In doing so it made state DOTs hopping mad.

The Washington, D.C.-based Surface Transportation Policy Project
(STPP) riled up state DOTs the week of the annual meeting of the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials (AASHTO) by releasing its second annual "Pothole Index" to an often-credulous press last November.

The STPP action is cynical because it mimics one of the themes of the highway lobby -- the need to repair and better maintain our crumbling highway infrastructure -- and misuses it to oppose new road construction.

"Highways marred by potholes and cracks are jostling American drivers while forcing them to fork out hard-earned dollars on car repairs," STPP said in Potholes & Politics 1998. "Yet billions of dollars which could be used to improve the condition of America's busy freeways are being used to build new roads at the edges of our metropolitan areas, where fewer people live."

STPP developed its Pothole Index by determining how much flexible
federal funds each state chooses to spend on repairs per mile of urban highway in need of repair.

"The State Pothole Index reveals which states are neglecting to basic
road repair in favor of building new roads," STPP said, finding Arkansas is spending the least per-mile to repair its roads, followed by Maryland, Colorado, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Michigan, Virginia, New York, Illinois and Wisconsin.

But AASHTO and its member departments furiously disputed the validity of the Pothole Index at their annual meeting in Boston Nov. 6-10. "Relying on partial information and distorted statistics, [STPP] has once more attacked state transportation departments with false and misleading conclusions about highway spending," fumed AASHTO in an uncharacteristically heated statement.

STPP distorts maintenance funding by ranking the amount of federal
money allocated to repairs. "The report ignores the vast amount of state and local funding that is also used for highway repairs," said retiring AASHTO executive director Frank Francois. "Federal funding amounts to only one quarter of all spending, and to rank states according to the use of those funds is therefore a complete deception."

STPP says that states are embarking on costly new road projects rather than adequately maintaining roads. However, of all total highway spending at all levels of government, less than one-fifth is spent on new construction and capacity. STPP also makes no differentiation as to the widely varying elements that contribute to roadway conditions in each state.
 

Cheap shot backfires

In Illinois, STPP's cheap shot appeared to backfire, with the Chicago Tribune going beyond the spoon-fed news release to reveal that 98 percent of the Illinois DOT's budget is spent on repair of the existing system, with the remainder for updating and expanding major arterial streets for which the state is responsible.

"We haven't been in a road-building mode for years," said Jim Slifer, IDOT Highway Division director, the Tribune reported.

And STPP's Pothole Index also has galvanized some of the most powerful elements of the surface transportation community. On Nov. 7, AASHTO's Planning Committee urged AASHTO at-large to work with TRIP, The Road Information Program, to develop public information on issues identified by STPP. It also urged AASHTO at-large to ask the Federal Highway Administration to identify misuse of FHWA data in STPP's report.

Among TRIP's missions this year will be to respond to such public
relations campaigns by anti-highway forces, which mistakenly suggest that highway expenditures are detrimental to the environment and regional development, and to counter anti-highway groups' efforts to block funding for new highway projects and expansion.

STPP's method is to use the underfunding of maintenance to militate
against suburban "sprawl", the new buzz word among the anti-highway elite.

Suburban sprawl -- supposed to be encouraged by highway construction -- now is presumed to be draining central cities of their residents, destroying farmland, forcing new investments in suburban infrastructure while precipitating disinvestment in central city infrastructure, and even contributing to presumed global warming.

And like a horrific infection, sprawl is presumed to be self-perpetuating, attracting even more vehicles to overloaded streets and roads, which requires more widening, which attracts more vehicles, ad infinitum.

This is a rephrasing of the "chicken-or-the-egg" question, in which
planners are challenged to address the issue of what comes first: vehicles, or highways. In truth, each are so intimately wound with each other that they cannot be separated, except by spurious propagandists seeking an easy headline.

The real question is: "How does unfettered mobility in America's free market economy contribute to economic growth and consumer choice?" And then, "How does road construction multiply economic growth?" In this context, congestion and economic development are the kinds of "problems" that most other countries in the world would like to have.

Other than the STPP fracas, AASHTO in Boston took a "breather" after the hectic year of surface transportation reauthorization that had just been completed. AASHTO and its member departments are dedicating themselves to making sure the new Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century is implemented according to law.

"AASHTO's energies and efforts have shifted to implementing this major, complex bill, which continues many of the key ISTEA concepts, but which contains many new features and requirements," Francois said.
 

Horsley to succeed Francois

In the meantime the AASHTO Board of Directors announced that John C. Horsley would succeed Francois as executive director, as of Feb. 1, 1999.

Dan Flowers, 1999 president of AASHTO and director of the     Arkansas Department of Transportation, said, "John Horsley comes
to AASHTO with a wide range of experience that will serve the     Association well. During his years at the Department of     Transportation he has worked with many groups at the federal, state and local level to build a broad consensus of support for     transportation."

Horsley brings a profoundly mulitmodal perspective to AASHTO and has a long career in government. For the past five years he has worked in the Secretary's Office of the U. S. Department of Transportation and since April 1998 served as associate deputy secretary and director of the Office of Intermodalism. In that position he has served as the Department's advocate for intermodal policies to improve freight efficiency, passenger convenience and to encourage teamwork among all modes of transportation.

Horsley's credentials are less hard highway-oriented than the highway industry might have preferred. He assisted the White House in the development of the Millennium Trails Program. And as recently as AASHTO's annual meeting in Boston in November 1998, he spoke on such red-flag topics as "Intermodal Program Opportunities: Resolving Traffic Congestion and Air Quality Mitigation", and invoked the "S-word" in "U.S. DOT Perspective on Sustainable Transportation and Planning".

As the deputy assistant secretary for governmental affairs at the
U.S. DOT, Horsley guided the department's outreach program on the
Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA). He also
worked closely with Congress, state and local governments,
transportation constituencies, labor and citizens groups on such
initiatives as the National Highway System designation, innovative
finance, livable communities, border crossing efficiency and
departmental restructuring, AASHTO said.

Francois was AASHTO executive director for 18 years. A titan of transportation both literally and figuratively, Francois joined AASHTO in 1980 as the transportation community grappled with its direction at the conclusion of the Interstate construction era.

Francois helped steer the nation's transportation system into a new era of intermodalism, while fighting for highways as the centerpiece of the system. He was one of many leaders scrapping for higher funding for surface transportation, and for partnering with allied associations like the National Governors' Association.

Horsley will have to determine whether AASHTO's existing staff structure is one in which he has confidence as AASHTO moves to the next century. We all have much riding on his decision.