Petri Backs VMT for Highway Financing

This story appears in the March 4 print edition of Transport Topics.

WASHINGTON — The chairman of a key House subcommittee that oversees highways said a tax on the number of miles a vehicle travels is the fairest way to raise the money needed to support the nation’s transportation infrastructure.

Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis.) said in an interview with Transport Topics that until the technology for a vehicle miles traveled tax (VMT) is refined, he would support an increase in the federal tax on diesel and gasoline, as well as indexing the tax to keep pace with inflation.

“The most efficient way . . . [to fund road projects] as best I can tell is [to] use new technology, which is satellite and electronic based, to be able to charge vehicles for the miles they use,” Petri said at his Capitol Hill office. He is chairman of the highway subcommittee of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

A VMT tax “offers the prospect of encouraging non-peak use, moving traffic away from gridlock situations — for example, giving trucks a discount for traveling at night without competing with commuters as much as they do,” he said.

Petri said adding more tolls to highways holds little appeal and that he sympathizes with truckers who tell him tolling puts a “target” on their backs and causes diversion problems as toll-dodgers clog secondary roads.

He said he is also sensitive to trucking’s concerns that mileage information gathered under a VMT tax could affect a carrier’s edge in the marketplace.

“I hope that we’ll have the opportunity to work with people in the industry to make sure that any move toward this sort of technology is done in a way that is as safe and useful as possible for the trucking industry,” Petri said.

Already, Oregon has conducted VMT pilot programs, and the federal government is funding a study as well.

To “get from here to there” on a VMT system, Petri said he wants trucking and Congress to work together, lest lawmakers come up with a plan that proves unworkable or harmful to the industry.

“I think that there’s an expertise in the industry in using this technology that would be valuable . . . in helping to design a system that would work for the industry and for the country,” Petri said.

He also said he has visited large trucking firms, including Schneider National in Green Bay, Wis., and watched how carriers pinpoint exactly where their trucks are at any given moment.

It would “make sense” for trucking to sit down with lawmakers and design a VMT tax, Petri said, so the alternative is not that the U.S. Department of Transportation hires a consultant who drafts provisions for Congress that ignore trucking’s needs.

Petri said he and other committee members are talking about holding a series of roundtables with trucking and other business sectors on how the nation can best pay for transportation.

Last summer’s reauthorization law is only a two-year spending plan that must be replaced with a new plan by October 2014 or else spending for highways and other transportation programs could come to a halt.

Petri, a Harvard-educated lawyer, has been on the T&I committee since 1983. He came to Congress in 1979 after a special election from a district anchored by the town of Fond du Lac, north of Milwaukee. Since 1993, he has been ranking member or chairman of the highway subcommittee and has worked on three reauthorization bills. This is his second round as highway subcommittee chairman.

Petri said the failing of the most recent law, known as MAP-21, was its lack of a permanent and timely funding method for transportation.

The technology that produced fuel-efficient cars and trucks has eclipsed the fuel tax but holds “enormous promise” for mileage taxes as a way to pay for badly needed roads, he said.

At this early stage in the congressional session, members of the highway subcommittee and its main committee have not yet laid out a plan for addressing the upcoming reauthorization process, Petri said. He also said he sees the committees spending the next two years moving towards a “consensus.”

He noted the upcoming House debate on reauthorization may not be as contentious as last year because within the transportation committees and the business community there is “growing awareness” that the country is “overdue” for a long-term funding plan, and that the current fuel tax is no longer adequate.

Last year, as Republican leaders in the House struggled to produce a reauthorization bill, Petri said Republicans were too divided to agree on a bill of their own, and that the only way forward was to accept the Senate’s bipartisan reauthorization bill.

That’s what happened. The House agreed to the Senate bill with few changes.

Petri is also quick to dismiss transportation funding proposals that smack of what he calls “creative funding schemes” that involve borrowing or “one-shot think,” like allowing people with overseas profits to avoid taxes by buying infrastructure bonds, one idea currently taking shape in Congress.

“The temptation always is to come up with various schemes that, at the end of the day, mean someone else ends up paying for something that we consume today,” he said.

It may be “old-fashioned,” but paying now for what you use is still the best funding method, the congressman said.

He did not hesitate to criticize President Obama’s short-term transportation plan unveiled Feb. 20 for relying on bonding and federal loans to states and local governments.

“The president’s plan just seems to be rehashing the same ideas he’s put forward in the past with no real proposals on how we’re going to pay for it, which is the fundamental issue,” Petri said in a statement afterwards. “I want to fix our nation’s roads and bridges too, but we need to answer this age-old question first.”