A burgeoning global economy is pressuring America to raise its capacity to meet a rising demand to ship goods overseas, but where is the cash needed to build new roads and improve existing ones?
No one offered a solution Friday, but participants at a special Coalfields Expressway Authority gathering in Beckley heard plenty of grim statistics to mull over.
Scott Hercik, a transportation and international trade adviser to the Appalachian Regional Commission, alluded to a virtual explosion in global trade in less than a half century.
Back in 1970, it comprised 7 percent of the American economy, but rose to 25 percent in three decades, and by 2050, the estimate is it will make up half of the business, Hercik said.
“Access to this global economy is absolutely critical,” he told the meeting.
“If you’re isolated, that’s bad news. And your businesses really struggle to compete, and that will get worse the longer you struggle with this issue of physical isolation.”
Jim Sothen, a veteran engineer with the state Division of Highways, acknowledged the infrastructure simply isn’t in place to accommodate the rapid growth envisioned in global trade.
“We have to find a way to come up with funds to build a highway system and funds to keep the system up to date,” he said.
Sothen prefaced his remarks by saying he didn’t intend to leave a “gloom and doom” scenario, but emphasized highway funding is static and is likely to remain as such unless a means can be found to pump needed cash into the DOH, as inflation keeps gnawing away at resources with higher costs in materials, administration and construction.
“As revenue sources stay flat, there is less and less money to be put back into expansion,” he said.
More than half of what the DOH takes in from its four sources of money is plowed back into routine maintenance, Sothen said.
“We’re not in this by ourselves,” he said. “All states are having trouble with funding. Even at the national level, we’re being told by 2009 there’s going to be a shortfall in the highway trust fund. We don’t simply want to tuck our heads in the sand and say there’s no money, we can’t do anything. We need to start a dialogue with legislators, community leaders, the general public, the public-private sector, and how we fund transportation in the future.”
Delegate Richard Browning, D-Wyoming, and the authority’s executive director, has been a strong critic of the Manchin administration’s six-year plan entailing 170 projects at a cost of $20 billion, since southern West Virginia was left out of the picture when priorities were assigned.
Reverting to his former role as an English teacher, Browning recalled the theme of lawyer Atticus Finch in “To Kill A Mockingbird,” admonishing daughter Scout to walk in another’s shoes to get his viewpoint, explaining why he invited Sothen to speak.
“We always want more money in this part of the state because we think we deserve more money, and we actually do,” Browning said. “I believe that. But before we criticize and wonder why people do certain things, we have to remember people responsible are looking at the whole state, trying to make the best decisions they can, based on need.”
In West Virginia, the financial crunch is even more pronounced.
Sothen reminded the gathering that West Virginia and only three other states — Delaware, North Carolina and Virginia — essentially maintain all public roads at the state level. In fact, West Virginia ranks sixth among state-maintained systems with 36,000 miles and 7,000 bridges. The state leads the nation in this category from a percentage standpoint — 92.
West Virginia is one step away from the cellar in capital investment in roads at $7,594 per lane mile, contrasted with $24,000 nationally.
“We’re losing ground,” Sothen said.
A recent report showed 10 percent of the roads are in poor condition and 37 percent of the bridges are substandard, while 15 percent are structurally deficient and 22 percent are functionally obsolete.
West Virginia motorists shell out 49.9 cents per gallon of fuel in combined state and federal taxes, or some $269 a year assuming the typical driver logs 16,000 miles and burns up 853 gallons of fuel. Besides the 31.5 cents of gas tax proceeds, the DOH also gets money from registration fees, the privilege tax and miscellaneous sources, Sothen said.
Since 2000, he said, the money derived for the DOH has risen a mere 1.5 percent, not even keeping abreast with inflation.
“We’re losing our purchasing power,” he said.
Maryland’s gas tax is 23.5 cents, but the state is obligated to oversee a mere 5,140 miles of highways, since all others are kept up by cities, townships and counties, Sothen said. This explains why Maryland can allot $126,000 per lane mile to its system.
As gas prices spiral upward, Sothen warned, the state could reap far fewer bucks since motorists, at some point, will be inclined to drive less and buy fuel-economy vehicles at trade-in time.
Once all the routine chores are performed, the state is left with about $114 million for improvements, and in this fiscal year, there are no special federal earmarks, which traditionally pump between $35 million and $50 million into such ventures as Coalfields Expressway and King Coal Highway, he said. With only $114 million left after expenses, Sothen said, it would take 200 years to finance the 170 projects in limbo.
“We’ve got to find some other way to help us finance highways,” he said.
At one stage, he used a slide to show it costs an average West Virginian a mere 74 cents a day to use the state’s road system.
“We all agree that we need the highways,” he said. “We all agree that we need to improve capacity. We can’t continue to think in terms of letting the gas tax take care of it.”
Browning arranged the meeting at Tamarack to draw attention to the road funding difficulty and inspire some dialogue toward finding a solution.
“If we don’t make it happen, shame on us,” he added.