Better Roads Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/85910
by John Latta, Tina Grady Barbaccia and Mike Anderson RoadWorks Inside the highway and bridge industries Change the rules for P3s says You're out of touch and we don't trust you. Hey Washington! M ost Americans think their transportation system is in bad shape. But they pre- fer tolls to an increased gas tax to find funds to fix it. The latest Reason-Rupe public opin- ion survey, conducted in December, found that more than half of Americans think their area's transportation system is only fair or poor says, Robert W. Poole, Jr. Director of Transportation Studies for the Reason Foundation. Nearly half think congestion has SayWhat "Some would call it random luck; I, and others, believe it is divine intervention," —Guam Governor Eddie Calvo af- ter a runaway dump truck missed him by five feet before ramming into a loaded fuel tanker which did not explode. gotten worse over the past five years, and 54 percent think it will get worse in the coming five years. But 77 percent oppose increasing the federal gas tax, apparently, says Poole, not trusting Congress to spend the proceeds on improving their trav- els. Instead, they favor using tolls for new capacity, with 58 percent prefer- ring new highway capacity paid for by tolls (especially if it saved them time) than by increased gas taxes (28 per- cent). And 57 percent support convert- ing existing HOV lanes into HOT lanes. The report shows significant seg- ment of the American public upset across at federal transportation poli- cies backing rail and bus riding. The feds have spent $8 billion to fund high-speed rail, but, says the report, only 34 percent, think government should do this and more than half (55 percent) think high speed rail should only be built where there are enough people to pay high enough fares to make it work without subsidy. "In addition," says Poole, "while Congress devotes 20 percent" of Highway Trust Fund spending to mass transit, 48 percent of Americans think that transit should receive no more of transportation funding than its share in travel. In most places, says Poole, that would be less than 5 percent. 4 February 2012 Better Roads Heritage Report A new report from the Heritage Foundation, Can Public- Private Partnerships Fill the Transportation Funding Gap, says the federal government needs to allow states more freedom to use P3s, and states need to adopt the policies and practices needed to use P3s effectively. Federal and state governments should take several steps, says the report, including: • Congress should remove or raise the limit on private activity bond volume for all qualified P3 projects. • The states should enact the neces- sary legislation to accommodate P3s. Recent efforts to enact such laws in New Jersey and New York failed as a result of union opposition. • State departments of transportation should ensure that the responsible managers and staff are qualified to conclude these complicated deals successfully. • State governments should adopt poli- cies and practices to ensure that the P3 option is considered at the outset of any planning process for projects over a certain cost rather than per- petuating the current practice of using it as a fallback position if everything else fails. For example, Congress could require … that all projects over a cer- tain size that seek federal assistance undergo a formal analysis of the P3 option. • Congress should carefully review cur- rent tolling restrictions on interstate highways, which are owned by the states. No state has yet been willing to toll existing free capacity, despite a fed- eral pilot program that would allow it if the tolls are used to increase capacity.