Trucker, motorist groups join to fight privatizing toll roads

Trucker, motorist groups join to fight privatizing toll roads A coalition of highway user groups urged the Bush administration Friday to rethink its advocacy of long-term highway leases to private consortia as the way to make up for dwindling balances in the federal highway trust fund used to pay for critical road maintenance and upgrades.
   'If ensuring a profit for private companies and quick cash for state and local governments remain the top priorities, these plans could actually lead to a decline in safety and mobility on both the privatized roads and the parallel public roads, as private companies try to maximize their profits and prevent competition,' the group said in a letter to Transportation Secretary Mary Peters.
   Calling itself Americans for a Strong National Highway Network, the alliance comprises a mix of groups that work together to promote funding for increased road capacity to improve safety and reduce congestion under the umbrella of the American Highway Users Alliance. The other individual members of the anti-privatization coalition include the American Trucking Associations, AAA, truck stop and travel plaza trade association NATSO, the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association, and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.
   The coalition opposes the trend towards selling long-term concessions to private companies and turning highways into toll roads. It is urging reform and expanded use of the fuel tax system.
   Several localities, including the city of Chicago and Indiana, have recently privatized major highways within their jurisdictions, and the billions of dollars in upfront money they earned for multi-decade leases has caught the attention of many other states who are now considering asset sales of some major highways. Meanwhile, the Department of Transportation has promoted innovative financing techniques among states to make up for the shortfall in fuel tax receipts. The department recently published model legislation that states could use to develop laws to authorize asset transfers to private entities.
   'DOT's model legislation implies an unqualified endorsement of public-private partnership initiatives, even though serious issues have not been adequately addressed and there is no real context for evaluating their place in an overall transportation system as large and complex as ours in the United States,' the coalition letter stated.
   The American Trucking Associations and shipper groups argue that allowing states to transfer interstate highway sections to private companies interested in maximizing toll rates would Balkanize the national highway system, undermining the central tenet of a common system that promotes interstate commerce. Critics say that a piecemeal approach to tolling would cause large-scale diversion of motorists and commercial vehicles to secondary roads, and creating safety and congestion issues on smaller arteries.
   'Leasing our highways is essentially a dismantling of our interstate highway system,' ATA President Bill Graves said Friday at a Washington press conference.
   Nine floors down in the National Press Building, Govs. Ed Rendell, D-Pa., and Mitch Daniels, R-Ind., held their own press conference 15 minutes later to promote the benefits of leasing public roads and release an issue brief from the National Governors Association on transportation finance challenges faced by states. Daniels last year pushed through the controversial 75-year, $3.8 billion sale of the Indiana Turnpike to an Australian-Spanish toll road consortium. The Pennsylvania legislature is considering the lease of the Pennsylvania Turnpike to a private operator.
   Earlier in the day governors met at the White House with President Bush to discuss highway funding and tolling alternatives.
   Rendell urged the creation of a federal capital budget, saying that the nation will never seriously address its crumbling infrastructure by paying for long-term assets out of the operating budget. The governor said every major developed nation in the world has funded major infrastructure programs through capital expenditures.
   'If this country is ever going to have a first class infrastructure we need a federal capital budget,' he said.