Infra Insight Blog

This morning, members of the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission and National Transportation Policy Project of the Bipartisan Policy Center released a joint statement urging Congress to take steps toward several transportation policy principles designed to help guide deliberations over how to extend, fund and improve the federal surface transportation program in the face of dire fiscal realities. Some of the key proposals include the call for Congress to incentivize and remove barriers to increased state and local revenues from direct user fees and the need to transition to a more direct user fee based on vehicle miles traveled (VMT). With the emergence of electric vehicles and the need to be able to more accurately price road use, today's joint statement says moving to a VMT-based system is critical.