It will be especially interesting to see how this bill changes or fails to change TDOT. TDOT has already submitted a Long Range Transportation Plan to the Federal Highway Administration. Part of the reason for that is to get coherent planning going nationwide and eliminate the state politics in road construction. This legislation seems to want to put the politics back in at the state level. Senator Doug Jackson has called that, in the past, "constituent service."

Performance based standards are a clear and present danger to road construction that has as a primary purpose of economic development. Over time, performance based standards using safety and financial criteria (how do you pay for it)have a potential for evolving into objective standards that lay a foundation for better transportation decisions.

Federal support for economic development motivations for building highways has been on the decline since about 2005 and after it was noticed by economist in the Federal Highway Administration that most anecdotal stories of highway cornucopias at every road project are greatly exaggerated by counting the hits and ignoring the misses.

Many of the alleged hits were just income and business activity transfers from one spot to another and resulted in a net small or no gain. Also, federal support and programs for road construction with economic development motivations is held back by federal regulations on program economic efficiency that were put in place by the Clinton Administration circa 1994. They can watch a state do stupid things with their own money but they can not suggest programs or support doing things that fall outside of the federally prescribed envelope of benefits versus costs.

It is obvious that the legislature pays little or no attention to any planning document that TDOT makes and puts out to the public. The one that TDOT produced in 2005 had numerous pleadings and scenarios for additional ways to increase the gas tax and registration taxes, including putting fuel tax increases on autopilot by indexing. The document had a planned shortfall of over $2 Billion dollars, more than a years worth of transportation income, between 2008 and 2015. The projections of income made then have so far been disastrous overestimations.

In spite of TDOT's faltering real inflation adjusted income since 2003, the legislature has no concept of the pending shrinkage of financial capacity to satisfy asphalt pork projects. A road not only has to be built but also maintained. On a per mile basis, Tennessee roads are making less and less money every year because of expansion of speculative road projects that have low traffic counts but high economic development expectations. Fixing congestion would mean lowering the per mile income even more in the cities.

Just looking at the legislative hopper since the first of the year causes one to believe that TDOT exists solely for the provision of special projects for certain legislative districts. Every county seat seems to have a right to a four lane connector to the Interstate. By a three to four vote the Senate Transportation Committee killed a bill that would give Perry County(less than 8000 people) a County Road Connector Road ahead of schedule for only three easy payments of $51,700,000 per year for three years. Montgomery County seems to need a pedestrian bridge and five other road projects that TDOT forgot about too. The NAFTA Highway fiasco takes too long to discuss.

Federal Law has put the local politicians in at least partial control of the transportation agenda at TDOT through the system forced on all states called the Metropolitan Transportation Planning Organization and the Rural Transportation Planning Organization. TDOT has totally failed to control the zeal for economic development projects in the Southeast Rural Transportation Planning Organization. It is now your right to have a four lane paid for by everyone else but you.

By federal law, the MPO decision making process is suppose to be "financially constrained." This means working within a fixed amount of resources and making choices among alternatives. Allowing the Tennessee Legislature the ability to break out of any financial constraint and order by legislative fiat a program with little or no sense of economic consequences was not what the Federal Congress had in mind.

Worse yet is the decay of discipline within the RPO structure. The voting members of the Southeastern Rural Transportation Organization, mostly county executives and mayors, have rebelled against TDOT's decision to kill Corridor K in 2003 and have put on the full court press to "get 'er done." There is no sign that anyone in the legislature, TDOT or the Planning Organization that the cost of this 44 mile monstrosity would be $1.5 Billion dollars. That is more than TDOT can reasonably expect to earn in a year and a little over a fourth of that is suppose to go to counties and municipalities for basic preservation of the existing system.

Posted by: Danny L. Newton at May 30, 2007 12:17 AM

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