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States Experiment with Controversial Taxes to Pay for Highway Construction

Some states are experimenting with controversial new taxes to pay for highway construction. Special correspondent Lee Hochberg reports from Oregon, where officials are looking into charging drivers a tax based on the number of miles they drive in lieu of a highly-debated gas tax.

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  • JUDY WOODRUFF:

    Now experimenting with controversial new taxes to pay for highway construction.

    Special correspondent Lee Hochberg reports from Oregon.

  • LEE HOCHBERG:

    Anyone who has driven the West Coast's major north-south highway, Interstate 5, knows this maddening half-mile bottleneck in Portland, Oregon, where the southbound roadway narrows to two lanes.

    It's needed to be widened since the 1970s. Finally, a lane is being added, paid for with money from Oregon's gasoline tax, which funds 65 percent of the state's road projects.

    But, a year into the job, the amount of revenue available from that tax is dwindling. State transportation spokesman Dave Thompson is unsure Oregon will be able to complete the interchanges needed to connect the widened freeway to these feeder roads.

    DAVE THOMPSON, Oregon Department of Transportation: That's a $90 million project. And the gas tax does not give us enough money to do that at this point. We can't even put it on our schedule, because we look out to see where the gas tax will be in the next three or four years, and there's not enough there.

  • MAN:

    Yes, $10 regular, please.