Up & Coming Weekly

CONCERT SERIES TWO GREAT CONCERTS SNYDER PRESENTS Atcheson, Pianist Sunday, April 25, 2010 6:30 p.m. Randall It’s Not Just The Formula by JOHN HOOD If North Carolina lawmakers continue to eye the state transportation budget like greedy kids spying a basket of candy, they’ll continue to grab and squabble. As former UNC- Charlotte professor Dave Hartgen observes in a new John Locke Foundation study, our policymakers need to look at the issue from a different perspective — as if they were members of an investment pool seek- ing the highest possible rate of return. North Carolina’s transportation challenges are daunting, costly, and increasingly understood by a large swath of the public. By national standards, North Carolina ranks poorly in both urban traffic conges- tion and the condition of rural bridges. Although we have a relatively high gas tax, we don’t have noticeably better roads than other Southeastern states. And all too often, pork-barrel politics and Smart Growth ideology play too large a role in our transportation policymaking, which ought instead to be based on objective data and realistic goals. Building transportation infrastructure is an investment activity. In rough proportion to their use of state roadways, motorists pay car and gas taxes into the Highway Fund and Highway Trust Fund. State and local officials are charged with investing some of the money in adding valuable new capacity to the system, saving the rest for maintaining the value of the existing capital stock. Unfortunately, so many hands touch this capital flow that it becomes diluted. “Elijah” Sunday, May 2, 2010 • 6:30 p.m. SNYDER MEMORIAL BAPTIST CHURCH 701 Westmont Dr. • 910.484.3191 www.snydermbc.com All Concerts are Free of Admission and Open to the Public Transit boosters want to force non-riders to subsidize the trips of transit riders. Governors want to do favors for their biggest supporters and friends. Legislators want to maximize the flow of funds into their districts as a means of buying votes, with the more-senior members having the greatest opportunities to do so. The private firms that design, build, and supply raw materials for new projects want to maximize their revenues. City and county officials want to move their local projects to the top of the list. At a legislative committee meeting earlier this month, many of these individuals or interests paraded past the microphone to restate their wants. Few offer a coher- ent, objective assessment of the state’s true transportation needs. Hartgen did so in his new research paper. Rather than focus on divvying up highway funds by region, Hartgen argued that North Carolina needs to focus on projects, wherever they are located, that promise the greatest bang for the buck in alleviating traffic congestion and improving safety. The need is pressing, because: • Roads of inadequate quality and capacity reduce the incomes of North Carolina residents by billions of dollars a year in lost time, lost fuel, and vehicle repairs. • Achieving a significant reduction in future traffic congestion alone would boost the state’s economy by nearly $1 billion a year. • Reallocating existing revenues to address the state’s highest priorities is a more realistic approach than trying to tax our way out of the problem, since North Carolina’s transportation-related taxes are already high by regional standards. The conventional wisdom in Raleigh appears to be is that North Carolina needs to raise taxes and change the equity formula to steer more dollars to urban areas such as Charlotte, the Triad, and the Triangle. This is not so much the wrong answer as it is the wrong phrasing of the question. If policymakers used current and projected traffic counts to allocate highway dollars, some counties would gain projects and some would lose them. But North Carolinians do not confine their driving within county lines. They travel from city to city, region to region – or, at least, the products they consume travel across the state in trucks. Most North Carolinians would benefit from highway projects that alleviate congestion and improve safety along highly traveled corridors, be they around the southern side of Wake County or a stretch of rural interstate in the foothills, sand- hills, or coastal plain. Tossing a bunch of money into a basket and watching im- mature politicians fight over it may be entertaining, but it’s not a transportation policy worthy of the name. Maybe some grownups will get involved at some point. JOHN HOOD, Columnist. COMMENTS? 484-6200 ext. 222 or editor@upandcomingweekly.com 20 UCW APRIL 28-MAY 4, 2010 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM

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