ATRI: Only a Fuel Tax Hike Can Deliver on Infrastructure Promise
Photo: Jim Park
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Photo: Jim Park
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It will take nothing less than an increase in the federal tax on motor fuels if President Trump’s vision for a trillion-dollar investment in the nation’s infrastructure is ever to be realized. That’s the stark conclusion of a new report just issued by the American Transportation Research Institute.
Titled “A Framework for Infrastructure Funding,” the ATRI report found that the “only meaningful mechanism for attaining the [Trump] administration’s vision for a large-scale infrastructure program is through a federal fuel tax increase.”
Authored by Jeffrey Short, ATRI senior research associate, the report also determined that the inefficiency of other funding mechanisms– including mileage-based user fees and increased tolling– will “fall far short of the needed revenue stream without placing undue hardship on system users.” In addition, the report argues for indexing the fuel tax to inflation going forward.
The nonprofit industry research outfit said in a statement that “a federal fuel tax increase will incentivize states to generate multi-million dollar matches to the new federal funds, ultimately moving the United States closer to the infrastructure investment goals proposed by both Congress and the President.”
ATRI also said the report details what will happen if Congress does nothing but kick fuel tax can down the road again. As it is, the federal fuel tax has not been raised in more than two decades.
“While the trucking industry contributes more than $18 billion in federal user fees each year, growing traffic congestion and freight bottlenecks now cost the industry more than $63 billion annually,” the group stated. “The report also indicates that growth of e-commerce will likely slow as freight deliveries fail to meet the real-time demands of U.S. consumers.”
In the report, author Short calls the federal motor fuels tax “a successful model for assessing a road user charge” and notes …Read the rest of this story
