Editorial: Kicking of the Can

Congress is poised to kick the can down the road, and a bumpy road it is. The can we’re talking about is long-term funding for transportation infrastructure, and the bumpy road, of course, is the state of the nation’s bridges and highways.

As reported in this week’s edition of Transport Topics, leaders of the Senate agreed to vote, possibly as soon as July 29, on a short-term funding bill that the House of Representatives already passed.

That bill would provide $11 billion to keep the present level of highway funding through May. The bill accomplishes this by shuffling money around in various federal government accounts, so nobody has to vote for any increase in taxes.

But an increase in taxes is exactly what’s needed to maintain and improve our highway system. American Trucking Associations and many other businesses and organizations have long supported an increase in federal fuel taxes to pay for the maintenance and expansions that are necessary if America’s freight transportation system is to avoid being choked by congestion.

Highways and bridges are expensive, and revenue from existing fuel tax levels just hasn’t kept up with the rising cost of road construction. Fuel taxes were last increased in 1993, and there has been a lot of inflation since then: construction materials, labor, construction equipment, real estate that must be bought for expansion.

Second, fuel taxes are efficient, involving very little in the way of collection overhead. Also, fuel taxes are a fairly good, albeit rough, approximation of user fees; the more you drive, the more fuel you burn, the more tax you pay.

Some who agree that more revenue is needed say that there are other ways to do it than by raising motor- fuel taxes, which politicians fear would be punished at the polls. Some advocate a vehicle-miles-traveled tax, arguing that the reason fuel taxes aren’t keeping up with needs is because vehicles are more fuel-efficient. They talk about hybrids, they talk about electric cars or even trucks. They say a VMT is a user fee, like fuel taxes, but that it more accurately gathers revenue from more fuel-efficient vehicles.

But a VMT would require a large investment in building the collection mechanism, and just about any scheme that can be thought of would mean keeping up with every vehicle’s travels, a privacy intrusion that many people find unpalatable.

At some point, Congress will have to find the political courage to approve a funding source for highway construction that doesn’t lurch from month to month.