Open, bipartisan dialogue in Augusta can save Maine’s economy from a growing crisis

Most Mainers probably assume that since the Transportation bond referendum passed in June that the maine Department of Transportation has plenty of money to take care of our highway and bridge infrastructure. This is understandable, as $130 million seems like a lot of dough to most of us.

This assumption is painfully incorrect, however. Reading the Biennial Capital Work Plan on the Maine DOT Web site (www.maine.gov/mdot/planning-documents/bcwp2008) is a sobering experience. Even with the bond money from June 2007 and June 2008 included, the work plan reveals the following:

• Only 21.23 miles of Rural Arterial Highways will be reconstructed. The backlog is more than 200 miles, so this is less than 10 percent.

• It’s even worse for Major Collector Roads. Some 1,500 miles are needing repair, but only 19.8 miles are planned, a not so grand total of just over 1 percent.

• Only half of the 8,300 miles of highway maintained by Maine DOT have been improved to meet current traffic and safety standards.

• Under this two-year work plan, Maine DOT will replace less than half the bridges required to keep pace with their deterioration. The plan states under current funding, bridges will need to last 180 years when 50-80 years is the anticipated engineering life of the average bridge.

(Although the governor’s just-released bridge study recommends nearly doubling the funding for bridge repairs and replacements, where these additional funds would come from is not at all clear, and very much in doubt. The Federal Highway Trust Fund is projected to be $4 billion in the red by 2009, so we should not anticipate much help from Washington.)

Maine DOT officials say that they need an additional $200 million per year for the next 10 years to just maintain our existing transportation system and catch up on deferred projects. A quick perusal of the work plan indicates that this likely is a conservative number.

So how did we get into this dire situation? A combination of factors including the booming Chinese economy, the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina combined to create unprecedented inflation in the construction materials sector, which has reached double-digits annually for the past several years.

At the same time, Maine’s bridges and highways are showing their age, as illustrated by the failure of the Waldo-Hancock Bridge, which resulted in a four-year, $50 million unexpected expense.

There appears to be widespread agreement at the State House, Maine DOT and the transportation construction community on the severity of this funding crisis. However, there is no real consensus on how to solve the problem.

Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Hancock County, and Rep. Boyd Marley, D-Portland, the chairs of the Joint Standing Committee on Transportation, have taken the correct approach: bring everything and anything to the table for discussion and sort out the “best” solutions.

Items on this table include:

• Reducing the portion of Maine State Police funding that comes from the Highway Fund;

• Investigating tolls on I-295 and I-95 north of Gardiner and any new limited-access highways;

• Adding a sales tax on motor vehicle fuels;

• Increasing motor vehicle registration fees to the New England average;

• Passing legislation to ensure the integrity of the Highway Fund.

Without open, bipartisan dialogue – which includes all of these concepts – we will stay mired in this rut. The traveling public in Maine will suffer even higher automobile repair costs and lower fuel mileage, due to congestion and poor roads. We will endure higher crash rates on our crumbling highways and see escalating bridge postings and closings. Our tourist industry will stagnate if our visitors cannot comfortably reach their destinations. New businesses will reconsider locating in Maine if they are concerned about the transportation of raw materials and products.

None of this bodes well for the economy in general.

I know the leadership of the House and Senate are committed to finding an equitable solution to this funding crisis. I know the people of Maine are well-informed on the issue and literally have “seat-of-the-pants” knowledge of the conditions of our roads and bridges. I am confident our Yankee ingenuity and Maine work ethic will see us through this, and the transportation community will emerge from this leaner and smarter and ready to face future challenges.

Jim Hanley is government affairs manager for Pike Industries in Westbrook and a member of the board of directors of the Maine Better Transportation Association. He lives in Gray.