By Jeff Davis
“Congress should carefully consider whether and how to replace the fossil fuel-based highway user taxes that currently support highway and mass transit spending with some other revenue source,” he said.
By Jeff Davis
While the climate benefits from booming electric vehicle sales, the nation’s transportation system faces an unfortunate predicament: less gasoline and diesel purchased means dwindling fuel tax revenue. Fuel tax revenue provides a core funding source for operating, maintaining, and improving transportation systems, so policymakers must find a replacement as soon as possible.
This event explores such options as mileage fees, higher annual vehicle fees, or abandoning the user-pay principle and relying on general fund revenue.
By Jeff Davis
As Jeff Davis explains in an article for the Eno Center for Transportation, the FHWA has lost buying power, getting less “bang for the buck” on projects. “This was the 11th straight quarter of cost increases. The July-September 2023 NHCCI of 3.456 is a 69 percent increase in highway construction costs since the October-December 2020 quarter.”
By Jeff Davis
Among the provisions that Republicans and rail interests have taken issue with is one that mandates a two-person crew for “high-hazard” trains. Jeff Davis, a senior fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation think tank in Washington, says the railroads see that as “a gratuitous giveaway to the unions who have been advocating the two-person rule since long before East Palestine, and which the railroads say would never pass objective cost-benefit analysis.”
By Jeff Davis
In the past 15 years, Congress has conducted 10 transfers from the general fund to the HTF, totaling nearly $272 billion, says Jeff Davis, a senior fellow for the Eno Center for Transportation. Of these transfers, the smallest was $6.2 billion in 2012, while the largest was $118 billion as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that was enacted in November 2021.
By Jeff Davis
At the hearing with House lawmakers Oct. 18, Jeff Davis, senior fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation, suggested the panel scrutinize the account over the coming years. “From a truth-in-budgeting perspective, the choice seems clear: It’s time to either mend, or end, the Highway Trust Fund,” Davis told the transportation committee.
By Jeff Davis
Jeff Davis, a senior fellow with the Eno Center for Transportation, told the subcommittee, “States are taking the lead and and testing new user-pay options.” They include ways to charge vehicles by miles traveled. “These are promising,” Davis said.
By Jeff Davis
Of the $1.4 trillion of tax receipts pumped into the Highway Trust Fund since its inception in 1956, about 8% — $114 billion — has been through the 12% FET on new tractors and trailers, according to testimony from Jeff Davis, a senior fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation, who also participated in the hearing.
By Jeff Davis
And transit agencies are competing for a limited amount of federal funds, said Jeff Davis, an analyst with the Eno Center for Transportation, a Washington-based transit advocacy group.
“If Secretary Buttigieg signs all of those that means that Congress will theoretically be obligated to cough up an enormous amount of money for the next 10 years to fund all of these projects,” he said.
By Emma Foehringer Merchant
“From a revenue point of view, it’s never really made sense to use proceeds of the gasoline tax to pay for people to stop driving and take mass transit instead,” said Jeff Davis, a senior fellow with the Eno Center for Transportation.
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