This past Friday, Princeton University's PRIOR Center and New York University's Rudin Center convened a conference on what's next in transportation. The speakers, who included Mort Downey, former Deputy Secretary of Transportation and leader of the Obama transition team for transportation; Tony Shorris, former head of the New York and New Jersey Port Authority; current PA chairman Anthony Coscia; and others, agreed that we are at a crossroads in transportation policy.
On the one hand, there has never been more enthusiasm for new modes of transportation such as high-speed rail and new approaches such as vehicle mileage tolling and congestion pricing. Billions in the stimulus bill and the Obama budget for rail have set off a frenzy of excitement about building high-speed rail in the United States. At the same time, however, the old system of funding infrastructure, the Highway Trust Fund, fed by gas taxes, has never been under greater stress. With a new transportation authorization bill likely to move this year, we stand at a key juncture in U.S. transportation policy.
Transportation reform is vital to building a clean economy. Not surprisingly, therefore, much of the discussion at Princeton focused on the irony of trying to fund the reinvention of transportation out of a five-cents-per gallon gas tax -- at a time when reducing gas consumption has emerged as a national security, economic and environmental priority.
Currently, the Highway Trust Fund, built on nickel-a-gallon gas tax, accounts for the lion's share of infrastructure funding in the United States -- not only for roads, but for mass transit as well. But the fund is essentially depleted (having required a bailout last fall to stay solvent). Additionally, with construction prices higher but gas usage falling, the gas tax now provides only about half the purchasing power needed to sustain our current system, let alone make improvements.
