Paying for our Roads

Over the past few years, Massachusetts has struggled as to how we pay for our roads system. We incurred a huge debt during the construction of the “Big Dig” project in Boston. This project aided in the transportation of cars through Boston on the North South highway. The rest of the state complained about paying for this. But the issue is complicated. On one hand, we needed to get traffic through Boston faster. The expressway was built for less than 50,000 cars per day and was handling over 250,000 cars per day just before the Dig was opened. It was clear that, given the amount of activity in this area, we needed to do something like this. Given the amount of revenue generated by business activity in this area, it is in the interests of everyone in the state to ensure that a better roadway was constructed. It also brought in a tremendous amount of federal dollars and this fueled our economy with goods, services, and salaries.
On the other hand, this project sucked highway money out of the rest of the state and many projects were left undone. These projects were, and are, just as important as the Big Dig to those areas around the state stifled by lousy transportation.
There are many other considerations. How do we rebuild a reliance on rail for both passenger and goods? How do we rebuild our regional transportation? Are there ways we can lessen our reliance on cars and use more enviro-friendly mass transportation? Is this fiscally possible given the problems of the MBTA in Boston?
However, for today, let’s just look at our roadways. It seems to me that we need to find a way to look at a statewide plan if we are to reorganize and modernize our highway departments or systems. The Big Dig grew far larger than anyone imagined. In doing so, it ate up a generation of highway funding resulting in a crisis today. We can lay blame and I am sure in hindsight that a better job could have been done in managing the financial aspects of this project. But the fact is that the Dig was the largest construction project ever done in America and there were not enough state and federal auditors to watch over something of this size. And the Big Dig was first proposed as part of the Eisenhower Defense Highway bill passed in the 50’s. Naturally the price grew with inflation, but also with the cost of such things as steel that far outgrew inflation. It was expensive but necessary.
Whatever the reasons, the state is charged with paying their fair share and until we come to grips with this, we can’t spend money on the rest of the system. That has been the problem. The state didn’t come to grips with this project, as it was ongoing, the federal government was complaining about the size and demanding we put together a funding scheme. Consequently, a lot of this debt (over $2 billion) was given to the Massachusetts Turnpike Agency. That has lead to fiscal problems at the pike and lead to toll increases that place the burden on the people who travel from the western suburbs of Boston. Since they don’t use the north south route through the Big Dig, they are complaining about paying for the roadway. The same can be said for the people in some neighborhoods in Boston who are looking at $7.00/day tolls to get to work. The people in western Massachusetts don’t want to pay for this as they think that their roads haven’t been done because of this project. So what do we do?
The Governor wants to merge the transportation systems of the Massachusetts port authority (MassPort), the turnpike (MTA) and our highway department together. There are problems with this. First, MassPort cannot commingle federal moneys from the airport together with other funds. This is a bad fit and since 9/11 they have struggled fiscally themselves. As for the MTA, they have their own outstanding bonds that will have to be reconciled if they merge. This is very complex. And I have said this could be good or bad depending on whether the rest of the state will look like the turnpike or the turnpike will look like the rest of our roads. But the largest problem is that this generates little towards resolving the biggest issue; that of the big dig debt. The agencies are like three people who go out to lunch and get a $75 bill and only have $60. They can pass the bill around, but ultimately, they still only have $60! The issue here is about raising the revenues to pay for the kind of roads and bridges we want.
There are currently four ways that have been suggested to do this.
1. The Senate has suggested that we take a look at privatizing the turnpike. This has had mixed results around the US. Moreover, that gives us money up front for long term leasing or purchase of roads. Will future legislatures run through this money resulting in more problems in the future or will they salt that money away and use it over the course of the years of the lease?
2. Can we offer ways to cut back expenditures in order to make the transportation agencies run leaner, putting more money into retiring debt and fixing roads? There are always ways to squeeze money out of the budgets, but we need to be cautious about what that means. One of the ways that we “squeezed” money out of the budget while paying for the Dig was by cutting back on the design work in the 90’s. That led to jobs around the state being postponed multiple times for years.
3. We can raise tolls. This is unacceptable to many as they pay tolls but don’t feel that others are paying their fair share. That is true. A part of the state is paying greatly increased tolls while others pay nothing, including people who use the big Dig on a daily basis. And the tolls in western Massachusetts were taken down years ago despite the studies that find that most of those tolls were paid for by out of state users of the pike.
4. We can raise the gas tax. This hasn’t been done since 1992 and we are below the national average in gas tax. A law was passed in the 90’s that ensured all the gas tax was actually used on our roadways. This seems more equitable since everyone pays it and it is a consumption tax. The more you drive, the more you pay. However, it is tough to raise a tax during a fiscal downturn. And, people in rural areas such as mine know that cars are a necessity and rural areas mean that services are farther away. While an urban area trip to the grocery store means around the block, in some towns it means traveling 15 miles both ways. Is this equitable?

I am sorry that this is such a long post, but this is a complicated issue and a thorough discussion could take up volumes. It is also a Hobson’s choice that may not have a right answer.

I think we need to do a little of everything in order to be equitable and to solve this problem. It is a drag on our economy and people are paying more for their cars through accelerated tire wear and realignments and the like because our roads are bad. We are losing commerce because our roads are bad. We need to fix this.

I believe we need to look for all the savings we can wring out of the systems. This means that the turnpike can no longer fund tourism grants or plowing adjacent roads. We need to increase our electronic passes and decrease our toll takers. We need to reinstate the western tolls to pay for the western maintenance. We need to take look at tolls at the borders of the state. And I am leaning towards an increase in the gas tax... a modest increase the gas tax. Gas has gone from $4.03/gal to $1.73. (That is the range I have paid in the last year.) If we had passed a gas tax at $4.03 to take effect of increasing our tax $.01 for every $.25 drop in price over the last few months we would have raised the gas tax by $.08 and no one would have noticed. We need to raise taxes between $.06-$.09. I think that as gas prices continue to drop, this is not an unfair burden given that it has not been increased in over 16 years. We could even provide a sliding scale to decrease this if gas prices rise precipitously in the future. This actually makes sense given that higher gas prices lead to decreased use of roads. Again, this is complicated as we need to ensure highway bondholders that we would continue to raise money to pay for bonds. So the state would have to make commitments on this, or find ways to increase mass transportation.
However, and it is a big however, we need to ensure that this increase creates a meaningful state plan to repair our roads ALL across the state. This includes funding the redheaded stepchildren of our system, the regional transportation authorities. In order to gain acceptance, people need to know that their roads will be taken care of.