On 40th birthday, interstates face expensive midlife crisis

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 29, 1996 | by David Field

The interstate highway system celebrated a milestone in June, but transportation experts and motorists agree the network needs work that could cost taxpayers hundreds of billions.

Forty seems a little early for a midlife crisis, but transportation experts and lobbyists say parts of the nation's interstate highway system are falling apart.

"We want to celebrate it," says William D. Fay, president of the American Highway Users alliance, of the national road network's anniversary. "But more than that, we want to broadcast a warning: The system is already on a decline that will only worsen unless some public-policy trends are reversed."

Motorists agree that the system needs help. About two-thirds of Americans say the roads in their states are in poor to fair condition, according to American Automobile Association President Robert L. Darbelnet, whose organization conducted a poll on the topic. "Clearly, Americans are worried about the declining status of a transportation network that they have always taken for granted."

Nearly two-fifths of the interstate's pavement is in poor or mediocre condition, reports the Federal Highway Administration, or FHWA. That's 16,664 miles that need repair soon or immediately. Another one-fifth is in "fair" shape. Only the remaining two-fifths are rated "good."

In 1994, the FHWA classified 13,262 bridges -- about one-fourth of all interstate spans--as below standard. Of that total, 9,959 bridges are "functionally obsolete," which the highway agency, a part of the Transportation Department, defines as lacking "the lane widths, shoulder widths or vertical clearances adequate to serve the traffic demand."

The remaining 3,303 were "structurally deficient," meaning that they needed major repair, replacement or limits on their loads. Most bridges were built to withstand the weight of 72,000-pound trucks, but federal standards now allow for twin trailers weighing up to 80,000 pounds, and those higher weights have given some routes a pounding.

When President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act in June 1956, the landmark legislation set in motion one of the greatest public-works projects in history. "The interstate system changed the way we live and the way we work," says FHWA Administrator Rodney Slater (see sidebar). The 44,546 miles of interstate highways turned a two-month transcontinental journey into a four-day road trip.

(As a young officer, Eisenhower traveled with the the U.S. Army's first military convoy from Washington to San Francisco in the aftermath of World War I. Presidential candidate Eisenhower cited that trip in his 1952 campaign pledge to build a modern network of roads for the national defense.)

The interstates became an engine of development, making possible the postwar suburban expansion and transforming the nation's retail economy by creating shopping malls and spurring travel. In 1955, people drove 603 billion miles on U.S. highways; last year, they logged 2.3 trillion miles.

Construction of the system cost taxpayers about $329 billion in 1996 dollars, according to transportation consultants Wendell Cox and Jean Love, or the equivalent of $58.5 billion in 1957 dollars -- not far from the orginal estimate of $41 billion. Repair of the nation's roads and bridges will require $315 billion, says Darbelnet, citing federal estimates. The highway agency also says the government would have to spend about $72 billion a year during the next five years to upgrade roads and bridges -- about $37 billion more than presently is spent on highway construction by federal, state and local governments.

But critics say those figures are inaccurate. "The American people have paid about $130 billion for the interstate system," counting taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel, argues Fay. Motorists pay 18.3 cents in federal tax on every gallon of gas, of which all but 4.3 cents goes into something called the federal Highway Trust Fund dedicated to maintenance and repair. Truckers pay 43.33 cents a gallon, with a similar 4.3 cents set aside for deficit reduction.

To mask the true size of the federal deficit, however, every president since Richard Nixon has held highway spending below the level the trust fund would support. "Where there is a user fee that will generate $30 billion in 1996 alone, there is no excuse for not dedicating those funds to safer roads and bridges," says Fay.

A similar trust fund, compiled through a now-suspended federal tax on airline tickets and air-cargo bills, is dedicated to airport and air-traffic control spending. The House voted in April to move this fund "off budget" to make it easier to spend. That's what road warriors want to happen with highway monies. "AAA says Congress must take transportation trust funds off budget to assure their use for transportation only," says Darbelnet.

Using some of the funds for deficit reduction is technically a "diversion" and this, along with spending on mass transit -- about $29 billion since 1990 -- as well as a fuel-tax exemption for ethanol, will bring the total federal diversion from the Highway Trust Fund to $100 billion by the year 2000, according to William Wilkins of the Road Information Program. But budget experts from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to independent scholar Allen Schick say that taking the transportation trust funds out of the budget will make it that much more difficult to balance it.