Could be, writes the News & Observer about this morning’s decision by a subcommittee of the 21st Century Transportation Committee.

Proponents of so-called “smart growth” will love this idea, since it penalizes people for living away from their work sites, rather than in the tightly-packed, noisy cities and towns the “smart-growthers” love and want to impose on others.

Keep in mind, here’s how transportation is funded in our state, as detailed in the Locke Foundation resource Agenda 2008:

North Carolina taxpayers pay for state highways through taxes on motor fuels and vehicles. Expenditures from the state’s highway funds have grown significantly in nominal dollars during the past 20 years to $2.3 billion in FY 2006-07, and North Carolina currently levies the 15th highest tax rate on motor fuels in the nation. The rate increased from 24.2 cents per gallon in 2004 to 30.2 cents per gallon in 2008. But adjusted for inflation and vehicle-miles traveled, highway expenditures actually decreased during the past two decades. Per-capita state and local spending on transportation grew at a slower rate than spending on education, health care, and overall government spending.

What should the state do? Again, from Agenda 2008:

1. State officials should focus their attention on improving the efficiency and quality of North Carolina’s highway system. More highway capacity, new technologies, and tollways should be used to relieve congestion and promote economic development. Projects should be selected according to worthiness, not geography.

2. The state should end all subsidies for the Global TransPark. Furthermore, the state should issue a request for proposals for the sale of the state ports at Wilmington and Morehead City and the state-owned North Carolina Railroad.

3. The Department of Transportation should be restructured to perform its job better. Reforms should include downsizing the Board of Transportation and making it an advisory panel only, merging highway divisions and eliminating bureaucracy, using competitive contracting for design and planning functions, and giving a portion of gas taxes collected directly to local governments for local needs. A state infrastructure bank should be established for assisting localities, as South Carolina has done.

4. State lawmakers should end the diversion of highway user fees to non-highway uses. All revenues from motor fuels and auto-sales taxes should be dedicated to road construction and maintenance. The “loop” program should be ended and replaced with project selection based on worthiness criteria. Together with reductions in low-priority road building, administrative savings, and the use of public and private tollways, dedicating gas and car taxes only to their appropriate uses would yield $470 million a year in additional highway spending. That would eliminate the gap between legitimate needs and expected revenues over eight years, according to an analysis conducted for the John Locke Foundation in 2000.

5. Innovative designs for major roads should be considered, to reduce impacts but provide needed capacity. The state should insist that local planners spend state dollars on major state roads, rather than delay them in favor of less important local projects.