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Beyond fiscal 2009, Reese says, VDOT budgeted no increase in revenue from the federal highway trust fund, no special earmarks from Congress and a growth in gasoline tax receipts of a modest 1 percent annually.
Hopefully, VDOT’s precautions will spare Virginia from a funding crisis should Duvall's worst fears come true. But disciplined accounting can't make up for declining tax receipts if motorists continue to drive less and get better gas mileage. And there's no sign that Virginia lawmakers are preparing for the day when the gasoline tax fails to deliver.
As I’ve argued before in Bacon's Rebellion, Virginia needs to shift to a "user/beneficiary pays" system for building and maintaining roads. That can be best accomplished through a combination of charging drivers a road-maintenance fee based on the number of miles they drive each year, and charging congestion tolls to allocate scarce roadway capacity.
There is no move yet to restructure the gasoline tax into a mileage-based user fee. But the policy wonks in the Department of Transportation are big boosters of congestion tolls. So is the Kaine administration, at least when applied to HOT lanes.
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