At a time when funding for surface transportation programs is scarce, the Obama administration released a plan to keep programs in the black until March 2011, according to various media reports.
The main takeaways of the plan include a request to take $20 billion in revenue from the United States General Treasury Fund into a federal trust for highway and transit infrastructure projects, according to a Reuters report.
This news follows reports from last month indicating that the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) is again on the verge of insolvency and will require up to $7 billion to remain fully funded through 2009.
The HTF is the federal government’s primary source for financing highway, bridge, and transit projects, and it is largely funded by the motor fuel federal tax, which is 18.4 cents per gallon for gasoline and 24.4 cents for diesel and has not been raised since 1993. One main reason for the HTF’s dwindling financial resources is that Americans are driving fewer miles, as evidenced by Americans driving 90 million fewer miles year-over-year in fiscal 2008.
In mid-June, Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood called on Congress to propose an immediate 18-month highway reauthorization bill that would replenish the HTF. He said at this time that if this does not happen the HTF could be out of capital by the end of next month, with states facing the prospect of losing key transportation funding.
This news comes on the heels of the recent release of a six-year surface transportation bill introduced by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.) that will likely cost $450-$500 billion. The current bill—SAFETEA-LU—expires on September 30. A main theme of Oberstar’s bill calls for a national transportation policy, as opposed to DOT’s current policies, which were established and are administered by separate DOT departments—each focusing on a single mode of transportation.
Read the rest of the logisticsmgmt.com article here.
