Arkansas came close to another wrong turn in transportation infrastructure. Despite recent voter approval of a new half-cent sales tax that raises $2.3 billion for roads over 10 years, state highway officials' estimates might lead one to conclude Arkansas highway system "is on the road to destruction," a recent editorial in this newspaper said.
The faster we run, it seems, the behinder we get. You can get a rough idea of how bad off we are from Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department Director Scott Bennett's statement that, over the next 10 years, the state has $20 billion in needs but only $3 billion to spend.
The problem is national. According to recent estimates by the Reason Foundation, interstate highways will need $600 billion over the next 10 years for maintenance alone. Interstate highways are crumbling beneath their surfaces, increasingly difficult to maintain and clogged with traffic. Yet neither state nor federal governments can find the cash simply to maintain what we've got. Highway construction and maintenance costs have grown significantly, while funding has declined because income from per-gallon taxes on fuel has fallen as cars have become more fuel efficient, and because the Federal Highway Trust Fund is periodically broke.
State Reps. Kim Hendren and Dan Douglas, Northwest Arkansas Republicans, offered bills to provide more cash. Hendren's bill would convert the state's 22 cents per gallon fuel tax to a per-dollar tax, so that the tax would rise as fuel prices rise. Douglas' bill would have shifted $2.8 billion in state sales tax revenue to road construction over 10 years.
Hendren's bill makes sense but Douglas' plan to finance roads with general sales taxes is a terrible idea. As Hendren puts it, "If you use it, you ought to pay for it. We shouldn't tax some single mom's diapers and baby formula to pay for the highway I drive on to Little Rock." Thankfully, Douglas withdrew his bill last week at the request of the governor, who was concerned about its impact on the state's overall budget.
America is obsessively car-dependent, a bad habit we nurture with enormous subsidies. An eye-opening study, "The Real Price of Gasoline," was published in 1998 by the International Center for Technology Assessment, a non-profit, bi-partisan organization that analyzes technological impacts on society. In 2015 dollars, the hidden subsidies we all pay to support our driving habits amount to $5 to $14 per gallon of gasoline. You can do an Internet search for the study's title and publishing organization for detailed confirmation of these subsidies. If we paid these costs at the pump, gasoline would cost $8 to $17 per gallon. Other industrialized nations know these facts, and accordingly charge more for gasoline -- a big reason their transportation systems are so much better than ours. Think of European bullet trains, trolleys, bicycling and walkways, for example.
Douglas' bill would have increased subsidies for driving, causing grief for our crumbling roads and for poor, handicapped, young, or old people who have limited access to cars. Gov. Asa Hutchinson, to his credit, opposed Douglas' bill. But this bill won a recommendation from the House Public Transportation Committee. The shift of $2.8 billion would have started slowly, increasing to $500 million per year by 2025 -- a huge subsidy that will only encourage more driving.
The Obama administration has proposed allowing states to collect interstate tolls -- probably the best way to raise money for maintenance. Tolls tend to be less regressive and fairer than fuel taxes.
The current highway crisis is ample evidence America's transportation model, namely cars first, airplanes second and everything else last, is unsustainable. We're in a rut. President Obama struck a hopeful new course by investing $10.5 billion in high-speed intercity rail. Unfortunately, Republican opposition and "NIMBY" protests have stymied such projects.
Northwest Arkansas continues in the same rut. In 2012 Washington and Benton county voters rejected a much-needed expansion of regional transit, while approving a half-cent sales tax devoted primarily to widening the regional interstate. We shouldn't add new lanes until we can maintain what we have. The movers and shakers supporting this highway expansion are the same folks who created the congestion in the first place by lining the interstate with malls, big box stores, megachurches and fast food restaurants, turning the interstate into an ersatz regional main street.
One bright spot has been biking and hiking trails. Still needed are downtown bike lanes. This revitalizes our regional downtowns and improves the quality of our lives. A similarly progressive development in mass transit would move us far toward sustainable transportation.
It's not the first time highway supporters have tried to tap general revenue for highways, and it won't likely be the last. Taking money from general funds to further subsidize our car addiction, however, will only dig us deeper into our current rut.
Art Hobson is a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Arkansas. Email him at [email protected].
Commentary on 03/10/2015