OpenMarket: Automobiles and Roads

A recent survey conducted for the American Energy Alliance clearly shows that the public does not support congressional efforts to extend or expand federal tax credits for purchasers of electric vehicles. Current subsidies of up to $7500 are available only for the first 200,000 EVs sold by each automaker. 

In 1982, when Congress designated the National Network—the approximately 200,000 miles of truck corridors that crisscross the U.S.—it also set a 28.5-foot minimum limit on tandem trailer length. Some states have opted to allow trucks that pull two longer, 33-foot trailers (“twin-33s”), but most have not. In the interest of promoting interstate commerce as the Constitution directs the federal government to do, these limits should be standardized nationwide.

Today the Competitive Enterprise Institute released my new report, “Transforming Surface Transportation Reauthorization: A 21st Century Approach to Address America’s Greatest Infrastructure Challenge.” In it, I argue that past approaches to funding America’s highways—namely, having the federal government pick up the majority of the initial construction tab while assuming states will then maintain these highways, all largely funded through taxes on motor fuel—will no longer hold and that a new approach is needed.

Seventeen automakers, including Ford, General Motors, and Toyota Motor North America sent a letter on 6th June to President Donald J. Trump urging him not to challenge California’s authority to regulate fuel economy. Instead, the companies want Mr. Trump to negotiate a compromise with California over model year (MY) 2021-2026 fuel economy standards. 

As we pointed out last year when New York City attacked Uber, Lyft, and other ride-hailing firms by imposing an interim supply cap, politicians fighting these new entrants to the urban transportation sector ignore the harms their protectionist policies do to their constituent consumers.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and other congressional Democrats met with President Trump on April 30 to discuss an infrastructure package. Unfortunately, Schumer and Pelosi released a letter to the president prior to their meeting that suggested that, rather than streamlining the permitting process, they want to make it more cumbersome by tacking on additional climate change-related requirements. 

In recent years, there have been increasing calls to raise federal fuel excise tax rates in order to address what many have called an infrastructure crisis. To be sure, there are very real infrastructure needs in the U.S., but they are not uniform across infrastructure asset classes and are not primarily the result of a lack of federal funding.

Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute sent a letter to Congress urging members to preserve and strengthen the users-pay/users-benefit highway funding principle and to establish a nationwide, interoperable mileage-based user fee pilot program.

Today, I submitted comments to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) on behalf of CEI in response to a notice of proposed rulemaking on promoting innovation in the use of patented and proprietary products. This may sound like an esoteric transportation regulatory issue, but it has very serious real-world implications.

CEI had a busy year in the transportation policy trenches. We worked at the federal, state, and local levels on a variety of projects. Below are selected examples of the work we did this year to inject free-market ideas into the generally command-and-control world of transportation.