{"id":1033,"date":"2023-03-02T22:38:29","date_gmt":"2023-03-02T23:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=1033"},"modified":"2023-03-03T05:40:54","modified_gmt":"2023-03-03T05:40:54","slug":"assembly-speaker-calls-for-tolling-to-fund-wisconsin-infrastructure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=1033","title":{"rendered":"Assembly Speaker calls for tolling to fund Wisconsin infrastructure"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/assembly-speaker-calls-for-tolling-to-fund-wisconsin-infrastructure\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Declining gas tax revenues require a fair and sustainable replacement<\/strong><\/em><\/h5>\n
\n
\"Tolled<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on Wednesday renewed a call for Wisconsin to adopt tolling\u202fas a way to\u202fpay for state infrastructure projects.\u202f<\/p>\n

An alternative is needed, he said, as increased fuel efficiency and an increase in electric cars on the road\u202fare\u202fcontributing to\u202fdeclining gas tax revenues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have got to decide as a state and as a society how we are going to pay for our roads,\u201d Vos said\u202fat a legislative roundtable hosted by\u202fthe Wisconsin Counties Association Conference. \u201cThe gas tax is declining. \u2026 We\u2019ve got to find an alternate revenue source.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more than a dozen years, the Badger Institute\u202fhas worked with\u202fRobert\u202fW.\u202fPoole\u202fJr.,\u202fdirector of\u202ftransportation\u202fpolicy\u202fat the\u202fReason Foundation, to identify free-market, users-pay\u202fapproaches for funding state highways and bridges.\u202fTolling, or other mileage-based user fees, have worked in other states and would provide sustainable\u202ftransportation funding as a replacement for fuel taxes well into the future, Poole\u2019s research shows.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad to see Speaker Vos raising this idea again,\u201d said\u202fPoole. \u201cIn January, Michigan\u2019s\u202fDepartment of\u202fTransportation\u202funveiled a major study finding that eight of its Interstate highways could be rebuilt and modernized via toll revenue financing over the next 10 years. That would free up state fuel tax revenues for all the state\u2019s other roads.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Badger Institute\u2019s latest research on the topic,\u202fFuture-Proofing Wisconsin\u2019s Highway Funding System<\/a>, was authored by Poole and Benita\u202fCotton-Orr, both Badger Institute visiting scholars. The report was part of the institute\u2019s\u202fMandate for Madison<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the report, Poole and Cotton-Orr\u202fpropose a mileage-based user fee\u202fthat can phase in as a replacement for, not an addition to, the gas tax.\u202fTheir options take advantage of advances in technology\u202fthat would avoid the costs and hassles of old-fashioned tolling while protecting drivers\u2019 privacy.\u202fIt also maintains the principle that highways are funded by their users<\/a>, which can help keep road funding from having to compete with other priorities for a share of general state tax revenue.\u202f<\/p>\n

Wisconsin is one of only 15 states\u202fthat fails to take advantage of tolling to cover the costs of its highways.<\/p>\n

Vos\u202fhas promoted tolling for over a decade, including a first-phase tolling study in the last budget. Gov. Tony Evers vetoed the study.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like people are ignoring the problem because it\u2019s not acute yet,\u201d Vos said.<\/p>\n

Of the four funding sources for roads in Wisconsin \u2014 federal\u202ffunding,\u202fstate\u202fgas taxes, vehicle registrations and driver\u2019s license fees \u2014 three are\u202frelatively static, he said.\u202fWith the federal\u202fgovernment promoting the manufacture and use of\u202felectric\u202fvehicles,\u202f\u201cthere will be fewer gasoline powered vehicles\u202fon the\u202froad, but not fewer vehicles on the road.\u202fWe\u2019re going to figure out ways of making up for that lost revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Wisconsin, electric vehicle buyers pay a differential, but Vos said that\u202famount\u202fis \u201cprobably not enough to\u202fmake up for that lost tax revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I were in Congress, I would not support the federal policy to transition to electric vehicles,\u201d Vos said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Poole noted that in Washington, D.C., this week, Rep. Rick Crawford, chair of the House Highways and Transit Subcommittee, called for Congress to give states greater flexibility to implement tolling on their highways.<\/p>\n

Michael Jahr is the Vice President of Communications and Government Relations at the Badger Institute. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
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The post Assembly Speaker calls for tolling to fund Wisconsin infrastructure<\/a> appeared first on Badger Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/assembly-speaker-calls-for-tolling-to-fund-wisconsin-infrastructure\/ Declining gas tax revenues require a fair and sustainable…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1035,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-badger-institute"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1033"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1036,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions\/1036"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}