Editorial: Good News, Bad News

Isn’t it always this way? The good news is, there’s plenty of freight for the trucking industry to haul, and strong signs that growth will continue.

The bad news is, highways are overcrowded and crumbling, while Congress and the White House continue dithering.

American Trucking Associations reported last week that freight tonnage boomed in December, jumping 10.5% from a year earlier at the fastest pace in 13 years.

The Federal Reserve reported this month that factory output increased in December at the highest monthly growth rate all year. Meanwhile, store inventories are low and consumer confidence is growing, another source of freight for trucking. And all the signs point to more growth in 2012.

But there’s a problem: This prosperity means there will be more and more trucks on the road, so the need for an overhaul of the nation’s transportation system was never more critical.

You’d never know it from what’s going on in Washington. Oh, there’s talk of a new highway bill — they’ve talked about it for years now. President Obama even gave it an oblique mention in his State of the Union address last week when he told Congress: “Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home.”

Maybe that’s OK as far as it goes, but it just doesn’t go very far. The nation’s transportation system needs a renewed dedicated source of spending, not mere scraps from savings elsewhere in the federal budget.

The Highway Trust Fund is running disastrously low, largely because fuel taxes haven’t kept up with higher construction costs and the need for more highways to support our growing economy.

The easiest, most direct, most honest way to rebuild the trust fund is the raise the fuel tax that has supported it all these years. American Trucking Associations backs an increase in the tax on diesel fuel as long as the additional revenue is spent on improving the freight system.

But Congress and the White House keep looking for magical solutions that somehow disguise the simple fact that our transportation system desperately needs more money, and that higher fuel taxes are the simplest, most obvious source.

Unwillingness to take on the funding issue directly is what’s stalling a new highway bill, and Washington needs to face up to that reality.