On this week’s Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, a conversation with Susan Howard, director of policy and government relations for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). 

Picking up on last week’s conversation with Richard Czuba, a veteran Michigan pollster and founder of the Glengariff Group, Howard talks about results from a recent Glengariff poll that asked Michigan voters for their perceptions of road conditions and repairs and how those results fit with what she’s seen at the national level. 

Howard says contrary to common belief, lawmakers have largely not paid a price for raising taxes or fees that fund transportation infrastructure when voters understand where the money is going and can see the results. 

Howard also addresses the health of the Highway Trust Fund and why the “donor-state” concept is no longer an issue in Michigan and other states (save, perhaps for Texas, where she says officials would make a different argument).  

The federal government has used the General Fund to compensate for the diminished Highway Trust Fund for several years now, while the federal gas tax has not been raised since 1993. AASHTO officials have cited the cost of other items in 1993 versus now and how transportation infrastructure has suffered because of the lack of action.  

Is the Highway Trust Fund model broken? Howard discuses the history of the fund going back to its origins in 1956 and some discussion about whether transportation should be funded like other federally supported discretionary programs. 

“The conventional wisdom and accepted course for the future is moving away from the gas tax as the method for funding transportation and to a mileage-based fee,” Howard says, which recalls previous podcast conversations about funding roads like public utilities.