Matthew Kandrach – President, CASE
April 8, 2019 – https://bit.ly/2VwJ3Pa
The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, led in part by Congressman Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, who is the top Republican on the subcommittee on highways, continues to work aggressively on a massive infrastructure bill. Because the Trump administration also seeks a large bill to revitalize our roads and bridges, it is one of the few areas that bipartisan compromise could occur.
Like anything in Washington, though, the ability to do so comes down to money and how best to generate it — something voters in Illinois know all too well. Much of the same debate that played out in Springfield over funding is mirrored in D.C., forcing our elected officials to make difficult decisions.
While many in Washington, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, continue to advocate solely for increasing the gas tax, a more immediate change could be enacted: charge heavy commercial trucks by the mile and the weight of their vehicle, instead of the amount of fuel they consume.
The reasoning is clear, and while no panacea, such policy would be a good step in the first direction of sustainable, user-funded infrastructure.
Since 2008, Congress has taken roughly $143 billion from the general taxpayer funds to pay for infrastructure projects out of the Highway Trust Fund. This is due to the clear shortfalls of the federal gas tax — last modified in 1993 — which cannot keep up with present demand. Cars and trucks are more fuel efficient, meaning that they fill up at the gas pump less often, undermining the ability for gas tax revenues to pay for highway projects.
This has led politicians across Congress — both Republicans and Democrats — to increasingly embrace the notion of a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) fee, which would charge drivers based on the miles they drive. The concept is supported by key Democrats and Republicans alike.
Yet American Trucking Associations president and CEO Chris Spear was right when he recently told Congress such a transition would be complicated. What Spear didn’t acknowledge, however, is that a VMT fee program for trucks could be enacted easily. These vehicles already have “electronic logging devices,” which track mileage, and these vehicles impose the largest, uncovered costs on highways.
While commercial vehicles are crucial to the economy and pay a considerable amount in taxes, studies across the board show they do not financially make up for the burden they impose. Robert Atkinson, chairman of the 2009 National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission, says the implementation is “simple.” “The truck receives a one-way GPS signal to allow it to identify its location and an onboard computer loaded with price-per-mile data for all the roads across America. Additionally, trucks would be equipped with wireless axle-weight sensors, allowing the onboard computer to calculate an additional surcharge based on pavement damage (a formula that factors the type of road and the truck axle weight). The computer would then remit taxes monthly to the federal Highway Trust Fund and to every state the truck traveled through.”
Congress will continue to evaluate infrastructure financing over the next two years especially. While just one piece of the puzzle, a commercial VMT would be an easy place for lawmakers to start.
