Unbridled state and local government use of private financing to improve the nation's highway network will result in a national transportation system of varying quality from region to region and will not solve mobility problems, a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee aide warned yesterday.
Unchecked use of public-private partnerships "fails to heed the lessons of the past and will lead to future balkanization of our transportation system," Art Chan, the aide, told those attending a P3 summit here sponsored by City & Financial, a British-based conference and publishing company.
Chan's comments were presented on behalf of committee chairman Rep. James L. Oberstar, D-Minn., who was originally scheduled to deliver the speech, but withdrew after coming down with a case of laryngitis. The committee will play a key role in a reauthorizing transportation policy and funding law that expires next year on Sept. 30, the end of fiscal 2009.
Oberstar and Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., have been highly critical of top ranking Department of Transportation officials, including Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, for rejecting an increase in the current 18.4-cent-per-gallon gas tax to fund needed transportation improvements and instead advocating more tolling and P3s.
"Advocating privatization, tolling and rationing as the only solutions to our nation's transportation crisis ... fails to recognize the magnitude of the crisis we are facing and does not acknowledge the difficult choices required to remedy the situation," Chan said. "The effort of the [Bush] administration and its supporters to sell off or toll existing infrastructure undermine the policies that have led to the world's premier intermodal surface transportation system."
Chan argued that the federal government must make sure that the transportation network functions as a unified system and allows movement efficiently around the nation.
Peters' position amounts to "devolution by subterfuge," which is at odds with maintaining a national system, he said. Devolution is a long-standing position held by some in Congress, which calls for scrapping federal transportation programs and allowing the states to raise and spend transportation money as they see fit.
Oberstar and DeFazio "are not convinced that fifty states each pursuing their separate transportation priorities with their respective private-sector partnership will, in the end, produce a coherent, integrated, national surface transportation system," he continued. "Such a nation system can only emerge with strong federal leadership."
Chan quoted Oberstar as saying: "I will not preside over the balkanization, or total dismantling, of our cherished integrated surface transportation system."
Chan said there is a role for the private sector, but it is only a marginal one - with the gas tax the cornerstone of the funding regime.
His comments came after Jim Ray, deputy director of the Federal Highway Administration, told the gathering that tolling roads at peak periods is the best way to control congestion.
"We tax people in a very hidden way," Ray said. "We are using the system in an irrational way because we see it as free," but it is not, and charging drivers directly through tolls would take cars off the roads.
Ray was critical of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, which released a report recently that, among other things, said that the gas tax should be raised by as much as 40 cents over five years and that the federal government should rely on the tax for transportation funding until 2025.
"Sadly, the commission chose to rely on status quo solutions," he said, adding that the while the panel recommended increased use of P3s, it also recommended restrictions that would hinder the market.
He pointed to a second panel, the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Finance Commission, which released a preliminary report last week saying tolls were preferable to the gas tax as a funding mechanism.
"We hope that the finance commission will provide us with the road map we need," Ray said. q
