(Source: Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital Blog)

President Obama this week urged the country to boldly confront challenges and take responsibility for the future. Today he was starkly reminded by a Congressionally-appointed commission to do the same when it comes to filling the massive hole in the nation’s transportation budget.

In a report issued today, the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission said that raising gasoline taxes and taxing miles driven instead of gallons are the only viable ways to get the tattered U.S. road and transit system back on track. The Obama administration just shot down both proposals.

The recommendation was two years in the making—the commission’s mix of transport industry veterans, elected officials and think-tankers has been trying to divine how to raise the extra money needed to maintain and improve roads, buses, and trains.

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(Source: InsideGNSS.com)

One change that apparently won’t happen under the Obama administration is replacing the federal gasoline tax with a GPS-monitored mileage fee.

In an interview with the Associated Press last week, U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) Secretary Ray LaHood had suggested that his agency should look at a “vehicular miles program where people are actually clocked on the number of miles that they traveled.”

It was one of the shortest flights of a trial balloon so far this year.

When asked at his February 20 news briefing about the mileage fee concept and whether President Obama had “weighed in” on the subject, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, “I don’t believe the President has. I can weigh in on it and say that it is not and will not be the policy of the Obama administration.”

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