Susan Demas Op-Ed Article

On June 3, the Mackinac Policy Conference forum was held in Detroit and featured seven gubernatorial candidates. Transportation issues, specifically the gas tax and the Detroit-Windsor bridge (DRIC), took center stage at the forum and were debated by the candidates. In an op-ed this week by Susan Demas of the Michigan Information & Research Service, Ms. Demas argues that all seven of the candidates demonstrated a clear lack of understanding of Michigan’s transportation systems and were unwilling to raise the gas tax for maintenance revenues.

This lack of understanding on behalf of the gubernatorial candidates is a major impediment to achieve NTPP’s vision of a national transportation policy that is performance driven and achieves certain goals like stimulating economic growth, making transportation safer, and providing access to jobs, labor, and other activities. Therefore, until state leaders grasp the ideas espoused by NTPP that a transportation policy goes far beyond getting people from “A” to “B”, we will again be stuck with an inefficient and wasteful federal transportation policy.