By Suzanne Sprague
DALLAS – [Ambient traffic noise.]
Suzanne Sprague, KERA 90.1 Reporter: Gridlock traffic is a fact of life shared by millions of North Texans every day.
[Ambient sound: People in cars yell, "I don't know what's going on," and "It's terrible," as horns honk.]
Sprague: According to the Texas Transportation Institute, congestion costs Dallas drivers almost $1,000 a year in wasted time and gasoline. Fort Worth drivers, about $640 annually. And Michael Morris, the Director of Transportation for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, says it's only going to get worse.
Michael Morris, Director of Transportation, North Central Texas Council of Governments: With $30 billion in new capacity improvements in this region over the next 25 years, and that includes freeways and rail, the congestion levels in the region will basically double.
Sprague: State officials don't believe they can end gridlock in North Texas because the region is growing too fast, but they do want to ease the pain. So as they prepare to convene the legislature next month, many are calling for new ways to pay for building more roads.
Florence Shapiro, Texas State Senator, District 8: We are a pay-as-you-go state. We only build roads if we have money. We can't build roads fast enough for the number of cars that are being put on the roadway.
Sprague: Republican Florence Shapiro of Plano chairs the Senate's State Affairs Committee, which has been examining transportation funding since the Legislature adjourned in 1998. Shapiro wants to amend the Texas Constitution so the state could borrow money to build highways by creating a so-called revolving bond. Right now, Shapiro is considering putting $100 million dollars in the fund.
Shapiro: And that money is leveraged in bond dollars to the tune of a billion dollars. It's a ten-to-one exchange. And that would be over a ten-year period. So you could invest $100 million, and you could actually get a billion dollars worth of mobility options for that $100 million. It's a great investment.
Sprague: Shapiro doesn't want to raise the gasoline tax, so ultimately, the original $100 million investment would likely come out of an anticipated budget surplus. That's not an entirely bad option, according to Sterling Burnett with the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas. However, Burnett would rather see people who drive pay for new roads directly.
Sterling Burnett, Senior Policy Analyst, National Center for Policy Analysis: You know, we have private roads in the United States. Maybe what you do is you have a subscriber system, where if you get on the road, if you want to ride on this road, you pay a yearly fee or you pay a monthly fee.
Sprague: Something like a toll road. And in fact, this session, the Legislature will likely consider whether to use public money for the first time to help pay for building toll roads. Jerry Heibert, the Executive Director of the North Texas Tollway Authority, says that would help ease the traffic congestion in North Texas.
Jerry Heibert, Executive Director, North Texas Tollway Authority: Toll road financing is an alternative to help bring projects into use more quickly than they would if they had to wait for tax financing; and I think that really is the tradeoff, is, does the region want these transportation improvements sooner rather than later, and I think that is really one of the issues.
Sprague: So is control. Tollway authorities are not elected. They're run like private corporations. While residents may rely on toll roads to get to work or to school or to the airport, they have little power over how they're managed. Some state activists would like to see more of that power over transportation projects in the hands of local government, where residents might be able to have more influence. Glen Gadbois is the Director of Transportation for the Texas Citizen Fund, a consumer non-profit advocacy group in Austin, which plans to lobby the Legislature for more local control this session.
Glen Gadbois, Director of Transportation, Texas Citizen Fund: If that happens, I can guarantee that, in rural areas as well as in urban areas, there's going to be more money spent on transit than is currently being spent.
Sprague: Gadbois is an advocate for public transit and says the state shouldn't just focus on building highways or toll roads to solve traffic problems.
Gadbois: We build roads with no regard for what development is going to happen there. As a consequence, you get things like sprawl, and then everybody figures out when they move to the suburbs that the traffic is bad out there and they need to face it every day.
Sprague: But Gadbois isn't optimistic the Legislature will either begin paying for mass transit or allow cities and towns to have more control over the state's transportation dollars. It's not an idea endorsed by State Affairs Chairwoman Florence Shapiro. Paul Geisel, an urban affairs professor at UTA and an Executive Committee member of Fort Worth's public transit system, believes public transit is good for the community, but he says many Texas residents don't believe it's good for their wallets.
Paul Geisel, Professor and Dean of the School of Urban and Public Affairs, University of Texas at Arlington: It's so difficult for people to understand that transit has to be subsidized and that it is expensive. You don't see that on a highway. You don't realize that you're paying 30 cents on every gallon of gas for those roads, so you're paying a huge tax for it. The portion you're going to pay for mass transit is so insignificant in comparison, but when you look at the amounts and that it's going to go in the sales tax, it looks different.
Sprague: "Tax" is not a word readily embraced by the Texas Legislature, so lawmakers are looking for almost any other means to bring in new transportation dollars. Florence Shapiro is counting on federal discretionary dollars that President-Elect Bush will control to help pay for improvements and expansions along the NAFTA corridor.
Shapiro: We get 80% of the NAFTA traffic that goes throughout the United States coming through the border in South Texas and through the state. We get about 12% of the funding for the corridors and borders in the state of Texas. Having a President from the state of Texas cannot do anything but be helpful for us.
Sprague: Other lawmakers are hoping for more transportation dollars from Congress, although federal funding already has jumped $700 million in the last year. And Washington could significantly cut highway dollars if Dallas and Houston don't meet certain clean air standards. Senator Shapiro says her committee hasn't discussed environmental issues, but it plans to include air quality concerns in the transportation debate. And with the state able to meet only one-third of the transportation needs in Texas, some observers predict there just won't be enough money in this legislature session to make any real difference in the lives of most North Texas drivers. For KERA 90.1, I'm Suzanne Sprague.