North Carolina’s transportation system is broken, and the current crop of elected leaders is doing nothing to fix it, a former N.C. transportation secretary who helped create the Highway Trust Fund says.
“It’s broken — because of this, my children and my grandchildren are being deprived of economic opportunity, and their quality of life is being diminished, and I resent that,” James Harrington told participants in a transportation forum Tuesday in Raleigh.
Harrington led the state transportation department from 1985 to 1989 under Republican Gov. James Martin. As transportation secretary, Harrington helped develop a trust fund designed to shield highway money from other state government spending. The system worked “more or less effectively for six years,” once it took effect in 1989, he said.
“Since that time, the legislature and the DOT administration have ‘reorganized’ the DOT and the Board of Transportation in a way that the systems set up to expedite construction projects have become systems designed to delay those projects,” Harrington said. “The constitutional protection written into the Highway Trust Fund legislation has been violated repeatedly by the governor and the General Assembly. I really resent that.”
Harrington is a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging diversions of more than $200 million in Highway Trust Fund money to the state’s General Fund. A trial court dismissed the November 2002 suit, but the N.C. Supreme Court ruled in December 2006 that Harrington and former state Sen. Bill Goldston have “standing,” or eligibility, to pursue their case.
“The staff of the attorney general’s office, those who advised us initially that the Trust Fund was constitutionally protected, have spent four years obstructing our efforts to bring this issue before the court,” Harrington said. “This has been a long, tiring, and expensive effort.”
The Highway Trust Fund will never be safe as long as the state ignores problems with its general budget, Harrington said. “Recognize that as long as the legislature ignores the structural deficiencies in the General Fund, they will resort to highway robbery to cover their butts.”
North Carolina should move toward a “utility-type method” of financing highway maintenance, Harrington said, and some elected official needs to push for changes. “You have to make this a priority political issue in the next election.”
Harrington’s comments led into a panel discussion for the N.C. SPIN syndicated television program. N.C. SPIN and the Regional Transportation Alliance coordinated the forum.
North Carolina’s population growth has overwhelmed its transportation system, said panelist David Hartgen, professor of transportation studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “What was an adequate — in fact, visionary — mechanism for funding the system in the late ’80s has now proven to be inadequate and a significant drain on the future economic potential of the state.”
Hartgen says his annual review of the 50 state highway systems has detailed North Carolina’s fall from the eighth-best system in the late 1980s to the No. 28 system today. “We have let our system go, and we are in danger of losing the central arteries that we depend upon for our economic viability.”
Transportation planners also focus too much attention on transit projects that fail to address the state’s needs, Hartgen said. “Basically the priorities are not where they need to be,” he said. “In Charlotte, 60 percent of the [transportation] funding is going to 2 percent of the commuters. In Durham, 50 percent of the budget is going to 3 percent of the commuters.”
Some panelists tried to deflect at least some of the criticism leveled at the General Assembly and transportation department. “I think it’s unfair to say this is all DOT’s problem,” said Chris Fitzsimon of N.C. Policy Watch. “When we created the Highway Trust Fund, no one expected the rate of growth we’ve had in North Carolina. Certainly, no one expected the rising cost of highway construction and the price of oil.”
“We need to be the ‘Good Roads State,’ but we also have to have schools that work, and we have to protect the water and air and all the other things that state governments do,” Fitzsimon said.
Transportation Board member Nina Szlosberg questioned the need for an increased focus on new roads alone. “With four million people coming into our state in 25 years, if we think we can build our way out of it, I think we’ve got our heads in the sand.”
Hartgen rejected that argument. “Actually, that’s how we’ve done it for the past 200 years,” he said. “We have, in fact, built our way out of it by spending money wisely on projects that are needed.”
Szlosberg and Hartgen disagreed again when the panel discussion returned to mass transit. Support for transit will grow as the population shifts more toward the younger “creative class,” Szlosberg said. “When we invest in transit, the private sector comes behind us,” she said. “The development community understands there is a huge market for this.”
“Really, I find her statement contains so many things I disagree with,” Hartgen said. “First of all, the density is not there [for transit service]. Second, 95 percent of the people are driving private cars. Third, the transit share is declining in this state. Fourth, costs of service have been going up at a rate three or four times faster than inflation. Fifth, transit fares are now 10 or 20 percent of the budget in most cities.”
The state should take different steps to improve its transportation system, Hartgen said. “Fix the funding formula to include congestion conditions somehow,” he said. “Select projects on the basis of merit. And abolish the transportation board.”
Harrington offered an even simpler list of recommendations. “Leadership, leadership, and leadership.”
Mitch Kokai is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.