(The following story by Mark Young appeared on the North Platte Telegraph website on August 18, 2010.)
NORTH PLATTE, Neb. High-level officials representing federal and state governments and railroads gathered together at the Sandhills Convention Center to further open communication lines to local agencies and concerned citizens regarding the fate of the transportation systems.
Congressman Adrian Smith (3rd District) hosted the Transportation Summit on Tuesday with a panel of guest speakers ranging in transportation expertise, from roadways to railroads to tourism.
Smith said the goal of the summit was to open communication lines to bring in new ideas in order to enhance the state's infrastructure. The outlook is not a good one for the state's roadways, according to Nebraska Department of Roads District 6 Engineer Gary Thayer, who has been attempting to raise the alarm for years in a disturbing trend of inflation versus sustainable funding.
Thayer provided numbers that showed more than 80 percent of Nebraska's roadways at a good to excellent rating, but if the current funding trend continues then more than 50 percent of the state's roadways will have a poor to fair rating within 20 years.
Pavement preservation makes up NDOR's largest percentage of expenditures and Thayer said, "Our buying power is being eroded away at double-digit inflation," noting that the price of oil along with other contributing factors is leading the state into meeting only half its expected needs.
"We'll have over $9.1 billion in needs over the next 20 years, but that's at today's dollars," he said. "At the rate of inflation the actual cost will be over $13 billion and we'll get less than half of that over the next 20 years. We need to find reliable funding."
Joseph Werning, Federal Highway Administration, Nebraska Division Administrator, was on hand to outline how the federal government distributes money for the nation's 4 million miles of roadways. It is a fixed system of distribution based on specific calculations in distributing $42 billion a year for highway programs. Federal funding is also only available for 24 percent of the nation's roadways.
Smith said transportation is a fundamental function of the government for obvious reasons.
"We need to be looking at how important transportation is to industry, which is what spurs economic growth," said Smith. "Our challenges are many. We will see even more challenges, as Gary said, when we continue to look at unsustainable formulas."
Rails vs. roads
One area of transportation that has been effectively forward thinking in reducing costs is the railroad industry. Brenda Mainwaring, Union Pacific Director of Public Affairs for Nebraska and Iowa, led her presentation with the industry's primary message to the federal government: "Don't harm us."
The federal government is taking more and more notice of how the railroad industry operates, Mainwaring said, and the result of that attention is uncertain.
"When the giant eye of Washington, D.C., turns your way, it can be a good thing or a bad thing," she said.
The railroad industry has invested $460 billion of its own money back into its own infrastructure since 1980 and uses private money, not public money, to operate and maintain those operations. Mainwaring said the railroad industry can take the attention as a compliment, but wants to stay on message to the government to think through any decisions made that would have long-term consequences.
"In some ways I think the federal government recognizes the railroad's efficiency, but we want our government to look at the full picture of potential consequences before taking action," Mainwaring said.
Mainwaring was largely referring to the proposed increase in passenger service, which Amit Bose, Federal Railroad Administration Director of Legislative Affairs, said was "in the process of progressing forward," but noted that the government would not run a national passenger service.
"It would be left to state control," he said.
All of the experts who discussed the proposed passenger service agreed that it makes sense in areas that are more populated, but the government-run Amtrack passenger train service already operates at a 97-percent usage on freight lines and has to be subsidized with tax dollars to continue service. Mainwaring outlined the incredible costs that are saved by freight trains.
Using government studies, Mainwaring said if the railroad industry was diverting a mere 10 percent of the long-distance trucking that it would be equivalent of taking 2 million cars off the road, which not only saves on wear and tear but reduces greenhouse gases by more than 70 percent.
Railroad shipping is more affordable, she said, which in turn keeps costs of products lower to the consumer. The counter argument is that fewer trucks means less fuel taxes are being paid to maintain the roads, but Mainwaring said the industry paid $625 million in property taxes alone in 2008.
Railroad rate increases have only gone up 5 percent from 1981 to 2008, she said. Compare that to a 137-percent increase in gas, a 160-percent increase in bread and similar increases in most consumer goods.
Tuesday's discussion was informative and accomplished the goals set forth by Smith who wants to see more flexibility in how the government moves forward with transportation issues. As part of the House Technology and Science Committee, Smith said the research and development going into improving infrastructure at a fraction of today's costs are exciting.
In the meantime, Senator Tom Hansen (43rd District) said the state has to continue to look at its own immediate needs.
"The Transportation Committee has had several meetings on funding roads," he said. "The fuel tax went up this past year, not much, but a bit. Most of the extra federal funding is gone now. It paid for a lot of projects, but there is no more and all I care about is finding a way to maintain our roads."
