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State's Way - Or the Highway
Transportation Strategy Board says it will take $5.5 billion over ten years to fix road woes. There's just one little problem
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Business New Haven
2/3/2003
By: Melissa Nicefaro
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When it comes right down to it, it's all about the money - and money is not exactly growing on trees in Connecticut these days.
Created in June 2001, the state's Transportation Strategy Board (TSB) was given the mission of examining transportation issues, prioritize solutions to those issues and coming back with the results. The group's report, unveiled January 6, has a total grocery bill exceeding $5.5 billion over the next ten years.
"It is indeed a perfect-world plan," admits Democratic House Speaker Moira Lyons (D-146). "In the legislature, the world is not perfect, as it isn't in our own lives. I don't think anyone expects a carte-blanche, 'Gosh this is wonderful, move forward and do everything they say' response."
So it isn't $5.5 billion or nothing, according to Lyons. And that's a good thing, since Republican Gov. John G. Rowland has said point-blank that there is no money to be found for such "improvements."
Connecticut budgets and spends roughly $1.4 billion per year on its transportation system, $900 million of which is paid by state revenues with the additional $500 million coming from federal sources.
"Although we are in extremely difficult financial times and we have this huge shadow of a deficit looming over Connecticut, our first responsibility is to the general fund," Lyons says. "I totally agree with that.
Lyons says the TSB's report is about more than transportation alone; it is about the state's economic well-being.
"The purpose of this is not transportation as much as economic development and how we want our state to look," says Lyons.
The report calls for $3.49 billion to be spent on improving the state's roads, $1.3 billion on public transit, $62.6 million on water travel improvements including feeder barge upgrading, and $41.5 million spent on making air travel more attractive for business travelers. (Projected costs include study fees as well as actual physical improvements.)
Tanya Court, director of public policy and programs for the Southwestern Area Commerce & Industry Association's (better known as SACIA), says there are mixed signals coming out of Hartford regarding the TSB report and the lack of money to support its findings.
"The state budget crisis is causing folks to address those issues and not focus on the report," Court says. "There's somewhat of a feeling that the legislature is not going to move forward on the recommendations. Not acting is not going to be acceptable. We do have a transportation problem in southwestern Connecticut."
Court agrees that it's not an all-or-nothing deal. The TSB report did recommend several items that were not going to cost any additional money.
"For example," Court notes, "developing an effective performance-measurement system to form the basis for continuous improvements and evaluate the effectiveness of the program. They also need to deal with some of their governance issues. For example, addressing some of the issues that would impede implementation. If it takes you several years to hire a consultant for a project, you really haven't moved ahead."
Concludes Court: "If we're all very creative, there is a solution and we can move ahead on some elements and not just throw up our hands. That's not really an option. We're choking on ourselves here by not freeing up the congestion and improving the mobility."
Solutions (read: dollars) can be found in several areas, according to TSB officials. A "special" ten-year tax that would hike the state's six-percent sales tax to 6.5 percent for ten years beginning July 1 could generate $265 million a year - or $2.65 billion over the ten-year timeframe.
Revenues at that level would fund the proposed strategic actions and are above and beyond the $7 billion of federal and state funds the state's Department of Transportation (DOT) currently expects to receive over the next ten years to fund the capital component of the existing transit and roads.
Reintroducing highway tolls is another option. The TSB suggests that in order to expedite the construction of any expansion of either I-84 or I-95 during the 20-year strategy period, DOT should consider instituting tolls. The tolls would be used to pay exclusively for the construction of the proposed expansion projects.
The TSB also requests that DOT consider installation of a dedicated toll to pay for the construction of the ongoing expansion of the Pearl Harbor Memorial ('Q') Bridge and related highway improvements.
Hiking gasoline taxes is yet another option, notwithstanding the jitters many consumers already feel about gas prices in the shadow of possible war in the Middle East. The TSB recommended increasing the motor fuels tax from its present 25 cents per gallon by three cents on July 1 of each year through 2007, inclusive. The fuel tax would thus rise to 40 cents per gallon by July 1, 2007. This proposed solution could bring $1.8 billion into the coffers over five years.
Republican State Sen. William Aniskovich of Branford says he has "serious misgivings about any proposals that require tax increases dedicated to transportation projects because of the state of the budget."
Explains Aniskovich: "The reality is that we're looking at [transportation] the wrong way. We have a significant special transportation fund, with nearly a $1 billion in dedicated revenues. That is in addition to the general fund. The issue ought to be, 'How do we prioritize the transportation projects that are on the table?' to assure that the ones that get moved are the ones that help business."
"I don't think that taxing businesses is an alternative that many legislators or businesses would embrace."
Instead, Aniskovich wants to see the legislature concentrate on the I-95 corridor from New York east to Madison - the so-called Coastal Corridor - as a priority for transportation investment.
"It is the area where we have the greatest amount of congestion and the most significant amount of business potential," Aniskovich says. "With all due respect to Hartford County and southeastern Connecticut, it would be a wise investment to earmark as many dollars as we can to that coastal corridor."
Transportation problems are statewide, according to Moira Lyons, and while Fairfield County bears the brunt of auto congestion, the TSB report and proposed solutions address the entire state.
Says Lyons, who represents Stamford: "People from every corner of Connecticut echo the same sentiment: If we don't do something, businesses aren't going to be able to expand or they will refuse to come here."
Aniskovich says it's time to take action on a variety of ideas that have been on the table for quite a while.
"For starters, we absolutely have to have additional parking at train stations up and down the corridor in order to encourage more people to get onto the trains," Aniskovich says. "You cannot expand train service in this coastal corridor without significant new parking.
"Secondly, I think you need to get much more interconnectivity in the system than we have right now. We need to link trains to bus and van services that will move people to points of employment from train stations," he explains.
"Finally, we need to really invest in the barge feeder program to get more freight off the highways and into our port system. That will alleviate congestion on the highways," Aniskovich says.
"The state can double-deck I-95 or it could widen the Merritt Parkway, but that would [precipitate] all sorts of howling and gnashing of teeth," says the Branford Republican.
The bottom line is that there isn't much in the way of highway improvements that can add capacity in the problem areas of the state.
"It is equally negative to New Haven County businesses to have that southwestern Connecticut traffic because it's the portal through which you move to get to New Haven County," Aniskovich notes. "We have just as much an interest in mitigating that congestion as we do making the Q Bridge a nicer commute."
Lyons acknowledges that taxing state businesses more heavily might is not the ideal answer.
But businesses have said, she adds, that their No. 1 problem in terms of expansion is traffic concerns.
"To solve the problem, we are going to have to find additional revenues at probably one of the most difficult times [historically] in the state of Connecticut to find additional revenues."
"I will be speaking to various business organizations and asking them to help me come up with a concept by which they can be part - monetarily - of the solution," Lyon says.
"Business is important. Without business we don't have jobs. Without jobs we can't take care of our families and without that we don't have the income tax and we can't take care of people who have a very difficult time right now with health care or education. It's this giant circle that we are a part of. Each one of us is part of that wheel."
The DOT Shopping List
The state Department of Transportation's budget for fiscal years 2003-2005 includes spending on 494 projects, altogether costing $1.65 billion in federal funds to be matched by $665 million in state funds and $43 million in local funds.
Major projects included in the DOT budget include:
o $141.5 million of the estimated $600 million cost for the replacement and demolition of the Pearl Harbor Memorial ('Q') Bridge in New Haven.
o $80 million of the estimated $108.5 million cost for reconstruction of I-95 in Bridgeport.
o $42.5 million for the Bridgeport Intermodal Center.
o $20 million of the estimated $53 million for the U.S. Rt. 7 Brookfield bypass.
o $60 million of the estimated $72 million for the U.S. 7 and Merritt Parkway interchange improvements in Norwalk.
o $40 million of the estimated $116.5 million for the replacement of the Moses Wheeler Bridge (I-95 Stratford-Milford).
o $70 million of the estimated $172 million for the reconstruction of I-84 in Waterbury.
o $123 million of the estimated $250 million for the replacement of the Metro North catenary system from Greenwich to New Haven.
o $30 million for the construction of the Waterbury bus garage.
o $55.5 million for the construction of the New Haven bus garage.
o $225 million for the replacement/rehabilitation of highway bridges throughout the state.
o $25 million for general safety-related improvements to highways throughout the state.
Source: Connecticut Department of Transportation
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