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No Clear Path For State's Highway Funding

OKRoads.com

John Baker knows a thing or two about how dangerous it can be to drive on Alcoa Highway. He lives just off the four-lane road in south Knoxville.

“Depending on the time of day, it’s sometimes a kind of scary thing to pull out onto Alcoa Highway,” he says. “It is definitely sort of a hold-your-breath-and-punch-it kind of deal.”

Baker’s car is one of the estimated 47,000 vehicles Alcoa Highway handles every day. State transportation officials say they want to make the route connecting Knoxville and Maryville safer. They also say it will cost a lot of money.

A Congressional agreement brokered in December means federal money will keep flowing to Tennessee for highway repair and construction – some $300 million to $400 million over a five-year period. But it won’t be enough to support all of the state’s highway projects. Most of it is going to come out of Tennessee’s pocket.

“Increasingly, the federal government is looking to states to take up more of the burden,” said Mark Burton, of the UT Transportation Research Center.

The burden is heavy. The twelve-and-a-half mile Alcoa Highway remodeling project is estimated to cost $270 million to $280 million. And of course, that’s just one item. Transportation Commissioner John Schroer says the state’s total highway repair backlog clocks in at about $6 billion. And it’s growing.

“We’re gonna maintain our roads. We will have some capital dollars available,” Schroer told reporters last September. “But roads like Alcoa Highway, and other roads across the state, will have to be pushed further down the line.”

TDOT’s infrastructure projects are funded almost entirely from state and federal gas taxes. More fuel-efficient vehicles and cheaper gas prices that have benefited drivers have also undercut the department’s pool of money.

One option, then, is raising Tennessee’s gas tax. But that hasn’t happened since 1989, and a tax hike has little support among state legislators. Senate Transportation Committee chair Jim Tracy (R-Shelbyville) urged a broader view, looking at multiple solutions.

“As we speak today, we’re trying to put together a comprehensive plan. We need to find out how much we need, revenue-wise, to fulfill the six-billion-dollars-plus in backlogged projects,” Tracy said.

There are other options, but none of them are especially appealing for fiscal conservatives. Federal, state and local governments frequently issue bonds to finance public works projects. But Governor Bill Haslam says that’s a non-starter for him.

“Some states borrow money to do that,” the governor said last fall. “I’m committed to us not doing that. At the end of the day, we’re not going to pull anything out of the air that will magically produce good roads for us.”

Sen. Tracy has his own idea: returning more than a quarter-billion dollars the General Assembly removed from the highway fund between 2002 and 2008. Other lawmakers have suggested raising registration fees on electric vehicles, or re-directing the money collected from taxes on tire sales.

“We’re going to spend the next year trying to come up with a plan and how much money we’re going to need to do that, and figure out what we’re going to do to pay for it,” Tracy said.

Despite the urgency Governor Haslam gave to the highway funding issue in two cross-state road trips last year, he said last week the legislative package he’ll present to lawmakers this session will not include plans for a long-term solution. Meanwhile, that $6 billion highway to-do list waits.

So do people across the state waiting for local projects to break ground, or to be finished. In south Knox County, John Baker isn’t holding his breath.

“Since my wife and I moved here eighteen years ago, [widening Alcoa Highway] was imminent, apparently, then, and…at this point, I’ll believe it when I see it.”