Here’s an article from the Chicago Tribune in which Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is quoted as saying “there is no favoritism” involved in the disbursement of the transportation stimulus funding to the states. The reason given was that the disbursements are “based on a long-standing formula for allocating highway funds to the states.”
Using their system eliminates some forms of bias, but there is no reason bias can’t be built into the system itself.
Apparently, if there is a formula involved we are getting an outcome that is impartial, effective, and fair. After all, a formula involves fancy math, and anything involving fancy math must be true. Right?
In this case the answer is “yes” – but only to a degree. The use of formulas has taken some of the arbitrariness and the worst forms of politicking out of the transportation spending process. Moreover, the application of existing formulas was certainly the only politically feasible way to push such a large and complex spending program through Congress with the lightning speed that was required of a stimulus measure.
But on the other hand, the formula was not handed to us on stone tablets: humans, with all their imperfections, devised it. Using their system eliminates some forms of bias, but there is no reason bias can’t be built into the system itself.
Here’s one of the two formulas that determine the way most of the highway funds are being distributed:
* 25 percent based on total lane miles of federal-aid highways.
* 40 percent based on vehicle miles traveled on lanes of federal-aid highways.
* 35 percent based on estimated tax payments (e.g. from fuel taxes) attributable to highway users in the states into the Highway Account of the Highway Trust Fund (often referred to as “contributions” to the Highway Account).
* No state can receive less than one half of one percent of the spending.
No doubt this descent into the minutiae of transportation finance allocation has sent many of you scurrying off to read about Marijuana Pepsi, electric cars, or Mike Zarren‘s take on basketball statistics by now. But for those hearty souls who remain, can you spot the (at least) five ways that ineffectiveness, inefficiency, and (depending on one’s values) inequity are built into the process?
My answers next time. Yours?
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Mike D,
“5. Appears biased to intra-state commerce (more lanes around cities and to suburbs) than interstate commerce, which is arguably where gains from trade are primarily generated.”
Also, I believe Congress only has the ability to regulate interstate commerce, not intra-state. But I might be one of those fools who thinks our federal government abides by the bounds set forth in the Constitution.
Quick question from an interested layman: do federal-aid highways include US Routes or even selected state route roads, or just Interstates?
Others have great points , I just have one to add:
This doesn’t seem to address at all the environmental effects on transportation costs. It takes more money to build and maintain highways through extreme mountainous terrain, near the coasts (landslides), in colder climates (extra chains & studded tire damage), and in earthquake zones.
Several of mine have been listed. I’ll add these:
-The gas tax benefits areas with large urban centers, where many people drive without using federal highways.
-No allocation is given for structures requiring extra maintenance (e.g. bridges)
-Toll roads (which partially fund themselves) are counted just the same as free roads.
In case you didn’t think the economic issues with this are boring enough on there own, allow me to point out the technical engineering flaws.
When determining the lifespan requirements of a road, the loading comes from both the vehicle load and general weathering. The vehicle load that matters includes both the number of vehicles and the weight of those vehicles; Virtually all road damage is caused by trucks rather than passenger cars due to their greater weight (this is why trucks are required to have so many wheels- to better distribute the load). The most significant weathering effect is the freeze-thaw cycle and drainage. So the problems are:
1. Different roads have a different ratio of commercial and passenger traffic, so simple vehicle-miles are inefficient for determining wear and tear.
2. The formula does not take into account regional weather diferences. The strength of the freeze-thaw cycle differs from state-to-state. As a result, some states simply have to maintain their roads more frequently (or build them with more time-consuming techniques and expensive materials).
3. The formula doesn’t take into account regional differences in material costs.
4. The formula doesn’t take into account regional differences in gradation, soils, and sub-grade. These factors all effect the cost of road construction
5. This is not an engineering problem; but since the distribution of funding is already established before the projects are proposed, states will simply be assigning projects to match their funding level rather than identifying their most important projects and prioritizing them.
In the heavily congested Northeast (NY-NJ) corridor the amount of total miles driven is significantly disproportional to the lenght of time it takes to get from Point A to Point B. Time of trip is a tough number to quantify given varying traffic patterns but our two largest metro areas-New York and Los Angeles- fit into this undistinguishable category.
A few big issues:
1. People may have to use non Fed-aid roads where a new fed-aid road would be a better solution. That is, this favors states with lots of fed aid roads already and makes it harder for other states to add a new fed-aid road. Further, if one of the two states lowers it fuel tax a bit more than the other, they will suddenly get more of the Fed fuel contribution.
2. States where people commute to a neighboring state for work creates issues for both in terms of fuel dollars and distance (but not load).
3. Distance favors underutilized places like Montana and Utah and Nevada where you have very long roads with minimal use. The reason for distance is that road damage is not just from heavy use, but this is less fair to ultra high density areas like Los Angeles, the North East, etc.
4. This does cover overutilized roads in the sense of car_hours/distance may be near saturation (so no problem) or may be way over saturation (or may be well under saturation). Since the total state distance and road-load is used, it does not give enough weight to over saturated sections.
This formula ignores the effect factors like weather and grade have on road maintenance costs. Consider I-70 from its western terminus to Denver. Pretty much any car on this road is driving its entire length. The first half of the road, in Utah, is mostly flat, but the second half, in Colorado, runs through the mountains. But under the federal formula, Utah gets just as much money as Colorado for this road.
The formula also ignores special roads, like bridges or tunnels.
Anyone know which states get more money because of the 0.5% minumum? And is this why it seems like RI highways are always under construction?