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WASHINGTON — A way for Congress to ensure long-term funding for the country's highway system would be to approve a 10-cent gas tax increase and index the tax to inflation, former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told Transport Topics May 13.

WASHINGTON — The House Appropriations Committee on May 13 voted 30-21 to send a fiscal 2016 transportation funding bill to the House floor after defeating a Democratic attempt to remove a provision that would add new requirements to a study on an hours of service rule for truckers.

ARLINGTON, Va. — Virginia celebrated 20 years of public-private partnerships for infrastructure, recommended them to other states and is looking for a P3 arrangement to improve Interstate 66, which runs from Washington, D.C., to the west.

ARLINGTON, Va. — Virginia’s governor said his state will soon have to begin shutting down transportation improvement projects if Congress does not fund and reauthorize the federal Highway Trust Fund before the end of this month.

With less than two weeks before funding authority for transportation projects expires, Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) on May 12 introduced legislation that would establish an infrastructure bank.

WASHINGTON — Vice President Joe Biden said Congress will soon unveil a highway funding patch that ensures states continue to receive federal funding assistance after transportation funding authority expires at the end of the month.

WASHINGTON — Policymakers and Wall Street veterans made pleas May 11 for greater investment in the nation’s infrastructure but acknowledged the stumbling block is still the same — how to pay for it.

President Obama on May 8 nominated Greg Nadeau to be administrator of the Federal Highway Administration.

WASHINGTON — The biggest challenges facing infrastructure public-private partnership proposals are in persuading public officials and taxpayers to accept some level of financial and possibly environmental risk, and in convincing public employees they won’t lose their jobs, a panel of P3 supporters said at a May 11 “Infrastructure Week” event.

The top two Democrats on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee are pressing the panel’s chairman and the chamber’s top tax policy authorizer to schedule a joint hearing very soon that focuses on a long-term highway bill.