Lawmakers have begun looking for ways to pay for much-needed solutions to a transportation grid already stretched by booming growth and a special legislative panel is discussing ideas that could be on the ballot next fall.
The Blue Ribbon Transportation Committee, which held its first meeting Oct. 2, hopes to develop possible solutions to a transportation infrastructure that, under the current funding structure, cannot meet the demands of repairing existing roads and building new ones.
Although the state gasoline tax raises about $700 million a year, the Department of Transportation’s top official told the committee that, along with vehicle registration fees, is not enough.
“We’re attempting to fund a 21st century transportation system with a very old model, and it just isn’t working,” ADOT Director Victor Mendez said.
Because increasing the gasoline tax wouldn’t raise enough money — a one-cent hike to the gas- and diesel taxes would generate only about $37 million a year — the committee turned its attention for the first meeting to toll roads.
Though common in other parts of the country, toll roads are a rare sight in the Western United States. But Leonard Gilroy, director of the Reason Foundation, a self-described public policy group that pushes libertarian and free-market proposals, said Arizona could use capital created by toll roads — euphemistically referred to as “public/private partnerships” — to rebuild important bridges, create express toll lanes, add capacity between Phoenix and Tucson, and develop toll truckways along the I-10 corridor.
Arizona law allows minimal use of such partnerships for transportation projects, but there has never been such a venture.
“Now is the time to dust it off,” Gilroy said of the statute.
Not everyone was convinced. Rep. Tom Prezelski, D-29, said territorial leaders in Arizona’s early history tried unsuccessfully to sell the idea of toll roads to the public.
“People here have been proposing toll roads in Arizona since 1865…and they’ve never worked,” he said.
And Karen Rasmussen, president of the Arizona Trucking Association, said toll roads aren’t the favorite solution for her organization. She said they would likely not reduce traffic problems created by large trucks, as truck drivers would be more apt to take the free roads, even if it meant a slight delay.
Instead, she suggested raising the fuel taxes, as long as the money generated by an increase was dedicated to building new roads.
Some lawmakers on the panel were frustrated with the committee’s focus, and one West Valley Republican said he was concerned the options discussed would focus only on large urban areas and not the entire state.
“If you don’t want to fund it, that’s another issue,” Sen. Robert Blendu, R-12, said. “But to not have the vision is inexcusable.”
But one of the committee’s co-chairmen said other lawmakers needed to remember the committee isn’t designed to come up with a specifically detailed transportation plan.
“That’s what you have the [transportation] agency for,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-22, said. “We’re building at a macro level.”