Is President Barack Obama’s avowed penchant for bipartisanship a double-edged sword? Could it sometimes mean that poor decisions or poor personnel choices are carried foward? And are there some transportation issues the U.S. has yet to seriously address? In this Guest Voice post blogger Average Joe looks at these issues. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers.
On Obama’s Bipartisanship And Transportation Realities
by Average Joe
I am a little disappointed in President Obama’s attempt at bipartisanism. One of his attempts was the nomination of Representative Ray LaHood (R-IL) for Transportation Secretary. I am disappointed because LaHood may be as wrongheaded as his predecessor, Secretary Mary Peters.
Their odd ideas on funding highways and bridges may be a ruse designed to avoid the hard decisions which real transportation professionals face everyday. There has not been enough money to fund transportation since the last gas tax in 1992. However, it seems they would love to privatize roads in lieu of actually funding them. The Wall Street Journal outlines several banks who would love to invest in roads as opposed to unlocking our debilitating credit crisis. Their interest in roads over consumer credit would indicate the huge amount of money to be made by potential long term leases of roads and bridges. Most of these roads were paid for in the early fifties by our grandparents.
I guess the new plan is to give private companies our roads and allow them to make a pile of bucks for merely maintaining them. Apparently Lahood and Peters feel private roads are a great idea.
I have another idea.
Let’s pay for the maintenance ourselves and keep the money the private companies would make.
Let’s pay for that maintenance by a tried and true method called gas taxes. Gas taxes are the purest form of non-regressive taxes we pay. It is very simple, you drive, you pay. Granted, there are huge subsidies for trucking. That may be another article for another day. There is also the problem that gas taxes are getting a little more complicated with the advent of alternatively fueled vehicles.
The inconvenient truth that people have read the Inconvenient Truth and bought alternatively fueled vehicles is, well, inconvenient for the gas tax system. Many government-hating conservatives would like to use alternative fueled vehicles as an excuse to privatize the transportation system. They point to inefficiencies and bureaucracies in departments of transportation to perpetuate a conservative notion. That notion is all government workers are either incompetent or lazy.
I agree, socialism has failed miserably and government has no business performing many functions. I however, can tell you having worked as a transportation engineer in both the public and private sectors, profit never saves lives in road or bridge building. Engineers have a funny saying about the concept of “better, cheaper and faster.” We say you can have two but not all three.
There could be another advantage of taxing traditionally fueled vehicles and giving the alternately fueled vehicles a pass. It might be an incentive to use less petroleum. Thomas L. Friedman a New York Times columnist and someone who obviously understands the Middle East and petro-politics, justifies nicely reasons to tax gas while it is still a buck and a half a gallon. I think his message falls somewhere between the rabid environmentalist who would like to see gas at ten bucks a gallon and the American Petroleum Institute (API).
The API’s message seems to be gas is good and gas will last forever. Friedman tells us there are hidden costs to using petroleum. He says the government, in effect, subsidizes petroleum by not including the costs of wars and other side deals to keep the Middle East and petro-dictators semi-stable. Although he would tax gas for the reasons laid out previously, I would tax gas to get what I believe would be the final benefit of fully funding road building.
The last benefit of the taxes recommended by the bipartisan commission formed to look into transportation infrastructure would be congestion relief. A forty cent gas tax would begin to address one of our least productive uses of petroleum, sitting in traffic. 84 percent of the American people seem to agree. Ironically, Secretary Peters disagreed with the commission’s recommendation to fully fund infrastructure. Her report cites a “lack of investor confidence in current transportation policy.”
Of course there is a lack of confidence. Under funded highway maintenance programs and anti-government propaganda have made the American people believe nothing can be done. I’m not confident either.
I especially lack confidence when people like Mary Peters and Ray LaHood are in charge.
AverageJoe works as a civil engineer in the transportation sector. He has both owned a consulting engineering business and worked in the public sector. He lives with his wife and daughter in north Alabama. He describes himself a “militant moderate” who prefers solutions over rhetoric and personality. After unsuccessfully submitting an OPED a week to the New York Times and Washington Post for several years, he began blogging at www.americansilentmajority.com in 2007.