A suspension or "holiday" in the collection of all or part of the federal gas tax -- even if temporary -- would endanger the highway industry's attempts to reduce the backlog of U.S. highway infrastructure construction needs. But citing gas prices that may reach $3 per gallon in summer, in May Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) introduced a bill that would do just that.

Ironically -- at virtually the same moment -- the nation's attention was directed to a blue-ribbon report from the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI), which ranked 68 U.S. cities in terms of their traffic congestion, and estimated some of the penalties paid by driver stalled in traffic. The TTI report garnered extensive media attention both nationally and locally, and sparked further analysis by other industry groups.

The juxtaposition portrayed a country ready to suspend the means by which traffic congestion can be alleviated, right as the data showing the extent and economic costs of congestion became available.
 

House bill to suspend tax

In a response to rising gas prices, on April 24 Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) introduced H.R. 1575, which would suspend the entire federal motor fuels tax and permanently repeal 4.3 cents per gallon of the tax.

The current Secretary of Energy, Spence Abraham, last year co-sponsored a similar bill, which failed.

Sensenbrenner's Freedom from Unfair Energy Levy Act (FUEL) would  place a six-month moratorium on federal motor fuel excise taxes, including the 18.3 cent per gallon gasoline tax and the 24.3 cent per gallon tax on diesel fuel, and permanently eliminate the 4.3 cent per gallon tax increase enacted in 1993.

"The FUEL act's moratorium will provide immediate assistance to every American who now bears the burden of steep fuel costs," Sensenbrenner said.

In a devious and crude swipe at the highway lobby -- and ignoring the economic benefits that adequate highways bring -- Sensenbrenner said "Some have argued that money from fuel taxes is more useful in Washington than in Americans' pockets ... the economic damage caused by high fuel prices far outweighs any impact on federal spending that a six-month moratorium could cause."

While President Bush has said he wants to focus on long-term solutions to America's energy shortages, and not quick fixes like suspending the gas tax, which do nothing to solve the energy shortage, he has not ruled out suspending the federal tax.

With pressure building May 11, Bush correctly told a group of reporters that high prices for gas partly are the result of a lack of refining capacity. "Our nation must expand our refining capacity, especially within this hemisphere," the president said. But he did not rule out a gas tax cut, understanding that consumer ire over high gas prices could cost Republicans seats in Congress in 2002.
 

ARTBA analysis shows pain

In early May, the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) analyzed the pain that Sensenbrenner's legislation would inflict on state transportation improvement programs.

ARTBA found that because the existing federal surface transportation law -- the 1998 Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) -- directly links federal highway investment to Highway Trust Fund receipts, the bill would cut federal investment in state highway improvements by $6.7 billion in FY 2003, $8.8 billion in FY 2004 and $5 billion thereafter.

Under the Sensenbrenner proposal, ARTBA said, California would lose the most federal support, $600 million in FY 2003, followed by Texas ($500 million). New York ($338 million), Pennsylvania ($338 million), Florida ($313 million), Illinois ($224 million), Georgia ($233 million) and Wisconsin ($131 million) would also experience major reductions in federal highway investment.

"Repealing or reducing the federal motor fuels tax would delay important transportation improvement projects and rob the nation of air quality benefits that accrue from less congested and well-maintained highways," ARTBA President Pete Ruane said.

"Legislation introduced last year to cut the federal motor fuels tax was soundly defeated three times in the U.S. Senate because it was bad public policy," Ruane said. "It's still bad public policy this year and there are no guarantees a cut would even be passed along to consumers."
 

Beyond funding cuts

Also, the ramifications of a gas tax holiday go way beyond the cuts to road funding as outlined by ARTBA.

TEA-21 provides unprecedented levels of federal funds for surface transportation construction, spends down the "balance" accumulated after years of inadequate disbursements from the Highway Trust Fund, and even steers collected gas taxes in excess of the annual obligation ceiling to the states to be spent on road construction under the same formula as the conventional funds.

Supporters of a gas tax holiday say there would be no reduction in funds available for road construction, because disbursements from the general fund would make up the difference between the loss of gas taxes and the obligations of the program. But there are two problems with this approach.

o First, general fund disbursements for road construction would bring annual highway spending back under the noses of the House and Senate appropriations committees.

This is bad for the industry because historically it always has been the appropriations committees which have cut back on budgeted highway spending in each year's appropriations bills. They would release most of the money for annual obligations, but hold on to a portion of the funds to improve the government's cash flow. Treasury then would write an IOU to the trust fund for the difference.

As crafted by then-Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), chair of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, through a series of procedural checks, TEA-21 outmaneuvers the appropriations committees to permit unfettered spending of Highway Trust Fund revenues, while spending down those IOUs to meet TEA-21 annual obligation ceilings.

At the May annual meeting of the Construction Writers Association, an aide to the House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee pledged his committee will fight Shuster's checks tooth-and-nail as TEA-21 reauthorization commences in two years.
 o Second, whether gas prices remained high or low, it would become very difficult for government to reinstate the suspended gas tax after its temporary suspension had expired.
 The temptation to keep the tax in abeyance, maybe permanently, would be very tempting to legislators and hard to resist in a divided Congress, with devastating results to the road program.
 

New DOT emphasis on congestion

In the meantime, the problem of traffic congestion was getting new emphasis under the Bush administration's Department of Transportation.

While traffic congestion and relief through construction was a topic apparently swept under the rug under the Clinton administration -- which saw road construction as a necessary evil and detrimental to the environment -- the current administration is looking to capacity improvements made possible by TEA-21, as well as non-building solutions, to relieve congestion.

"Congestion in U.S. transportation is a challenge that faces every American, simply because the vitality of the U.S. economy is so closely linked to an efficient transportation system," said U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure in early April.

"Congestion and delay not only waste our time as individuals, they also burden our businesses and our entire economy with inefficiency and higher costs," Mineta said. "Congestion and inefficiency in transportation are not just inconvenient and aggravating ... they are also a tax that burdens every business and every individual."

Major action is underway at the Department to tackle surface transportation congestion, Mineta said. "Technology offers particular promise for transportation," he said. "Federal research helps build stronger roads and bridges. With new technologies and new, longer lasting materials that are easier to apply, we can 'get in, get it done, and get out.' The safer and less disruptive that infrastructure repairs and improvements are to the user, the better."
 

New studies underscore congestion

Then, in May, right after Mineta's comments to the House and Senate, The Road Information Program released a study -- Stuck in Traffic: How Increasing Traffic Congestion is Putting the Brakes on Economic Growth -- which showed how traffic congestion is hurting the U.S. economy and business operations.

TRIP's research from a variety of primary sources -- including TTI's 2001 Urban Mobility Study (see below) -- found this country's economy requires higher levels and greater reliability of freight transport for both business-to-business and business-to-customer exchanges.

"Increasing traffic congestion nationwide threatens to put the brakes on the nation's economic growth," said Will Wilkins, TRIP executive director. "The high quality of life that Americans enjoy today increasingly is jeopardized because our highway system is inadequate to meet the growing need for the reliable movement of goods."

Commercial truck travel increased by more than 37 percent from 1990 to 1999, from 96 billion miles of travel in 1990 to 132 billion miles of travel nearly a decade later, TRIP reported.

Some 72 percent of the estimated $7 trillion worth of goods shipped from sites nationwide is transported on trucks, TRIP found. An additional 12 percent is transported by courier services, bringing the total to 84 percent of all goods shipped that travel over roads. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is stimulating this increased reliance on freight transport between major urban areas.

And trucks are not only using roadways to move freight, they're storing it there as well, at least temporarily. "The increasing use of 'just-in-time' delivery techniques have made trucks rolling warehouses and made businesses increasingly dependent on reliable goods movement in and out of urban areas," TRIP said.

TRIP could have added the fact that trucks awaiting just-in-time delivery often park on the sides, or even the center, of roadways as they await their delivery slot, exacerbating congestion and burdening pavements.

The $54 billion a year to be spent on road construction in 2001 is expected to produce $308 billion in benefits, in reduced congestion, improved safety and reduced road and vehicle maintenance costs, based on a DOT report showing that the average benefit for each $1 spent on road construction is $5.70.

The U.S. DOT projects that freight deliveries will double in most regions of the country by 2020. Moreover, 82 percent of the anticipated new goods and products shipments will be by trucks that will travel over an increasingly congested road system.

The best way to relieve traffic congestion is through a comprehensive set of strategies that should include expanding the capacity of key streets and highways; improving transit service; expanding walking and bicycling facilities; encouraging alternatives to driving alone when possible during rush hour and improved, community-based planning, TRIP found.

TRIP suggested roadway capacity improvements, new roads and highway links, added transit service, sidewalks and bike paths, and improved incident management and driver information systems be parts of a comprehensive approach to regional traffic congestion relief.
 

TTI study spurs dialogue

Both the TRIP study and an antihighway study came out in coordination with TTI's annual report on congestion published each year by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University.
 TTI's analysis found that "rush hour" in the nation's major cities has doubled in less than 20 years, increasing from nearly three hours (morning  and evening combined) in 1982 to almost six hours in 1999. "Congested travel periods today consume nearly half of the daylight hours in any given workday," TTI said in its 2001 Urban Mobility Study, released May 7.

In the 68 urban areas that TTI studied, the institute found the cost of traffic congestion nationwide totaled $78 billion, representing the cost of 4.5 billion hours of extra travel time and 6.8 billion gallons of fuel wasted while sitting in traffic. The average delay is 36 hours per person per year. The average rush hour trip takes 32 percent more time than the same trip taken during non-rush hour conditions.
 

Antihighway lobby responds

In the meantime, the Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP) -- an "Inside the Beltway" coalition of environmental and antisprawl/antihighway groups -- released its own report analyzing the TTI study, and highway interests howled.

That's because STPP's report -- Easing the Burden: A Companion Analysis of the Texas Transportation Institute's (TTI) Congestion Study -- misused data from the TTI report, alleged TRIP in an analysis of STPP's analysis.

"STPP's analysis finds that the places adding roads most aggressively over the past 10 years have had no greater success in fighting congestion than those not adding roads," the group said. "In the 23 metro areas that added the most to their road systems, road space per person increased by 17 percent. In the 23 places that added the least to their road systems, road space per person actually fell by 13 percent."

The STPP report bases its conclusion about the ineffectiveness of road building on its analysis of lane mileage data of major streets and highways in the 68 major urban areas studied in TTI's report, TRIP said.

STPP said mileage grew by 14.8 percent from 1990 to 1999, reporting this increase in lane mileage is the result of new road capacity construction, TRIP said. "In reality, the additional lane mileage is largely the result of changes in the area in each region considered urbanized and changes in the classification of roads," TRIP said.

A more realistic estimate of lane mile growth from 1990 to 1999 comes from the Federal Highway Administration, TRIP said, which reports that national lane mileage of all roads during the period increased by only 1.3 percent.

"While we respect the right of an advocacy group such as the Surface Transportation Policy Project to promote their own transportation policies, it's unfortunate they choose to do so by misrepresenting data," TRIP's Wilkins said.