Next time you hear green politicians talk about how transit is being starved while sprawl-inducing roads get more money, think further.

About 60 percent of transportation taxes in Snohomish, King and Pierce counties is going for bus and rail transit systems, compared to 40 percent to state highways, according to the Washington Policy Center, which dislikes being called a conservative think tank.

In 1992, only one-third of these taxes went to transit, two-thirds for roads, the center's report shows.

The three-page policy study, however, misses a few angles in our extraordinarily complex transportation funding system. Federal taxes for highways and transit aren't included, nor are city taxes such as Seattle's "Bridging the Gap," which cover street reconstruction as well as bicycle and pedestrian routes. Further, Washington state has spent well over $1 billion on freeway carpool lanes used by buses.

It's written by Jim MacIsaac, an engineer who has produced research for anti-rail campaigns. "Road funding is only 40 percent of all transportation taxes collected in the region, but serves more than 97 percent of all person-trips," says Mike Ennis, the WPC's transportation analyst. On the other hand, King County Metro is the nation's seventh-busiest public bus agency, and around 40 percent of downtown Seattle commuters use transit and carpools.

Despite a pro-roads bias, the numbers look realistic. A 2006 review by the Seattle Times found that road and transit taxes [including local and federal] were about equal.

That was before voters in 2008 approved an $18 billion sales-tax boost to Sound Transit, mostly for new rail lines. Earlier, they upheld the Legislature's gas-tax increases, by thwarting Initiative 912.