Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Last week, protesters gathered on the statehouse steps in Little Rock, Arkansas, to oppose a bill that would transfer money from the state’s general fund into its highway fund.

The 100 or so protesters — mainly from the education and social services sectors — warned that the legislation would transfer $2.3 billion in revenue over 10 years out of classrooms and clinics and into the state Department of Transportation, according to the Arkansas News.

Arkansas Advocates for Families and Children have dubbed the bill “highway robbery.”

It’s not just Arkansas. States unwilling to reexamine the way they fund and implement transportation projects are increasingly faced with trade-offs between transportation spending and other priorities. As the federal gas tax continues to stagnate, more and more states are considering extreme measures to shore up transportation budgets — including robbing funds from education and social services.

States are in a difficult position, says Eric Sundquist of the State Smart Transportation Initiative. “The road lobby is still pushing for more, more,” he said. ”It’s started to dawn on people that this money is being sucked out of state and local treasuries.”

Wisconsin has come under fire for much the same reason as Arkansas. During the 2011 budget cycle, Governor Scott Walker was pushing highway expansion projects totaling $400 million. In order to raise the money without raising the gas tax, Walker proposed transferring $140 million from the state’s general fund to highway spending.

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You wouldn’t necessarily expect NASCAR, the very embodiment of the macho fast-car fetish in America, to go to bat for pedestrians. But in preparation for yesterday’s “Super Bowl of stock car racing,” the Daytona 500, NASCAR teamed up with the Florida Department of Transportation to help promote pedestrian safety around the event.

But how deep is NASCAR’s commitment to pedestrian safety — or FDOT’s, for that matter?

Florida is the most dangerous state in the nation for pedestrians, according to an analysis by Transportation for America [PDF]. FDOT Secretary Anath Prasad told the local media that the agency is working hard to change that.

“We have doubled our efforts in making sure that we turn around those statistics,” he said. “It is unacceptable in our great state.”

Part of that campaign was the plan to step up enforcement for both pedestrians and motorists around the NASCAR event, which was expected to bring some 250,000 people to the area Sunday. FDOT even sponsored a car, driven by Joe Nemechek, emblazoned with the words “Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow,” a slogan used in the FDOT educational campaign to reduce pedestrian deaths.

As part of the campaign, FDOT dispensed some basic, common-sense advice to drivers and pedestrians and said it was seeking improvements to “engineering, enforcement and emergency response.”

We’re glad to hear Florida at least making a verbal commitment to address the grievous problem of pedestrian deaths. But we’d like to see the state get more serious about the engineering portion of this campaign — which would mean not building intersections that look like this.

And while we’re talking enforcement, it’d also be nice if Prasad — who, after recently being ticketed for speeding, raised the speed limit on the very street where he was caught — would practice what he preaches. There is a culture of disrespect to pedestrians in the Sunshine State that seems to pervade all walks of life, from the DOT secretary to the police to average drivers.

If FDOT’s “education campaign” amounts to nothing more than ticketing a few pedestrians — classic victim-blaming — it could, in fact, worsen the structural inequality that makes those on foot so vulnerable.

Instead of an educational campaign about the importance of using crosswalks, how about a few more actual crosswalks, and shorter ones, with pedestrian refuge islands? I think they’d be happy to have them in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood. That would be real progress for Florida pedestrians. Would FDOT get behind that?

NASCAR has other problems. Dozens of spectators were injured at Saturday’s Nationwide Series race at Daytona International Speedway, the latest incident in which fans have been harmed as the result of a crash.

The work of a sustainable transportation reporter can be a lonely lot. But it’s a lot less lonely now that two McClatchy reporters, Curtis Tate and Greg Gordon, have taken up the mantle of exposing wasteful road expansion.

With their far-reaching and well-researched three-part series, published last Sunday, Tate and Gordon brought stories of highway corruption and waste to a mainstream print audience. They spent four months researching the series, digging into 15 years of campaign finance records and interviewing leaders inside and outside of the transportation field.

“America’s highway system,” they wrote, “once a symbol of freedom and mobility envied the world over, is crumbling physically and financially, the potentially disastrous consequence of a politically driven road-building binge.”

Kentucky and South Carolina still gripped by highway madness

Tate is from the same hometown as Rep. Hal Rogers, the powerful Kentucky Republican who wields the gavel of the Appropriations Committee in the House. Tate couldn’t help but notice that Kentucky was using its federal formula funds to build Rogers’ pet project (I-66) while borrowing against future federal highway funds to do badly needed maintenance and repair work. The state has even used $4.2 million in interstate maintenance funds for I-66, despite the fact that the project didn’t meet the necessary criteria.

Meanwhile, although surrounding states have given up on their plans to create a new interstate, I-69, Kentucky charges forth. Rogers and Democratic Governor Steve Beshear “have received large contributions from road builders and highway engineers” but deny that these donations have influenced their zealous cheerleading for the project. Kentucky’s part of the new interstate will essentially stitch together three existing roads and slap the number 69 on them – meanwhile widening shoulders and reconfiguring interchanges simply to meet interstate standards. Tate and Gordon said that their “examination of campaign finance data revealed a mutually beneficial relationship between Kentucky highway contractors and their local and state elected officials.”

But this story doesn’t end with Kentucky. The push to get I-73 built in South Carolina is just as unsavory (although it doesn’t end, as the Kentucky story does, with the former governor and 15 members of his administration getting indicted on corruption charges related to politicking in the transportation department).

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This is the final installment in our three-part “Revolving Door” series about how cronyism in state DOTs leads to wasteful highway building. The first part profiled Ohio DOT chief Jerry Wray and the second part looked at Oklahoma DOT boss Gary Ridley. Both Wray and Ridley left the DOTs to work as asphalt industry lobbyists, only to return to the public sector later on. 

This edition of our Revolving Door series features TxDOT Director Phil Wilson, whose chief qualification for leading the $10 billion-a-year agency seems to be not his transportation or administrative expertise, but his cozy relationship with the governor.

Wilson has held half a dozen public offices under Texas Governor Rick Perry, including secretary of state and personal communications director. While Wilson was serving as the governor’s deputy chief of staff, in 2006, he helped set in motion a “public private partnership” on wind energy that cost taxpayers a bundle, but offered some personal benefits to both him and the governor. We relay this anecdote, even though it doesn’t directly relate to transportation, because it speaks to the level of cronyism and deal-making that Wilson brings to the office of state-wide transportation commissioner in the second most-populous state in the union.

As a member of the governor’s cabinet, Wilson recommended the state pay for the construction of utility lines from wind farms in the western part of Texas to the more populous eastern half. He estimated the deal would cost Texas taxpayers a few hundred million dollars. But according to a report from Texans for Public Justice [PDF], when contracts were awarded in 2009 the price had ballooned to $5 billion.

By then, Wilson had left the Perry administration to work as vice president and lobbyist for the energy company Luminant, one of the country’s largest wind energy buyers. Between 2008 and 2011, Phil Wilson reported he received between $250,000 and $470,000 in total compensation as a lobbyist for Luminant, according to Texans for Public Justice. (In Texas, lobbyists report their wages in ranges.) Meanwhile, Wilson helped Texas Energy Future Holdings, the parent company of Luminant, win the biggest utility line contract, for a cool $1.3 billion, TPJ reported.

At the same time, according to the Center for Media and Democracy, Luminant was stepping up to help ensure Rick Perry’s reelection. The company donated $633,575 to the governor’s campaign fund from 2001 to 2011. Last year, the whole thing came full circle when Perry welcomed Wilson back into public service. Wilson was appointed by Perry to head TxDOT, making him the first non-engineer ever to hold the position. The Texas media criticized the appointment, calling Wilson a “political hack” with a thin resume. Terri Hall, founder of Texans Uniting for Freedom and Reform, called the move “flaming pay-to-play cronyism.”

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This is the second installment in our three-part “Revolving Door” series about how cronyism in state DOTs leads to wasteful highway building. The first part profiled Ohio DOT chief Jerry Wray, who has switched back and forth between working directly for the asphalt industry and shoveling money to the asphalt industry as a public official.

Like Jerry Wray, Oklahoma DOT Director Gary Ridley has split his career between public office and lobbying on behalf of the asphalt industry. He started out in the mid-1960s, working as an equipment officer for the DOT. He climbed several rungs on the ladder and then left in 1997 to lead the Oklahoma Asphalt Paving Association, before returning to the department in 2001 as director of operations. In 2009, he was appointed to the top position in the agency.

The Oklahoma Asphalt Pavement Association made $3,000 in contributions to Governor Brad Henry’s reelection campaign in 2006, three years before Ridley’s appointment, and then donated $1,000 to the campaign of current Governor Mary Fallin in 2010. She had reappointed Ridley shortly after her confirmation.

Those are pretty small amounts in the world of political campaign money. But there are a lot of cozy ties between the road lobby and top politicians in Oklahoma, and Ridley is deeply embedded in the state’s industry-friendly culture. One of Ridley’s predecessors as ODOT director, Neal McCaleb, also worked as a lobbyist for the road industry, sandwiched between two terms as transportation secretary. McCaleb, reportedly a close political ally of Ridley, is now president of a road lobbying group called Transportation Revenues Used Strictly for Transportation. (TRUST — get it?)

Upon Ridley’s reappointment, McCaleb, acting as a representative of TRUST, called him the “best transportation director in the state’s history.” Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, one of the chief architects of the new transportation bill, MAP-21, went further, calling Ridley “the best secretary of transportation in the country.” Inhofe, a well-known climate change denier, is a political darling of the oil and gas industry and fervent opponent of federal programs that support biking and walking.

Sure enough, Inhofe trotted Ridley out to testify before Congress on behalf of the more backwards proposals for the transportation bill last July. His testimony was a direct appeal to exempt states from requirements to invest in biking and walking:

This country’s CORE infrastructure is in a deplorable condition. Therefore, we support the ability for States to carefully scrutinize, prioritize and direct transportation funding that may be available for peripheral projects and programs.

Programs that mandate the commitment of dedicated transportation funding to recreational and fringe activities such as bicycle and pedestrian trails, complete streets, landscaping and historic preservation should be vigorously reviewed. If community livability projects and other similar programs are determined to be critically important to the viability and prosperity of the Nation, other funding mechanisms should be identified and the programs should be funded separately from core transportation infrastructure.

Tom Elmore, executive director of the Oklahoma City-based North American Transportation Institute, said it is an open secret that ODOT is focused as much, if not more, on serving the highway lobby as the people of the Sooner State. He calls Ridley “the P.E. with no degree,” since Ridley does not have a college degree, but was awarded a certificate as a Professional Engineer because he passed a test. (The same test is no longer sufficient for the credential.)

“ODOT and the highway lobby are one and the same,” Elmore said. “It’s very difficult to tell these days who is working for ODOT and who is working for the contractors because there is a such a revolving door.”

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One of the top goals of the national transportation reform movement is to get state DOTs to spend their money more wisely. The feds distribute tens of billions of dollars to state DOTs each year with very few strings attached. But for every state like Massachusetts or Tennessee that’s decided to shift toward building walkable streets and away from highway construction, there are plenty of state DOTs that continue to build very expensive, sprawl-inducing roads, even though they can’t afford to maintain what they already have.

In many states, big decisions about how to spend money have less to do with the actual public benefits of a given project than the rewards that accrue to elected officials. With billions of dollars at stake, transportation departments can be used to reward favored constituencies or to achieve other political goals. Witness Birmingham’s $4.7 billion zombie highway, which won’t do much besides line the pockets of politically-connected companies. Or how about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s decision in 2010 to kill the ARC rail tunnel connection to New York’s Penn Station, which threw away years of preparation so Christie could win national attention from movement conservatives and appeal to his suburban base by diverting the funds to roadbuilding.

Sometimes transportation decisions amount to little more than cronyism, which is never more obvious than when a governor hires an industry lobbyist to run his state DOT. For this series, which we’re calling “The Revolving Door,” Streetsblog looked at three states where governors have gone so far as to put a lobbyist for the roadbuilding or energy industries in charge of transportation policy.

To kick off the Revolving Door series, we’re taking a look at Ohio Department of Transportation Director Jerry Wray, nicknamed the “asphalt sheriff,” who managed to sandwich a lobbying position at an asphalt industry group in between his two terms as ODOT head.

“ODOT is a machine for the road contractors. Everything that they do is intended to produce more gas tax revenue so there can be more revenue for ODOT.”

- Ken Prendergast, All Aboard Ohio

Wray first filled ODOT’s top office under Republican Governor George Voinovich in the 1990s, when he was often accused of favoring the asphalt industry, according to the Columbus Dispatch. After “retiring” from ODOT in 1999, he became vice president of Flexible Pavements of Ohio, an asphalt industry lobbying group. He was then brought back into the public sector when Republican Governor John Kasich took office in 2009. Major road builders like Columbus-based Kokosing Construction and its founder Bill Burgett were among Kasich’s largest donors.

Right away, Wray and Kasich let Ohioans know they had new priorities for the state — the kind of priorities that would certainly please Wray’s former employer. In an interview with the Columbus Dispatch, Kasich said he and Wray shared a similar philosophy on transportation: namely, a deeply partisan obsession with obstructing the state’s passenger rail plans — the “3C” train service connecting Columbus, Cincinnati, and Columbus Cleveland that the Obama administration had pledged $400 million to start up. “His people that he will bring on will understand: no games, no politics, no train,” Kasich said of Wray. Killing the train — which would have cost the state a paltry $17 million annually to operate, less than the state currently spends cleaning and maintaining highway rest areas — was Kasich’s first act after being elected.

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If there’s a city that could serve as a cautionary tale for overbuilding highways, that city is Detroit. So it’s fascinating — and encouraging — to see this city going through an internal tussle over the wisdom of building a highway.

Hot off a major victory in reforming its balkanized system of suburban and urban transit systems, some leaders in the Motor City are questioning a Michigan Department of Transportation plan to widen I-94 — a chokepoint for suburban commuters – in Detroit and its suburbs. The $1.8 billion project would add one lane in each direction over a 6.7-mile stretch of the freeway, and would involve the rebuilding of 67 overpasses.

MDOT leaders justify the project as a congestion easer for 160,000 commuters, and they say it will reduce collisions. But experience suggests that the project — which has been on the books for decades — will simply induce more traffic and further disinvestment in Detroit.

One of the more prominent critics of the project has been the local advocacy group Transportation Riders United. Michael Boettcher of the TRU told the Metro Times that the widening would undermine the Midtown neighborhood, which has been the site of a fragile resurgence. “The fewer physical connections there are between those areas on both sides of I-94, the greater psychological barriers there will be… making it harder for people to cross the interstate at all by car or on foot,” he said.

Boettcher says the project is not worth the $1.8 billion pricetag. MDOT expects 90 percent of the project’s costs to be paid for by the federal government. But, by state law, that would require a $22 million contribution directly from the city of Detroit, which is struggling to corral a $350 million deficit. Amazingly, Detroit officials are supportive of the project and have promised the funds.

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Something tells me we’re going to be seeing a lot more of this in the not-so-distant future.

Last week Tennessee DOT commissioner John Schroer took to the pages of the Memphis Commercial Appeal to explain his decision to halt construction of his state’s portion of I-69. The reason, he explained, is that the state can’t afford the 65-mile, $1.5 billion highway project, between Memphis and Dyersburg.

“The $1.5 billion cost estimate represents more than 100 percent of Tennessee’s annual federal construction funding,” Schroer said. “To spend that on one project — regardless of its location — would not only be a disservice to all Tennesseans, but it would also be downright irresponsible and potentially dangerous. It would leave no money to repair and replace old bridges or implement safety improvements designed to save lives.”

In particular Schroer mentioned the unavailability of federal earmarks as a factor in the decision.

TDOT undertook an examination of its project pipeline last year with Smart Growth America and discovered that it had nine times more projects in its project list than available funding would cover. Determined to change the way it did business, Tennessee has been turning away from bypasses and road widening to concentrate more on integrating land use and transportation. The state wants to build places people want to go to and not just through at high speeds.

I-69 — also known as the NAFTA Superhighway — had received special designation from FHWA in 2007 as a “corridor of the future,” a distinction that was supposed to come with streamlined approval and federal funding. The mega highway was to connect Michigan and Canada to Texas and Mexico. The road has been touted as an economic development boon for the states it bisected.

Tennessee had spent close to two decades on planning, land acquisition and design work for I-69. The state had already spent $200 million, $150 million of which came from the federal government.

But Schroer expressed doubt other states would be able to complete their portions, given the current funding environment.

“Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana and Texas are all facing tremendously expensive I-69 projects, including construction of bridges over the Mississippi and Ohio rivers,” he wrote.

Schroer said he would be happy to take up I-69 again “when long-term funding is identified.”

Cross-posted from the Strong Towns blog. 

Charles Marohn is a planner and engineer in Minnesota and the executive director of Strong Towns. 

We’ve been looking at the instincts of today’s transportation agencies. While on an individual level it is clear that these organizations are filled with people who are professional, competent and want to do the right thing, the institutional inertia is carrying them in wayward directions.

When confronted with a persistently dangerous intersection, there is no push or conversation to close it. That is not in the play book because the policies of transportation agencies are deeply rooted in misunderstandings about economic growth and development. What is in the play book is the will to make large expenditures on modest improvements in the hopes that the problem will be alleviated. This from agencies that are fatally short of funding. At least we tried.

Unfortunately, those misunderstandings we have about growth and development correlate highway spending with increased prosperity. In reality, this is an illusion brought about by quick and easy development leveraged off these massive investments. The lack of productivity in this approach means that, over the long term, the costs far outweigh the gains. It is the Ponzi scheme of the Suburban Experiment. We’re in the unwinding phase.

Nobody should understand that more clearly than our nation’s DOTs. They are simultaneously over committed and under funded. While they obsess about the latter, it is the former that they will ultimately be forced to reconcile. Many in these agencies — especially the second tier of leaders that are a little more removed from our highway building heydays and a little further from retirement than the first tier – understand this clearly, but they lack an acceptable alternative approach. They are trapped by the inertia of their organization.

It is to those people that I offer my thoughts on the principles and understandings that a Next Generation DOT should embody when making that inevitable course correction.

1. Transportation spending is not economic development.

Speaking of transportation in terms of economic development has been a convenient way to secure additional funding streams. Unfortunately, the meme has become part of the wider culture, even though we know that good transportation systems serve productive growth, not create it. Transportation systems move goods and people. They are not catalysts for productive growth. We know how much that interchange costs so we need to stop pretending that the quiki mart, pet stop and strip mall somehow justify the investment just because it makes the locals happy.

2. Transportation spending is not job creation.
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