The other shoe is falling

Well, the voters have spoken on Proposal 1 and the result is no additional dollars for the foreseeable future while the legislature tries to develop one proposal that a majority of them can support. The news is no better at the federal level as the clock continues to tick towards a May 31 deadline. This is when the existing federal transportation legislation – MAP-21 – is set to expire.

There is little doubt that the bill will be extended, but the issue is for how long before a new six-year bill with additional funding is developed. Some legislators are willing to extend the program until July, knowing that the program is not scheduled to run out of money until August.

Some legislators, however, want an extension that lasts through the end of the calendar year to give them time to write and pass a new, long-term bill. This idea will require them to find an estimated additional $11 billion to keep the program operating through the end of the year.

I hate to say it, but it is the same argument we continue to hear out of Lansing. There is no debate that additional dollars are needed to improve our highway and transit systems. There is no agreement on how to do it and on where the dollars are coming from.

Meanwhile, as this debate continues, our transportation system continues to deteriorate. And there continues to be no meaningful discussion on what we want the systems to look like or how we expect them to operate – only discussion on what the politically expedient dollar figure is and where to get the dollars from. We spend so much time developing plans, vetting them, in some cases disagreeing on priorities – only to find out that at the end of the day there are no dollars to implement them anyway. Seems like a waste sometimes.

I am hoping for a speedy resolution to the funding crisis at both the state and federal level. A longer view is needed to help get us to a solution – a view that looks at the positive impact a significant investment in transportation would have on business and safety. The conversation needs to go beyond the word “tax” and start to get at “value added” – and it needs to get there fast.