Perilous gas-tax hikes aren't the only way
The U.S. Department of Transportation reports that without new revenue, there'll be a mounting gap — rising to $30 billion annually by 2009 — in available funds for maintenance and "necessary" upgrades of the nation's highways.
But does that open the way to raise the revenue? No way. Some transportation leaders in Congress favor a several-cent hike in the federal gas tax, now 18.4 cents. But with the country's big transportation law up for reauthorization, predictable fights are breaking out again between "donor" and "recipient" states. And neither the Republican House leadership nor President Bush seems willing to tolerate any kind of tax increase anyway.
Resistance to gas-tax increases are almost as high at the state level, even though a handful of states (Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Washington and Maryland among them) have recently debated and in some cases already voted increases.
With dollar signs in their eyes, road contractors lead the lobbying for gas-tax increases. And they have a case. In California, for example, the gas tax has risen from 6 cents in 1957 to 18 cents today. But if it had kept pace with inflation, it would be 32.5 cents today. On average, fuel taxes across the states would have to rise 11 cents to recoup their 1957 buying power.
And need? Road delays (travel times in excess of free-flow conditions) increased 8.5 percent from 1993 to 1997, consuming needed fuel and polluting the air. But from now to 2020, the Federal Highway Administration now projects congestion to increase another 42 percent.
Another argument for hiking gas taxes: Higher pump prices might help curb our appetite for SUVs and other gas-guzzling (and polluting) vehicles.
Yet, it's a danger for us to be fixated on gas taxes alone, University of California-Berkeley Professor Martin Wachs warns in a ground-breaking analysis of our highway funding dilemmas published by the Brookings Institution.
Gas taxes are critical right now, reports Wachs, but in fact they're covering only 35 percent of our governments' cumulative spending on roadways, from big expressways to meandering country roads.
What? Weren't we always told highways are sort of self-financing through the gas tax? Not true, says Wachs. Even when you add in vehicle taxes (another 20 percent of road funding) and tolls (4 percent), it turns out that auto and truck user-related revenues are larger, but only slightly, than the billions flowing in from local property taxes, bond issues and governments' general fund appropriations. So much for the tired argument public transit depends on "subsidies," and roads don't!
Wachs reports a rush to special local-option taxes or for state borrowing for roads. (politically expedient for term-limited legislators but incurring massive interest charges). Inevitably, funding for schools, libraries and other vital local functions suffer.
Wachs argues we'd be smarter to rely more on user fees. Short-term, that means additional fuel taxes, tolls, vehicle-registration charges, truck-weight levies and the like. The truck issue alone is significant: If heavyweight trucks had to pay their true cost in roadbed wear and tear, costs would get allocated more equitably among all types of vehicles, and the advantages of switching a larger share of long-distance freight to rail lines would be a lot more apparent.
Long-term, as petroleum supplies dwindle and biofuels and hydrogen-propulsion methods become perfected, gas taxes won't work at all. So it's not too early, says Wachs, to consider equipping each vehicle — auto or truck — with a responder that calculates cost by time of day, charging the user more for use of crowded roads and access to congested areas, less for use of open ones.
Electronic toll collection is actually quite functional and successful now. Millions of motorists are using "EZ Pass" on the East Coast, "Fastrak" on the West Coast, and a variety of similar devices in between. Even so, there are lots of thorny questions to resolve. Even Wachs' seemingly clear-eyed analysis doesn't suggest what's the right "mix" in our transportation future for bus, commuter and light-rail lines, for transit-accessible nodes of new town development across metro areas, or for bike paths and pedestrian ways.
However rational proposed new planning and transportation systems seem, raw old politics is very much with us — and unlikely to fade away. A big concern is that Americans, caught up with mini-issues like paying 12 vs. 16 cents tax a gallon, will miss the big picture of pitfalls — and immense possible breakthroughs — in our transportation plans for the new century.
Neal Peirce's e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com