VMT

If you ever doubted whether a small investment in biking and walking could have a large impact, here is your proof.

Oregon, true to its history as the first state to implement a gas tax, was also the first state to consider getting rid of it -- in exchange for adopting a mileage-based system for highway funding. And the Beaver state isn’t alone: A number of other states have done studies and introduced legislation to charge drivers for the distance they travel instead of the gasoline they consume.

At Rail~Volution yesterday, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) -- also known as the godfather of the “rail~volution” -- said even he wouldn’t raise the gas tax right now.

The Hill is reporting that the Obama administration has already sworn off a move toward a vehicle-miles-traveled fee. We just reported that an undated draft of the administration transportation proposal included the creation of an office to study the feasibility of implementing such a system to replace the traditional fuel tax.

Thanks to The Hill and CQ for reading President Obama’s transportation bill draft [PDF] more thoroughly than I did – they discovered a significant detail that I’d missed. Despite his administration’s insistence that they won’t consider an increase in the gas tax or other user fees, Obama’s bill includes language establishing a Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Office within the Federal Highway Administration, which would in turn create a Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Policy Decision Group to study the feasibility of a VMT fee.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee just spent two days listening to 40 experts from different aspects of the transportation sector and advocacy community, from engineers to environmentalists to the Tea Party. Each person had just four minutes to speak and they crammed as much as they could into their time: observations, demands, recommendations for a better transportation bill. Their ideas were widely divergent on many points, but on one, they found unity: This should not be a smaller bill than the one that came before it.

With the White House unwilling to engage on the specifics of how to pay for its $556 billion transportation bill, members of Congress are studying the possibilities. Earlier this month, Senate Budget Committee Chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) asked the Congressional Budget Office to analyze the potential of a vehicle-miles-traveled fee as a fairer way to tax drivers.