May 23, 2016
Madaffer Enterprises President Jim Madaffer traveled to Australia this month to speak to an international audience of transportation professionals about the need to modernize the way governments raise money for transportation infrastructure in the 21st century.
As fuel efficiency improves and electric vehicles become more popular, gasoline taxes are no longer the most effective way to fund the construction and maintenance of roads and bridges, Jim told the audience at the 2016 Roads Australia National Roads Summit.
As chair of the California Transportation Commission’s Road Charge Pilot Program Technical Advisory Committee, Jim has helped lead an initiative to develop an alternative to the gas tax in California. Under a “road charge” system, motorists pay for transportation infrastructure by the mile, rather than by the gallon.
There is still much work to be done to determine the best way to implement a road charge system, but California’s Road Charge Pilot is helping to test and validate emerging technologies that could enable the transition away from gas taxes.