Just to follow-up on my earlier post about a proposal to hike the federal gas tax by 40 cents per gallon over five years (and then afterwards to increase it yearly, based on inflation), Transportation Secretary Mary Peters takes to the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal to make her Bacon-esque case for no tax hike at all. Snip:
Even if Congress loses its taste for pork, raising gas taxes and spending more on highways still won’t improve the quality of Americans’ commutes, though it would likely make them more expensive. We tried this already and it simply doesn’t work.
Over the past 25 years, the federal government has increased transportation spending by 100%, yet traffic has grown by over 300%. Not surprisingly, recent studies, including one last summer by the Government Accountability Office, have found that higher gas taxes do nothing to improve traffic congestion.
We believe that this country can do much better than simply charging drivers more to sit in never-ending traffic jams. Thanks to technology, an innovative private sector, pioneering state and local officials, and a sustained effort by our administration to encourage reform, a clear alternative has emerged.
This past year, over 20 major cities in the U.S. have submitted proposals to the Department of Transportation to implement some form of electronic tolling that will both reduce congestion and generate needed revenue for transportation projects. Thanks to new open-road technology, these pricing programs can be put in place without forcing a single driver to slow down to pay a toll or have their transponder “read.”
It’s worth reading in it’s entirety (I think Rupert has made the Journal’s op-ed pages free to all).
One thing that has always fascinated me about the debate over gas taxes on Bacon’s is that no one (that I know of…forgive me if it has) has discussed the Pigouvian angle.
Now that’s an argument worth having.