States will miss TEA-21: the federal transportation act has poured billions of dollars into highway, transit and alternative modes of travel projects. What should its reauthorization look like?

• Author: Boulard, Garry

In booming Montgomery County, Md., where the population--a white-collar spillover from Washington, D.C., and environs--has jumped by nearly 30 percent in the past two decades, Carol Petzold admits she is grateful for the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century.

The act, which has drastically transformed the nation's transportation infrastructure, is up for renewal this year, a renewal that could bring with it a funding loss as new committee chairmen critical of some aspects of the federal legislation universally referred to as "TEA-21" have taken the helm in the U.S. Senate.

"It's been good for us," the Maryland state delegate says of the federal legislation.

"It has provided Maryland with quite a few federal dollars for our transportation projects," continues Petzold. "In fact, for the last four years, we have received about $530 million per year--and have used it well."

Not only well, but with imagination: Maryland has used tens of millions in TEA-21 funds for road, highway and transit construction since 1998.

Through TEA-21's enhancement funding in 2001, Montgomery County was given $3.1 million more for construction of a bridge that state officials said would provide the "crucial missing link" for the county's extensive system of bike paths and trails that span busy Interstate 270.

"More than 50 percent of our capital transit and highway programs have been funded through TEA-21," says Petzold. "So you could very much say that if we hadn't received this money, up to 50 percent of our transportation projects in Maryland would not have been completed."

In southern California, officials with two of the West Coast's largest ports at Los Angeles and Long Beach celebrated the opening last spring of the Alameda Corridor, a $2.4 billion rail cargo expressway connecting the two.

"This is the kind of project that is creating thousands of jobs and moving billions of dollars in trade between the ports," says Senator Betty Karnette.

"That corridor could not have been completed without TEA-21 funds," she says. "How can you find a better example of using combined federal and state money?"

Even in fiercely independent Alaska, where anything with ties to faraway Washington, D.C., is viewed with suspicion, Senator Lyda Green--who numbers herself among the big government skeptics--points to a series of road construction and maintenance programs, including the building of the Glenn-Parks Interchange in her native Matanuska-Susitina borough, as projects that could have been undertaken only with TEA-21 money.

"We are really a virgin state when it comes to highway construction," she explains. "But the highways we have are long and well-traveled. To keep them up requires a vast amount of money, money we do not have by ourselves at the state or borough level."

A POPULAR PROGRAM

Rare is the Washington program that wins almost unanimous plaudits from the states, especially more than a decade after its beginning.

But TEA-21, and its parent--the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, otherwise known as ISTEA or Ice Tea--is different and perhaps all the more popular because it provides states with a certain amount of funds for their transportation needs. This was something that was sorely lacking before when transportation budgets were often determined by how much money was in the overall state budget or approved or denied by voters via referendums.

And as TEA-21 faces reauthorization, many of the states worry that budget constraints caused by a weakened ecomony may limit the money once available under ISTEA and TEA-21.

"There is no telling with any accuracy what is going to happen," says Art Guzetti, director of policy at the American Transportation Association.

"Right now Washington is full of talk about tax cuts and reducing revenue, which is not a great climate in which to be pushing a major spending bill."

The states may also be confronting another funding problem: their own ability to raise money for TEA-21 matches. "The gas tax, at the state level, is becoming less and less of a generator for transportation revenue all the time," says Peter Van Doren, a...