Posted on 02/12/2004 4:13:22 PM PST by TaxRelief
RALEIGH - Elections for state office in North Carolina in recent years have revolved around issues such as taxes, spending, education and a proposed state lottery. This year, I think transportation will play a much larger role than it has in a long time.
Partly, this is a result of the fading of the public schools as a central focus of the political class - not because education isn't still a higher priority for both candidates and voters, but because there is at least a perception of progress. Based on polling and voting behavior, I don't think North Carolinians see our educational deficiencies as a crisis, though perhaps they should. But I do think that many, if not most, North Carolinians, and especially those likely to vote in the 2004 elections, view unmet transportation needs as the political equivalent of a pot boiling over.
Perhaps I should say that voters see several different stovetop messes. One is congestion. An increasing number of motorists in Charlotte, the Triad, the Triangle and smaller metros from Asheville to Wilmington are experiencing significant delays in commuting to and from work. According to a just-released analysis of state highway systems by David Hartgen of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, North Carolina has now risen to fourth in the nation in the percentage of urban interstates considered "congested," at 75 percent. Only California (82 percent), Maryland (82 percent), and Minnesota (77 percent) look worse on this measure.
Contrary to myth, investment in new and expanded highways is one of the most effective means of addressing the problem of traffic congestion, though in a growing area attractive to transplants from the country or from other states such investments slow growth in traffic delays or redistribute it but rarely reduce it.
Some North Carolina cities are finally seeing long-awaited projects come to fruition, such as the belt around Charlotte and the outer belt around Raleigh, but others are not. The last big transportation-improvement bill passed by the General Assembly, back in 1989, was fraught with planning and projection errors, thus setting expectations far higher than revenues could satisfy. Whatever the cause of this gap - and I tend to blame environmentalist obstructionism and unnecessary raids on highway- based revenues for non-highway purposes - there is no doubt that many North Carolinians are frustrated and seeking answers.
One answer peddled by some hucksters in North Carolina's largest metros is mass transit. Gov. Mike Easley pushed a transportation bill through the Legislature last year that included some good ideas but also included additional diversions of millions of gas-tax dollars to transit boondoggles. Voters tend to feel vaguely good about this idea when you first ask them, because they think that new rail or bus lines will attract other motorists and thus leave the roads more open for them. The truth dismays them.
In a poll my organization commissioned last month in Wake County, likely voters started out roughly split on a proposed Triangle rail-transit system, 46 percent opposed and 41 percent in favor. But when told that Triangle transit officials themselves admitted the project would result in only a slight reduction in traffic congestion, something in the neighborhood of 1 percent, nearly 60 percent of voters said it would be a bad investment, compared with only 27 percent endorsing it. And when given a choice between spending gas-tax dollars on more highways or more transit, voters overwhelmingly (66 percent to 25 percent) thought the priority should be highways.
Another hot pot for many North Carolinians is the quality of the highways they traverse. They are right to be concerned. Hartgen's study found that the condition of the state's roads is deteriorating rapidly - falling from 20th in the nation in 2001 down to 36th just a year later. North Carolina's rural interstates ranked 44th, with urban interstates at 42nd, rural primary roads 45th, and bridges 37th.
"This is a sad showing for a state that once prided itself on good roads," Hartgen said. Poor highways affect safety, wear and tear on cars and trucks, and commerce.
On that last point, what makes this issue so timely for so many voters this year is North Carolina's languid economic performance. They know that adequate access to good-quality highways is far more important to most existing or potential businesses than are the tangential issues many politicians spend their time fiddling with, including even other transportation infrastructure.
For safety, for convenience, and for economic development, North Carolinians increasingly see highway improvement as a key issue in state and local elections. Politicians would be foolish not to follow their lead.
John Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation, publisher of Carolina Journal.com, and host of the statewide program "Carolina Journal Radio.
©High Point Enterprise 2004
I want 4-lane roads and left-turn signals too.
(I'm a follower.)
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