Every six years, the federal government decides how it will spend your highway tax dollars.

And in every one of the past several versions of that legislation, a set percentage of money from the highway trust fund was set aside for what the feds call “transportation enhancements.”

The American Heritage Dictionary defines an enhancement as something designed “to provide with improved, advanced, or sophisticated features … to make greater, to augment.”

So when you hear that your highway money is paying for transportation enhancements, you might think the money is paying to enhance transportation – to fix a highway, to make a bridge stronger or more durable.

But in fact, that’s not what transportation enhancements are.

They are a broad category that includes biking and hiking trails, museums, parks, landscaping or anything that improves the view and can be seen from a road. And it represents a drain of hundreds of millions of dollars out of America’s highways.

So where did these things come from?

“In 1991, the Congress passed what was called IS-TEA, the intermodal surface transportation efficiency act,” Mike Joyce of OOIDA’s Washington, DC, office said. “And that was a $217 billion authorization bill to fund the nation’s infrastructure. Included in ISTEA was a program called the transportation enhancements program – the TE program. And what that program was, was a program that authorized funding for about 17,000 projects nationwide.”

Many people involved in transportation use the figure 10 percent to describe how much of the nation’s highway funds are spent on enhancements.

Joyce says that figure is pretty accurate. But exact dollar figures – like many in the federal budget – can be hard to nail down.

Of the $217 billion authorized for the six-year ISTEA bill, Joyce says roughly a half billion dollars every year was spent on so-called transportation enhancements.

Virtually every state dips their hands into this part of the federal cookie jar. Pennsylvania is no exception. In fact, a quick look through the state’s list of recent “transportation enhancements” reveals many such expenditures of federal road money in the state.

For example, the Irwin Borough Streetscape and Gateways Project in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.

Paying to ‘pretty up the place’

Streetscapes are a popular item for highway funds. The term refers to beautification – it can include landscaped or brick medians, landscaping along the side of a roadway, nicer light poles or other improvements designed to beautify a road.

On the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission Web site, the agency says the Irwin Borough project includes “landscaping, lighting, signage, and other aesthetic treatments” at six places the commission officials referred to as “identified community gateway locations.”

The reason the money is being spent at the site: It’s identified as part of the historic Lincoln Highway corridor, one of the first identified, national, cross-country highways – a road not used for coast-to-coast commerce for more than three-quarters of a century.

However, the project covered just six blocks of the road – essentially, all city streets. And the price tag to federal taxpayers just for phase 1 - $1.963 million, approved in 2006.

The streetscape cash was listed along with hundreds of other projects on the National Transportation Enhancements Clearinghouse Web site. The group says it provides information to communities that want to, in their words, “revitalize the transportation experience in your community.”

In looking through the documents on that site, Irwin Borough wasn’t the only streetscape approved for federal funds.

Since 2001, other similar work in Pennsylvania listed to receive federal money included:

And the list goes on and on.

Pork money for paths

Another siphon in the federal highway gas tank, one that truckers have often talked about, is highway money being spent on paths for hikers and bikers.

Again, the list of Pennsylvania projects receiving federal dollars shows numerous examples of highway funds being used for what amounts to recreational activity.

One example is the so-called “Hot Metal Bridge” in Allegheny County.

The Hot Metal Bridge is one of a side-by-side pair of 1100-foot-long, near-identical structures that were built to connect steel works on both sides of the Monongahela River.

Various records date the construction of the span anywhere from 1887 to 1900. The other span – which shares the same set of river piers – is called the Monongahela Connecting Railroad Bridge.

Documents show that in 2002, more than $6.5 million was approved to convert the Hot Metal Bridge into a pedestrian and bike path connector. And in 2006, an additional $2.2 million was approved for additional work at the site.

John Coyne is director of engineering and construction for the URA – the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Allegheny County, the agency in charge of the Hot Metal Bridge.

Coyne says the bridge – which sits in the center of a redevelopment project – would connect two popular hike-and-bike trails, one on each side of the river, each part of a much larger regional trail system.

The highway funds, he says, paid for basic repair work for the conversion:

“The money paid for the conversion of the uh the deck,” Coyne said. “We put on a new deck, new railing, lighting and ramps to connect the bridge on either end.”

That kind of expenditure is typical for a conversion of a bridge that size and that age – and, Coyne adds, far less expensive than building a new pedestrian bridge.

Coyne notes that the bridge is historic – a fact backed up by other organizations interested in the history of the area. And not only does it provide a way for pedestrians and bikers to cross the river safely, it also connects two so-called “brownfield” redevelopment projects and links to area universities.

As a result, John Coyne sees the Hot Metal Bridge as a natural place to spend federal dollars.

“We’re taking an old historic railroad bridge and converting it into a use that transportation enhancement funding was intended to be used for,” he said.

He’s obviously not alone in that thinking.

Again, looking through documents on the web site of the National Transportation Enhancements Clearinghouse, dozens upon dozens of similar projects – dotted around the state – have been approved to use federal highway money.

They include bridges, trails and other foot traffic facilities. A few examples:

Again, the list goes on and on.

“Of significant concern”

Many truckers have probably thought that enhancements such as museums, trails and streetscapes in Pennsylvania and elsewhere are where the bulk of diverted highway funds are going. And it is quite a chunk.

But despite the millions upon millions of dollars spent on enhancements like these, in fact, they represent just a percentage of highway funds spent in any state – to be precise, about 10 percent of federal funds.

However, OOIDA executive vice president Todd Spencer says they’re still a problem … a problem that needs to be tackled.

“We’ve reached the point where significant revenues go into the highway trust fund, but during the process of allocating where those funds are going, not enough is making its way to highways and bridges,” he said. “That is of significant concern.”

All of this spending has taken place in the face of what state officials call a transportation funding crisis in Pennsylvania.

So why not cut back on the use of highway trust fund dollars for bike and hike trails, museums and beautification, and instead spend it on potholes and pavement?

OOIDA’s Mike Joyce explains:

“Well, they’ve been very popular political capital, in two ways, both financially and in mileage,” he said. “For a candidate, a politician, a current member of Congress to return to their home states and provide grants to communities that are trying to develop their downtowns (and things like) bike paths.

There’re coalitions here in town that push for bike paths, and a diversion of these resources. But they’ve been very popular programs, again, for congressional members to return – they’re pork projects is what they are.”

It isn’t just a problem on the federal level.

Local officials, starved for cash to fund what they see as necessary projects, pushed hard to get the money.

And Todd Spencer says that is just as big a problem as the officials who are doling out the cash.

“For everything that’s in every program, there is a constituency that thinks it’s absolutely vital,” he said. “The constituency thinks the money is vital.

“For illustration purposes … money collected at weigh stations here in Missouri goes into local school systems. Well, the local school systems think that money is absolutely vital. Now, where it comes from, they could care less.

“In Michigan, it’s the libraries benefit from tickets that truckers pay and weigh violations,” he added. “They think it’s vital. Again, there’s a constituency for everything.”

What’s missing is what Spencer calls a “united public dialog,” a national discussion regarding how the federal and state governments pay for highways and other transportation needs.

It’s a discussion that will become much more urgent in 2009.

That’s when Congress will reauthorize highway funding with a new, six-year bill. And OOIDA’s Mike Joyce says that at that time, federal lawmakers – and citizens – need to far more closely examine this part of the federal budget.

“Congress is really going to have to tighten its purse strings. And they’re going to really have to look very closely at projects like this,” he said. “Are these important? Are these integral to the economic development, the future development of our country in a very competitive world marketplace?

“You know, our transportation infrastructure has made us the envy of the world. But it could be something in the future that begins to inhibit our growth, inhibit our ability to compete in the global marketplace.

“These projects are something that’s really going to have to be looked at closely,” Joyce continued. “There are a lot of projects throughout the country transportation-wise that could benefit from those resources and those funds.”

Even if federal and state officials were able to redeploy significant amounts of the money now spent on enhancements back to highways, it’s unlikely that would solve the funding problem.

To truly solve the funding crisis, Spencer says additional cash now diverted away from highways would have to be returned to roads as well.

“You know, there are many, many other categories, and bear in mind that the transportation funding system that we’re working with is one that’s basically been around for decades,” Spencer said. “And through the decades, it has evolved in all kinds of different directions.

“We’ve got to narrow the focus. We’ve got to narrow the mission of the highway trust fund, so to speak, where a much greater percentage of what goes in actually goes to highways and bridges.”

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

Originally aired on: December 18, 2007