ATA Opposes Toll Road Privatization
As Washington girds for an extended debate over how to pay for improvements to the national highway system, the American Trucking Associations is making its position clear: It does not support privatization or leasing of existing toll roads.
The problem with privatization is economic risk and loss of control, said ATA president and CEO Bill Graves in announcing the policy adopted by the ATA board.
"ATA strongly opposes the lease or sale of existing toll roads, bridges or tunnels to private parties," Graves said. This financing technique generates revenue "at great expense to the trucking industry and taxpayers and with potential negative impacts on highway safety, security and the motoring public," he said.
"ATA is prepared to lead a national coalition of highway users in opposition to these financing schemes that offer a short-term windfall but a long-term recipe for disaster."
At first glance this position sets ATA at odds with current thinking in Washington.
Mary Peters, the new Secretary of Transportation, advocates public-private partnerships and tolls as ways to supplement fuel taxes as a source of highway funding. "Traditional transportation programs and their funding sources are no longer able to keep pace with demand," she told the Senate Commerce Committee recently.
Public-private partnerships are likely to be part of the next highway program reauthorization bill, due in 2009. The concept already is on display in Indiana, where a toll road has been leased to a private company, and in Texas, where an international firm has signed up to build and finance a new transportation corridor parallel to I-35.
Former Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta is a champion of the public-private approach. "It will require a cultural change to move from a government monopoly model toward acceptance of the private sector and market forces," he said in his farewell address as Transportation Secretary. "If we can fix the policy problems I am confident it will work."
Mineta said that practically every major financial institution on Wall Street has created or is creating an infrastructure fund with transportation as a major component – they recognize an enormous potential in infrastructure.
"It is imperative that future transportation decision makers continue to foster this interest and not take steps to discourage it," Mineta said. "History may very well look back on this as one of the defining public policy debates of our time – as consequential as the one that gave birth to the Interstate Highway System 50 years ago."
ATA's basic position is that funds for highway improvements should come from the mechanism that already is in place – fuel taxes. But its new policy contains nuances that acknowledge current thinking about the public-private approach.
For one thing, it refers to "existing" toll facilities, as opposed to new ones."If someone wants to build a six-lane highway in the middle of the desert and we're not forced to run on it, I don't know how we stand up and say we're going to oppose that," said Tim Lynch, senior vice president of federation relations and strategic planning at ATA.
"This policy is really designed to go after the conversion of existing roads into privatized roads, as opposed to brand new obstruction."
ATA's main concern with private projects is that carriers need to have alternative routes, and that funds raised through tolls be reinvested in highways, Lynch said.
"Theorists at DOT are arguing that privatization is the only way to add capacity," he said. "Part of our feeling is that most of (the private contractors) aren't really talking about adding capacity – they want to see the revenue stream." He cited the recently privatized Chicago Skyway as an example: "None of those revenues are going to add capacity."
Washington Report continued...
