Former US DOT Bosses Call for Mileage Tax and Congestion Fees

The message today from two Republican-appointed former Secretaries of Transportation sounds a lot like the language you hear from reform groups advocating for an overhaul of federal transportation policy.

Norman Mineta and Samuel Skinner co-chaired a conference at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs last fall. The report from that conference, issued yesterday, offers some recommendations for moving national transportation policy [PDF].

The conference report tackles the most pressing question facing the nation's transportation system today: how to pay for much-needed maintenance and improvements. The authors are in favor of switching from a gas tax to a fee levied on vehicle miles traveled. They say technology exists to ease privacy concerns, and they want to see a VMT fee that charges more for travel during peak hours.

They also echoed the sentiments of many reformers who want to get beyond spending on shovel-ready projects, which tends to favor highways, and start choosing projects strategically. The Miller Center report applauds the potential of transportation infrastructure to provide short-term jobs, but says:

The authors also encourage a new way of thinking about building infrastructure: that it's truly an investment, not an expenditure. With investments, the money comes back -- and "the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should score the anticipated return on investment when it evaluates transportation spending proposals." The report acknowledges that this is a small step, "but it would allow the government to begin evaluating projects based on their long-term benefits and to prioritize those projects that deliver the largest future returns."

Transportation reformers looking to create a more equitable, sustainable and economically competitive system have explained that much depends on how the government would score transportation spending. As NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik Khan noted at a conference last fall, a highway expansion will look like a good investment if you measure its performance when traffic is still flowing smoothly, and a poor one if you measure after more drivers have been enticed to use the road, tying up traffic again.