Countdown
America's Next Transportation Act
Need is Clear, but Case Must be Made
TEA funding will depend on our actions, and
the
next six years depend on it.
by John Horsley,
Executive Director, AASHTO
It’s been said, accurately, that transportation is the linchpin of
our economic success in the United States. A huge component of capital
creation is getting people and their ideas, or the things they create
through those ideas, from one point to another — quickly and in good
shape.
In the year 2003, Congress is faced with a process known as
reauthorization — the re-upping of federal law that authorizes federal
expenditures for transportation projects built by states. In the fall of
2003, the six-year Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, a major
legislative investment that increased spending on transportation by nearly
40%, will expire. Continuance of the program relies on Congressional
action to move it forward. AASHTO and many other groups are working in
earnest to identify the central issues Congress should weigh in drafting
such legislation.
Much has changed in Congress, including the presence of a large number
of new members, since TEA-21 became law. Leadership on key committees has
changed. New competing public priorities — such as the need for
increased security against terrorism — are part of the current
landscape.
As a result, those of us who understand the importance of strong
transportation must make our case afresh to Congress, to decision makers
around the nation, and to the public, explaining the needs as we have
identified them and the role transportation plays in supporting our
economy and our quality of life.
AASHTO has set these
priority objectives for reauthorization of TEA-21:
1. We seek to ramp up federal-aid transportation spending over the next
six years, from $34 to $41 billion for highways and from $7.5 to $10
billion for transit;
2. We want to maintain funding guarantees and firewalls against
diversion of transportation funding to non-transportation purposes, as
provided by current law. Though the basic program structure is sound, we
want to smooth out the potential for radical down-swings in highway
funding through the generally positive program known as revenue-aligned
budget authority;
3. We seek to increase states’ flexibility to meet needs including
security, safety, congestion relief, freight, road preservation, and
capacity;
4. We want to improve environmental stewardship, and streamline
environmental and historic-preservation reviews that now delay projects
unduly.
If Congress opts to leave in place only what is currently law,
inflation will erode the value of the Highway Trust Fund’s purchasing
power. Expanded economic activity is projected to increase the fund by
about 2% per year, ultimately reaching about 11% over a six-year period.
But declining purchasing power over the same period is expected to decline
by 26% — producing a real decline from current funding levels.
Further, our inventory of needs is much greater than the funding
allocated to take care of those needs. The U.S. population has grown by 31
million over the past decade, and vehicle miles traveled has increased
30%. The result is congestion, which costs Americans $68 billion a year,
according to the Texas Transportation Institute. Further, there are safety
threats associated with road overcrowding and driver frustration.
And there are safety issues independent of those factors that still
need to be addressed. The death rates on two-lane roads remain higher than
those on divided highways. The next few years will find a larger number of
seniors on the road — whose rate of car-crash survival is lower than
that of the overall population — and more young, inexperienced drivers,
the cohort with the highest fatality rates of all. We need to design and
operate highways to maximize drivers’ safety, and educate them to drive,
walk, and share the road more safely.
Though current federal funding levels won’t meet all our needs,
AASHTO has proposed exploration of options that could increase the Highway
Trust Fund by $10 to $25 billion. These include tapping HTF reserves and
interest, transferring funds now in the General Fund generated through
sales of ethanol-blended motor fuel, indexing, or a fuel-tax increase.
They also include a mechanism for leveraging federal funds, known as the
Transportation Finance Corporation.
The TFC would issue bonds to more than double $18 billion in revenue
into $34 billion for highways, $8.5 billion for transit, and $5 billion
for other transportation needs. One significant benefit of the TFC
approach would be generation of enough funding to guarantee that all
states would effectively receive as much in federal-aid transfers for
transportation as they paid in through fuel-tax collections: every state
would achieve a minimum 95% return on state payments made into the Highway
Trust Fund.
AASHTO will be holding regional forums and several meetings to explore
the importance of transportation to such pillars of our economy as
agriculture, trade, and tourism, as the year 2003 approaches. We are
comparing notes with our transportation-industry associates and working to
ensure that we speak with one voice when the new Congress is seated in
January.
The quality of this team effort will determine America’s quality of
life for years to come.
Reprinted from Better Roads Magazine
October 2002 |
