Yesterday I blogged about the need for alternative sources of funding for transportation and how being taxed by the amount of miles you drive is a very real posibility in the future.
Today we're going to talk about another proposal for financing the future of transportation; an initiative called America Fast Forward (AFF). AFF basically takes existing initiatives such as Build America Bonds and the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) program and revises them to provide funding for the next generation of infrastructure projects, while detangling financing from earmarks and appropriations.
A key component of AFF is creating Transportation & Regional Infrastructure Project (TRIP) bonds. A Transportation Finance Corporation would be created that would control the issuing of $50 billion in bonds over six years, and the repayment process. At least 1% of would go to qualified projects in every state, with the remaining funding competitive for larger qualified projects.
The Brookings Institution website has more information. Read the article and let me know what you think of AFF.
2 comments:
The bonds sound interesting, but I did not see how they would be paid back. It just says user fees?
Also the local area would have to come up with matching funds, so where do those funds come from?
A lot of unanswered questions still. User fees could be a lot of things. I think we'll be hearing more about this though as it's fleshed out. If it gets that far. And historically, matching funds have been hard for area jurisdictions to come up with. A lot of the time the match is only 20% of the project cots, so it's more doable, but 50% match rates have been known to derail projects.
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