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Tolling Points

Will There Be Bipartisan Consensus to Invest in Infrastructure in the U.S.?

By: 
Bill Cramer
Category: 
Stories

It is a new year and a new day in Washington, DC. Is it possible there will be a bipartisan consensus on infrastructure investment of vital concern to citizens and business?

President Trump is aiming for a trillion-dollar infrastructure initiative. The Democrats have come back with their own infrastructure plan with a similarly ambitious price tag. Even tech entrepreneur Elon Musk is weighing in, with a typically ambitious congestion relief plan to bore traffic tunnels under the streets of Los Angeles.

In inimitable Musk fashion, he vowed to name the new enterprise The Boring Company. "Boring," he told reporters. "It's what we do." Much more interesting, noted IBTTA Communications Director Bill Cramer in USA Today, is the potential to mobilize private investment to support the plan.

Among the priorities President Trump has highlighted for his first 100 days in office, infrastructure was the one that crossed party lines, according to a poll released earlier this month by POLITICO. And yet, Congress now appears to be pushing Trump’s major initiative to the second 100 days.

Reaching Across the Aisle

Infrastructure investment was not a top priority for Trump voters, based on a recent poll commissioned by POLITICO and the Harvard School of Public Health. But it was the area where the president’s supporters most closely converged with the concerns of the wider public.

“Among President-elect Donald Trump's top policy priorities, federal infrastructure investment is the least important to those who voted for him, but the most important to the general public, with about half of each group calling it an ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ high priority,” explains reporter Tanya Snyder.

“While 85% of Trump supporters were eager to repeal Obamacare, just 50% of them thought ‘major new spending by the federal government on roads, bridges, airports, and other infrastructure’ should be a high priority of the incoming administration.” But “among the general public, 49% said so,” a result that pointed to a potential consensus in the making.

“The other issues—immigration, defense spending, tax cuts and trade—showed much wider enthusiasm gaps.”

The cross-party sentiment is pretty much consistent with a post-election poll late last year that found 80% of registered voters in favor of a comprehensive infrastructure bill, with 74% prepared to see the government invest much more or somewhat more in the nation’s roads.

Direct Investment or Tax Credits?

IBTTA has consistently pointed to tolling and other forms of user financing as one of the main tools in the toolbox for any level of government that sees infrastructure funding as a policy priority. On that basis, “IBTTA and the tolling industry are excited to work to advance the new administration’s vision to invest in restoring America’s crumbling roads, bridges, and other critical infrastructure over the next decade,” Executive Director and CEO Patrick Jones stated earlier this month. “We look forward to ensuring that toll finance remains an important component of any proposal to rebuild our nation's transportation infrastructure.”

The numbers in the POLITICO-Harvard poll shifted—and diverged—when respondents were asked how infrastructure investment should be funded. With tax credits in play, support from Trump supporters increased from 50 to 53%, but enthusiasm among the general public fell from 49 to 40%--and just 32% among Hillary Clinton voters.

Still, the relatively high support from the constituency that elected the president and both houses of Congress might be just the prompt the country needs to tap private as well as public funding to begin drawing down a persistent, vexing infrastructure deficit.

If the president’s supporters get the funding model they prefer, and everyone gets the safer, more reliable highways they need and deserve, it might just be the kind of grand bargain that can deliver results.

And if that’s the way the conversation goes, America’s tolling authorities will stand ready to help.

To see just how ready tolling is to help fund a major highway infrastructure initiative, click here for IBTTA’s National Toll Facilities Usage Analysis.

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