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Anti-Tax Absolutism Leaves Interstate Highways Crumbling

Following up on all these candidate pledges leads me to an excellent example of why the fiscal absolutism of politicians like Stace Nelson, Larry Rhoden, John Thune, and Kristi Noem leads to bad practical outcomes.

Via Governing, I learn that the Reason Foundation just released a report on how to modernize the Interstate Highway System with toll financing. Easy, tiger—yes, the Reason Foundation recognizes that South Dakota is a terrible place for toll roads, that our low traffic and higher costs mean coin booths on I-29 and I-90 would not be nearly as effective or politically palatable for funding our reconstruction needs as they would be in some other places.

But Reason's Robert W. Poole, Jr., says we need to do something to re-vamp and re-ramp the Interstate system. Our roads are aging, but political gridlock leaves us stuck in an outdated and insufficient funding system:

The need for massive investment to transform the first-generation Interstate into what this report calls Interstate 2.0 occurs just as our 20th-century highway funding system—based on fuel taxes and state and federal highway trust funds—is running out of gas. Steady increases in vehicle fuel economy, the lack of inflation indexing of fuel tax rates, and political gridlock over increasing fuel tax rates all make it very difficult even to maintain current pavement and bridge conditions and prevent congestion from getting even worse. The transportation community agrees that we need to phase out fuel taxes and replace them with a more sustainable funding source, generally agreed to be mileage-based user fees of some sort. But no consensus exists on how and when to do this [Robert W. Poole, "Interstate 2.0: Modernizing the Interstate Highway System via Toll Finance," Reason Foundation, September 2013].

The political process exists to reach workable consensus. But when special interest groups tie politicians up in red-line pledges, we can't get there. And what do we get? Crappy roads that will only cost more to fix the longer we wait.

Fixing the Interstates is an excellent example of why responsible politicians can't adopt zero-growth fiscal policy. Sometimes your costs increase and your needs don't change. If we're going to ship more milk and beef and French cheese out on I-29, we need to spend more to keep I-29 intact. Toll booths may not be the best answer for South Dakota, but shouting, "Not one penny more in taxes or spending!" is no answer.

11 Comments

  1. Porter Lansing 2013.09.14

    Every day we liberals in our liberal states reach into our paychecks to send money to SoDak to pay your bills. We don't complain or demand you guys get a second job or raise your taxes to pay us back or insist your citizens take drug tests because by any accounting every citizen of your state is a "federal welfare recipient". What we DO notice is that SoDak and all the red states are the first to whine and bitch when another group needs aid while taking at least 50% more of our tax dollars than you pay in. Pledging not to raise taxes is really pledge to remain on welfare; thumb you nose at we "bill payers" and let we liberals pay your way while you refuse to offer the same to people in need. Ms. Noem, how can you honestly vote to retain your corporate agricultural welfare payments while refusing those seniors, disabled and hungry children a few bucks a month for food? Shame on you and your kind for your blatant selfishness.

  2. Cranky Old Dude 2013.09.14

    How much of the "highway trust fund" actually gets spent on highways? Or is it raided and frittered away? Didn't it go bust in the last few years and have to go to Congress, hardhat in hand?
    It is one thing to pay taxes and see them used wisely but it is not very inspiring to see how they are usually spent. I think a lot of the current anti-tax feeling is generated by the perception that our politicans aren't being very wise with that money.
    Maybe St. Dennis should have fixed some roads instead of blowing $10M on trying to attract more "workers" to SD.

  3. Chris S. 2013.09.14

    Toll highways, especially toll interstates, are a terrible idea. It hinders the whole process of transportation and is antithetical to the reason we have public roads in the first place. Plus, when every vehicle has to stop at a toll both (as on the interstate near Lawrence, Kansas, for example), it wastes a huge amount of everyone's time as transit comes to a halt to pay the stupid, ineffective toll.

  4. Rorschach 2013.09.14

    Instead of toll booths, the federal government needs to quit funding the roads and bridges in every county, city and town in the US. Let locals pay for the new bridge in Sioux Falls and every other city. Let states pay for state highways. The federal government need not continue borrowing money to fund all the needs and wants of state and local governments. The federal government doesn't need to have skin in every game. Focus, federal government, on Federal needs - i.e. the interstate highway system.

  5. caheidelberger Post author | 2013.09.14

    Ah, I do the study a disservice by using the term "toll booth." Writes Poole:

    "The cost estimates include fitting the entire Interstate highway system, both rural and urban, with state-of-the-art all-electronic tolling (AET) equipment. Fully interoperable tolling already exists statewide in California, Florida and Texas, as well as the 15 E-ZPass states in the Northeast and Midwest. With AET there would be no toll booths or toll plazas, and by 2016 nationwide electronic tolling interoperability is expected to be in place. That will mean a motorist needs only one account and one transponder to travel throughout the United States."

    See? No toll booths, no stop and go, just sensors along the road... and a transponder on every vehicle. How does that affect your critique, Chris?

  6. Deb Geelsdottir 2013.09.14

    The MM metro uses a transponder system for certain freeway lanes. Motorists buy the sticker online, affix it to the windshield and go. That's it.

    I would like to see the fuel tax retained in addition to a wheel tax. Therefore a little bit of progressivism is maintained in the tax system- those who can afford a big gas guzzler will be paying more fuel tax too.

    Is there any thinking about a wheel tax based on vehicle weight? Or would it be related to number of wheels? Or one flat rate?

  7. Roger Cornelius 2013.09.14

    There just may not be that much wrong with funding our state and federal highways.
    How often have you seen a street or highway constructed or redone and the next year or two the same stretch of street is being done over again because of poor planning or poor construction, or both. Is this kind of waste intentional to keep construction dollars flowing to private contractors?

    How much in administrative dollars are being misappropriated for non-construction or repairs?

    The first thing these departments and agencies will tell you is "we need more money" while failing to take a hard honest look at how previous dollars were spent.

  8. John 2013.09.14

    Be careful what you wish for . . . American roads owned by foreigners. Toll collection companies owned by foreigners. And the corruption, fraud, and crime when these roads are owned by Americans - twas enough to send at least one governor to prison. And if the profits are sent overseas it complicates road maintenance and upgrades.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_State_Toll_Highway_Authority
    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/01/highwaymen

    There are far better ways to manage the interstates and their maintenance than selling out. First, only authorize one exit every 20 to 30 miles; it's an interstate not an intrastate or intracity - similar to the situation in Germany. If locals want local roads allow them to build and maintain them. Second, collect vehicle registration fees on a graduated system per pound proportionate to the documented road damage caused by heavy vehicles. Presently cars subsidize trucks as the trucks pay a tiny fraction of the costs of road wear and damage they inflict. Road mileage is decreasing so taxing by mileage won't solve the problem; neither will increasing gas taxes since transportation fuel use is also declining.

  9. David Newquist 2013.09.14

    When I went to see my daughter at a hospital in Littleton, Co., (yes, just a few blocks from Columbine), we were nearing the end of the 12-hour drive, it was very late in the evening, and I took a tollway that circumvented Denver. I did not see any toll booths, except at the exit ramps, so kept happily driving. Some weeks later when I returned home, I received a toll bill from the tollway commission, which I happily paid. Anyone who has driven I-25 through Denver, especially at night, will know why one is willing to avoid it.

    There are a series of cameras on the tollway that take a picture of your license plate and the computer calls up your name and address from a data base, records your passages through the toll cameras, and sends out the bills. You can also register with the commission to get a discount for frequent usage.

    I am sure that the idea has some heated detractors, as does any idea in the U.S. these days. The country is more passionate about bickering and telling other people how uninformed and stupid they are than it is in getting anything done. And so we are nation with its collective finger up,,,,well, you know.

  10. Douglas Wiken 2013.09.14

    Do we really want any government to know exactly where we (or our cars went), when they went, and average speed between check point A and Check Point B?

    Wheel taxes should be assessed on weight per wheel, number of wheels and whatever else fits. Using any single tax skews the system as it does now by taxing only the first four wheels.

    It may be that initial penny-pinching on construction adds to total cost over time hundreds or thousands of times as much expense. Using steel re-bar instead of copper aluminum, or fiber-reinforced poly bar saves dollars up front, but multipiies costs over time especially when used in bridges and highways. Concrete without steel rebar will last and last and last. Steel re-bar probably limits concrete to less than 50 years of use. Roman concrete bridges made when rebar was unknown are till being used now for vehicles instead of horses.

    A perhaps too simple and too historical coverage of this is in a book called CONCRETE PLANET.

  11. Wayne B 2013.09.16

    The unfortunate part is wheel taxes (at least in this state) are capped at a maximum of 4 wheels... kinda counterproductive when it's the 18-wheelers that cause the damage.

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