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.
Leave a Reply
Tell Your Legislator
Got a Question?
Sign Up for Updates
Be Social
ASCE seems to be short sighted on this issue. Inflation is certainly an issue, but the article does not address the fact that gas consumption has declined since 2007. Mileage standards, use of electric vehicles, natural gas, ethanol, and the like will further erode the future value of the tax.
We need to develop/support alternate means of revenue that captures the cost of maintaining the infrastructure independent of the fuel.
This is very worrisome indeed. Hopefully they will start to discuss this more seriously in Washington and start to replenish those funds!