The surface transportation reauthorization season is here along with that nagging question – can we fix the dwindling Highway Trust Fund? As larger world events in the Middle East raise prices at the gas pump, the transportation community will need to build a better case for voter support than ever before if they want to keep the Trust Fund afloat, and we’ll need a funding mechanism that avoids adding onto the affordability crisis.

Through voter referendums, local governments learn a lot about what Americans are and aren’t willing to accept for transportation. Most Americans support transportation bonds when it clearly addresses the transportation problems they know need to be fixed in their area. They want to see clear goals, detailed priority lists, and realistic change in a few years’ time. Common obtuse transportation refrains on economic gains, helping businesses or even national defense are only reasons to use existing taxes for transportation rather than additional taxes at the pump or fees that hit their families’ budgets.

So, if a national transportation proposal has no chance of fixing their main roads, bridges, buses or sidewalks, the American people, and therefore Congress, will have little to no incentive to support raising funding from families to fix the Highway Trust Fund. If we want to refill the Highway Trust Fund, it is imperative that Congress guarantees that a reasonable level of funding makes it down to every region in America for locally selected regional priority projects and that recipients are accountable for results.

The bad news is that today the share of federal transportation funds that makes it down to more local and regional level is less than 16% on average. The good news is that Congress already has a program that can grow and deliver projects across the country – the Surface Transportation Block Grant (STBG). The STBG model program is the most flexible of all the transportation formula programs and it brings nationally significant projects down to communities of even 5,000. Apply the STBG model to programs like bridges and safety to build off the success of the Safe Streets for All program, and now you have the bipartisan Bridges And Safety Infrastructure for Community Success Act (H.R. 7437 -BASICS Act) which is a blueprint for delivering a formula program that builds significant transportation projects people want and that the nation needs.

If Congress can deliver formula program changes that give Americans more direct reasons to support a transportation bill, they will still need to navigate the affordability realities of asking families across America to fund a transportation system that costs more today with unchecked inflation and supply chain impacts. Any changes to our current approach to funding must pass a litmus test: it has to be reliable while also generating sufficient revenue; it should be seamless to administer while protecting privacy. Most of all, it must pass the fairness and affordability test. For example, does the cost burden fall on a specific segment of system users like Americans families to take on more costs? Most of the discussed user fee revenue tools today fail these basic test points for most Americans. Perhaps it’s time to learn from our current gasoline tax and look upstream in the economic cycle to capture fees and follow the wisdom of Wall Street investment advisors to diversify our investment strategy? It also wouldn’t hurt to then instill some accountability for solvency by spending what we raise and make sure we’re not using precious federal funds for profitable companies when public infrastructure is languishing.

Americans expect a transportation bill from Congress that makes an impact, but if we ask them for another dollar, it better be for a good reason.