Arizona's 18-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax needs to be raised and indexed to increase with inflation, participants in a statewide transportation seminar in Tucson said Monday.
More than 100 government officials, contractors and transportation experts are here for the Arizona Town Hall on Transportation to discuss how to increase transportation funding. Suggestions ranged from increasing the state gas tax to the legally impossible opting out of the federal gasoline tax.
A draft final report on the recommendations from the seminar will be prepared Wednesday.
"Until we solve the riddle of how to pay for it, this is all idle talk. That has always been the No. 1 problem," said Si Schorr, a Lewis and Roca attorney and the Pima County member on the Arizona Transportation Board.
In another discussion, Aaron Golub, an Arizona State University professor, said he supported raising the state gasoline tax from 18 cents to bring in a proportional amount of money today as when it was set in 1991, and raise it by inflation each year.
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"Some states index (their gas taxes) to inflation so they no longer need a vote," he said.
The gas tax may need more revision than that, suggested Dina Higgins, a Mesa city councilwoman. As more people start using more kinds of fuel, the gasoline tax will apply to a shrinking portion of the people who use the roads.
"Maybe we should call the gas tax a vehicle-fuel tax. That covers anything coming out of a pump at a fuel station," she said.
Even a small increase in the gas tax would help transportation systems a lot, said Tim James, a researcher at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business.
Other options that came up for discussion included toll roads, vehicle-mileage taxes and higher license fees.
The people attending, who were split into four discussion groups, also talked about transportation planning and development Monday. "Transportation dictates how we grow instead of the reverse," said Rhonda Bannard, a town hall participant who works at Inspired Connections, a public relations firm in Phoenix.
"Our transportation system needs to be able to offer us continued quality of life, and the only way to do that is with more options," said Albert Elias, director of the Tucson Department of Urban Planning and Design.
While one group was discussing what role transportation should play in Arizonans' lives, many said drivers need to get into a different mind-set.
"We're never going to get rid of the car in the driveway, but we can make it a pain to drive," said Kirsten Engel, a University of Arizona law professor.
"I doubt it would be acceptable public policy to make driving as much a pain in the a-- as possible," engineer Mike Ellegood said in response.
But getting people to mix their transportation modes would help the overall burden on the transportation system, said ASU's James. For example, getting people to drive their vehicles to park-and-ride lots and then take a light-rail train to their destinations would diversify people's transportation.
Getting someone to use transit not only would helps the commute but also those who still use the roads on which the person would have driven. That's why it should be up to more than just the transit riders to pay for transit services, said Susan Anable, director of public affairs for Cox Communications in Phoenix.