Limited Funding Stalls Transportation Projects
TRANSPORTATION
The New Bedford Standard-Times
Courtney Hime
Boston University Washington News Service
December 8, 2008
WASHINGTON – The Shawmut Diner is located at one of New Bedford’s busier intersections. But congestion at Hathaway Road and Shawmut Avenue is not as bad as it used to be.
Philip Paleologos, the owner of the diner, has witnessed how effective the implementation of a single left-hand turn arrow can be in managing traffic.
“That has drastically cut down on not only accidents but also bottlenecking at the corner,” Mr. Paleologos said of the traffic signal, installed15 years ago. “Before the light with the arrows, we had many more accidents happening, because drivers were impatient and would pass on the left to go straight while people were turning.”
Despite this traffic success story, other intersections in the area are still experiencing problems. In fact, many of New Bedford’s intersections are under-designed, according to the Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District.
“I don’t know who planned the roads down here back in the ’50s and ’60s, but they must have thought that we were backwater towns that weren’t going to grow at all because they built interchanges that made no sense,” said Roland Hebert, deputy director and transportation planning manager for the regional planning agency. “They only made sense if we were going to stay farmlands.”
As a resident of New Bedford for 31 years, Mr. Paleologos has seen other intersections fail to manage the growing increase in traffic flow. Route 6 in Dartmouth and the intersection of Route 6 and Faunce Corner Road in particular have both had trouble keeping up with an increase of vehicles on the road, he said.
The regional planning agency, which serves 27 towns and cities in southeastern Massachusetts, has published several reports on problem intersections and roadways in the area. According to the 2007 Transportation Improvement Program, the latest report released, some of the most common problems occur at the Routes 24 and 140 intersection, the Tarkiln Hill Road and Kings Highway intersection, the Interstate 195 interchange in Dartmouth at Faunce Corner Road, Interstate 495 in Middleborough and the ramps on I-195 onto Coggeshall Street and Route 18, but many other problems exist.
As national transportation and infrastructure problem
As the nation’s list of transportation projects grows, funding for these improvements continues to shrink. Communities appealing to the state for money to fix infrastructure problems are having trouble acquiring the necessary funds because state money for road projects is drying up. Officials are looking to the federal government for funds to help maintain and improve transportation infrastructures.
Funding for transportation projects on a national level has been problematic and slow. But there is legislation that could jump-start work on solving some of the problems of the nation’s infrastructure
While traffic demands in the region are increasing the funds available to improve roadways are shrinking and WHATEVER.
WHATEVER
WHATEVER ….
Plans for fixing New Bedford’s problem spots have been in development, but acquiring the funds from the state continues to be difficult, said James Hadfield, director of highway planning for the regional agency.
“Most of us …understand how difficult it is to get funding and how slow projects move through the pipeline to actually be funded,” said JamesMr. Hadfield, director of highway planning for the regional agency. said. “It’s a very serious problem that’s not only here in Massachusetts, it’s nationwide.”
In September the House passed the Job Creation and Unemployment Relief Act of 2008. The bill has been placed on the Senate calendar, but has not been considered. If passed, the act would help fund projects that are ready to be implemented within 120 days, said Jim Berard, director of communications for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
While he said he doesn’t think the bill will proceed any further this year, Mr. Berard said he believes a similar stimulus bill that would allot money for transportation projects will be in the works early in the Obama administration.
In addition to the economic recovery bill that would potentially replace the House-passed bill, Mr. Berard said the committee would be looking to pass a new federal highway surface transportation bill.
Mr. Berard said he couldn’t offer specific details on what would be included in the bill, which has not been drafted, but he said it would be likely to allocate at least $300 billion to transportation and infrastructure projects, a figure he called a “conservative estimate.”
“With all the emphasis that people have been placing on infrastructure, on the need to rebuild our national infrastructure, we are expecting this bill to be probably the largest, in terms of money, that we’ve ever passed,” he said.
Any funds allocated for transportation projects, however, must be distributed by the states. And in Massachusetts, distribution of transportation funds has become a hot topic.
According to the Massachusetts Transportation Finance Commission’s March 2007 report, the cost of maintaining Massachusetts’s transportation system “exceeds the anticipated resources available by $15 billion to $19 billion.” The report went on to say that the estimates were conservative and did not include addressing any needed expansions or enhancements.
“Putting a new lane on a highway, widen it, building roads that don’t exist yet – forget about that,” Mr. Hebert said of the report’s findings. “Just maintaining what we have and putting it in good shape, we’re $20 billion in the hole.”
That debt exists in part because of the Central Artery/Tunnel Project, commonly known as the Big Dig. The project, which from planning to completion lasted nearly 25 years, cost $14.6 billion, and with interest included, will ultimately total a cost of $22 billion, according to a July story by The Boston Globe.
“The Big Dig and the third Harbor Tunnel was the most expensive highway project in the nation and we did it with federal money and a state credit card,” Mr. Hebert said.
The system of bonding that financed the Big Dig is one that Mr. Hebert said he doesn’t believe is disappearing anytime soon.
“We’re still in a position where our elected officials are not responding to this need properly,” he said. “We’re borrowing more money on top and we still haven’t come up with more ways to pay it.”
The problem, Mr. Hebert says, is that the state hasn’t come up with a way to raise revenue so that debts and future state transportation projects can be funded with real dollars. While there is no easy answer for how to raise revenue, Mr. Hebert said, charging drivers a gasoline tax is one possibility. .
“It seems to me that gasoline taxes are the most fair user fee in the country,” he said. “If you don’t drive, you don’t pay it.”
Voices across the state have been weighing in on the issue of a gas tax or an increase in toll road fees.
David Guarino, spokesman for Massachusetts House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, said the speaker also believes an increase in the gas tax would be a fair way for the entire state to help raise revenue.
“If the decision has been made that we need to do something, not only to address the Big Dig costs, which are immediate, but the long-term transportation needs of the commonwealth, then whatever solution we come to has to be fair and has to be something that is shared throughout the state,” Mr. Guarino said.
However, State Rep. Robert M. Koczera (D-New Bedford) said he does not support an increase in the gas tax at this time because the funds would be used to pay off the debt from the Big Dig, a project “generally seen as a benefit to Boston” and infrequently used by New Bedford residents.
“Most of my constituents do not utilize the Big Dig. So I tend to feel that’s a disproportionate cost that my constituents would have to pay,” he said of the gas tax.
Rep. Koczera said he would be more open to an increase in the tax if the funds would be used to help create commuter rail service or mass transportation for New Bedford residents. However, he said he doubts the support to pass an increase in the Massachusetts fuel tax exists in the state legislature.
Gov. Deval Patrick said in a statement that he is not “hostile” to an increase in the gas tax but that it’s not his first choice.
Instead, Gov. Patrick and the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority have proposed increasing the toll fee at the Sumner and Ted Williams tunnels from $3.50 to $7 and at the Allston-Brighton and Weston toll plazas from $1.25 to $2. Hearings to discuss changes in toll rates are being held throughout the state this month.
Regardless of what the state decides, the initiative to raise revenue is a step in the right direction, according to Mr. Hadfield of the regional planning agency.
“We can’t keep borrowing our way out of problems,” Mr. Hadfield said. “Nobody likes to pay taxes, but yet everyone complains when the roads aren’t fixed or traffic signals break down. It has to be paid for one way or another.”
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