Massive new spending is needed to keep the nation’s increasingly clogged transportation system from causing economic gridlock as well, according to a new report written by a congressionally mandated panel.

A majority of panel members on the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, a 12-member panel that reviewed transportation issues for the past 22 months, described a system operating at almost full capacity. Panel members said the influx of new money was needed to keep the United States economy growing.

“Raising gas taxes won’t improve traffic congestion; it will only perpetuate our ineffective reliance on fossil-based fuels to fund infrastructure and send more Americans’ hard-earned money to Washington to be squandered on earmarks and special interest programs,” Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, the commission’s chairwoman, said in a statement. Peters, who did not attend Tuesday’s news conference, dissented from this recommendation with two other panel members.

But no less a conservative luminary than Paul Weyrich, who cofounded the Heritage Foundation and now runs the Free Congress Foundation, said there was likely no way around a tax increase given the breadth of the nation’s infrastructure needs and the importance transportation plays in the economy.

“I’m a conservative Republican,” said Weyrich, a panel member. “The orthodoxy in the conservative movement is don’t raise any tax. But in this particular instance, I don’t see any alternative.”

Republicans in Congress, however, joined Peters in opposing the call for a gas tax hike.

“Our initial reaction is disappointment that the commission relies so heavily on increasing the gas tax,” said Matt Dempsey, a Republican spokesman for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The report advocates spending between $225 billion and $340 billion in federal, state and local monies to repair and improve the nation’s road, freight rail and public transit systems to keep pace with the global economy.

Current spending is about 40 percent of that level.

In addition to a gas tax increase, long the mainstay of transportation funding, the spending increase would come from savings introduced by a more streamlined process by which transportation projects are built and new transit systems are taxed. The report also recommended the wider use of public and private tolls on federal highways.

“The operative phrase is there is no free lunch,” said Jack Schenendorf, the panel’s vice chairman and a former Republican aide on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, in a packed room at the National Press Club.

Several business groups that are worried about the growing costs for transporting their goods welcomed the report.

“The U.S. will soon be facing a competitive disadvantage if we don’t develop a national plan to improve the quality of our infrastructure system like our international trading partners,” said John Engler, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers.

The report also suggested that policymakers set a goal of shaving 10 years off the time it takes to plan and build a project to cut costs.

It advocates new spending on renewable fuels and the infrastructure to support non-fossil fuel energy sources to address global warming concerns.

The report also recommends a panel akin to the Base Closure and Realignment Commission be developed to set national transportation priorities. Lawmakers approve or reject the military base closings developed by BRAC but can’t amend the list.

Panel dissenters said the new transportation commission would simply add another layer of bureaucracy to the decision-making process.

Another area of disagreement centered on the use of public-private partnerships to pay for infrastructure improvements.

Critics said the panel should rely more on private financing to reduce the federal role in paying for transportation needs.
America Moving Forward, a new transportation group that advocates for more private financing, said the commission would limit private participation by placing too many restrictions on outside financing.

“Placing roadblocks in the way of this critical investment runs counter to our nation’s goals,” said Peter Louglin, executive director of America Moving Forward, whose members include the investment firm Goldman Sachs.

Commission members said they support private financing to pay for transportation needs, but they also argued that champions of so-called PPPs (public-private partnerships) overstate their ability to handle the necessary improvements.

Steve Heminger, the executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in San Francisco who was appointed to the panel by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said as much as half of the $140 billion annual projected shortfall in transportation spending versus need would be dedicated just to the rehabilitation of the current structures.

“There are not a lot of bankers interested in investing in that,” he said.

Heminger and other panel members also rejected the contention that increasing the gas tax, which is now 5 cents a gallon, is politically untenable.

“Regardless of the outcome of the election, we are going to have a very different view of transportation in the Department,” Weyrich said, in relation to the administration’s opposition to a gas tax hike.

“I don’t think the current policies are going to be relevant. I’m not worried about it.”