Reuters has done a lot of interesting interviews this week from its Infrastructure Summit. In the news service’s latest dispatch, the Senate’s transportation pointperson, Barbara Boxer, discusses her plans for the highway bill.

In ADD-friendly bullet point form (it’s Friday afternoon, for heaven’s sake), a few noteworthy items from the interview:

> The Senate plans to stick with the gas tax, but it “is very important to index the gas tax to inflation,” says Boxer.

> “I also don’t want to increase the gas tax,” she says.

> Also under consideration: Raising taxes on diesel; trying to open the door to private capital; creating a vehicle miles traveled tax.

> “[Boxer] wants to maintain the same relationship between the federal government and states, whereas Oberstar is considering giving the states more discretion in spending,” says Reuters.

There’s a long way to go before the new transportation bill reaches anything close to final form — but the pace of developments is already picking up. And it sounds like there’s a showdown brewing between the House and the Senate with respect to how much latitude the states have in spending their federal transportation dollars.

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Jim Obestar, the Minnesota Democrat who oversees transportation and infrastructure issues in the House, told Reuters that he wants to fundamentally change how the country plans and pays for highway and transit projects.

The scheme will be a central part of his draft of the next transportation bill, a projected $450 billion piece of legislation that he hopes will be to the president by early fall. Oberstar has said that he plans to unveil the first draft of the bill next month.

According to the Reuters story:

Oberstar [said] that his plan would reorganize the U.S. Transportation Department in order to streamline infrastructure spending programs.

“It’s a complete restructuring of the thought process, the delivery system, the delivery mechanism, and the funding for it,” Oberstar, from Minnesota, said in his Capitol Hill office.

The Oberstar measure would retain current federal funding sources as well as give more spending discretion to states. In addition, it would make room for private investment in infrastructure programs.

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In this interview last week with the Washington Post (which we just noticed is available on video), the Transportation Secretary said some interesting things. For instance:

• When asked about the vehicle miles tax–remember that LaHood got slapped down by the White House a couple of months ago for floating precisely this idea–he was indirect but seemed to suggest that the scheme is alive and well, but its fate is in Congress’s hands. “That debate will go on in Congress,” he said.
• There will be no increase in the gas tax while Obama is president because people are economically stressed and it “is very regressive.” (This got a bit of press pickup last week.)
• “The president wants to create opportunities for people to live in communities where they don’t always have to be in an automobile to get where they’re going.”
• He and Housing secretary Sean Donovan see the new Livable Communities program as a means of “creating opportunities for people to get out of their cars.”
• The current $13 billion in high speed rail funding is “a very good start,” but America’s HSR program “will develop over a couple decades.”
• Regarding Amtrak’s future, he said: “Amtrak will be a part of some planning for some high speed rail corridors.”
• His assessment of his own performance: “I was able to really help the president to extent that there’s $48 billion” in transportation funds in the stimulus package.

Part 2 of the video after the jump.

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