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Editorial: Oberstar's bridge plan would be fast and fair

Minnesota will have to ante up to get federal help.

Last update: August 25, 2007 - 4:22 PM

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ERODED BUYING POWER

At least 45 states have raised gas taxes since Minnesota last raised its in 1988. Since then, the buying power of its 20-cent-per-gallon fee has eroded by nearly half while demands for roadway repair and expansion have soared.

Tax Policy Center, Transportation Alliance of Minnesota

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Rep. Jim Oberstar has offered a compelling plan to quickly and responsibly reconstruct the worst of the nation's 154,000 deficient and dangerous bridges. The Minneapolis calamity of three weeks ago should generate action, he said last week, not the collective shrug that followed the Silver Bridge's collapse into the Ohio River 40 years ago, when 46 people died.

Oberstar has an encyclopedic mind and can rattle off the numbers and weights of vehicles that traverse the nation's roadways now compared to then. He recites the exponential increase in our driving habits and the economy's growing reliance on trucks as "rolling warehouses" -- and the enormous pressures that all of that places on our infrastructure.

But in the recesses of our minds, Americans already know these things: that the massive interstate system, built largely in the 1960s, is aging all at once and buckling under the weight of our motoring habits -- and that we've been unwilling to shoulder the costs of upkeep, preferring instead the illusion that driving is a relatively cheap and inconsequential act.

As chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Oberstar will open hearings next week on a crash federal program that would spend an estimated $25 billion over three years (plus matching money from the states). New, higher and more specific standards would be set for the condition and inspection of bridges. Bridges would then be rated and ranked against those new standards by the state and federal engineers. Their conclusions would be corroborated by the National Research Council, ensuring that the highest-priority bridges would be fixed first.

Members of Congress would be restricted from "earmarking" pet projects. A strict formula would instead be used, based on a bridge's risk of failure, its traffic load, its importance to national and regional commerce and this important factor: the commitment of the state in which it's located to provide matching money (20 percent, or 10 percent if it's for an interstate bridge).

There's the challenge for Minnesota. As Oberstar said last week, his home state has not been a reliable partner. It has, at times, returned federal dollars that it could not match. In the case of transit, it has routinely forgone federal money that then goes to competing states. Indeed, it's well known that Minnesota has, as Oberstar politely calls it, a "cash-flow problem" on transportation, that MnDOT has shifted funds, maximized borrowing and resorted even to asking private contractors to shoulder up-front costs on one major project (the Crosstown), all to accommodate the governor's no-new-taxes promise.

Higher taxes are not the answer to every government problem, and Congress and the Legislature should now explore all reasonable options to pay the overdue cost of bridge repair. Given the pressures of the Iraq war, plus crises in health care, education, local government aid and property taxes, it will be difficult, however, for Congress and the Legislature to avoid an increase in the basic user fee that drivers pay for the upkeep of the public roadways -- and that's the gasoline tax. Oberstar is open to other ideas, but proposes a nickel per gallon for three years on the federal portion. If Minnesota wants federal money to help fix deficient bridges -- while catching up to other pressing transportation demands -- it'll have to find enough funding somehow to become a reliable partner.

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