Opinion

Merely patching highway funding doesn’t hold up

An editorial from The Herald-Dispatch

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Another Band-Aid is being placed on the federal program that pays for maintaining the nation’s transportation infrastructure, and it won’t be sticking around long.

So is there any hope that the nation’s lawmakers will come up with a way to fix the wound rather than apply a temporary bandage? There’s not much encouraging action coming out of Washington, which means states will continue to be in limbo when it comes to projects on highways and bridges.

The issue has to do with the Federal Highway Trust Fund, which states rely on to supplement their own spending on transportation infrastructure. West Virginia, for example, has received more than $400 million annually from the fund in recent years. Virtually everyone agrees that the United States’ highways and bridges are deteriorating, but there has been no consensus on how to funnel more money into the trust fund to help address the problem.

The result is that no long-term solution is imminent, just like there hasn’t been one in more than six years…

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