Metro Regional Government of Oregon - Oblivious to the Obvious

I read an article in the Portland (Oregon) Tribune that METRO - a self contained overlay government entity that was created to "manage" growth  due to the inability of the three counties in northern Oregon would not talk with each other to coordinate planning - came to the conclusion after 15 years that new roads were not being built nor the old ones were being maintained.

This is not surprising since their de-facto policy is that no roads should be built or improved upon at all and all transportation infrastructure monies should be spent on buses, bike lanes and light rail.
To combat this lack of road building over last 15 years they have decided to fund a year long study on how to collect money to pay for roads that they discourage from being built. Add in the lack of state desire to repair / rebuild roads (or upping the gasoline tax to pay for the roads being ASKED for by people in the state) and the Federal monies that are being used to rebuild destroyed roads in the south - or elsewhere since METRO would  not put in for federal funds due to lack of desire to build roads - and you have a classic problem of government - completely oblivious to the problem they caused by a specific policy.

Since METRO is exempt from all rules - and are always asking to be exempt from most state rules - this waste of $150,000 on a study on how to raise money from the METRO people to pay for roads is quite stupid.

To pay for roads etc it is quite simple on what needs to be done:

Every vehicle in the METRO area is accessed a surcharge of $100 a year (payable at time of vehicle registration)

Every MAX rider is accessed 15 cents a ticket, 25 cents per day pass, $5.00 a month pass

Every Bus rider is accessed 15 cents a ride

 

and the money collected from each goes to pay for improvements in each area - and ONLY in that area.

 

Being a surcharge - and not a "tax" and METRO has full legal right to charge surcharges, the road, rail, bus problems are thus funded and they could start within a few months to build new roads, rail lines, and bus routes.

 

With 2 million cars in the METRO area that means $200,000,000 a year to build / repair / roads. New roads cost around 1 million a lane so that alone would allow 50 MILES of 4 lane roads to be built in a year - which would wipe out the congestion in all of Portland in 1 year. 5 Major roads in / out and rebuild / add 10 miles of 2 lanes to each would get rid of all traffic problems (there are bridges to be built so the cost goes up by 250% to get them built, that is where 150,000,000 million would have to be spent on in the first year.)

 

Could I have my $150,000 now?