Federal Funding for Freight Projects in Limbo

Hundreds of massive highway projects on critical freight routes are among a list of transportation needs that states have sent to Washington in hopes of qualifying for the federal funding program Projects of National and Regional Significance.

Across the country, from Oregon to Ohio to New York, states said they had no problem finding big projects.

However, Congress has ordered up only an inventory of transportation needs. It has not provided funding for the program it created a decade ago.

“You can’t expect a single state to carry out a project [of] national significance. We need to find the funds and the means to proceed,” said Emil Frankel of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. Frankel was assistant secretary for transportation policy in the U.S. Department of Transportation from 2002 to 2005.

There are needs states can’t meet with the money they get under the federal highway funding formulas, said Mort Downey, a transportation consultant who was deputy transportation secretary from 1993 to 2001.

“Also, there are sometimes projects for which the benefits are more national than local and, therefore, [need] a source of unique funding,” he said.

For example, Ohio and Kentucky put the Brent Spence Bridge that carries Interstate 71 and I-75 traffic across the Ohio River on their inventory prepared by the Nov. 17 deadline.

“This is not an Ohio bridge; it’s not a Kentucky bridge,” said Steve Faulkner, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Transportation. “It’s a bridge for the entire region and then some.”

The Brent Spence carries 4% of the nation’s gross domestic product, more than double the traffic it was built for 50 years ago, and would cost $3 billion to rebuild, state officials said.

“We hear from business owners that are moving goods across that bridge and they’re not moving them from Ohio to Kentucky,” Faulkner continued. “They’re moving them from Ohio into Kentucky and to places well beyond.”

Missouri put on its list another major freight route, I-70, some 200 miles of which the state wants to widen and reconstruct.

“I don’t think that there’s a tax or a funding mechanism that just Missouri could do that would be of enough impact to do the $3 [billion] to $5 billion worth of work that needs to be done on I-70,” said Ross Nichols, director of governmental affairs for the Missouri Trucking Association.

The road was built to carry 12,000 to 18,000 vehicles per day but now averages 95,000 a day, including 25,000 trucks, on its urban segments, state officials said.

The Projects of National and Regional Significance program was created in 2005 under SAFETY-LU, the last long-term transportation reauthorization bill.

To qualify, projects must have a cost greater than or equal to the lesser of $500 million or 75% of the sum of federal highway funds apportioned to the state where the project is located.

In a departure from the standard formulas by which Highway Trust Fund dollars are apportioned, Congress said projects would be based on such criteria as national economic benefit and congestion reduction.

Lawmakers dedicated about $1.8 billion from the trust fund for the program, which could have built more projects if the DOT had time to develop regulations, Downey said.

“The flaw in SAFETEA-LU was that 100% of the money was earmarked to a variety of congressional projects, some of which were excellent projects, some of which were non-projects,” he said.

A beltway around Bakersfield, California, for example, was never built, Downey and Frankel recalled, noting that the then-chair of the House Ways and Means Committee was from Bakersfield.

In MAP-21, the 2012 transportation reauthorization bill, lawmakers renewed the program and ordered the inventory of projects. Instead of using trust fund money, though, funding was to come from the general fund, which has not happened.

“So now they’ve got the regulations but they don’t have any money,” Frankel said.

Projects that states put in the inventory carry price tags in the high millions, if not billions.

It could cost $3.3 billion to replace the aged viaduct that carries I-81 traffic through Syracuse, New York, said state officials who put that project, and six others, on the inventory. That freight corridor stretches from Tennessee to Canada.

Oregon’s projects have “significant freight benefits,” said Travis Brouwer, head of legislative affairs for the state Department of Transportation.

A plan to widen and rebuild I-5 near Salem would cost $850 million, while rebuilding the intersection where I-5 meets I-84 and I-405 would cost $500 million, he said.

“We believe that while the formulas are certainly a good base for the [federal highway] program,” Brouwer said, “there should be at least some money distributed based on need and national benefit so states can tackle these large scale projects.”