Boston Globe: High-tech highway funding

From Boston Globe

WITH FUNDING set to expire this fall, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee proposes to authorize a half trillion dollars in federal spending on surface transportation over six years. The Obama administration took a different view, announcing that it wanted Congress to delay reauthorization for 18 months.  But neither addressed how they would pay for a new authorization. That failure is the latest evidence of a surface transportation financing program in need of transformation, not just reauthorization. Technology should be at the heart of that transformation. Today, fuel tax receipts are the principal federal funding source for highway and mass transit projects. But the rise of higher-mileage and alternative-fuel vehicles, together with the failure to raise the tax in more than 15 years, show its limitations as a reliable 21st-century funding source.