Editorial: Bipartisanship helps get transport funds

Our fundamental transportation problem, as a nation and as a metropolitan region, is that drivers don't pay anything close to the full cost of driving. Thirty-three percent of road and bridge costs in Minnesota, for example, are borne by general property taxpayers, not by the buyers of gasoline, license tabs or other car-related expenses. Indeed, if all the externalities associated with excessive driving were calculated -- from emergency rooms to air pollution, not to mention more contentious factors, like foreign wars -- the sum would be staggering and would compel us to reconsider our daily travel habits.

The Bush administration, to its credit, devised a pilot program in 2006 to help drive home that very point. It offered $1.2 billion in grants for innovative ideas to reduce auto congestion in the nation's busiest cities through tolling, transit, telecommuting or technology.

This week, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters named the Twin Cities as one of five recipients. Minneapolis and six southern suburbs will get $133.3 million, mostly for installing high-occupancy toll lanes and laying the groundwork for bus rapid-transit service along Interstate 35W between Lakeville and downtown Minneapolis. The changes will make bus service faster and more reliable, and allow single drivers willing to pay tolls to drive in the car pool/bus lanes, similar to the setup on I-394. The grant will also expedite the reconstruction of Marquette and 2nd Avenues as the primary funnel for bus traffic downtown, while providing real-time transit arrival information.

New York, Miami, San Francisco and Seattle received the other grants, also for installing some variant of congestion pricing: charging drivers a toll for driving in congested corridors while enhancing transit options. New York's plan is significant. Its $354.5 million grant will launch Mayor Michael Bloomberg's idea of charging a fee for drivers entering Manhattan south of 86th Street -- similar to central London's pay-to-drive system.

While congestion pricing alone can't solve the traffic problem or cure the overreliance on cars, it can give cities a temporary respite while major transit investments and development patterns adjust to the world's new energy and environmental realities.

The Twin Cities grant is a tribute to cooperative work from the administration of Gov. Tim Pawlenty, House Transportation Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar and a bipartisan coalition of mayors and legislators led by Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak. As with the collaborative spirit that the city, state and congressional delegation demonstrated in the first days after the catastrophic bridge collapse, this entirely separate effort also shows the value of working together. Now, in the first 90 days of the coming session, the Legislature must accept the federal money and approve the projects envisioned. Surely it's up to the task.