If longer commutes, heavier congestion, increased pollution and greater dependence on oil seem inevitable, there's a good reason: These ills all stem from the misguided way our elected officials fund transportation in America. It's time to establish a 21st-century transportation policy to pay for 21st-century priorities.
Every day brings more news about our struggling transportation system: wearisome traffic delays, soaring gasoline prices and shrinking funds for transportation projects. This week, Maryland officials announced they would cut back transportation spending plans by $1.1 billion because of a drop in state revenues. And federal Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters announced recently that the federal highway trust fund will come up $8.3 billion short in a matter of weeks.
The state and federal shortages come in part from Americans choosing to drive less because of high gas prices, thus generating less gas tax revenue to replenish transportation funds. This means that work on road and bridge projects will be halted until funding can be secured.
It's hard to remember that our transportation system, now such a source of frustration to us, was once an engine of American progress. Railroads opened the West, and automobiles brought mobility to a footloose generation after World War II.
Nowadays, commuters in the metropolitan Baltimore region lose an average of 44 hours a year in traffic delays - more than an entire workweek and four times as much as in 1982. Furthermore, transportation is the major reason for our addiction to expensive foreign oil, consuming two out of every three barrels that we import, and is the fastest-growing source of global warming pollution.
Since the completion of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1956 vision of an interstate system to link our major cities, transportation policy has been driven more by congressional earmarks than by consideration of how to improve mobility and support other national priorities. Expansive new highway projects such as Maryland's Intercounty Connector undercut efforts to curb global warming and reduce our fossil fuel addiction, leaving little funding to repair crumbling roads and bridges.
Currently, states receive highway funds based on outdated criteria in which more driving generates more in gas taxes and thus garners more federal dollars. It's a variation of the old rule that "no good deed goes unpunished": States that do their part to reduce America's oil dependence and global warming by promoting alternatives to driving lose out on federal money.
