Apr
14
Wednesday, April 10, 2008
For city drivers, you’re either stuck in traffic or slamming into potholes. Some heavyweights came together Wednesday to discuss the future and funding of the nation’s surface transportation, and its implications for economic growth and the environment, particularly in densely populated areas like Chicago.
Matt Rose, CEO of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation and former member of a special commission that studied transportation in the country, said, “Our job was to surface these issues. And at least to lay out what the challenges would be.”
The federal program to deal with transportation issues must be completely overhauled, he said, and that’s going to take money. Right now the nation is spending only 40 percent of the $225- 340 billion needed per year. In addition to public-private partnerships, tolling and congestion pricing, there is the potential to raise the money through a gas tax and other user fees, he said.
“The public’s not going accept higher fuel taxes and other fees if the system is not overhauled,” Rose said. “But you go out and you do polling, and you say will you pay a higher gas tax, the first answer you’d get is are you crazy? Gas is $3.25, $3.50 a gallon, no way. But if you go and say, if we can reduce your commute time by ten minutes, would you accept a nickel a gallon [increase] over the next five years, the polling looks a lot different.”
The final report, released in January, recommends a transition as quickly as possible from a gas tax to a vehicle-miles-traveled tax by 2025. Vehicle-miles-traveled is a way to charge drivers for how many miles they drive instead of how much gas they use. Until then, the gas tax would be 5 to 8 percent per year, each year for five years, and indexing the tax to inflation. Under the proposal, the average American motorist could expect to pay 44 to 66 cents per day.
Switching to alternative fuel sources is also among the recommendations included in the report. Currently, the transit system is 97 percent dependent on petroleum. The majority of petroleum in the United States is used on transportation. The commission recommended that Congress pass tax credits to induce auto companies to replace its traditional cars with hybrids, and for Congress to provide funding for electric-rail transit in order to reduce the United States’ oil dependence.
The report also recommended condensing the 108 current disparate federal transportation programs into ten. One of those programs would be dedicated to infrastructure maintenance, that would aim to prevent structural failures, such as the I-35 interstate bridge collapse in Minneapolis in August of 2007, which resulted in 13 deaths and approximately100 injured.
Rose said that in addition to maintaining and improving our highways and rail, we must heavily invest in public transit to accommodate a growing population and mitigate highway congestion. The census bureau estimates there will be 120 million new citizens by 2050, most of whom will live in metropolitan areas such as Chicago.
“The amount of public transit that America already uses saves over 4.2 billion gallons of fuel a year, it’s 37 million metric tons of less carbon that goes into the air,” said Bill Millar, president of American Public Transportation Association, which lobbies on behalf of public transit. The environmental benefits are twofold: first from the fuel emissions saved from vehicles not on the road, and second, the ones there are can move more quickly.
Larry Wilson, Rail Planning Section Chief at the Illinois Department of Transportation, said Rose “makes a very strong case for the investment in infrastructure being absolutely necessary. And having worked in the railroad industry in the past, if you let the industry investment slide down, it will have a huge effect on trade and the economic competitiveness of the nation and the region. I think Chicago’s infrastructure issues are nationally recognized, and I’m sure we’ll see a good share of what comes forward.”