One of the few areas where Republicans and Democrats in Congress generally agree has been transportation funding. This year, House Republicans managed to propose a transportation funding bill that has generated bipartisan criticism.

Over the past month, the fate of the five-year transportation measure has been in doubt because of Republicans’ plans for dramatic changes to funding and distribution practices of the past, and by attaching non-transportation issues to the bill.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a Republican and former congressman, said the House plan is the worst transportation bill he’s seen in 35 years. So much criticism has been coming from Democrats and Republicans that House Speaker John Boehner has broken the bill into three parts and also is considering a stopgap funding plan.

Two elements of the bill have raised the loudest complaints, but there are other parts drawing flak.

For the first time in decades, the House bill would end the practice of dedicating 20 percent of federal gasoline tax revenue to public transit. Instead of a predictable public-transit funding stream, the House bill would provide one-time funding comparable to past years, but then would have public transit compete for funding annually.

Many motorists object to what is widely seen as mismanagement and inefficiencies in public transit agencies like PAT in Pittsburgh. But it’s also true that major metropolitan areas need viable public transit systems to function and prosper.

Keeping one-fifth of highway funding going to public transit is not a bad idea, but there should be more accountability as to how those dollars are spent to reduce costs and inefficiencies.

Another part of the House transportation bill raising howls of protest calls for opening nearly all U.S. coastal waters to offshore drilling. While seemingly unrelated to transportation funding, House Republicans view this as a way to generate money to shore up the depleted Federal Highway Trust Fund.

The U.S. is producing more oil and gas than at any time in history, and in fact has become a gasoline exporter. So, the prospect of a sudden and massive move into new offshore wells seems unlikely.

The current system of using the federal gasoline tax to generate revenue for highway work and bridge repairs is a user-fee approach that most people support. But the Highway Trust Fund has been spending money faster than tax revenue is coming in, partly because the federal gas tax has not been increased since 1993.

Nobody likes paying more taxes, but if people expect money to be available to maintain roads and bridges, they should expect to see regular gasoline tax increases. But Congress has failed to raise the gas tax because it’s politically unpopular.

A new problem with gas tax revenue is that as people have replaced older cars and drive more fuel-efficient cars, they consume less gasoline. Despite Americans driving more miles than ever, less gasoline is being sold at the pumps.

Because of this, Congress should have been adding to the gasoline tax, even beyond what was needed to keep up with inflation. But with gasoline now approaching $4 a gallon, few in Congress will have the nerve to propose raising the gasoline tax. Nor is President Obama likely to propose a gas-tax hike in an election year.

Congress fumbled on transportation funding by not slowly phasing in higher gasoline taxes when prices at the pump were low.

Adding to the problems House Republicans created in their bill, they inserted a mandate that the Keystone XL pipeline be approved. While Obama’s denial of that project was largely political, it does not belong in a transportation funding bill. It’s just more politics.

In the past, transportation bills were mostly noncontroversial, except for complaints over the many earmarks that self-serving lawmakers inserted for local projects. Now, the earmarks are reduced, but House Republicans have managed to create a bill that has something for just about everyone to hate.

It didn’t seem possible for Congress to be any more dysfunctional than it was at the end of last year. But the House transportation bill proves that there still is room for Congress to have lower public approval.