Not just another road study? Prove it

Maybe they really mean it this time.

Gov. Mike Easley and the leaders of the state House and Senate assembled a "blue-ribbon" panel Monday and asked its 24 members to diagnose the state's transportation problems and figure out how to pay for the solutions.

The 21st Century Transportation Committee is expected to generate some ideas for the General Assembly next spring and to make a final report by the end of 2008. Brad Wilson of Raleigh, chief operating officer of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, will lead the group of political and business leaders.

Wilson's committee will have to establish first that North Carolina's ability to pay for roads, trains and buses really is lagging far behind its needs.

Easley squelched this premise last spring when he labeled "absurd" his own Department of Transportation's predicted $65 billion shortfall over the next 25 years. Nothing happened to dispel the governor's skepticism, and the legislature declined to approve new transportation money.

This isn't the first time Easley and the legislature have thrown study groups at transportation problems.

In 2005, Easley and DOT created the group N.C. Thinking Ahead! with a similar "creative, innovative" charge. After a year of PowerPoint presentations, polls and public hearings, Thinking Ahead! dropped dead.

DOT stopped calling meetings. The group never even contributed to the proverbial dusty shelf of ignored committee reports.

About that time, the legislature tackled urban mobility problems with a blue-ribbon group that also toured the state and took itself seriously. There was a final report in this case, but no action.

This time it will be different, said Rep. Nelson Cole, a Reidsville Democrat on Wilson's committee.

"I do not think this is just another study," Cole said. "I think this study is going to prove there are other directions we can go in funding transportation and being more responsive to the needs we have out there."

Here are some likely items for the new panel's agenda:

* Highway Trust Fund transfers: It was a bipartisan decision in 1989 to shift $170 million each year from the Highway Trust Fund to the state's non-transportation General Fund. That's how much the General Fund lost when the state sales tax on cars was replaced with a similar "highway use tax," which goes to the Highway Trust Fund.

Many Republicans and some Democrats say that halting this transfer would solve DOT's money woes and jump-start the state's road-building engine. Actually, the Triangle's share of this $170 million would cover only a mile or two of Raleigh freeway (and Durham sidewalk) work.

* More local authority and financial responsibility: Last year, the legislature gave cities new latitude for spending money to improve state roads. It dropped an old ban that had made North Carolina one of the few states where counties could not build or maintain roads.

Some state officials want local governments to take over secondary roads. Some city officials worry more about freeways, and the fact that urban congestion has no weight in the state's "equity formula" for sharing road money.

* Different ways to pay: Inflation steadily boosts taxes on sales and wages, but fuel-tax revenue has dropped despite recent increases in the per-gallon rate. Our more efficient cars are burning less gas.

But we keep driving more miles. Members of the new study committee said Monday that they want to explore a per mile tax approach that was pioneered in Oregon and that in the coming year, will be road-tested in the Triangle.

"That would be more in keeping with what the needs of the citizens are -- the people who use the roads are the ones who pay for them," Cole said.

Rep. Becky Carney, a Charlotte Democrat who served on the ill-fated urban mobility panel, will join Cole on the new committee. This time, she said, the public will expect results.

"People want to feel safe on the roads," Carney said. "They want to be able to move around, and they want choices. A lot of times the public is ahead of the policymakers, and I think the public is ahead of us this time."