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.
“Based on the numbers, there will need to be an alternative or states will have to become comfortable with having to rely on general fund dollars for transportation,” said Garett Shrode, policy analyst with the nonprofit Eno Center for Transportation.
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.
Philip Plotch, the principal researcher at the Eno Center for Transportation and a Fair Lawn resident, said what’s happening now with the private bus operations is not so much a case of “history repeating itself,” but “more of it’s just a trend that hasn’t stopped over the past 100 years.”
“If you’re relying on a just-in-time delivery system that prioritizes the synchronization of precise schedules and you can’t count on drivers to get the goods there, you’re going to have disruptions in the supply chain,” says Robert Puentes, president of the Eno Center for Transportation, a think tank.
Garett Shrode with the Eno Center for Transportation said that approach has its pitfalls because “80% of electric vehicle charging happens at the home and not at public chargers.”
“If you look at the numbers over the last two decades, we’ve been losing revenue to fuel-efficiency gains in internal combustion engines,” [Garett] Shrode says.”
For media inquiries, including interview requests, please contact Eno at publicaffairs@enotrans.org, or contact Eno at 202.879.4700 or publicaffairs@enotrans.org.