Attn: Transportation editors
Okay, America, you can stop taking the family gas guzzler on long road trips. But you’re gonna have to pay.
That’s a blunt translation of the message that Transportation Secretary Mary Peters delivered last week when she announced that energy conscious Americans drove 9.6 billion miles less in May than they did the previous May.
It’s a trend. In the seven months since last December, Americans have driven 40.5 billion fewer miles than they did during the same period of the previous year. It proves Americans are getting the message that they need to drive fewer miles in vehicles that get better gas mileage.
But here’s a “freakonomics” twist: While driving fewer miles in more fuel-efficient vehicles achieves a national goal of reducing energy consumption, it also means less money for the Highway Trust Fund which collects 18.4-cents for each gallon of gasoline and 24.4-cents for each gallon of diesel fuel. These federal taxes are used to pay for highway and bridge construction projects.
“By driving less and using more fuel-efficient vehicles, Americans are showing us that the highways of tomorrow cannot be supported solely by the federal gas tax. We must embrace more sustainable funding sources for highways and bridges through more sustainable and effective ways such as congestion pricing and private activity bonds,” Secretary Peters said in a press release.
Congestion pricing? Private activity bonds? These must be euphemistic catch-phrases for collecting tolls on interstate highways and leasing highways to private tollroad companies, both ideas that Secretary Peters has supported several times in the past.
Secretary Peters’ comments came at the same time that the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) released a report that put a $140 billion pricetag on the cost of repairing and modernizing America’s bridges.
Bridges were built to last 50 years, and the average bridge in this country is now 43 years old and creeping closer toward the end of their useful lifespan. And, AASHTO’s report went on, about 20% of the nation’s bridges are already over 50 years old.
This should not come as a surprise to politicians and highway officials who have been talking for several decades about the need to repair America’s infrastructure. While talking, the cost for doing the work has skyrocketed.
“The costs of steel, asphalt, concrete, and earthwork,” the AASHTO report said, “have risen by at least 50% in the past five years, forcing delays of bridge improvements and replacements. Nearly every state faces funding shortages that prevent them from the kind of on-going preventive maintenance, repair, and replacement needed to keep their bridges sound indefinitely.”
