Aggregates Manager Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/120734
Fuel Use Trends and the Highway Trust Fund With looming insolvency, a vehicle mileage-based user fee is a viable, but challenging option for creating revenue. by Tina Grady Barbaccia 10 F inancing scenarios for current and future transportation are challenging with a Highway Trust Fund (HTF) that is always facing insolvency and the frequent uncertainty with funding legislation that's always much less than what is actually needed to both maintain and improve our current system. Although the current surface transportation legislation, "Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21stCentury (MAP-21)," has provided some short-term funding certainty — at least until the end of next September when the two-year bill expires — and made some reforms that arguably have made the highway program more efficient through program consolidation and environmental streaming, the lack of clarity for new revenue streams is still a major problem. Revenue streams for the HTF are insufficient, and, despite several proposals to increase funding, there have not been any substantial new programs or solutions to solve the problem. The report, "The Impact of Fuel Use Trends on the Highway Trust Fund's Present and Future," AGGREGATES MANAGER April 2013 however, provides analysis on potential methods to increase revenue streams to stabilize the HTF and provide funding. The objective of the study was to document the challenges facing the HTF fund and to encourage "creative thinking about how to fund federal infrastructure programs." Conducted by Devin Braun, Ryan Endorf, and Stephen Parker at the College of William & Mary's Thomas Jefferson Program in Public Policy (TJPPP) and prepared for the Associated Equipment Distributors (AED), the report found that indexing the federal gas tax for inflation in 1993, when the gas tax was last increased, would have generated an additional $64.4 billion in revenue during the last two decades, Christian Klein, vice president of government affairs & Washington Counsel for AED, wrote in the report's forward. The TJPPP researchers also projected that higher fuel efficiency standards "would further erode the value of the gas tax," Klein wrote. The researchers also noted in the report that "failing to change the existing tax structure could lead to a $365.50 billion shortfall for the HTF — between cur-