AASHTO Journal, 19 August 2011
Fuel taxes are not sustainable for funding the nation’s surface transportation system, but mileage-based user fees would be, concludes a recently released report from the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Minnesota.
The report assesses whether the current use of fuel taxes to fund the transportation system should be replaced with new distance-based approach of user fees.
“While there have been discussions among many transportation leaders regarding why fuel taxes are no longer a good way of funding the transportation system, there is by no means a public understanding of why this is so,” according to the report. “The public assumes that the taxes they pay at the pump are paying for the system, and that if funding problems exist, they are due to waste and inefficiency.”
The report sets forth five transportation finance principles to help gauge the attributes of fuel taxes as well as vehicle-miles-traveled user fees.