ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, August 21, 1996 TAG: 9608210005
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GABRIEL ROTH
TWO RECENT events, at opposite sides of the United States, signal the end of federal financing of state highways, a system that has enabled officials in Washington to dominate expenditures on major roads since establishment of the federal Highway Trust Fund in 1956.
The first event is the amazing success of the privately provided State Route 91 Express Lanes east of Los Angeles, which were opened last December to relieve congestion on a notorious bottleneck.
These express lanes (two in each direction) are 10 miles in length. They were provided by the California Private Transportation Co. in the median of the existing freeway lanes, which remain congested but toll-free. This is America's first electronically managed toll road. Instead of dropping coins into boxes, the express lanes' users open accounts with CPTC and have their vehicles equipped with transponders.
These electronic devices emit unique identification signals that enable the accounts to be identified and automatically debited.
When account balances drop to $10, users have to deposit more funds, which they can do by arranging for automatic transfers from their credit card accounts. More than 55,000 accounts were opened in the first eight months of operation.
Users without accounts are subject to fines. (Their vehicles' license-plate numbers are automatically photographed.) The SR 91 Express Lanes project is of special interest because it gives the lie to the claim that new road capacity gets congested as soon as it is built.
Instead, the tolls are adjusted to ensure that traffic on the express lanes is never slowed by congestion.
Current levels vary from 25 cents at night to $2.50 in peak periods, but tolls can be raised to any level necessary to ensure free flow at all times.
The express lanes benefit all traffic. Drivers who voluntarily choose to use them obviously benefit. But those who choose not to also benefit from reduced congestion on the untolled lanes.
Compared with the situation before their introduction, the express lanes are reported to save patrons 20 minutes on each peak-period trip.
The other significant development occurred in mid-July in Washington when two Republican legislators, Rep. John Kasich of Ohio and Sen. Connie Mack of Florida, introduced the Transportation Empowerment Act.
The legislation would end most federal involvement in highway financing and the taxes that support it. In launching the act, Kasich said:
``Currently, the federal government collects 14 cents a gallon in taxes for transportation at the pump and takes it to Washington. It skims some of the money off the top to run the U.S. Transportation bureaucracy.
``More is taken away for congressionally mandated special projects - projects members of Congress authorize whether state and local highway officials want them or not.'' The proposal would become effective on Oct. 1, 1997, and return control of highway financing to the states in three phases over a two-year transition period.
On Oct. 1, 1999, the federal motor-fuel taxes would be reduced to just 2 cents a gallon. That would fund activities that are appropriate for the federal level, such as overseeing maintenance of the interstate system.
While many would consider even that as 2 cents too much, the Kasich-Mack bill, if enacted, would be an enormous improvement. The present system encourages states to implement low-priority projects they do not have to pay for.
It also enables Congress to impose on the states environmental rules and other regulations that it is unable or unwilling to legislate directly.
When fully responsible for their own roads, states would have much stronger incentives to ensure that funds paid by road users were spent efficiently. In the absence of ``free'' federal construction funds, for example, some states may prefer to maintain more of their existing roads rather than to build new ones.
Other states may find ways to encourage the private sector to assume more of the burden of road provision, perhaps by prohibiting the discrimination against privately provided roads that is now the norm.
Innovative financing and pricing methods, such as those employed on California's State Route 91, would stand a better chance in the absence of federal regulation. (It is noteworthy that the SR 91 Express Lanes receive no federal support whatsoever.) The Kasich-Mack proposal has no chance of passage this session, but its sponsors plan to present it again at the next Congress. There they will have two kinds of obstacles to overcome.
First, there will be opposition from Alaska, Hawaii and East Coast states that receive much more from the federal Highway Trust Fund than they pay into it. The sponsors plan to overcome these objections by creating a fund to compensate the losers.
Second, opposition is likely from members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. They enjoy the privilege of distributing the ``congressionally mandated special projects'' (also know as ``demonstration projects'') that Kasich mentioned.
No fund has been proposed to compensate them, and a bitter fight is in the cards.
Gabriel Roth, engineer and economist, is author of ``Roads in a Market Economy.''
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune|
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