Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 9, 1990                   TAG: 9003092046
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEW POLICY FOR TRANSIT COSTS RIPPED

The policy, reflecting the constraints of a tight federal budget combined with President Bush's no-new-taxes pledge, essentially would shift more of the financial burden of mass transit, highway and airport projects to the people who use them and to state and local governments.

Mass-transit and passenger-railroad spokesmen protested the loudest, but there were also expressions of pain or concern from others in the transportation field.

Democratic members of Congress lost no time in attacking the plan.

"I don't understand how a national transportation policy can downplay the role of mass transit to the extent that yours does," House Public Works and Transportation Committee Chairman Glenn M. Anderson, D-Calif., told Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner at a hearing of the surface-transportation subcommittee a few hours after the policy statement was released.

The subcommittee will soon draft new highway legislation, as other subcommittees draft aviation and other transportation programs that are coming up for renewal in the next two years. Skinner most likely will have to fill in some of the blanks that were left by the policy report, which contained few recommendations specific enough to be written into law.

Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said the policy "sounds like they're trying to pour 5 pounds of sugar in a 2-pound sack."

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., chairman of the transportation appropriations subcommittee, said the policy would have the federal government "turn its back on its obligation to assure a national transportation network."

There is little debate over the magnitude of the problem. Various studies have placed the need for infrastructure improvement at about $3.3 trillion.

Not only are urban highways and airports reaching gridlock, but many highways are in poor shape. The Transportation Department has said that 11 percent of the 1.2 million miles of principal highways - the 30 percent of highways that handle 87 percent of traffic - are "deficient."

Almost all the debate over the policy Thursday centered on its basic premise: that a greater share of transportation funding must come from non-federal sources.

"I think we feel state and local governments have not provided a sufficient amount of infrastructure funding," Skinner told reporters.

But spokesmen for state and local governments said they have already been squeezed dry.

Numerous states have raised gasoline taxes over the last few years, with some state taxes now exceeding 20 cents per gallon.

The American Public Transit Association called the policy "long on advice and short on help," while Robert R. Kiley, chairman of the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority, said the policy "is gridlocked by the anti-transit philosophy that has brought us to the present state of near immobility."

The aviation industry was less strident, but expressed disappointment. "We must question the wisdom of what appears to be a budget-deficit-driven philosophy compelling users to bear substantially higher costs of . . . a system that benefits every citizen of the United States," said Robert J. Aaronson, chairman of the Air Transport Association.