tunnel.

electricron wrote:There you are spreading the false rumor that rural infrastructure was built exclusively for rural customers. The truth is rural infrastructure was built for urban customers more so than rural customers..

The test can't be "exclusively" (and I never said it was), but "primarily" would be a good test. The beneficiaries of roads are primarily those who live along them. City people "use" the rare "farm-to-market" trip very rarely or even once per year (for grains), compared to essentially daily trips that "farmers" use a road for their own household grocery shopping, retail, and second jobs trips (most farmer households in "the East" have second jobs).

Not even this "Policy Brief" which is pro-Rural, can do better than say "it's complicated", and never actually does the math which they say should be done, and really never proposes any counter-numbers to overcome the fact (which they concede) that Pennsylvania's 5 least populous (rural) counties have 142 feet of state road per resident, versus 5 most populous (urban) counties having only 5 feet of road per resident.

The authors propose nothing, really, that would undo the implied 28-to-1 subsidy of each rural person getting roughly 30 times as much state road per capita as the urban. The best they do is say the urban roads are 2x more heavily used (and might be 3x wider on average, and 2x as expensive). 2x3x2 = 12x...meaning if we did the math they say we haven't done, we'd still see rural places getting 2x ~ 3x as much "road stuff" per capita.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/ ... eto-445926

Well that escalated quickly.

ADMIN: added fair-use quote.

President Donald Trump has threatened to veto a massive omnibus spending package if it includes money for the Gateway tunnel project in New York City, according to multiple sources.

Trump's threat has complicated the outlook for the $1 trillion-plus spending measure, which Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) want to pass before government funding runs out on March 23.

While it is highly unusual for a Republican president to threaten a veto on a funding bill coming from a GOP-run Congress — and risking a potential government shutdown — Trump is adamant in his opposition to the federal government underwriting the project, the sources said.
...

I'm going to tell the truth about why I want the tunnels built. I'm selfish! As a central NJ railfan I want to see Clayton Block and Sand get the contract for all the sand required for the concrete. Clayton has a MAJOR sand mine in Woodmansie, NJ southwest of Lakehurst. I'll get to see some nice unit sand trains through my backyard. Right now the only trains we see is a once-a-week Conrail Shared Assets mixed freight of 8-19 cars. Also the rail line through our area is being considered for passenger service expansion by NJ Transit. (MOM line, see NJ thread) The future Passenger service is dependent on cross Hudson tunnel capacity expansion as well as an upgrade of the CSAO Southern Secondary. to above FRA Class1.

east point wrote:Second avenue subway ? since the diameter of Gateway is double of 2nd avenue that is 4 times the spoil for digging Gateway. Cannot get costs as low as 2nd ave .

Double the diameter?

I believe the TBMs are specced at about 30', so you're claiming the SAS are 15' diameter? Seems tight for tracks, trucks and the cars.

Arlington wrote: The test can't be "exclusively" (and I never said it was), but "primarily" would be a good test. The beneficiaries of roads are primarily those who live along them. City people "use" the rare "farm-to-market" trip very rarely or even once per year (for grains), compared to essentially daily trips that "farmers" use a road for their own household grocery shopping, retail, and second jobs trips (most farmer households in "the East" have second jobs).

Not even this "Policy Brief" which is pro-Rural, can do better than say "it's complicated", and never actually does the math which they say should be done, and really never proposes any counter-numbers to overcome the fact (which they concede) that Pennsylvania's 5 least populous (rural) counties have 142 feet of state road per resident, versus 5 most populous (urban) counties having only 5 feet of road per resident.

Food is delivered to New York City on a daily basis. While farmers may ship grain once per year to the local silos, they deliver other food stuffs more regularly than once a year. Milk spoils in about a month. Cows give milk every day. It’s obvious you know little about how your food is delivered to your local grocery store. You completely ignored the manufactured goods built in cities delivered to farms, which I guarantee happens more than once a year.

As for the footage per resident, you ignore how large farms must be. Five feet per farm isn’t going to get the food or goods far. The average apartment or suburban home may have 1,600 - 2,600 square feet. The average home lot in the USA today is 0.19 acre. The average homestead farm had 6,969,600 square feet or 160 acres. The average farm today has 434 acres, or 18,905,040 square feet. An acre is 43,560 square feet, slightly less than 209 feet by 209 feet.
So why are you surprised the per capita road footage is so different between rural and urban areas?

electricron wrote:So why are you surprised the per capita road footage is so different between rural and urban areas?

Just like I never said exclusively I never said I was surprised by the road footage difference. Quite the opposite: I basically predicted this lopsidedness in the NH commuter rail thread (where upstate/rurals kill commuter rail for downstate/urbans) where we could show that nearby MA was spending generally more per capita in rural places that were simultaneously paying less per capita in taxes (based on lower incomes, lower property values, and lower retail sales per capita). And another poster showed how MA was paying $4000 per subscriber to extend cable broadband...a classic analogy to all the infrastructure subsidy that rural areas consume but urban areas don't

Rural places like upstate NH and NC-13 totally delude themselves when they say things like "I pay for my roads with my taxes, so NY/NJ should pay for Gateway with their taxes" That first clause is wrong: these rural places are paying only a tiny fraction of what they consume--probably paying about the same "1/30th" of it as in PA (explained upthread), while urban people pay for 37/30ths of what they get (per capita, each urban person pays 30/30ths of what they use and ship another 7/30ths out to rural areas as a subsidy). [EDIT: assuming a US-median 80% urban population, that's 4 urban people splitting the cost of the subsidy to each urban person]

Only a subsidy from the state--from taxes mostly paid by urban people--allow rural folks to consume as much infrastructure as they want/need/demand for a modern lifestyle. But yeah, given explicit New Deal & Great Society rural "uplift" programs and given that urban people are mostly paying, it was not surprising (to me) at all that rural people would demand/get/use 28x road per capita as urban people.

At the same time a decent swag would be that rural people pay only 80% the tax $ per capita as urban people (they pay in 20% less, overall, than urban people) given the rural per capita incomes about 20% lower, retail sales about 10% lower and property taxes about 40% lower.

What I'm surprised at is that you won't concede the obvious financial implications:
Rural people get 28x as much road per capita
Rural people pay .8 as much taxes per capita

In road per dollar per capita, rural areas are getting 35x (28/.8) as an urban places. That's a HUGE infrastructure subsidy to (consumed by) rural areas from (funded by) urban areas.

The NY/NJ response to the NC-13 congressman is that Gateway represents a minor backflow of $ to urban NY/NJ in the giant historic river of infrastructure subsidies that's flowed (and continues to flow) from Urban to Rural.

Arlington wrote:The NY/NJ response to the NC-13 congressman is that Gateway represents a minor backflow of $ to urban NY/NJ in the giant historic river of infrastructure subsidies that's flowed (and continues to flow) from Urban to Rural.

Do you consider D.C. , Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey,Connecticut, and Massachusetts mostly urban or rural states? All of them had higher per capita Federal taxes than New York.
Here's the 2015 Federal revenues per capita data listed at Wiki, the results might startle you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_t ... e_by_state" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
1 District of Columbia $38,163
2 Delaware $23,982
3 Minnesota $19,504
4 New Jersey $17,226
5 Connecticut $16,507
6 Massachusetts $15,927
7 New York $13,659
8 Rhode Island $13,616
9 Nebraska $13,256
10 Illinois $12,310
11 Ohio $12,148
12 Arkansas $10,917
13 Maryland $10,665
14 Pennsylvania $10,640
15 Missouri $10,551
16 California $10,408
17 Washington $10,242
USA $10,234
18 Texas $10,204
19 North Dakota $10,189
20 Virginia $9,590
21 Tennessee $9,508
22 Kansas $9,295
23 Louisiana $9,130
24 South Dakota $9,013
25 Wyoming $9,009
26 Wisconsin $8,972
27 Indiana $8,767
28 Florida $8,762
29 Oklahoma $8,687
30 Colorado $8,664
31 New Hampshire $8,507
32 Georgia $8,476
33 Michigan $7,860
34 North Carolina $7,846
35 Oregon $7,757
36 Alaska $7,751
37 Iowa $7,678
38 Kentucky $7,392
39 Vermont $7,180
40 Utah $6,747
41 Nevada $6,398
42 Arizona $6,253
43 Idaho $5,920
44 Hawaii $5,769
45 Montana $5,625
46 Maine $5,615
47 Alabama $5,165
48 South Carolina $4,921
49 New Mexico $4,312
50 West Virginia $4,005
51 Mississippi $3,836
52 Puerto Rico $1,015

Using your logic that New York pays a significantly higher per capita in federal taxes they deserve $15 Billion brand new railroad tunnels, then I could suggest Minnesota and Delaware deserve the same amount of federal dollars for tunnels too. Who are you kidding?

Why do you think D.C., Delaware, and Minnesota federal taxes per capita are so high? Could the reason be over inflated salaries more so than economic worth, or a high concentration of financial institutions that generate wealth nationally? You know possibly from those rural areas you think don't pull their weight?

Is anyone surprised at how high federal taxes are from D.C.? You shouldn't be because D.C. local taxes are collected by the federal government. That's city, county, state, and federal taxes elsewhere.

I do note that New York City's budget has increased dramatically under Bill de Blasio, and the increase in spending (by billions a year) is primarily for social-service programs and salaries and wages of union personnel.

If de Blasio had simply kept NYC's budget at the level it was under Mike Bloomberg, subject to increase only for inflation and population growth, then NYC would be able to fund the portion of Gateway that had been proposed to be funded by the Federal government.

I don't recall anyone saying that NYC's government was too small under Bloomberg. I'd say that spending money for infrastructure would have a better payoff than spending money to line the pockets of de Blasio's supporters.

On the topic of why Feds should pay for Gateway (why NC-13 is wrong in thinking it is NC-13's money being spent), my thesis remains that most Fed money comes from urban people, but most infrastructure spending goes to rural highways. Gateway is a suitable use of what turns out to be the much-higher Federal tax contributions of DC, DE, NJ, NY, CT & MA, and urban people in those urban states, in particular.

Electricron's numbers confirm my point. DC is 100% urban and pays the most Federal tax per capita (Ron's explanation is wrong--it is NOT that local property/sales taxes are Federalized in DC, they are not)...and its been decades since DC had a major Federal infrastructure project (their "Gateway" would be the just-as-stymied replacement/expansion of Long Bridge & Union Station)

electricron wrote:Why do you think D.C., Delaware, and Minnesota federal taxes per capita are so high? Could the reason be over inflated salaries more so than economic worth, or a high concentration of financial institutions that generate wealth nationally? You know possibly from those rural areas you think don't pull their weight?

Whether or not one judges that urban jobs are worth the greater amounts that they are paid* does not change the fact that they ARE paid more per capita and DO pay more taxes per capita (and DO get back less on infrastructure) and DO end up subsidizing the infrastructure of perhaps morally superior rural folk. If you feel that urban incomes are not truly earned, you may deplore this inversion but can't deny that urbanites pay more in taxes than they get back infrastructure.

For the top 10 and bottom 10 (for brevity) I've added to Ron's quote, above, the % urban population of each state, and yes, being urban is a huge source & predictor of higher incomes (in DE it is also corporate tax paying, in addition to being more highly urbanized)

electricron wrote:

Arlington wrote:The NY/NJ response to the NC-13 congressman is that Gateway represents a minor backflow of $ to urban NY/NJ in the giant historic river of infrastructure subsidies that's flowed (and continues to flow) from Urban to Rural.

Here's the 2015 Federal revenues per capita data listed at Wiki...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_t ... e_by_state" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

1 District of Columbia $38,163 - 100% URBAN
2 Delaware $23,982 - 83.3% urban
3 Minnesota $19,504 - 73.3% urban (exception to Arlington's Rule)
4 New Jersey $17,226 - 94.7% urban
5 Connecticut $16,507 - 88.0% urban
6 Massachusetts $15,927 - 92% urban
7 New York $13,659 - 87.9% urban
8 Rhode Island $13,616 - 90.7% urban
9 Nebraska $13,256 - 73.1% urban (exception to Arlington's Rule)
10 Illinois $12,310 - 88.5% urban
...
USA $10,234 - 80% urban
...
41 Nevada $6,398 - 94.2% urban (but high % are low-pay Vegas/Reno service jobs)
42 Arizona $6,253 - 89.8% urban (but high % retiree incomes)
43 Idaho $5,920 - 70.% urban
44 Hawaii $5,769 - 91.9% urban (this *is* surprising. Untaxed Navy pay? Retirees? Hotels?)
45 Montana $5,625 - 55.9% urban
46 Maine $5,615 - 38.7% urban
47 Alabama $5,165 - 59.0% urban
48 South Carolina $4,921 - 66.3% urban
49 New Mexico $4,312 - 77.4% urban
50 West Virginia $4,005 - 48.7% urban
51 Mississippi $3,836 - 49.3% urban

electricron wrote:...the results might startle you:

Nothing startles me about this: About 70% to 80% of the time, being more urban predicts higher income and being less urban predicts lower income. Hello to famous Amtrak freeriders South Carolina and West Virginia, we see you there, paying 1/2 the taxes, and getting all kinda highways and trains. No surprise finding them in high-rural, low-contribution, high-infrastructure bucket.

When I assume "urban" == "high income, high federal contribution"
I'm right 3 or 4 times more often than I'm wrong.

When others assume rural folks pay via taxes for their infrastructure,
they are WRONG 3 or 4 times more often than they are right.

The top per capita Federal tax paying states are the more urban ones (for per capita math, the *people* are per capita urban) https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/pop ... pct-states" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
8 out of the top 10 per capita contributors are more urban than the US average
7 out of the bottom 10 per capita contributors are less urban --often much less urban--than the US average

I believe Nebraska is lifted by Kiewit and Berkshire Hathaway wealth (which flows to many early shareholders) and Minnesota by Cargill. Both Nebraska and Minnesota are also lifted by high income, highly-mechanized mega farming and industrial food processing in rural areas. Yes, sometimes rural incomes can be higher, and rural processing can be the source of urban wealth, but basically only 20% of the time. The other 80% is purely as predicted: urban people earn more, pay more, and historically were net-donors of infrastructure to less urban states that simply did not have the incomes to support the infrastructure that's been expected since the New Deal pushed roadbuilding and electric and telephones out into rural areas.

What do DC and Delaware want for their extra Federal contribution? It isn't more freeways in South Carolina. I'm sure the DC Acela set and WIL leadership (Joe Biden?) would both love to see a good chunk invested in the NEC HSR in general, with first priority to Long Bridge and Gunpowder & Susquehanna bridges, but they'd also see that these lead eventually to Gateway.

Minnesota, being filled with nice, civic-minded folk, may actually be happy knowing that it probably comes closest to paying for their rural roads of any more-rural states. Nebraska probably just wants its money back. But, again, these are the 20% cases in the top 10, not the dominant 80% for whom the urban = pays more taxes, gets less back rule applies.

*DC's income is all lawyer-regulators and lobbyists. I find those people odious, unproductive, and unsympathetic (same goes for all NY/NJ/CT bank-hedgefund manipulators/parasites) but I can't deny (and won't let others deny) the reality that they pay more in taxes than they get back in Federal infrastructure spending.

then NYC would be able to fund the portion of Gateway

Gateway is a joint Federal / New Jersey / New York State project, not New York City. deBlasios budget is paid for by NYC taxes not NYS taxes. NYC voted him in and they can pay for his policies.

Arlington » Fri Mar 09, 2018 7:28 am

And New Jersey is the #1 in population density.

One must wonder if there will be a "Toll" to use the tunnels whenever they are built.

Coming to mind is the one-time "bridge toll" charged by the New York Connecting RR to use Hell Gate Bridge. The interline NH-PRR rate was higher than the sum of the two NH and PRR Local rates. Interline tickets were endorsed "via HGB" to show the "Toll" was paid.

Possibly Messrs. Nelligan and Weaver have concurring or dissenting thoughts regarding such.

Gilbert B Norman wrote:One must wonder if there will be a "Toll" to use the tunnels whenever they are built.

Yes, that's exactly New Jersey's plan:

...letter from NJ Transit to the federal Department of Transportation outlines the plan, under which city rail commuters would pay a 90 cent per-trip surcharge to fund the tunnel project starting in 2020.
The surcharge would jump to $1.70 in 2028, and to $2.20 in 2038.

If Amtrak were "private enough" to obligate / bond its future fare premiums--say, a $10 or even $20 per trip "Tunnel Facility Charge"-- that'd go a long way to bonding/funding its share of the project, particularly from the fare premiums it will get from market power as half-hourly WAS-NYP Acelas drive the airline market share even lower. We build shiny terminals with PFCs, why not a tunnel with TFCs?

With Amtrak's NEC revenues "not its own" (or you never know when they'll be siphoned back to fund the, ahem, rural-centric LDs) nobody seems to have asked or offered an Amtrak toll on itself. I worry that infrastructure privatization would result in over-tolling by crony-investors.

Arlington wrote:Electricron's numbers confirm my point. DC is 100% urban and pays the most Federal tax per capita (Ron is wrong--it is NOT that local property/sales taxes are Federalized in DC, they are not).
Whether or not one thinks that urban jobs are worth the greater amounts that they are paid does not change the fact that they ARE paid more per capita and DO pay more taxes per capita (and DO get back less on infrastructure) and DO end up subsidizing the infrastructure of perhaps morally superior rural folk. If you feel that urban incomes are not truly earned, you may deplore this inversion but can't deny that urbanites pay more in taxes than they get back infrastructure.

I'll admit I was wrong about who collects the taxes in D.C., but the other point I was trying to make was poorly expressed by be; that D.C. is an unified city-state vs a state-county-city being separated. But that doesn't really matter because the revenues streams under discussion was just federal. So your explanation of higher salaries within D.C. is correct.

And while your arguments about urban and rural salaries and resulting taxes explains what's normal, it doesn't explain the data points that appear at first glance to be wrong. Like with your 80%-20% ratios, why the 20% abnormal exists at all?

But so far there's been no data listed on federal expenditures by states or by urban-rural. Let's see if we can list some to add to the discussion. This link provides one such list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_t ... g_by_state" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It breaks it down by by category of expenditure, listed by states in amounts and per capita.

Depending upon the category of expenditure, results are dramatically different. Here's the top 10 in the various categories per capita.....The list will be way too long otherwise...
By States
1 District of Columbia $73,920 100% urban
2 Virginia $16,710
3 Maryland $15,684
4 Alaska $14,375
5 Hawaii $13,752 91.9% urban
6 New Mexico $13,213 77.4% urban
7 Maine $12,104 38.7% urban
8 Alabama $11,743 59.0% urban
9 Connecticut $11,527 88.0% urban
10 West Virginia $11,496 48.7% urban
Retirement Benefits
1 District of Columbia $4,820 100% urban
2 West Virginia $4,576 48.7% urban
3 Alabama $4,329 59.0% urban
4 Maine $4,223 38.7% urban
5 Virginia $4,203
6 South Carolina $4,060 66.3% urban
7 Arkansas $4,009
8 Maryland $4,004
9 Delaware $3,967 83.3% urban
10 Florida $3,936
Non Retirement Benefits
1 Florida $3,403
2 Rhode Island $3,252 90.7% urban
3 Mississippi $3,181 49.3% urban
4 Michigan $3,179
5 West Virginia $3,158 48.7% urban
6 Pennsylvania $3,158
7 Massachusetts $3,107 92% urban
8 New Jersey $3,106
9 New York $3,046 87.9% urban
10 Alabama $3,033 59.0% urban
Grants
1 District of Columbia $7,678 100% urban
2 Alaska $3,604
3 Vermont $3,013
4 New York $2,690 87.9% urban
5 Maine $2,399 38.7% urban
6 Rhode Island $2,292 90.7% urban
7 New Mexico $2,249 77.4% urban
8 Massachusetts $2,247 92% urban
9 Montana $2,238 55.9% urban
10 North Dakota $2,165
Contracts
1 District of Columbia $25,963 100% urban
2 Virginia $6,197
3 Maryland $4,318
4 New Mexico $3,211 77.4% urban
5 Connecticut $2,892 88.0% urban
6 Alaska $2,215
7 Massachusetts $2,177 92% urban
8 Alabama $2,000 59.0% urban
9 Mississippi $1,934 49.3% urban
10 Arizona $1,864 89.8% urban
Salaries and Wages
1 District of Columbia $32,572 100% urban
2 Hawaii $4,095 91.9% urban
3 Alaska $3,575
4 Maryland $3,132
5 Virginia $3,043
6 New Mexico $1,432 77.4% urban
7 North Dakota $1,430
8 Washington $1,351
9 Colorado $1,261
10 Kansas $1,214

I used the % urban data provided by you earlier, but the point I'm trying to make here is that federal funds are allocated evenly depending between urban and non urban uon specific programs. Retirement benefits don't care where you live. Non retirement benefits don't care where you live. if you qualify for the program, you get the funds. Federal salaries and wages are affected by where you live depending upon if their is a large number of federal jobs. Just about all the other categories have urban and non urban mixing....

So let's get this back discussion back to USDOT revenues and allocations by state per capita.
Most of the USDOT funds comes from the Federal Highway Trust based mostly on fuel taxes.

Don't be surprised to see revenues and allocations matching closely to each other. As of 2014, the distribution of Highway Trust Funds . (Report made while Obama was President)
Per https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformat ... 15/hdf.cfm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
$ (x1,000)
Alabama 737,025 federal revenues 737,025 federal allocations
Alaska 106,125 106,125
Arizona 754,637 754,637
Arkansas 479,545 479,545
California 3,637,857 3,637,857
Colorado 591,863 591,863
Connecticut 360,446 360,446
Delaware 98,476 98,476
Dist. of Col. 23,577 23,577
Florida 1,959,066 1,959,066 4
Georgia 1,270,610 1,270,610
Hawaii 99,975 99,975
Idaho 219,526 219,526
Illinois 1,363,312 1,363,312 3,747,271
Indiana 1,006,594 1,006,594
Iowa 518,227 518,227
Kansas 410,633 410,633
Kentucky 671,700 671,700
Louisiana 649,495 649,495
Maine 187,540 187,540
Maryland 679,201 679,201
Massachusetts 647,970 647,970
Michigan 1,112,762 1,112,762
Minnesota 708,370 708,370
Mississippi 511,870 511,870
Missouri 914,513 914,513
Montana 186,999 186,999
Nebraska 304,878 304,878
Nevada 307,325 307,325
New Hampshire 159,943 159,943
New Jersey 1,025,001 1,025,001
New Mexico 363,403 363,403
New York 1,479,004 1,479,004
North Carolina 1,126,981 1,126,981
North Dakota 217,613 217,613
Ohio 1,440,633 1,440,633
Oklahoma 644,895 644,895
Oregon 451,465 451,465
Pennsylvania 1,473,511 1,473,511
Rhode Island 86,673 86,673
South Carolina 720,565 720,565
South Dakota 166,989 166,989
Tennessee 900,145 900,145
Texas 3,880,098 3,880,098
Utah 352,271 352,271
Vermont 78,919 78,919
Virginia 1,084,199 1,084,199
Washington 708,223 708,223
West Virginia 255,350 255,350
Wisconsin 727,780 727,780
Wyoming 197,491 197,491

Hmmm, do you see a pattern here? Federal highway funding isn't distribution to states by total federal tax revenues by states or by federal tax revenues per capita per state, but by specific highway tax revenues collected by the individual states.

Your entire conversation and talking points are entirely and completely red herrings!
So, if you want more federal highway funding for your state, I suggest collecting more fuel taxes.

And getting back to the Gateway Tunnels specifically, whether it's going to be funded or not rests entirely upon its' own merits to the entire country. It's price tag is too high for the normal USDOT funding mechanisms to handle when the highway and transit tax revenues collected per state pay for highway and transit expenditures per state, it's going to need a specific stand alone allocation.

First, please note that I think decent share of Federal infrastructure is built from non-gas/non-HTF funding. Eg: West Virginia's Corridor H (a stranded bit of I-66 in all but name) declares itself to be a designated "Appalachian Development Highway" which probably means it is not funded from regular old gas taxes. I suspect that I-68 (to WV through MD) was funded the same Robert Byrd / Earmark / Rural Development sort of way, and the Shuster Family's I-99 in rural-center PA.

For the above, specifically,
1)Please stop the 50-state dumps of data. instead paste instructive, relevant highlights and we can follow the link and save some column-inches
2) You pasted the wrong column, which only proves that they fully spent each states' contribution, not who was a net winner or donor.
3) The real column of interest, which, in a given year, may support your or my point, depending on who's got projects* is the one labeled:
"TO (FROM) OTHER STATES OR FOR GENERAL PURPOSES " because that shows where Fed Gas Tax +HTF make some states net donors (without parenthesis) or net recipients (in parenthesis)
4) 2015 was about the last year that the HTF was self funding. Since then they've been doing tricks from general revenueto keep up the outgo as the gas tax stagnated:

The HTF is principally capitalized by an 18.4 cent a gallon tax on gasoline and a 24.4 cent a gallon tax on diesel.3 For years, Congress has authorized the HTF to provide states and regions with more money than it collects in federal gasoline and diesel taxes.4 To cover the shortfall, Congress has repeatedly transferred Treasury general fund revenues into the HTF.5

(underline is mine)
5) When you do tricks "from general revenue" you're back to funding things from states that generally contribute more revenue per capita.
6) 2015 was also about when stimulus spending peaked, and I cant tell if they are "in there" but suspect that they are not (generally they were debt-funded).

And back to the first paragraph, something tells me that the HTF is not the whole story (and worked differently in the 70s & 80s as the South was urbanizing)

I'd much rather see spending stats averaged over a decade, given how project dependent they are, whereas taxes, being a "mass of people" thing will be pretty steady year to year, and not show event-based swings.

And we *still* have the problem *within* even urban states that $ flow to rural roads (as we've now documented in PA and is strongly suggested from the MA ratios)

R&DB wrote:

then NYC would be able to fund the portion of Gateway

Gateway is a joint Federal / New Jersey / New York State project, not New York City. deBlasios budget is paid for by NYC taxes not NYS taxes. NYC voted him in and they can pay for his policies.

The Feds, NY and NJ are falling down on the job of building Gateway. NYC could and should step in as needed, since the project is obviously a huge benefit to NYC.

de Blasio's budget is paid for by a variety of sources (including NYS and Federal taxes).

My point is that billions of dollars are being frittered away on lining the pockets of de Blasio supporters, while there is a huge funding shortfall for Gateway. Those dollars would be better used on Gateway. Period. Instead, politicians (Trump vs. Schumer, and de Blasio vs. Cuomo) spend time fighting each other, fiddling while the country's infrastructure goes to pot.