Federal transportation bills are gigantic documents that affect almost everybody, and the one that passed Congress yesterday will ring the cash registers in all 50 states to the tune of $286 billion.
We’d nominate Porky Pig for the mascot of the transportation committees in Congress if we weren’t so darn grateful for the $2.9 billion – a 47 percent gain – in highway and transit funding earmarked for cash-strapped Colorado.
About $2.4 billion will go for roads and the rest for mass transit. It’s like a transfusion after a date with Dracula. As anyone who’s driven Colorado roads this summer knows, lots of construction is underway, but many stretches of highway still are in rough shape.
Approval of the transportation bill ended a two-year battle of wills between Congress and the White House.
Congressional delegations love telling constituents how big a piece of the pie they’ve won for the home folks, and in Colorado’s case, we’re glad they did.
But we still wince at the $452 million for the Knik Arm (to be named for House Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young) and Gravina Island bridges in Alaska, which Sierra Club transportation expert Eric Olson calls “bridges to nowhere.”
In Colorado, the money will go for worthier uses. “We certainly can use it,” said Dan Hopkins, spokesman for Gov. Bill Owens. The recession dried up surplus-fund transfers to the Colorado Department of Transportation, he said, cutting funding about a third since 2001. Fuel-tax revenues also are down about 2 1/2 percent. Overall, CDOT funding for the current fiscal year is $800 million vs. just under $1.2 billion in 2001.
The $2.4 billion roads portion of the federal funding will provide an additional $400 million a year over six years to bring the state’s highway spending back up to the 2001 level of $1.2 billion, Hopkins said. But with projections that Colorado will need tens of billions more to build or repair state highways through 2030, “you still need Referendums C and D,” he said.
State taxpayers don’t always get a fair shake when it comes to federal dollars received compared to taxes paid – we have been getting 90 cents back for every gasoline tax dollar paid to the feds (slightly less than average). Under the new legislation, it will be 92 cents – recognition of our desperate transportation plight that is surely welcome.
