ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 17, 1997 TAG: 9703170093
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
Lifting a ban on interstate tolls is controversial, but less important than other parts of Clinton's transportation bill.
WOE ARE we, facing the prospect of paying tolls to travel the interstates, a possibility raised by the Clinton administration's proposal to lift a ban on such tolls.
Not only do toll booths cause delays and create congestion; the philosophy offends. Mobile Americans are drawn to the open road. Use of the road is free, and why shouldn't it be? Motorists paid for it with their gasoline taxes.
In fact, however, fuel taxes do not approach the full cost to the nation of a transportation system so dependent on the automobile. Highway trust funds do not begin to cover automobile-related costs of pollution, suburban sprawl and the West's dependence on oil imports from unstable parts of the world.
Actually, the toll proposal is hardly central to Clinton's NEXTEA transportation bill. Tolls are proposed only as an option for states and localities. Virginia, state Transportation Secretary Robert Martinez says, doesn't plan to charge them.
More substantive parts of the bill include proposed authorization of $175 billion in federal expenditures for surface-transportation programs from 1998 to 2003. (The formula by which the money is to be allocated is sure to be challenged in Congress by members from states, like Virginia, that say - with some justice - they're not getting their fair share.)
Not all the money would go into traditional road building and maintenance. Like ISTEA before it, the National Economic Crossroads Transportation Efficiency Act would set aside funding for innovative alternatives to ever more building, repairing and widening of roads. One such alternative is "smart-highway" technology, which might reduce the demand for more roads by increasing each road's capacity. The bill earmarks $600 million for developing this technology.
Another $600 million would be set aside for programs to help welfare recipients get to work, a difficulty created by suburban sprawl); $1.3 billion a year to reduce air pollution; and millions more for preservation of wetlands and open spaces.
The rock-and-concrete lobby will argue that none of these should receive federal highway funds. They are wrong. An excellent highway system has costly consequences. Those who reap the system's greatest benefits should help pay those costs.
LENGTH: Short : 48 linesby CNB