Transportation’s Political Crisis: Shift the Strategy
The arguments that in decades past helped produce record-breaking surface transportation authorizations don’t work any more. Not even the gas tax and the Highway Trust Fund, which make drivers pay and keep the money separate from other taxes, are sacrosanct. Transportation now needs a plan just to get by. After that, we should invigorate the user-fee concept with an eye toward replacing it with a vehicle-miles-traveled tax plan.
If we require another sign of the need for change, we received it on the first day of the new Congress. The GOP-dominated House of Representatives adopted new rules that will allow House members to allocate funds below the levels states that are authorized to spend by long-term transportation legislation that has been adopted by Congress.