Posted on 12/24/2014 6:49:54 AM PST by iowamark
Has the time come to reconsider the way we pay for transportation? Should the Highway Trust Fund and its fuel tax revenue continue as the main source of funds for the federal transportation program? If not, what are the alternatives? And more broadly, is the age of heavy reliance on federal funding drawing to a close?
These questions are no longer outside the realm of a serious policy debate. They have been raised by a number of respected think tanks, such as the Brookings Institution, The Heritage Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Building America's Future Fund and the Eno Transportation Center.
In the public sector, no less than U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has acknowledged the need to reconsider the traditional approaches to funding the federal transportation program.
“We have to get unstuck from this idea that we've got to keep doing transportation [funding] for the next 50 years the way we've done it for the first 50 years of the Interstate system,” the Secretary said in a November 2014 interview at the CityLab 2014 Conference on Urban Solutions for Global Challenges.
Bigger Isn’t Better
Meanwhile, statements by congressional leadership have cast doubt on the prospect for a six-year reauthorization, with an estimated price tag of one hundred billion dollars. Annual highway and transit expenditures at current levels exceed the annual Trust Fund revenue by roughly $16 billion per year.
“We will oversee a legislature in which ‘bigger’ isn't automatically equated with ‘better’ when it comes to writing and passing bills,” wrote House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in a joint post-election opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.
The statement was couched in broad generalities but its message was clear. There will be no massive splurge in spending in the Republican-controlled Congress in 2015.
President Obama seems to have reached the same conclusion.
Responding to a question by FedEx CEO Fred Smith at a December 2014 meeting with members of the Business Roundtable, the President said, “even if we were able to get something done [during the lame duck session], it would not be the kind of 10-year solution that we need […] The best they could do would be to stagger through another year.”
As for the lack of action on the gas tax, the President observed, “in fairness to members of Congress, votes on gas taxes are really tough. Gas prices are one of those things that really bug people.”
Instead, Mr. Obama continued, we should be looking for a “dedicated revenue source for infrastructure funding that is not so politically frightening to members of Congress.”
However, the President did not volunteer what that revenue source might be. Significantly, he did not refer to his earlier proposal to pay for a long-term surface transportation bill with “corporate tax reform,” a proposal that had met with widespread congressional skepticism
The President's clear-eyed assessment of the congressional mood has dimmed the hopes of infrastructure advocates for a boost in transportation revenue or a multi-year transportation reauthorization, even as gas prices have reached a four-year low.
Challenging the Status Quo
Joining in challenging the funding status quo has been the Eno Center for Transportation, a self-described “neutral, non-partisan transportation think tank.”
Its December 2014 report, provocatively entitled “The Life and Death of the Highway Trust Fund,” questions the continued viability of the Highway Trust Fund. The report suggests eliminating the Trust Fund, in favor of a funding structure based on General Funds.
“The current approach to funding surface transportation is not working,” declared the report's authors, citing political opposition to increasing the gas tax, diminishing travel per capita and improved fuel efficiency that have held down demand for gasoline, and the desire to maintain transportation spending above trust fund receipts, necessitating continual General Fund infusions to keep the Trust Fund solvent.
“Maintaining the status quo will continue to produce funding uncertainty and perpetuate current funding problems,” states the report.
Instead, the entire surface transportation bill should be funded with general funds, through the appropriations process. This more straightforward approach “deserves fair consideration as an effective long-term solution to our national transportation funding problem,” concludes the report.
Commenting on the report, former head of the Louisiana and Rhode Island Departments of Transportation William Ankner said “it is time to change how we fund transportation. Who benefits from our national transportation system?
“The answer is every person and business. If everyone benefits, then everyone should pay.”
Although Eno's proposed approach might make good sense policy-wise, it is not likely to find widespread support among transportation stakeholders. The transportation industry does not cherish the thought of having “their” program become part of the annual appropriations process, making it vulnerable to budget-cutting pressures and exposing it to competition for funds from other federal programs.
What could be more fair than that?
http://heartland.org/sites/default/files/highway-trust-fund2.pdf
“The Life and Death of the Highway Trust Fund”
Return the power of infrastructure to the states.
If you like your transportation, you can keep your transportation.
Wasn’t porkulus supposed to go towards infrastructure? Have Obama and his people ever accounted for where that $800 plus billion dollars in porkukus money went?
While we have to devise some way to pay for roads, we must NEVER allow government to do so via GPS tracking of mileage. That will destroy the unalienable right of privacy of travel.
I am already seeing one thing that reall pisses me off to no end...turning many roadways Into toll zones using those damn license plate readers then sending you a bill at the end of the month. We already pay taxes for roadways! I undesrtand toll roads are set up to get you from Point A to Point B faster but what happens when they start turning ALL of the roadways into toll roads! I am seeing this a lot more often and its not right.
Probably part of the SAFE STREETS initiative or whatever the hell they call it that’s part of Agenda 21....
We should have a single payer system!
Transportation is a basic right!
All roads should be free! And without speed limits.
There will have to be some details worked out about older vehicles.
For the unfortunate members of society there should be 0bamacars.
Safe, environmentally and culturally sensitive. (No more Pintos or Ford Falcons or Chevy Novas...)
Auto insurance will be incorporated with 0bamacare.
Yes FREE car insurance!
>>Just have all paychecks sent to the feral government. They will forward on to the employee the amount that the employee is deemed to deserve and keep the rest.
>>What could be more fair than that?
You can be more fair than that.
Let’s just cut out the middleman. Transfer all property and means of production to the Feral Gummint and then we can work where they tell us to work and they’ll give us a nice little apartment and the Michelle-approved food that we need. We won’t need roads then and that will free them up for the Party Bosses to travel in safety. Why hasn’t anyone ever thought of this great idea before?? </sarc>
Personally, I like that 0% financing for 72 months.
As long as you can beat the dealer down on the price of the car, too.
A few observations from somebody who occasionally works in the industry:
1. The roller coaster ride of funding at the state and federal level causes huge waste. For example, I recently did work on a project that had originally been designed circa 1996. A lot of stuff can change in that period of time, and a lot of stuff has to be re-done...which we have done...and now put the project back in the drawer for probably another decade before it gets dusted off again. Probably a half million has been spent on land acquisition and design for this project over a nearly 20 year span...and nothing has ever been built.
2. A lot of spending is on completely bogus nonsense. I once worked on a re-hab of an old train station into a museum - and it had federal highway money attached to it. That’s right - a museum.
3. A lot of federal highway money goes to roads that are not in our highway system at all. The government’s penchant to push things on the populace usually triggers this. If you see a roundabout or bike lane in a project, you can bet federal matching money was used to temp the local government into the project.
4. A lot of money goes to public transportation. Porkulus gave my city new buses, which were allegedly ‘cleaner’. But beyond that, federal money has recently bestowed my city with new bus stops - a glass enclosure and bench, along with new sidewalk in around a dozen locations. It gave us around $800k to do this...I assume that dozens and dozens of mid sized cities in the country with under-used bus service got similar grants.
5. The fix is in on construction worker wages. Two words: Davis Bacon.
I’ve really just scratched the surface. The waste is huge...and this could be much better managed if money were kept in state, instead of ‘washed’ through a federal juggernaut.
Roadway users should be charged by the Pound-Mile.
All that gas tax revenue is funding liberal pet projects such as walking/bicycle trails, mass transit, and hi-speed rail.
Now don't get me wrong, the idea behind what they are doing is one of which I approve, but the execution of that principal as a state monopoly has turned the system into a crooked racket with no accountability for function or success. Effectively, the way it is run now, these are government projects that unrelated government make-work projects.
“Roadway users should be charged by the Pound-Mile.”
That seems hardly equitable, since citizens who do not own a vehicle benefit from highways almost as much as those who drive...
A hilarious example are the traffic circles in Sedona, Arizona.
When they were built Sedona was a sleepy little town that thought the traffic circles would look pretty.
Now they are traffic nightmares stuck in gridlock with huge campers—overrun by tourists.
This was “central planning” at its most absurd.
“Return the power of infrastructure to the states”
So they can set toll traps. Try driving 20 miles on I-95 in Northern Maryland. If you do that, you’ll have to pay an $8 toll, right in the middle, to cross a 1000’ bridge. Of course the locals don’t have to pay to cross it...
Nice strawman ya got there.
I don’t care about your tolls, they aren’t my problem.
“I don’t care about your tolls, they aren’t my problem.”
Today. Wait until they turn over the Interstates to the states and the states realize just how much money they can generate. That is DREAM of people that want us out of their cars, and it sounds like a lot of people on our side are willing to facilitate it.
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