LaHood Backs Partnerships, Tolls on New Highway Lanes

By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter

This story appears in the Jan. 26 print edition of Transport Topics.

WASHINGTON — Ray LaHood, President Obama’s choice to lead the Department of Transportation, said tolls and public-private partnerships should be among the ways Congress funds infrastructure construction, but existing interstate highway lanes should remain toll-free.

Fuel taxes are inadequate to fund infrastructure construction and repair, LaHood said, and the United States needs to be “innovative,” adding that he favors tolls on new construction and the use of public-private partnerships.

LaHood testified Jan. 21 at a Senate Commerce Science and Transportation Committee confirmation hearing. The panel, whose members criticized the use of spending earmarks and censured DOT for pushing Mexican truck access to the United States, approved LaHood’s nomination and recommended that the full Senate approve him. LaHood, 63, who recently retired from the House after seven terms, said he’d have “the unusual perspective of being a Republican in a Democratic administration.” First elected in 1994, LaHood represented a district that included Peoria, Ill. — headquarters of engine maker Caterpillar Inc.

“One of our big challenges is to find ways to plus-up the trust fund,” LaHood said. “There’s not going to be enough money to do the things that all of us want to do, so we do have to think outside of the box.”

LaHood said he opposed “the idea of taking an interstate and putting a toll booth on it,” but if “you want to have an additional lane and you want to toll it, or if you want to build a bridge that’s going to cost a lot of money, I think people ought to think about tolls on the bridge as a way to pay for it.”

“The idea of taking part of the interstate highway that’s already there and people are using and putting tolls on that, personally I think that is not a good idea,” LaHood said.

Echoing some of the Bush administration’s beliefs about highway funding, LaHood said the government was “going to have to think innovatively,” adding that transportation dollars would have to be generated “differently than just the gasoline tax.”

“Public-private” partnerships will have to be part of the way governments increase money for transportation, he said.

LaHood said the fuel tax, the main financing source for the Highway Trust Fund, is “a dinosaur.”

Fuel taxes were “developed when [President Dwight D.] Eisenhower and the Congress came up with the idea” of the Interstate Highway System, LaHood said.

“We’ve come far afield of that,” he said, adding that he was “willing to listen to all ideas” on highway finance.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, top Republican on the commerce committee, said she agreed with LaHood’s stance on tolling. The Bush administration “focused really too strongly . . . on privately financed toll roads,” she said.

Hutchison said she also was “very concerned with our federal government giving incentives to promote these [and] allowing tolls over every lane of federal highway that taxpayers have already built.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said he had been “generally supportive” of public-private partnerships, but it was important to “make sure that the private sector has some skin in the game. . . . It’s not just the public sector putting up the dough and the private sector reaping benefits at the back end.”

LaHood told the committee that, if confirmed, his first commitment would be to safety, but he also would be mindful of the nation’s economic challenges and “the new reality of climate change.”

“Sustainability must be a principle reflected in all our infrastructure investments,” he said.

Several senators chastised DOT’s record on safety under the previous administration and pushed LaHood to rectify the situation.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) called previous DOT leaders “very arrogant” and “ham-handed” in how they proceeded with a pilot project allowing Mexican trucks to deliver goods here.

“[The last] administration did a pilot, and [the last] Congress just over a year ago passed legislation prohibiting it. The secretary of transportation indicated she didn’t care very much what [that] Congress thought and continued the pilot project anyway,” Dorgan said. “I would fully expect the new president and new secretary of transportation would revoke that pilot project within the first two months or so.”

Committee Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said, “The current trucking safety programs and regulations are grossly inadequate and ready for a major overhaul.”

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) pressed LaHood on the issue of earmarks. As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, LaHood was reportedly responsible for securing millions of dollars in earmarks for Illinois.

“Clearly, it is not a matter of bringing extra [funding]. Clearly, there is some robbing Peter to pay Paul,” McCaskill said. “We are just putting projects upon these state agencies that they frankly don’t want to do.”

LaHood said Obama opposes earmarks, particularly in the economic stimulus bill Congress is considering, and that he “work[ed] for the president” and would implement that mandate to the extent he could.

“It’s up to the members [of Congress] that there aren’t going to be earmarks,” he said. “We’ll help you with that, but when we get a mandate from Congress, that’s the law.”