I am Dr. Adrian Moore, Vice President of the Reason Foundation. I am a transportation economist and have been working on this thorny problem of how to fund and finance transportation. In 2008 I was appointed by Congress to the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Finance Commission to answer these questions for them, and in 2013 was appointed by California Gov. Schwarzenegger to the Public Infrastructure Advisory Commission for the same purpose for the state. And I have worked with and testified to many other state legislatures on these issues.
I want to talk first about some overarching considerations I have learned along the way. Then I want to touch briefly on what are the most productive ways forward for Michigan.
There’s a good reason why charging people a new tax is much more problematic than a firm raising its prices for its products. The former offers politicized promises that invite skepticism, the latter, if successful, offer customers a clearly understood case of getting more for paying more.
The full testimony is available here: Funding and Financing New Transportation Investments