RALEIGH – I love it when a plan comes together.

While a certain embattled political donor may have ruined this phrase for many North Carolina politicos, having used it to describe the creation of a tax-funded job for his wife, action-television fans will remember fondly this catchphrase of Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith, head of the A-Team. Typically uttered through clinched, cigar-stained teeth curved into a mischievous smile, the line promised in short order to lead to loud noises, fisticuffs, or at least a good, old-fashioned car chase.

Loud noises and fisticuffs might well be apt images for describing the ongoing debate about North Carolina’s transportation woes. But car chases? In the state’s urban areas, it may be increasingly difficult to find enough open road to stage even a tame, 1970s-era, “Mannix”-style chase scene. As for the more testosterone-laden chases of the 1980s, forget it. On the other hand, in many rural parts of North Carolina, there’s plenty of highway but not enough cars to make the chase exciting.

Wednesday’s Greensboro News & Record brought word of a new report from a state commission that has spent 21 months studying the state’s urban-transportation problems. It estimates a $30 billion gap between expected transportation-related revenues and what it considers to be transportation needs in and around North Carolina cities. Rep. Drew Saunders of Mecklenburg County, who chaired the commission, said that the report was designed to lay the groundwork for a major legislative debate about what to do and how to do it.

I was interested, and frankly pleased, to see so many familiar conclusions and proposals in the commission’s work. For example:

• It calls for ending the annual transfers of money to the General Fund out of the Highway Trust Fund, saying the practice is slowing needed investments. Where have I heard that before?

• It endorses the use of tolls for new highways and high-occupancy-toll lanes. Also sounds familiar.

• It argues for the use of bonds backed by federal revenue to speed up crucial projects, observing that other states have used the device effectively. Yep.

• It concludes that the state’s highway formulas are steering too much money to little-used, low-priority rural projects and too little to alleviating traffic snarls in fast-growing areas. Yes, that is certainly true.

One element of the report I’m not prepared to embrace is the idea of giving local governments more taxing authority to fund highways or transit projects. If we spent the existing stream of transportation funds wisely – e.g., not on choo-choo trains – and combined it with direct charges for new tollways, we’d have enough to meet North Carolina’s transportation priorities. Moreover, it is not obvious to me that most North Carolinians would say yes to new transportation taxes or fees if asked — and they should be — given the history of how voters have responded in other states. Most recently, Oklahoma voters overwhelmingly said no to a gas-tax hike supposedly to address road and bridge safety. In recent years, voters have also defeated transportation-tax measures in Virginia, Missouri, Oregon, and Colorado.

But in general, I’d have to say that the urban-transportation commission seems to be on precisely the right track. I love it when a plan comes together.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.