Over
the past several decades, federal and state
transportation policies have struggled to keep
pace with a rising population and increasing
numbers of motorists and trucks using the roads.
As a result, congestion has worsened in most major
metropolitan areas, imposing extra costs on all
motorists and truckers and threatening to
undermine the economic vitality of many commercial
centers as businesses and workers look to relocate
to less congested regions.
Efforts
to address this imbalance between capacity and
increased usage have often failed because voters
refuse to support tax increases to fund more road
spending. In part, their refusal to pay for better
service reflects a lack of confidence that federal
and state officials would use additional tax
resources effectively to provide better
transportation. As a consequence, local referenda
on higher transportation taxes are often defeated.
Similarly, in 2005 President George W. Bush easily
prevented Congress from increasing the federal
fuel tax by 35 percent.
With
the economy deteriorating and voters pressed by
worsening employment prospects and escalating gas
prices, opposition to pointless tax increases will
stiffen. Perhaps elected officials may finally
realize that the opposition to higher taxes stems
more from a reluctance to pay Neiman Marcus prices
for Dollar Store products than from any particular
ideological objection to paying for transportation
services.
Unless
federal, state, and local officials take steps to
improve management of transportation operations
and restore voter confidence, voter skepticism
will persist as congestion and safety standards
worsen.
Steps
to Improving Transportation
A
few states are pursuing a promising course of
reform that involves conducting a several-step
review and restructuring process. The process is
anchored by an independent performance audit of
the state's transportation system to determine its
strengths and weaknesses and to identify what
needs improvement.
Step
1: Admitting System Failure. A good place for
state officials to begin the reform process is to
admit that they have in fact failed and that the
state institutions assigned to solve
transportation problems have not been as effective
as they should have been. The state officials
should also acknowledge that they may need to
rebuild the entire system from the ground up so
that it will serve the citizens better rather than
serving leading legislators or privileged interest
groups that seek to divert state transportation
funds to other purposes, including unproductive
pork-barrel transportation projects.
Step
2: Independent Financial Audit. After
confessing these failings, the state government
should commission a two-part comprehensive
independent audit of state transportation
operations, including the state department of
transportation (DOT); the many state and federally
funded affiliates of the DOT; the taxpayer-funded
transportation boards, authorities, and
commissions; and the metropolitan planning
organizations mandated and funded under federal
law.
Such
an audit should have two broad components. The
first component would be a comprehensive financial
audit of how much money these various entities
spend to perform their many activities and
operations. The purpose would be to determine
whether their operations are cost-competitive with
prevailing best practices and whether they are
properly using cost-benefit analysis to establish
project priorities and make modal choices.
Step
3: Independent Performance Assessment.
The
second component of the audit should be a
comprehensive performance assessment — similar
to an assessment[1]
recently conducted in Washington State in 2007 —
to determine whether the state DOT and its many
state-funded appendages, associated entities, and
transportation operations are properly focused on
meaningful transportation improvements that
provide the citizens with the greatest value for
their tax money in terms of greater mobility. As
the record will undoubtedly reveal in most states,
state legislatures and governors have seldom
provided their DOTs with clear and concise
missions.
With
no clear mission, none of the many players in a
state's transportation system can be held
accountable for the performance of the
transportation program, thereby allowing a costly
state of mediocrity to thrive. A performance audit
would uncover these failings, reveal solutions,
and provide leaders with a meaningful agenda to
support and fulfill.
One
of the more compelling components of the
Washington State audit was the requirement that
the independent consultants and auditors develop a
series of recommendations to reduce traffic
congestion within five years. The five-year plan
developed by the consulting group included a
series of specific projects that could reduce
congestion by an estimated 15 percent to 20
percent within five years. Given that many state
DOTs commit themselves to no more than attempting
to slow the rate at which traffic
congestion worsens, the Washington result
demonstrates a rare commitment to actual
improvement.
As
part of such a reform process, elected officials
should agree to a moratorium on any new
transportation taxes, programs, and major projects
until the audit is completed and the legislation
implementing the recommended solutions is enacted.
Step
4: Implementing the Recommendations.
Upon
completion of the financial and performance
audits, the findings would be incorporated into
comprehensive legislation that establishes
quantitative performance goals to guide all future
transportation spending. Importantly, this
legislation would hold the governor, the state
DOT, and the legislature responsible for meeting
these goals within an explicit time frame.[2]
Chief
among the quantitative goals would be meaningful
measures of mobility enhancement, including
congestion relief. Texas and Georgia have
implemented performance plans with similar goals.
The Texas DOT is now responsible for reducing
congestion in urban areas by 50 percent over the
next 20 years to a statewide Travel Time Index (TTI)
of 120, while the Georgia DOT must reach a TTI of
135 in the Atlanta metropolitan area (as
calculated by the Texas Transportation Institute).[3]
Other
mobility-related issues, such as quantifiable
measures of safety and infrastructure quality,
could be included in the performance measure set,
while such trendy distractions as economic
development, aesthetic charm, and transportation
choice should be excluded.
Step
5: Informed Decision Making. Having
established a detailed plan to prioritize projects
by their impact on congestion mitigation, safety,
and infrastructure preservation, both leaders and
voters would then be in a better position to
decide how much to spend based on a clear
presentation of benefits from money spent on
transportation. Moreover, listing priorities
according their resulting benefits would enable
leaders and voters to make better choices among
financing options (e.g., taxes, tolls, congestion
charges, and special taxing districts) and among
service providers, whether they are government
(state, federal, or local) entities, the private
sector, regional authorities, or public–private
partnerships.
Needed
Federal Reforms
While
there is much that state governments can do to
improve mobility and alleviate congestion within
their borders, current federal surface
transportation policies and programs — which
provide about one-third of the funding for the
nation's roads — will not help to achieve this
goal unless Congress dramatically changes federal
transportation law. Chief among the many needed
changes is redirecting federal transportation
resources to benefit the motorists and truckers
who pay the taxes that fund the system, rather
than continuing to benefit privileged
constituencies who pay their lobbyists handsome
retainers to divert highway money to pork-barrel
projects and ineffective programs, many of which
contribute nothing to transportation, safety, or
congestion relief.
As
The Heritage Foundation has noted in many of its
reports on transportation, these diversions have
increased in recent years. The most recent highway
reauthorization bill — the Safe, Accountable,
Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A
Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU)[4]
— was easily the worst of the lot. It added more
than 7,000 earmarks and created more than a dozen
new programs, including the beginnings of an
effort to federalize the nation's sidewalks.[5]
SAFETEA-LU will expire in September 2009, and
Congress will begin the renewal process in early
2009.
While
many state officials and DOTs believe that this
time they will succeed in pressuring Congress to
enact a more sensible transportation bill, states
have little to show for their past efforts in this
direction. Their influence on such legislation
pales in comparison to the influence of the many
high-power lobbyists hired to undermine the
program for the benefit of the influential few.
Under
these circumstances, a much more productive
approach would be to "turn back" the
federal highway program to the states. Under
current law, the federal Highway Trust Fund is
financed by a federal fuel tax of 18.3 cents per
gallon of gasoline and 24.3 cents per gallon of
diesel fuel. The revenue from this tax is returned
to the states according to a flawed formula that
creates many winners and losers among the states,
with Southern and Great Lakes states paying much
more than they receive while New England and most
Middle Atlantic states receive more than they pay.
Furthermore, the federal money comes with many
mandates and micromanaging directives that
severely limit states' abilities to meet their
transportation priorities.
A
turn-back plan would eliminate the federal
middleman by empowering the states to collect the
federal fuel tax and use it to meet the
transportation priorities of their own choosing.
Legislation to implement such a turn-back program
(S. 2823) has been introduced by Senator Jim
DeMint (R–SC) and should receive the support of
states looking to better utilize the financial
resources often squandered by the federal
government.
Fortunately,
for those states, motorists, truckers, and voters
seeking fundamental reform of the federal highway
program, the legislation authorizing the existence
of the program will expire in September 2009 and
must be renewed (reauthorized) for another six
years. This reauthorization process will give
reformers a near-term opportunity to make the
necessary changes, but if they fail, they will
likely not get another chance until 2015.
As
the Washington State experience reveals,
meaningful reform will not be an easy path.
Although the state's performance audit was popular
with voters — it encouraged them to reject a
referendum for high transportation taxes when it
became apparent that the new spending plans were
inconsistent with the audit's findings — many
public officials were less than pleased that the
audit exposed the system's many failings.
Nonetheless,
the concept is spreading. In early summer, the
Idaho Legislature solicited bids from independent
consulting firms to perform a similar audit of the
Idaho transportation system.[6]
In July 2008, the Virginia House of Delegates
voted 95 to 0 to conduct a performance audit of
the state's DOT. Although the Virginia Senate did
not approve the proposal, the current legislative
impasse in the state will soon force the governor
and the legislature to revisit the issue.
-- August
4, 2008
[1] See
Washington State Auditor's Office, Washington
State Department of Transportation: Managing
and Reducing Congestion in Puget Sound,
October 10, 2007, at http://www.sao.wa.gov/Reports/AuditReports/
AuditReportFiles/ar1000006.pdf (July
17, 2008).
[2] For
the details of such a program and model
legislation to implement one, see Wendell Cox,
Alan E. Pisarski, and Ronald D. Utt,
"Rush Hour: How States Can Reduce Traffic
Congestion Through Performance-Based
Transportation Programs," Heritage
Foundation Backgrounder No. 1995,
January 10, 2007, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/SmartGrowth/bg1995.cfm.
[4] Public
Law 109–59, 109th Cong.
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