>>1630318Interstate highways were commissioned and partially paid for by the federal government, but are owned, operated, and maintained by the states. In the case of the highway I posted, it is operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Roads are paid for by gas taxes which are quite low universally in the United States compared to European countries to begin with.
In areas such as Northern Virginia however, there are extreme amounts of vehicles and people paying gas taxes along with vehicle "personal property taxes" which *should* help pay for the maintenance and improvement of these highways, since at a certain point the wear and tear is eclipsed by the volume of tax payers. The problem here is that the state legislature is in Richmond which is roughly 2-3 hours south of Northern Virgnia, and though this part of the state needs road funding the most, and generates the most taxes by far, the politicians in Richmond are disproportionately from other areas of Virginia such as Norfolk/Newport News/Hampton Roads (where we build our super-carriers) or more backwoods areas towards the Shenandoah/Appalachian mountains.
The result is that the money which should go towards proper road maintenance and updates in Northern Virginia is purposely distributed elsewhere, because Northern Virginia is the stronghold of faggorty and Democrats who want to politically take hold of VA and steer it into the abyss. This area is the sole reason why VA went democrat in the past election for example. Roads up here are shitty, falling apart, poorly funded, and rarely improved as a result, since state reps would rather take that money and build beautiful highways in the Republican parts of the state. Since it's the price to pay for keeping this state conservative at the state level I'm ok with it, but I can't wait to get the fuck out of the D.C. area.
