AASHTO Journal, 31 October 2014
Dozens of revenue ideas face lawmakers as Congress weighs how to fix the Highway Trust Fund, and a new tool from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials can let the public and policymakers quickly count the dollars various options would bring in.
“It is up to Congress to determine the best way to fund surface transportation and we know that building support for a path forward will involve some difficult compromises,” said AASHTO Executive Director Bud Wright. “This updated tool is meant to help Congress with that challenge.”
That matrix of revenue generating options is the association’s first update since 2010 of the popular budget planning resource. It pulls together ideas from across the transportation sector that could draw revenue from users of roads, bridges and transit systems that the trust fund supports.
For now, the Highway Trust Fund is on a short-term leash, with enough money only to last through next May. States are already feeling the squeeze of having to plan a 2015 highway construction season without knowing when Congress will fix that fund or how much money they will receive from Washington. (See related story from Tennessee in the Nation section.)
Wright said AASHTO’s board – which is made up of 52 transportation department chiefs from all the states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico – “does not recommend any single approach over others” for Congress to use. But he said the board “is strongly united in its desire for Congress to identify long-term and sustainable funding to shore up the struggling Highway Trust Fund.”
The new version of the options matrix spells out how much money lawmakers could raise through specific increases in the five excise taxes that now power the trust fund – on gasoline, diesel fuel and three categories of heavy truck equipment. It examines 33 other transportation-related options Congress could consider that have been discussed by industry groups or congressional staffs, and shows how much each could generate.
Joung Lee, AASHTO’s deputy director of management and program finance, told AASHTO Journal the revenue estimates are from the latest available data, ranging from 2011 to 2013 depending on the option. He also explains the matrix features in a Transportation TV video, shown below.
Besides a traditional table listing revenue ideas and their amounts, the publication includes a bar chart to quickly show viewers how well any particular idea ranks in revenue potential, and a bubble chart to show relative impact. Background pages explain how each option might work, plus the pros and cons.
Those options range from high-yield choices like raising motor fuel taxes or taxing vehicle miles traveled, to low-yield ideas that would have more users of transportation networks paying into the Highway Trust Fund through things like fees on electric vehicle registrations or bicycles and tires.