‘EARMARKING FISCAL INCOME TO TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE FUNDING’, A COLUMN BY STA CHAIRMAN JOSÉ F. PAPÍ

Today the cost of providing transport infrastructure is met directly through user charges, or indirectly through taxation. In the case of closed systems (rail, aviation), users pay for the infrastructure as a part of their overall transport charge. For open systems, primarily roads, there is either no direct infrastructure charge, or the infrastructure charge is levied directly to the user in the form of a toll.

Transport infrastructure funding has been traditionally conceived as a responsibility of governments. However, in the last 20 years experiences across the world have proven that the capacity of most governments to adequately fund transport infrastructure construction and maintenance is quite limited.

In this column, featured in Thinking Highways – Issue 3, 2016 (Europe and Rest Of The World), STA Chairman José F. Papí discusses  the benefits of tax earmarking to the funding of transport infrastructure.