September 4th, 2012 | By: America's Infrastructure Report Card
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts both accounts of the Highway Trust Fund will go broke sometime in FY 2015 unless Congress acts to shore up the fund that pays for surface transportation projects. According to a CBO chart obtained, the highway account will end FY 2012 with $8.7 billion and the transit account with $4.7 billion. The transit account could run dry in late 2014.
ASCE has long supported an increase in the gas tax to provide additional revenues for investment in surface transportation systems, a move that has been supported by many economists as consistent with reducing the federal budget deficit. However, the political climate in Washington has not allowed a serious discussion on this matter in some time.
More information on the gas tax can be
found here and the CBO chart can be viewed on
this site.
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July 16th, 2012 | By: America's Infrastructure Report Card
Senator John Kerry, author of the BUILD Act and Infrastructure Bank proponent. Courtesy Flickr/Talk Radio News Service
The Congressional Budget Office released a report last week analyzing a
national transportation infrastructure bank, which is a proposal that many on Capitol Hill would like to use in order to boost funding and improve the selection process for projects. The report finds that an infrastructure bank could play a limited role in enhancing investment in surface transportation projects, but that is could create a selection process that would overcome certain barriers to the financing of multi-regional or multimodal projects.
The bank would provide financing through loans, and projects would have to include tolls, taxes or other dedicated revenue streams when repaying them. Private and NGO partners, as well as state and local entities, could apply. While this would assist with funding, the report said, only a select number of projects could qualify.
Read more here.
Senator Kerry (D-MA) introduced the BUILD Act, S. 652, last year, which is a broader infrastructure bank focusing also on water and energy projects. ASCE has endorsed the legislation. In the House Representative DeLauro (D-CT) has also introduced a version of the infrastructure bank with H.R. 402, the National Infrastructure Development Act.
ASCE
Policy Statement 532 supports the creation and operation of a national infrastructure bank that can fund transportation, environment, energy, and telecommunications projects of significance.
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