but i'll digress; "people who want society to subsidize only cars vs. people who want the subsidies to fund a public transit system as well as cars".

it is true that in oregon about 90% of road building and maintenance for state/federal highways is paid for by excise taxes, and vehicles fees. but these fees do not pay for other services such as highway patrol, nor do they pay for the associated environmental costs, such as run off, and pollution. and yes some of that money is used for other transit modes, but not as much as the share of general fund revenue and bond proceeds that go towards these same roads.

the problem is that only looking at the current funding model without considering historical factors is very misleading. there is no denying that local, state and federal roads were initially built out with massive subsidies. much of the related infrastructure costs for this surburban build out such as water, and sewage have also been funded with massive subsidies. when these subsidies began, these new roads and associated services were only being used by a very small percentage of the people paying for them.

i cannot take seriously the financial arguments you provide via the CPI, and American Dream Coalition, because when you calculate the cost of public transit, you include the initial capital investment, yet when you calculate the cost of automobile transit, you leave out the initial (80+ years of) capital investment. you hold public transit to a different standard than the automobile. am i to believe that had you been around in the early 1900's when the auto build out began, you would have been decrying how automobile related infrastructure spending was causing a rapid increase in taxes ("A commission under President Hoover concluded that the automobile was the 'most potent influence' on the rise of local taxes between 1913 and 1930")? i have a hard time believing that. this is a vulgar form of libertarianism, it is "libertarianism, starting.... now!".

you say that "a blanced transit system" is "New Speak"; an attempt to hide the actual costs, i disagree. there is a general public concensus for this in the portland region. if there were not, it could not be happening. i used to be a libertarian, now i am a liberal. i understand that public investment is meant to be spent in a way that the benefit is more than the initial cost. i would say that until the late 70s this had basically been the case (though it took us a while to get a handle on some of the polution). since then i would say that we have been running in place, the network is complete, additional build-out is only exacerbating our problems and it is time for a public reassessment of where we want our transportation dollars to go.