5. PAYING FOR THE TON FREIGHT - RELATED CHARGES
This chapter details the Commission's exploration of alternative ways to fund the freight industry's share of the HTF, recognizing that Congress will need to determine whether to increase the freight industry's relative share of the nation's highway investment.
This chapter expands on the preliminary evaluation of highway-oriented, freight-related revenue mechanisms introduced in Chapter 3 and compares possible new mechanisms to those currently supporting the federal Highway Trust Fund (HTF). The objective of this focus on freight-related funding mechanisms is twofold. First, it is a response to calls from many sources to address the need for increased investment to improve the reliability, predictability, and cost-effectiveness of goods movement. Second, it identifies the need for Congress to assess whether imbalances that have been documented in past studies between the burden that freight-carrying vehicles (especially heavy commercial vehicles) impose on the system and the funds they generate for the HTF still exist.1
Freight is transported by both highway and heavy rail, as well as through other modes. The trucking industry shares the nation's highway system with other users and this system is built, operated, and maintained predominantly by public agencies. Investment in this system is supported at the federal level by gasoline taxes paid by automobile users and trucking-related fees such as diesel taxes and truck sales taxes. The freight rail industry, in contrast, operates almost exclusively on private, dedicated networks that | |
Many of the nation's freight-related investment needs do not get addressed through current federal policies and funding programs. | the industry itself pays for directly out of privately raised and funded capital budgets. Since trying to raise public highway and transit investment revenues from the rail industry presents an inherent conflict with the principle that users or beneficiaries should pay, the Commission has focused its consideration of new freight-related revenue options on mechanisms related to the trucking industry and shippers that use trucking for all or some part of their goods movement. |
Although the Commission's focus is on identifying potential sources of revenue and not on suggesting how resulting funds might be allocated, the discussion of freight funding options includes recognition of the likely need for a significant portion of the revenues from certain freight sources to be dedicated to freight- oriented congestion and intermodal or border crossing projects and programs. As evidenced by the limited last-mile investments around ports, the general lack of focus on alleviating freight bottlenecks, and the calls by many stakeholders for a "national freight program," many of the nation's freight investment needs do not get addressed through current federal policies and funding programs.
In freight transportation, there is one nearly universal truth: almost every unit of freight reaches its final destination via truck. Yet alleviating freight congestion bottlenecks and addressing the "first mile" or "last mile" linking public to private freight infrastructure are frequently not part of the federal-aid highway system and may even be overlooked by state and local transportation planners. Because any freight-related revenue mechanism becomes an operating cost for the freight industry, visible benefits are necessary to generate the industry support required to make the mechanism politically viable. Thus, dedicating a significant portion of the freight-generated funds for freight purposes would greatly improve their political viability.