AGC today announced that the Senate climate change bill neglects efforts to cut traffic congestion and breaks a decades-long promise that transportation user fees will be dedicated to financing highway and transit improvements.
On Tuesday, AGC and transportation partners sent a letter to Senators Kerry and Lieberman, warning that their bill fails to provide enough funding to the Highway Trust Fund to keep it solvent or pay for a multi-year surface transportation reauthorization bill.
The Kerry-Lieberman bill, The American Power Act, places new pollution fees on the gasoline and diesel fuels used by cars and trucks without returning most of the revenue generated from that fee to improving our transportation system. AGC estimates these fees would generate at least $19.5 billion in revenue and divert at least 77 percent of the funds from on-road fuel consumption away from transportation investment. The bill will allocate $6.25 billion annually for transportation. Of that $6.25 billion, $2.5 billion would go to the Highway Trust Fund - with a mandate to set aside funding for projects that decrease greenhouse gas emissions - while the rest of the money will be equally divided between the competitive federal TIGER grants and local land-use planning, as laid-out in the CLEAN-TEA bill.
AGC was quoted in a number of publications, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Engineering News-Record.
Last week, AGC issued this statement in response to the bill.
For more information, contact Brian Turmail at (703) 837-5310 or turmailb@agc.org.
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