America's roads need help. More than half of the nation's highways are not in good condition, costing drivers more than $50 billion in car repairs and more than four billion hours stuck in traffic per year. They're costing states, too, in terms of economic competitiveness: companies don't want to stay in areas where it's difficult to transport goods or for employees to get to work.3
"To ensure our nation's ability to compete in an evolving global economy and respond to crucial energy and environmental challenges, we must not only maintain our infrastructure system but also enhance and improve it. And, we must do so in a way that is transparent and accountable to the American people." Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell, chair, National Governors Association, 2008-2009; An Infrastructure Vision for the 21st Century, National Governors Association, February 2009, iii. |
Created in 1956, the national interstate highway system was assigned a primary funding source: the U.S. Highway Trust Fund, which would be fueled by taxes on gasoline. Since then, the buying power of those funds has eroded, dragged down by inflation, improved fuel efficiency and rapidly rising construction costs. Today, drivers pay less than half as much per mile traveled as they did at the end of the 1950s.4 The Trust Fund was slipping into insolvency until Congress provided an emergency infusion of $8 billion in September 2008. State and local governments welcomed the move, all the while realizing that the one-time injection of money would not solve the country's long-term transportation funding crisis.
State and local governments account for more than half of highway and transit funding in America, and they've also been pinched.5 The share of state government highway funding paid by user fees has declined by nearly 20 percent since 1965, putting more pressure on states' general revenues to close that gap.