Outgoing District 9 state Sen. Billy Wayne Bailey was stirring the pot in Charleston again last week by suggesting the day would come when feeder roads along the West Virginia Turnpike would have toll booths. While we hope and desire for that scenario to never happen, you shouldn’t ever say never.
We definitely expect many future highway projects in West Virginia will have tolls. Skyrocketing construction and maintenance costs simply demand it. And the picture of gloom and doom continues to be painted when it comes to road funding of any type.
Federal dollars are reportedly drying up.
Projections this week showed a number of local projects would take 80 years at the minimum to finish under the current funding formulas and structure.
Former state highways commissioner Joe Denault, who represents the pro-transportation group Keep West Virginia Moving, told lawmakers “there is no silver bullet” or “white knight in shining armor” to solve the budget crisis.
Enter the legislative and executive branches.
Our state leaders must consider a complete overhaul of how West Virginia is going to fund the transportation department’s budget in the future because relying on fuel taxes for the bulk of it is no longer a legitimate or sufficient source.
The Mountain State is just so far behind the rest of the country when it comes to adequate and safe highway transportation corridors that we can’t afford not to have our state budget restructured.
Coal severance taxes are providing the state with a cup runneth over right now, and while we understand the need to continue retiring West Virginia’s billions of debt, a hard look has to be taken at funneling more money toward transportation projects while we have a surplus.
Bold, aggressive, forward thinking from West Virginia’s elected leaders is a must. We keep saying it, and we’re going to keep repeating it over and over.
Every single day that goes by, and every month when we hear of multimillion-dollar spikes in revenue collections over the budget, is time we are wasting when it comes to roads.
Is anybody listening?
