Story by Gayle Worland
Photographs by Judy Spencer

One of the biggest issues in Congress this year is about getting from here to there.

Legislation that revolutionized the way America sets priorities for its highways, bridges and rails will expire on September 30. Meanwhile, it's caught in political gridlock.

Since its enactment in 1991, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, or ISTEA, has made Illinois a big winner. The federal program helped renew the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago and furnished dollars to repair bridges and extend mass transit.

Little surprise, then, that Illinois — which gets back an estimated $1.13 for every dollar it sends to Washington for transportation — wants ISTEA (pronounced "ice tea") to continue rolling along.

But Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin and a coalition of some 13 other states don't. They argue ISTEA drains their budgets to the benefit of other states, making them unwilling "donors" to road repairs and transit programs far from their borders. And they're fighting to change the basic formula for federal transportation funds.

So, as Congress girds to rewrite the surface transportation act, the Illinois delegation and the governor's office are paying close attention: More than a third of the state's roads that qualify for federal funds are rated in poor or mediocre condition, and more than 6,000 bridges need replacement or repair.

Illinois is not alone. But while the nation's transportation structure ages, fewer federal dollars will be available for transportation spending. "The whole antagonism between donor and 'donee' states has somewhat intensified," says Dan Gentry, bureau chief of policy and federal affairs for the Illinois Department of Transportation.

As a result, lobbying interests, lawmakers and transportation committee observers anticipate some major philosophical collisions on the U.S. House and Senate floors this fall. And transportation negotiators expect a bumpy road ahead.

In the meantime, nobody's going anywhere. Despite the impending deadline, Rep. Bud Shuster, the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, put ISTEA's reauthorization on hold because, he says, there simply is not enough money to work with. The federal balanced-budget agreement crafted this summer between the White House and the congressional leadership locked up monies in the Highway Trust Fund that transportation advocates say are needed to supply the annual $26 billion for highways and more than $5 billion for transit programs requested across the United States for each of the next five years. Much to the dismay of transportation interests, assets in the trust fund, which is fed by gasoline taxes, are counted against the federal deficit.

"A lot of the [transportation] funds have been held hostage to the budget situation, to make the deficit look smaller so other programs don't have to be cut so much," says Illinois transportation department spokeswoman Martha Schiebel.

In fact, part of transportation income already goes to balance the budget: In 1993 Congress increased the federal gas tax from 14.1 cents to 18.3 cents a gallon, of which 4.3 cents is earmarked for deficit reduction. Today the issue is even more complex because some groups are asking for half a cent of the 4.3 cents to go toward Amtrak.

An amendment sponsored by Shuster, a Republican from Pennsylvania, and ranking minority member Minnesota Democrat James L. Oberstar to boost transportation spending by $12 billion failed by two votes in May. Determined to give the issue a midsummer kick-start, Shuster visited Gov. Jim Edgar and state Secretary of Transportation Kirk Brown in July for a publicity-generating look at a Chicago Transit Authority project and the crumbling Stevenson Expressway.

It is no accident that Shuster's 73 member transportation committee is the largest in Congress. "Every mem-

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ber in the House has a transportation project — often more than one project — that he or she would like to see approved," says Rep. Ray LaHood, a Peoria Republican who serves on the committee with fellow Illinoisans Republican Rep. Thomas Ewing of Pontiac and Democratic Reps. Glenn Poshard of Marion, now a candidate for governor, William O. Lipinski of Chicago and Jerry F. Costello of Belleville.

Indeed, fixing roads and bridges is among the most visible governmental functions; it can make or break political careers.

"The stakes are high," agrees a transportation aide on Capitol Hill. "Highway funding is something that people understand and pay attention to. They notice when their highways are falling apart or when they're being repaired."

The economic, social and environmental impact of transportation funding for a country that stretches across a continent — and for its restless, mobile population — cannot be underestimated. According to the Washington-based Road Information Program, from 1985 to 1995 highway traffic in Illinois increased by 33 percent, while the state's population increased by only 4 percent. In 1994, Americans logged 4.2 trillion passenger miles on the nation's 3,920,921 miles of roads and highways.

The average American household spends one-fifth of its income on transportation. Direct spending — including fuel for personal automobiles, buses, train engines and such, and the vehicles themselves — represented 11 percent of the 1994 Gross Domestic Product, compared with 12 percent for food. With billions of ISTEA dollars now at stake, everyone from automobile groups to the construction industry to mass transit supporters, environmental organizations and bicycle boosters have sent their lobbyists scrambling to Capitol Hill to win support for their concerns.

Signed into law at the start of the decade, ISTEA signaled a change in national transportation policy. The federal government's focus turned from building a system of interstate highways to maintaining them and making them more accessible from secondary roads. It also gave state and local governments more say about transportation plans, put more emphasis on mass transit and encouraged "enhancement" projects ranging from the creation of commuter bike lanes to the removal of ugly highway billboards.

"It started with the right premise," says Poshard, whose southern Illinois district is primarily rural and concerned with the safety of aging, smaller roads and bridges. "I felt very, very good about it."

"ISTEA ushered in the end of big interstate construction," adds Gentry, whose state transportation tenure overlapped the writing of the huge transportation act. "It was a transition to a broader focus, an effort to step back and reevaluate."

The act created the National Highway System, as well as a block grant program called the Surface Transportation Program, and a bridge replacement and rehabilitation program. The act's Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program was designed to help traffic- clogged areas comply with air quality standards. Today there are other needs that planners must consider: the role of transportation in keeping the United States internationally competitive, for example, or ways to get low-income workers, newly off welfare, to their jobs. A new funding formula ushered in by ISTEA has given Illinois a good return for its transportation tax. Previously, Illinois got back only 83 cents for every dollar it sent to Washington, says Poshard.

Besides the miles of new asphalt that ISTEA has brought to the state, Illinois has also seen dollars directed toward the rejuvenation of the legendary American corridor Route 66, and projects as small as a new 4.6-mile paved trail leading from Rochester to the state transportation building in south Springfield. While the trail is a recreational gift to the region, to qualify for federal dollars it had to serve a commuting purpose as well.

Fifty-five percent of Illinois' $1.2 billion for surface transportation projects in state fiscal year 1997 — including repairs on bridges and interstates, work on U.S. and state routes, programs to alleviate congestion in urban areas and efforts to remove traffic haz-

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ards — came from federal coffers through ISTEA, says the transportation department's Schiebel. The state expects to have less to work with in the next half-decade, according to its FY 1998-2002 Proposed Highway Improvement Program. The five-year plan totals $4.535 billion, including $1.05 billion designated for fiscal year 1998. About $2.488 billion of the five-year sum is expected to be supplied by the federal government.

Unlike earlier transportation bills, under ISTEA states have to allow local communities more say on roads that would be built in their neighborhoods. The act has required more hearings and paperwork. But the department has never been able to ignore local voices — considering the realpolitik of Chicago's powerful presence.

ISTEA's emphasis on grass-roots transportation , planning "probably wasn't that drastic a change in Illinois because we've always had a strong relationship with local communities," Gentry says.

Key facts about road and bridge conditions and federal funding The U.S. Congress is considering legislation to authorize federal funding for the nation's surface transportation program, including roads and bridges. Congress last authorized federal aid for highways when it approved the Intermodel Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), which expires on September 30,1997. New federal highway legislation must be approved by that date or federal funding for Illinois' roads and bridges will cease. Here are some important facts about road and bridge conditions and federal funding in Illinois that have been compiled by The Road Information Program (TRIP), a nonprofit transportation research group based in Washington, D.C. The information is based on TRIP'S analysis of data from the Federal Highway Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, ' and from TRIP surveys of state departments of transportation. In all cases, information is based on 1995 data (the latest year available) unless otherwise noted. Highway funding • Federal funding for Illinois highways totaled $610 million in 1996. • About $363 million in federal highway user fees paid by Illinois motorists went to fund nonhighway programs. (Of the 18.3 cents per gallon federal motor fuel tax, 4.3 cents go to the U.S. General Fund and 2 cents go to the Mass Transit Account.) Road and bridge conditions • 43 percent of roads in the state are in poor or mediocre condition. • Approximately one-fourth of Illinois' bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. • Highway vehicle travel in Illinois increased by 33 percent from 1985-95, while the population increased by 4 percent. • Driving on roads in need of repair costs Illinois motorists $1 billion a year in extra vehicle operating expenses, or $144 per motorist.

Now the future of ISTEA is up for grabs. ISTEA Works, a coalition of 17 mostly northern states, including Illinois, hopes there won't be many changes in the current formula. And "the chairman [of the House transportation committee] won't want to make drastic changes," either, says. LaHood.

Nevertheless, in the committee's back rooms, staffers are drafting three options for their boss: a one-year extension of the current ISTEA, as well as models for a three- year or a six-year reauthorization.

The final product to come out of Congress may also reflect the Clinton Administration's own proposal, dubbed NexTEA, or the National Economic Crossroads Transportation Efficiency Act. The proposal endorses ISTEA's overall structure. But it falls short, Gov. Edgar wrote in a statement for the Council of State Governments, in the area of "discretionary funds earmarked to maintain and reconstruct the nation's interstate highway system and to rehabilitate or replace the nation's bridges."

Opponents of the president's plan also say it unfairly ties up money in the Highway Trust Fund to help balance the budget, rather than make those dollars available for transportation projects.

In the Senate, Illinois' Carol Moseley-Braun and Richard J. Durbin have embraced a bill sponsored by Sens. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat, and John H. Chafee, a Rhode Island Republican, which would boost Illinois' share of highway funds from its current 3.75 percent to 3.81 percent of the federal total. The bill also emphasizes funds for bridge rehabilitation — critical for needed repairs on Chicago's Wacker Drive —

16 / September 1997 Illinois Issues

and keeps the "congestion mitigation" program intact. "The suburbs love that." says a Senate aide.

ISTEA's important discretionary funding includes the "Interstate 4R" program, large sums to help resurface, restore, rehabilitate and reconstruct aging interstate highways. Durbin has introduced legislation increasing the $65 million now in the I-4R program to $800 million a year. The senator's action is designed as leverage to raise federal funding levels for Illinois' most pressing road priority: rehabbing the Stevenson Expressway — Interstate 55 — through Chicago.

Making the Stevenson, which carries more than 160,000 cars and trucks a day, like new again is expected to cost $567 million. The state is hoping for $175 million from the federal discretionary fund, so that much-needed repairs on the 30- year-old road surface would only take two years instead of four.

Transportation funding has an inherent problem: "a very lumpy cycle," Schiebel explains. A bridge will last some 70 or 80 years, but its construction can require an outlay of hundreds of millions of dollars. "It's impossible to accommodate that kind of expenditure with the annual allotment," which is why Illinois is pressing for more discretionary I-4R and bridge repair funds, she explains.

The current funding dilemma is made more difficult because transportation is traditionally a pork-barrel issue. The Illinois delegation alone is said to have a 200-page "wish list" of programs it would like to see funded.

Ideally, every member of Congress would like to have a meaty project to take home.

Illinois no longer has the lucrative services of former Illinois congressional heavyweight and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman DanRostenkowski, who lassoed $135 million of $175 million in ISTEA money for the Kennedy Expressway's renovation in the early 1990s. Even so, the state may have enough clout on the. " transportation committee to influence the bill it finally approves. "We have more members on the committee than any other state. That's something I've bragged about," says LaHood, whose transportation wish list includes a $500 million "Heart of Illinois" interstate stretching from Chicago to his Peoria district and the widening of Route 67, a north-south corridor from the Quad-Cities to Alton, sometimes called "Forgotonia" because of its dearth of large roads. Illinois has good geographic presence on the House committee, with representatives from across the state. "I think," says LaHood, "we will have a fair amount of influence." ISTEA is sure to heat up during the weeks ahead, and the final outcome will be anybody's guess. One observer says Shuster may consider scooping up the money the Clinton Administration has designated for a five- year bill and stretching it over only a three-year bill, thus boosting the annual sum. Other measures would guarantee states at least a 95-cent return on all transportation dollars they send to Washington. The transportation debate this time around is less about what to spend money on — roadways or mass transit? new construction or repairs? — and more about how much money will be spent. Illinois' congressional delegation is optimistic the state will fare well in the next generation of ISTEA. But developments could still take a sudden detour in an unforeseen direction. The stakes are high, and Illinoisans keep looking over their shoulders to see who is gaining. �

Gayle Worland is a free-lance writer in Washington, D. C., and a frequent contributor to Illinois Issues. An Illinois native, she took a plane on her last visit to Rockford.

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