Demanding less congestion
Politics in Washington have become so rancorous that even an issue on which there once was broad consensus – highway infrastructure – is a battleground. Legislators love to deliver road improvements – and the jobs they bring – to their home states and districts, but grassroots pressure and partisan battles have taken their toll on highway programs.
It’s clear that the national highway system requires a major infusion of capital just to maintain and restore aging roads and bridges. The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that an additional $27 billion a year will be needed just to maintain current highway and bridge conditions over the next 20 years. And to make actual improvements that will reduce congestion substantially, you can roughly double that amount.
That’s quite a price tag, but the consequences of inaction are high as well. A study by the Texas Transportation Institute estimated that in 2007, drivers in metropolitan areas wasted 4.2 billion hours sitting in traffic, burning 2.8 billion gallons of excess fuel. And consider the follow-on financial impact of congestion in the form of lost efficiency in the supply chain.
So the needs are great, and the costs will be high. But where will we get the money? The trucking industry favors an increase in the federal motor fuels tax – even though it could cost the industry hundreds of millions of dollars more a year. The American Trucking Associations says the industry is willing to pay its fair share, as long as the source of revenue is easy and inexpensive to pay and collect, has a low evasion rate, is tied to highway use and does not create impediments to interstate commerce.
