RALEIGH -- Triangle motorists lose $1,350 apiece each year because the state doesn't have enough money to keep roads safe, smooth and free of congestion, according to a new report from a national research group.
"North Carolina is falling behind in maintaining its major roads, bridges and highways," said Will Wilkins, executive director of The Road Information Program, a Washington nonprofit known as TRIP. "The state lacks adequate funding to proceed with numerous projects that would greatly enhance economic development."
Wilkins appeared in Raleigh with state and regional transportation and business officials to release a 47-page report calling for stepped up road and transit spending.
He said the state's drivers lose $5.7 billion a year in maintenance problems caused by deteriorating roads, time wasted in traffic congestion, and damage and injury suffered in accidents that could be avoided with road improvements.
TRIP is financed mostly by road builders. Its officers and many of its members represent businesses that build bridges and roads and sell asphalt and construction machinery, as well as insurance firms and labor unions.
Major Triangle-area projects are delayed because of dwindling state and federal funds, the TRIP report said. A list of examples included Durham's East End Connector and widening projects for U.S. 401 in northern Wake County and Interstate 40 in southeastern Wake.
Gene Conti, the state transportation secretary, said North Carolina expects to have about $11 billion in state and federal money to meet a projected $54 billion in transportation needs between 2015 and 2020.
"Our needs are growing in North Carolina," Conti said. "Our revenue stream is not. We need to continue working to do more with less, but at the end of the day I don't think that's going to get the job done."
Congress recently extended federal transportation funding through the end of 2010, but Conti said it was time to pass legislation that would renew long-term transportation spending priorities for the next five or six years.
Conti and other speakers said transportation revenues are tied to declining proceeds from the gas tax, as vehicles become more fuel-efficient. National study commissions have called for a phase-out of the gas tax, to be replaced by some sort of tax on the miles traveled by each car.
"We have to find a more equitable user-pay model," said Marc Finlayson of Raleigh, co-chairman of N.C. Go, a state transportation advocacy group. "We have to get a way to capture the wear-and-tear created by more fuel-efficient fossil-fuel vehicles, and by alternative-fuel vehicles that don't buy gasoline but still use the roads."
