Panel insists 10-cent increase needed to keep up with road repairs
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Jan. 2, 2009
WASHINGTON - A 50 percent increase in gasoline and diesel fuel taxes is being urged by a federal commission to finance highway construction and repair until the government devises another way for motorists to pay for using public roads.
The National Commission on Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing, a 15-member panel created by Congress, is the second group in a year to call for higher fuel taxes.
With motorists driving less and buying less fuel, the current 18.4-cents-a-gallon gas tax and 24.4-cents-a-gallon diesel tax fail to raise enough to keep pace with the cost of road, bridge, and transit programs.
In a report expected in late January, members of the infrastructure financing commission said they will urge Congress to raise the gas tax by 10 cents a gallon and the diesel fuel tax by 12 to 15 cents a gallon. At the same time, the commission will recommend linking the fuel tax rates to inflation.
The commission also will recommend that states raise their fuel taxes and make greater use of toll roads and fees for rush-hour driving.
A tax increase on this order would be politically treacherous for Democratic leaders in Congress - a gas tax hike was one of the reasons they lost control of the House and Senate in the 1994 elections.
President-elect Barack Obama has expressed concern about raising gas taxes in this economic climate.
But commission members said the government must find the money somewhere.
"I'm not excited about a gas-tax increase, but the reality is our current gas tax doesn't pay for upkeep of the system we have now," said Adrian Moore, vice president of the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank in Los Angeles, and a member of the highway revenue commission.
We can either let the roads go to hell or we can pay more."
The dilemma for Congress is that highway and transit programs are dependent for revenue on fuel taxes that are not sustainable.
Many Americans are driving less and switching to more fuel-efficient cars and trucks, and a shift to new fuels and technologies such as plug-in hybrid electric cars will further erode gasoline sales.
According to a draft of the financing commission's recommendations, the nation needs to move to a new system that taxes motorists according to how much they use roads.
A study by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies estimated the annual gap between revenues and the investment needed to improve highway and transit systems was about $105 billion in 2007, and will increase to $134 billion in 2017 under current trends.
The financing commission says the long-term solution is a mileage-based revenue system.
While details have not been worked out, such a system would mean equipping every car and truck with a device that uses global positioning satellites and transponders to record how many miles the vehicle has been driven, the type of roads, and time of day.
Creation and installation of such a system would take about 10 years.
