Mass Transit Account Origins

 A ways back, I said I'd look into whether the Mass Transit Account was the thing putting the Highway Trust Fund into the red. Turns out the reality is more complicated. From TransitCenter:

James Dunn describing how President Reagan’s secretary of transportation lobbied behind the scenes to win votes for a 1982 gas tax hike:

He began by solidifying the transit lobby’s support. He promised to create a mass transit account in the highway trust fund that would receive 20 percent of the revenue from a five cent per gallon tax hike (the “transit penny”). This convinced many big city Democrats and liberals to support the measure despite their concern over the effects of the tax on the poor.

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is where the Mass Transit Account comes from. A political bargain where transit got a penny and cars got four, in exchange for political support. Which, depending on your interpretation, may mean that transit got a penny of gas tax it had no right to...or that cars only got 4 pennies a gallon because of transit. 

Looking at the history of gas tax increases after which (5 more cents in 1990, 5 more again in 1993), creating the Mass Transit Account for gas tax money looks kind of silly.

 But if we look at the effects of inflation on gas tax over time, it becomes clear why the secretary of transportation might have been a little desperate in '82: the effective tax was lower than it had ever been, effectively about half today's level.

The reality is probably worse: The inputs to making roads (asphalt) were likely subject to higher than average inflation--asphalt and gasoline both come from oil, and refiners got cleverer about refining more of the dregs that would otherwise become asphalt into gasoline.