In the past month, for the second time in the two-and-a-half-year-old Obama Administration, discussion of a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) scheme to supplement or replace the gas tax floated up – and then disappeared rather quickly. As reported in Transportation Weekly in early May, about $300 million would be allocated in the Transportation Opportunities Act to study a VMT system. Such a miles-traveled program would charge motorists for actual use of pavement, not how much gas is being used.

“What we’re selling is road space,” Ralph Erickson, division chief of the Highway Funding & Motor Fuels office of the U.S. Department of Transportation, told Pothole.info. “It’s a valuable piece of real estate. But how do we collect a fair price on use?” Erickson said that a fairer system would also account for the weight of vehicles (i.e., as it contributes to wear and tear on pavement) and the time of day that those vehicles travel, otherwise known as congestion pricing.

Linking the quality of roads, bridges and rail to his state’s global competitiveness, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley has told business leaders that the state needs to find a way to raise $800 million addition dollars to invest in infrastructure.

The Democratic governor’s remarks were made in early May before the Maryland Chamber of Commerce. His comments regarding this increased investment in infrastructure were within a list of what he called the “five hard truths” about the economic future of Maryland. The other four points were that the funding would need to come from a diversity of sources, beyond the current per-gallon gas tax; that the state’s two largest urban centers, Baltimore and Washington DC, have not kept up in transit capacity with population increases since the 1980s; that two very large projects (the Intercounty Connector and Interstate-95 upgrades) were stressing state borrowing capacity; and that the economic recession has reduced funding for transportation plans by $2 billion.