In the early 1800s, America was on the cusp of a major industrial and commercial expansion.

The nation needed a way to move its goods, to transport raw materials and finished products, a mode of reliable transportation that would connect people and products.

But the railroads and highways that play such a vital role in commerce today were then the stuff of science fiction. So the United States entered the great era of canal building.

With barges towed by mules that walked along the banks, the canals could be built where needed, eliminating the need to locate along existing, natural waterways. And they often connected those waterways, opening both ends to new products, and new markets.

Today, only one of those canals remains in its original form – The Delaware Canal in Pennsylvania. For a century, it provided transportation services to numerous communities along its 60-mile-long path. It moved coal, creating an industry in rural Pennsylvania, and warming homes in Philadelphia and New York City.

The canal was last used as an industrial and passenger waterway in late 1931, a century after it was opened.

Preserved now as a state park, the canal is a bona fide piece of American history. It’s been named a Registered National Historic Landmark, and its towpath is a National Recreation Trail. And it’s immensely popular with the people who live near and around it.

Few people would argue that we should preserve what remains of the Delaware Canal.

But how many people would say we should use federal highway money to get the job done?

In fact, it was part of your fuel tax – your federal highway money – that paid for more than $5 million of restoration and rehabilitation work on the canal … something listed as a “transportation enhancement” by the state of Pennsylvania.

It’s just one example of how money paid for roads and intended for roads is spent on anything but roads in the Keystone state.

The case of the costly canal

To discover just how far away from highways the money is being spent, let’s take a closer look at the Delaware Canal.

According to state literature on the park, the canal’s “Tow Path” – where mules once walked to haul freight barges down the waterway – is now a hiking trail. And the only freight hauled in the boats that now ply its waterways is tourists.

Rick Dalton, manager of the Delaware Canal State Park, described the waterway’s current uses during a recent conversation.

“Nothing in the way of commerce as it was when it ran commercially,” he said. “The park is used more, of course, for recreation now as a state park – canoeing, fishing, mostly trail use, biking, hiking, bird watching.”

Yet, despite the lack of any current transportation use, in 1993 alone, more than $4 million in federal road money was spent on the canal. An additional $1.1 million in federal road money was approved in 2002.

Dalton says the 1993 money took care of some basic maintenance on the waterway.

“There was a major re-lining and dredging project that happened at that time,” he said. “Over the years, the canal silts in from different reasons, a lot of streams and runoff come into the canal, and puts material in; as really a maintenance (item), it needs to be removed occasionally.”

The $1.1 million for 2002 went for a similar bit of basic maintenance:

“That was the rehabilitation of lock 11, which is in Downtown New Hope,” Dalton said. “The money was used to rehabilitate the lock into a working canal lock.”

The work on the canal is listed on the web site of the National Transportation Enhancements Clearinghouse. That site shows not only that money – nearly $4 million for the canal in Bucks County – but another $3.7 million going for work on the Delaware and Leigh Canal Trail in Northampton County, also in 1993.

Obviously, none of that is related to the current transportation needs of moving people or goods. And none of it is related to the purpose for which the tax money was collected – paving and repairing roads.

So how did the money end up there? Did the folks at Delaware Canal State Park pull a fast one on the feds?

Hardly – in fact, the use of federal road money for non-road purposes was built into the legislation.

“In the original (highway legislation) – they call it TEA, transportation enhancement funding – the money was set aside for rehabilitation and restoration of historic transportation,” Dalton said. “The canal being, certainly, a national historic landmark would fit into that.”

In fact, various transportation bills have authorized such raids on the highway trust fund – a deliberate set-aside, a set percentage of highway money. And the cash has not only involved parks or historic properties, but also bike and hike trails, so-called “streetscape” projects, museums, and re-uses of railroad depots and other older buildings.

“Land Line Now” has found numerous examples over the past decade and a half where Pennsylvania has lined up at this particular federal trough, pulling in millions upon millions of highway dollars for various non-highway projects.

The official line on road funds

The expenditure of highway cash on projects such as the Delaware Canal wouldn’t be such a problem – if Pennsylvania officials weren’t crying out over their perceived lack of money to fix their roads.

In fact, Gov. Ed Rendell has contended that the state has a massive shortfall of funding for roads and other transportation needs.

To back up that claim, he points to a November 2006 report by the Transportation Funding and Reform Commission – a state-appointed panel. That report said the shortfall is running in the neighborhood of $1.75 billion per year.

The commission adds that Pennsylvania has roughly 6,000 deficient bridges and 8,500 miles of roads in need of repair.

Rendell and other officials in Pennsylvania aren’t alone in contending the state is short on road funds. The U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Mary Peters, has often said the federal highway trust fund has a bleak future.

During a joint appearance with Gov. Rendell, she repeated that assertion.

“The federal government's highway trust fund that pays for roads and bridges will go negative – or go into deficit spending – as early as 2009,” Peters said. “This is not an if, this is a when. This fund will go into deficit by 2009, and it's just a matter of whether it's early in the year or later in the year.”

Like federal officials, Gov. Rendell and others in Pennsylvania have pointed to tolls and privatization to solve what they see as a lack of highway funds.

Rendell, a Democrat, proposed a budget in February 2007 that included a private lease of the Pennsylvania Turnpike to increase revenue. He said publicly that a significant portion of the state’s $1.75 billion dollar shortfall every year could be covered by such a lease.

“We believe that leasing the Pennsylvania Turnpike, but retaining significant government control as to how it operates, could net us almost $1 billion a year more in money that we could apply to our roads, bridges and highways,” Rendell said.

However, he scrapped the turnpike plan in June in favor of a proposal to place tolls on Interstate 80 and keep the turnpike under state control.

When two congressmen from Pennsylvania – Republican U.S. representatives John Peterson and Phil English – added an amendment to another bill in Washington, DC, preventing the use of federal money to toll I-80, Rendell suggested he might once again try to lease the turnpike to private operators.

In remarks he made Aug. 2, Rendell stressed again that he thinks either tolling on I-80 or leasing the turnpike is necessary to paying for needed roadwork in the state.

“The Peterson/English bill in Washington has – at least for the time being – made it very questionable whether the original transportation legislation that we passed can go forward, because the Peterson/English bill would forbid us from tolling I-80 – and that's a substantial portion of the revenues we need,” Rendell said in that speech.

“That has put in doubt our transportation funding. We are going to proceed with the first traunch of funding, but it really has put in doubt the long-term availability of funding under the legislation.

“I informed the legislative leaders I am going to continue to go out and seek bids from those private companies that have expressed an interest in leasing the turnpike. If we receive a bid that is significant enough that would increase the total of funding that we give to transportation by a significant amount, I am going to bring that bid to the legislature.”

Since then, the governor has also pushed ahead toward placing tolls on I-80, even signing a lease that would move control of the highway from the state’s Department of Transportation to the Turnpike – all done in the name of raising transportation funds for the state.

However, what the governor has not discussed, proposed or publicly endorsed is taking a look at where the state’s current share of federal highway money is being spent.

The Delaware Canal is only one example.

One volunteer at a historic site that applied for funds told “Land Line Now” that people involved in the historical preservation community fought hard to get access to the funds – a battle they clearly won.

Others have successfully pushed to use highway funds for beautification projects, for parks and recreation, for museums and for other purposes.

The recipients of that money sometimes have little to do with transportation. Often, their only link to the movement of goods and people is that they can be seen from a road or highway.

And those projects are just one way that highway money is pulled away from roads in the state.

Mass transit, general state expenditures, state law-enforcement efforts and other items are all covered by part of Pennsylvania’s state or federal highway money.

U.S. Rep. John Peterson of Pennsylvania has become an outspoken critic of how highway funds are spent in the state.

During a recent press conference, he noted that a considerable portion of the state’s funding woes could be solved – if that money were actually spent on highways.

“For the last two years, Pennsylvania has spent three-quarters of a billion dollars of highway money for non-highway purposes,” Peterson said. “With this scheme, we will exceed a billion dollars of highway money for non-highway purposes.

“I’m not for education being funded out of highway money, I’m not for health care being funded out of highway money, and I’m sure as hell not for mass transit, two agencies – PATT and SEPTA, filled with patronage, filled with inefficiencies, filled with high price salaries of people that don’t work real hard – I’m not for funding them out of the sacred money that should be for highways and bridges.

“If Pennsylvania keeps its highway and bridge money for bridges and highways, we may not be too short,”

Peterson is not alone in those sentiments. They were also voiced at the same event by the congressman’s host, Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.

“What’s happening here is we’re hearing that, ‘wait a minute, there’s not nearly enough money to meet the state’s needs and obligations’,” Spencer said. “The fact of the matter is, there’s gobs of money. It’s where that money’s being spent. And what we have here in Pennsylvania is a bucket that’s filled full of water, and it’s got holes in the bottom of it. And the governor thinks he’s got a neat plan to put a whole lot more water in that bucket. But the rest of the story is he’s going to make those holes even bigger.”

Pennsylvania is called the Keystone state – a reference to the wedge-shaped stone at the top of an arch, the rock that holds the rest of the affair together.

And in the case of tolling, privatization and the future of America’s highways, Pennsylvania is, indeed, a keystone - It’s been said that if the state adopts the federal government’s plan for interstate tolling and highway privatization, many other states could quickly follow suite.

Todd Spencer described the state’s highway funds as a giant bucket. In this series of stories, we’re going to take a look at the money in that bucket – your federal and state highway dollars.

That includes where your money is being spent in Pennsylvania, why it’s going there, and what should be done about the situation.

What we’ve found is something every trucker – in every state – should know.

– By Mark Reddig, host, “Land Line Now”
mark_reddig@landlinemag.com

Originally aired on: December 17, 2007