State leaders propose to ration access to transportation

Jay Bookman: 

Most Georgians — and most members of the state Legislature — don’t yet appreciate the full impact of policy changes being contemplated at the state Department of Transportation.

One change in particular — the use of “demand management” techniques to ease congestion on metro Atlanta interstates — has the potential to be pretty volatile politically.

In fact, I suspect that state transportation officials are far more eager to embrace that new approach than are members of the traveling public, most of whom are not even aware of what might be coming.

In effect, demand management attempts to reduce the number of people trying to use the highways at peak time. The theory behind it is drawn from basic economic theory — if too many people try to use a fixed resource, the solution is to charge more money for it.

In effect, demand management uses tolls not just to raise money, but to change behavior.

Under Georgia law, the DOT already has legal authority to implement what it calls “a robust and proactive push on tolling.” But in a draft report to the Legislature outlining its plans for the next 20 years, the agency admits that demand management “reflects a significant shift from past state policy.”

Yes, it does. Putting rush-hour tolls in the range of $3 to $5 a trip on existing traffic lanes — highways that the people of Georgia already have paid for once — would indeed be a significant shift in state policy. And by approving the draft report, the Legislature would in effect be approving the tolling strategy as well.

In its report, the DOT also envisions higher in-town parking fees to discourage car use. The agency estimates that together, tolls and parking fees could raise as much as $12 billion for transportation by 2030.

Of course, if you’re going to try to price people off of roads, you better give them another traveling option. The DOT recognizes that reality by proposing to tap that toll revenue to finance projects such as an extensive bus-rapid transit network and perhaps even the Beltline.

Overall, the DOT estimates that more than 90 percent of the state’s toll revenue would be generated right here in the metro area. In effect, tolls would become a special metro tax on transportation. If that pans out, regional leaders will have to demand ironclad guarantees that the money raised here will be spent here as well.

The DOT report also documents how cash-starved it will be over the next 20 years without new resources, pointing out that we are 49th in per-capita spending on transportation.

But it doesn’t explain why we should build the intrusive, extensive and expensive infrastructure to collect tolls, complete with a nice profit skimmed off the top by private tollway operators, when a direct, easy-to-collect user tax is already available.

Last year, Georgia collected the lowest motor fuel tax of any state other than Alaska. The state of Georgia collected 13 cents a gallon, according to DOT, while North Carolina collected 30 cents a gallon, Florida charged 35 cents a gallon and Alabama charged 21 cents.
Raising the state fuel tax or the state sales tax on fuel to levels comparable to our neighbors would go a long way to solving the resource problem.

As a user fee, the gasoline tax also would be more fair than funding transportation through an increase in the general sales tax, another alternative likely to be floated in the Legislature.

The DOT report is the first such analysis provided to the Legislature under Senate Bill 200, which was written hastily and signed into law last year. The law itself is still flawed, but its provisions requiring a strategic overview will pay important dividends if this report generates the debate that it should.

Posted via email from Jim Nichols