The panel, "The Future Direction of Surface Transportation Policy and What It Means for You," was held as part of the Urban Land Institute Fall Meeting in Washington. It focused on new methods to increase transportation investment that benefit the development industry and encourage livability.

Horsley said the AASHTO proposal would involve changing the current federal gas tax (18.4 cents per gallon) to a percentage scale similar to a sales tax. (see related story) This would allow revenue from the gas tax (and a similar tax on diesel fuel) to rise in future years if the price of oil goes up.

"Nobody is interested in raising the fuel tax, but if we could make the switch to a percent tax that starts out being revenue neutral, then we could make a serious case for this system." Horsley said. He noted AASHTO is just beginning to float this idea around to Congress and stakeholders in the transportation industry.

Panelists Discuss Relationship Between Transportation & Development

In an effort to create more livable communities that have accessible transit options, the U.S. Department of Transportation has teamed up with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to encourage communities to better plan the way transit projects and housing projects work together.

"USDOT is ready to help with these challenges through its newly announced partnership with HUD and EPA," Kate Mattice, director of policy review and development at the Federal Transit Administration, said during her presentation. "We are working hand in hand looking for a way to leverage affordable transportation around low-income housing."

The panel discussed different ways that transit-oriented development could be considered in the future to increase the livability of communities and the mobility of the population at a time when highway congestion is getting worse. In the past, transportation and development have often been planned separately. Many of the panelists, however, said that more interaction between the two could benefit everyone.

"You can't look at transportation in a vacuum. If you're going to draft a new [transportation] bill, you have to consider housing and urban development also because they are interconnected issues," said panelist Mitch Warren, senior policy adviser for the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. "When we do fund the [surface transportation] reauthorization, we need to take a look at how to consider new ideas like transit-oriented development."

A major roadblock to increased federal funding for transit-oriented development is the lack of a dedicated revenue source for such projects and the uncertainty surrounding a long-term surface transportation reauthorization bill, speakers said. Without a reauthorization bill completed, the panelists cautioned, many of the discussions involving more specialized issues are irrelevant.

"Yes, there's a lot of policy that needs to be discussed on how to shape future development and encourage livability, but before we can even get to that point, we need to fund the basics of our infrastructure," Horsley said. "We are losing that ability as budgets get cut, and that is a bigger threat than some of these other issues."

The panelists agreed that time is running out to find a better way to fund transportation infrastructure and that the country risks experiencing serious economic and financial repercussions from a failure to act.

"It's clear there is no more time for the U.S. to resist the obvious investment imperative to maintain our transportation system," said panel moderator David Winstead, an attorney with Ballard Spahr LLP and a former Maryland transportation secretary and AASHTO president. "We need to get highway and transit projects going but that can't happen until we have a dedicated funding source."