The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Tolls, climate change and responsibility
The challenges we face when it comes to funding transportation improvements go far beyond fixing roads and bridges, as important as that is.
Roughly 28 percent of our nation’s carbon emissions come from the transportation sector, and 60 percent of that comes from light-duty vehicles, an amount that has been rising since 1990.
Connecticut residences are widely spread out, far from places of employment, resulting in too many cars driving too many miles, producing too much pollution. Highway congestion results in more emissions per vehicle mile because slow-moving and idling vehicles powered by fossil fuels are highly inefficient. These emissions impose high health costs on the public.
Raising the price of highway driving, lowering the cost and inconvenience of travel by train or bus, and smart growth will put downward pressure on emissions, and will generate the revenue needed to make the whole transportation system more efficient.
To achieve this efficiency, we need robust mass transit that people will want to use, and that means housing located near those mass transit services. We also need improved bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure so people can make the first and last miles of their trip, or even the whole trip, without needing a motorized vehicle.
More active transportation (walking or bicycling) itself has proven to benefit public health and to reduce health-care expenditures. Infrastructure for bikes and pedestrians is an important metric for quality of life in urban and suburban neighborhoods.
All of this will require financial investments over many decades. Unfortunately, most sources of additional federal and state revenue to support such investments are off the table.
Progressive federal income taxes have been moving in the opposite direction from helpful and equitable. A higher federal gasoline tax or a general carbon tax is unlikely to pass in the near future.
Highway tolls are the one revenue source that is on the table, and approximately 40 percent of such revenue could be paid by out-of-state drivers. How the federal government will allow toll revenue to be allocated within the state budget is a lingering question — one that may not be answerable until a commitment to tolls is made.
But surely, more revenue for any one use will help us meet our fiscal obligations overall.
Republicans claim we can make the needed improvements to roads and bridges by borrowing, in which case 100 percent of the cost would be borne by state residents. It would also shift the burden to children and future generations on top of their student debt, national debt, state pension debt, personal debt, mortgage debt, and the looming costs of climate change.
In the near term, more state borrowing would crowd out funding for schools, health care, municipal aid, and other efficiency and resiliency investments we need in light of a fast-changing ecosystem. Of course, these are areas where many Republicans would prefer to reduce spending anyway.
No one wants to pay tolls to use the highways, but responsibility and fairness usually call us to do things we would prefer not to do. Continued refusal to face the challenges of a wornout, inefficient transportation system jeopardizes safety, our state’s economy, and an adequate response to climate change.
We must do better.
John C. Hall is executive director of the Jonah Center for Earth and Art, an environmental nonprofit based in Middletown. Contact him at jhall@thejonahcenter.org or 860-398-3771.