For Nation’s Drivers, Bumpy Roads Ahead

If you’re stuck in traffic, don’t expect the government to clear the road anytime soon. When it comes to finding the money to ease traffic congestion, the outlook is strewn with obstacles.

A sputtering economy has produced less gasoline tax revenue than projected. An expected requirement to increase the use of lower-taxed ethanol in the nation’s gasoline supply is likely to reduce transportation funding further. And the ballooning federal budget deficit, new costs for homeland defense and possible war with Iraq could increase pressure on Congress to tap transportation dollars for needs other than building roads and filling potholes.

As Congress prepares to draft a new multibillion-dollar transportation measure -- likely to be the biggest public works bill of the decade -- lawmakers are like drivers caught in rush hour on a Los Angeles freeway: They have no easy way out.

“Either we’re not going to have enough money to deal with the traffic problems or there has to be a gas tax increase,” said William Buechner, chief economist of the American Road and Transportation Builders Assn.

President Bush’s new budget, to be unveiled today, will signal how much the administration wants to spend for transportation in coming years. The amount is expected to fall far short of what many lawmakers say is needed just to maintain roads and keep traffic congestion from worsening.

How much will be spent for transportation -- and how lawmakers divvy it up -- is shaping up as a major spending fight. “It will be the mother of all bloody battles,” predicted onetime House Transportation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), who is now retired.

The bill will determine not only how much is spent on highways but also mass transit, bike paths and other projects.

Many lawmakers want transportation to be one of the few nondefense programs to receive a big funding boost. They argue that highway spending will stimulate the economy, a Bush priority, and aid financially strapped states.

They also are using two new reasons to make their case. Roads are critical to homeland security, they say, because of their importance as potential evacuation routes. And money is needed to widen roads and post larger signs to accommodate the nation’s aging population.

The White House is expected to seek to hold the line on transportation spending as part of its effort to keep overall spending under control. “We just want to make sure that we don’t start on a spending path that will lead to an inevitable gas tax increase,” said a White House official.

For highway advocates, the drafting of a bill that will guide transportation spending for the next six years has come at a bad time. In 1998, Congress approved a six-year, $218-billion bill that represented a 40% spending increase over the previous six-year measure. At the time, however, the government was posting its first budget surplus in decades. Now, the outlook is “very grim” for funding transportation projects from 2004 through 2009, said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a budget watchdog group.

Still, highway improvements are among the most politically popular projects.

After the White House last year proposed a nearly 29% cut in highway funding because of lower-than-projected gas tax collections, the House restored about half of the money and the Senate restored the full amount, raising it to $31.8 billion. House-Senate negotiators are working to come up with a final figure.

Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), chairman of the House Transportation Committee, wants to boost annual funding to $60 billion for highways by 2009. He also advocates an increase in funding for mass-transit programs, from the current $7.2 billion to $12.5 billion by 2009.

“We’ve got to have more money to build more roads,” said Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “Every projection that we’ve seen is totally inadequate in terms of the amount of money we’re going to have to spend over the next six years.”

Among the California projects whose funding could be at stake are proposals for high-speed rail lines -- one running from San Diego to the Bay Area and another from Los Angeles to Las Vegas -- as well as extension of a rail line from downtown Los Angeles to the city’s Eastside and expansion of the state’s freeway carpool lanes.

As Congress takes up transportation funding, the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M; has reported what just about every driver knows: Congestion has spread to more cities, to more of the roads and to more times during the day.

A new federal report underscores the daunting task facing Congress in lean times. The study projects it would cost an average of about $76 billion a year in federal, state and local spending over the next 20 years to maintain roads in their current condition and keep traffic congestion from worsening, and $107 billion to significantly improve conditions.

Federal, state and local governments spent nearly $65 billion on highways in fiscal 2000, the most recent year for which figures are available.

Among the most contentious issues will be whether to increase the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gasoline tax by 2 cents a year over the next six years -- an idea that House Transportation Chairman Young and the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. James L. Oberstar of Minnesota, have floated, but which Bush opposes.

Another possibility is tying the tax to increases in inflation.

Congress raised the tax a nickel a gallon in 1990 and by 4.3 cents a gallon in 1993.

Advocates of a gas tax increase are gearing up for a lobbying campaign to build support.

“The administration talks constantly of their position for no new taxes. I’m not sure that couldn’t change with enough grass-roots pressure,” said Bob Burleson, head of the Florida Transportation Builders’ Assn.

In one missive to lawmakers, proponents of a tax hike point to President Reagan’s approval of a gas tax increase in 1982. They point out that Reagan said it’s not a tax but a user fee.

A battle also is shaping up over efforts by the highway lobby to divert to transportation projects money that now goes into the general fund from taxes paid on ethanol-based fuel.

The highway lobby is worried about losing even more money if Congress approves legislation, strongly supported by lawmakers from the politically important Midwest, to triple the amount of corn-based ethanol added to gasoline by 2012.

Another looming threat to transportation funding comes from the government’s own actions -- its efforts to promote greater use of alternative-powered and fuel-efficient cars. In his State of the Union speech last week, Bush called for spending $1.2 billion to develop a clean-burning hydrogen car.

The increased use of such cars will save gasoline but also reduce gas tax revenue. As a result, some in Congress are calling for studies on new ways to fund transportation projects in the future. But that problem is still years off because of the continuing popularity of many large gas-gulping vehicles.

As one congressional staffer put it, “Thank God for the SUV.”