State needs new road map

Editorial by Burlington Times-News, December 3, 2013.

North Carolina has the largest state-maintained highway network in the United States, but unless  public officials can come up with a long-term funding strategy, we may be consigned to navigate crumbling, inferior roads and bridges, to the detriment of our economy.

Transportation needs exceed the projected amount available by roughly $1 billion annually for the next decade and beyond. And the problem will only get worse.

With gas-tax revenues projected to dwindle over the next decade — the result of more fuel-efficient cars, alternative fuels and a change in driving habits — North Carolina’s transportation officials are still working to come up with a workable, palatable plan to ensure that “the Good Roads State” reflects future reality and not an anachronism.

The gas tax is the state’s largest revenue source for road construction and other transportation needs, but we cannot rely on it so heavily in the future.

Mark Foster, chief financial officer for the N.C. Department of Transportation, projects gas tax revenues to decrease by as much as $600 million over the next five years, while the state’s road and transit needs continue to grow.

We don’t have to depend only on existing revenue sources; in fact, we cannot afford to do that. The state must look at other options. The solution likely will not be a single pot of money, but rather a number of sources — preferably ones that are relatively stable and don’t require setting up an entirely new bureaucracy to collect.

The search for a stable funding source for future transportation needs is not new. Back in 2007, former Gov. Mike Easley and the top lawmakers in the General Assembly created the 21st Century Transportation Committee, which was charged with exploring alternatives or supplements to the gas tax to pay for road construction and other transit needs.

The recommendations included toll roads, billing car owners for miles traveled in a year, a $1 billion transportation bond, and ending the annual transfer from the Highway Trust Fund to the general fund to pay for the State Highway Patrol, driver education and other programs.

Many of the options ran into opposition. People don’t like tolls, and the idea of a per-mile tax raises a number of concerns. And collecting the gas tax is easy — you fill up, you pay at the pump. A per-mile tax would increase collections costs.

But we have to do something. Our economic progress is tied to how well our infrastructure can move goods and people. Failure to find a workable solution would severely cripple our economic growth.