Letters: Transportation Needs, Heavy Trucks, Raise Fuel Taxes
These Letters to the Editor appear in the May 25 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
Transportation Needs
With respect to the senators, when planning the needs for surface transportation, what practical experience do they or anyone reporting to them have in transportation?
I mean ground-level experience — by doing and seeing (“Congress Seen Taking Lead on Transport Policy, Not DOT,” 5-18, p. 3; click here for subcriber-content previous story).
I would suggest that a group of present-day upper-management people with at least 30-plus years of experience in transportation should be informing and leading this group.
Robert Fike
President
FTS Inc.
Oxford, Mass.
Heavy Trucks
This letter is in response to the May 18 story, “Volvo Backs Use of Longer, Heavier Trucks; Says They Can Increase Safety, Ease Traffic” (p. 2; click here for previous subcriber-content story).
Volvo, by its position, would support either forcing out of business the little guy who wouldn’t be able to afford the larger trucks or supporting the big freight haulers such as UPS, Con-way or any other company that transports less-than-truckload freight.
Our country does not need an additional burden on its highways. Our transportation system needs a lot of things, but a bigger truck and greater weight isn’t one of them.
Michael Boyle
President
Frigitrans Inc.
Tampa, Fla.
Raise Fuel Taxes
In its attempt to fix the depressed U.S. economy, the Obama administration has become fixated on the banking system’s weakness and the deteriorating value of real estate. While this focus is understandable and most actions taken thus far are commendable, the condition of banks and real estate are only symptoms of the current crisis.
We are at the brink of economic Armageddon because we have no coordinated national strategy connecting the funding and repair of our dilapidated transportation infrastructure to a strategic energy policy to achieve energy independence. Instead, we have infrastructure planning by self-serving provincial politicians, who produce ad hoc projects with no relevance to the priorities of a master national plan such as those in China and Europe.
The story is similar for strategic energy planning, which never has existed in our federal government, regardless of which political party has been in power.
In September, the pathetically underfunded Federal Highway Trust Fund will expire. Reports in 2008 from both the Department of Transportation and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials estimated that a minimum of $150 billion a year for the next five years would be needed at all levels of government to repair and improve our bridges and roads. Despite these estimates, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 includes only $27.5 billion for repairing bridges and roads.
The current fuel-tax rates on gasoline and diesel are 18.4 cents a gallon and 24.4 cents, respectively. Neither tax has been increased since 1993. If the Highway Trust Fund is reauthorized in its current form, that is, with no tax increase, it will generate approximately $35 billion — assuming gasoline and diesel consumption are within 5% of 2007 consumption levels.
Because the U.S. national debt will exceed $12 trillion by the end of this year, it is reasonable to conclude that the federal government will be constrained from printing money to plug the huge shortfall in funding bridge and road maintenance. The shortfall must be satisfied with an increase in fuel taxes of 50 cents a gallon this year and an additional 15 cents a gallon thereafter to replace the one-time amount provided in the stimulus plan.
To create a floor for the price of fuel to attract investment in alternative energy and fuel-efficient technology for motor vehicles — and to be sensitive to consumers’ pocketbooks — the tax should be pegged to the price of oil: When oil goes up, the tax goes down and vice versa.
Because of the state of the economy, opponents of increasing fuel taxes will argue it’s a political nonstarter. But this recession is precisely the right time to raise fuel taxes, because fuel prices are the lowest since 2002.
When the economy recovers, fuel prices will not rise in lock step with the rise in the economy because the tax will constrain consumption and reduce demand, thus limiting the power of the oil-producing nations to raise prices. Isn’t it better to pay 50 cents to the United States than to the petro states?
Fuel tax increases would:
• Fund the basic requirements of our infrastructure for the next five years.
Create more than 5 million jobs — DOT and AASHTO estimate that each billion dollars invested in infrastructure creates 35,000 jobs.
• Help revitalize U.S. manufacturing by attracting investment in fuel-efficient cars and trucks.
• Create a floor for fuel prices to give investors the confidence to invest in alternative energy such as wind, solar and especially nuclear.
• Provide transition time in which to formulate a national energy policy to make the United States energy-independent and driven by scientific objectivity rather than regional politics and antiquated 20th-century thinking.
The current economic crisis, while challenging our dominant position in the world, at the same time is presenting us with a golden opportunity to rebuild our infrastructure, ignite our economy and execute a strategy for energy independence.
John A. Simourian
Chairman
Lily Transportation
Needham, Mass.
