The Eno Center for Transportation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit research group, in 2022 launched a project to examine replacing gasoline taxes with fees based on the number of miles motorists drive. The federal 2021 infrastructure law requires that the Transportation Department do a pilot project on a so-called vehicle miles traveled fee.
The “sweet spot,” said Robert Puentes, the president and CEO of Eno Center for Transportation, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., is “about 400 to 500 miles, where it’s too short to fly, too long to drive.” Chicago, Columbus, and Pittsburgh fit the bill, for instance, as do Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Investments in such corridors could allow Amtrak to attract more riders with frequent, reliable service, and would also help the company and policymakers target climate resilience efforts effectively.
“We haven’t really seen productivity gains in infrastructure because we’ve been doing things the same old way for a long time,” Robert Puentes, president and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation, told The Verge. ARPA-I has the potential to revitalize the sector, he argued.
Unpredictable, but not unprecedented. In 2017, a fire caused a critical portion of I-85 in Atlanta to collapse. But workers rebuilt that elevated roadway in just six weeks.
By Jeff Davis
Jeff Davis, senior fellow and editor at the Eno Center for Transportation, said in an email that “the Transportation-HUD bill is uniquely disadvantaged in 2024 for reasons having nothing to do with the debt ceiling or spending caps.”
The “sweet spot,” said Robert Puentes, the president and CEO of Eno Center for Transportation, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., is “about 400 to 500 miles, where it’s too short to fly, too long to drive.”
The passenger rail company is feeling bullish this year, said Robert Puentes, head of the Eno Center for Transportation, an advocacy group. “What they have requested here is more money than Amtrak has ever received,” he said. That’s on top of billions from the infrastructure law that passed two years ago.
The passenger rail company is feeling bullish this year, said Robert Puentes, head of the Eno Center for Transportation, an advocacy group. “What they have requested here is more money than Amtrak has ever received,” he said. That’s on top of billions from the infrastructure law that passed two years ago.
The passenger rail company is feeling bullish this year, said Robert Puentes, head of the Eno Center for Transportation, an advocacy group. “What they have requested here is more money than Amtrak has ever received,” he said. That’s on top of billions from the infrastructure law that passed two years ago.
By Jeff Davis
“The beauty and tragedy of heavy rail is that once you’ve dug the hole in the ground and put a subway line in it, it’s there for 100 years whether people are still choosing to embark and disembark in that spot, or not,” says Jeff Davis, a senior fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation in Washington who has studied the administration’s budget proposal. “So, you could see significant redesign of bus routes and patterns in a lot of these major cities.”
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