Confusions Out of the 21st Century

There were two confusing aspects to this week's 21st Century Transportation Committee (21 CTC) reports to the General Assembly for action in the short session.

The first regarded the mass transit share of a transportation bond. Two sub-committees made recommendations as to what a bond should be spent on. Trouble is, they differed from one another and no attempt was made to reconcile those differences.

The second point of confusion is why anyone would want to spend new money on projects drawn up in the 1980s in a political logroll designed to get the Highway Trust Fund bill passed. Or why anyone would want to drown this state in debt to build roads willy-nilly when we have no objective prioritization process in place and DOT limps along, a shadow of the organization it could or should be.

To the first confusion: The Finance Committee recommended a bond of somewhere between $1.24 billion and 1.75 billion, depending on how much of our debt capacity is crowded out by toll road gap funding – that sum of money used to bridge the difference between toll receipts and bond repayment every year.

50% of that uncertain bond figure was recommended to be used for loops, interstates and intermodal (ie buses and rail) to increase capacity and reduce congestion. That means mass transit gets an unspecified percentage of an uncertain figure.

The Prioritization Sub-Committee, chaired by Senator Clark Jenkins, begged to differ. How much would mass transit get of this half of the bond? Zero.

"The overall recomendations are the sum of their parts," said the 21 CTC's Chair, Brad Wilson. If so, then this section resembles not so much a Picasso as a David Lynch movie in its linear rationality.

To the second confusion: The Finance Committee recommended that the second 50% should go to the flawed Highway Trust Fund (HTF) to continue building projects dreamed up in the 1980s; projects not decided by need, but through a political deal that means more money per capita gets spent in rural areas (where traffic is relatively light and not congested) than in the urban areas of the Piedmont (where traffic is relatively heavy and congested).

This is the Orwellian named, "equity formula", an 80's expenditure allocation formula with a name inspired by "1984".

On this the Prioritization Committee essentially agreed: 50% to the HTF, with a proviso that if there are no HTF four-lane roads-to-nowhere projects in a transportation division ready to build, then either the head engineer of that divison or the relevant Board of Transportation member could divert the money to projects deemed "critical". That sure sounds like a transparent and objective process, doesn't it?

Silly me. I thought there was not enough money for roads, and we needed more, more, more. Does this Prioritization recommendation mean they foresee that the new money may not get spent? Wha? Or that the old list of projects in the Highway Trust Fund are not, surely not, really "critical". It's not surprising really.  A lot of things I wanted in the 1980s, I don't really need now. Like hair gel, Wham, and digital watches.