Special Series: Bridges & Roads Part II

Thousands of drivers brave Massachusetts roads every day. Maybe you're one of them. If so, you've probably know what Westin resident, Valerie Mosely is talking about:

VALERIE MOSELY: It's horrible. Right after winter, it's horrible. It takes too long to fix the potholes. You're driving and then all of the sudden, bam!, your wheel is hitting a hole, and then you're wondering if your car is damaged.

Experts agree. The state's transportation system is broken. And Massachusetts doesn't have the money to repair roads. A recent report from the Transportation Finance Commission put the funding gap at a billion dollars a year. In the second of a special two-part series, WBUR's Meghna Chakrabarti traveled some rough roads in Western Massachusetts, searching for solutions.

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Gary Roux will tell you communities in Western Massachusetts are having a tough time smoothing out the ride for area drivers.

GARY ROUX: They're really having to struggle to do even minimal types of roadway improvements.

CHAKRABARTI: Roux is the principal planner with the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, the regional authority for 43 Western Massachusetts towns.
He says a failing overpass outside Springfield was dropping chunks of asphalt onto cars passing below. Crashes are common on congested off-ramps in the region. And Roux believes the sub-par system is hurting the local economy.

ROUX: If you're restricting your truck traffic, that's adding more time to travel from point A to B. It's increasing the fuel cost to transport the goods. It's having a secondary impact on a residential neighborhood or a school or a hospital. So, you see all these types of snowball effects that's (sic) happening because of a deteriorating transportation system.

CHAKRABARTI: Roux says there's been a long and steady decline in transportation funding to the Pioneer Valley. So road crews can't keep up with the maintenance backlog. He takes me on a drive through Springfield to see some examples.

CHAKRABARTI: Ok, and we're going back that way?

ROUX: You're going back that way, you'll come to a light. You'll take a left at the light. That'll take you right into the town center.

CHAKRABARTI: A decade ago, the Pioneer Valley received 40 million dollars a year in state and federal transportation aid. Now it gets only 12 million. Roux believes the drop is due in part to state funds that were sunk into the Big Dig. The Pioneer Valley, Roux says, has had to absorb the pain.

ROUX: And I think part of it is just hoping that you'll begin to play catch up with the investment that you need to get more projects into construction. You see the sign up ahead? Bear right onto Route 5.

CHAKRABARTI: Route 5 is an essential artery that connects Springfield to I-91 and Hartford, Connecticut. There's construction here; broken concrete and orange cones. Closed lanes are slowing traffic. Roux says the roadway needs significant improvement.

ROUX: Route 5 is being overlaid. This is a road that in parts has a concrete base that needs to be addressed, so that's a problem. You're gonna want to take the 57 West exit.

CHAKRABARTI: When the Transportation Finance Commission reported that Massachusetts faces a transportation funding gap of a billion dollars a year, panel members called the findings "shocking". But Gary Roux wasn't surprised.

ROUX: This is nothing new. The communities, I think, have been saying it louder and longer that they need more money for road and bridge improvement projects.

CHAKRABARTI: It seems like no one's been listening then, if it's coming as such a surprise in Boston.

ROUX: I don't think the Highway Department was necessarily surprised, either.

MASSACHUSETTS SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION BERNARD OCOHEN: We have about 32% of our pavement on state-maintained roadways that are either in fair condition or in poor condition.

CHAKRABARTI: So says State Transportation Secretary, Bernard Cohen. A recent report from the American Society of Civil Engineers put the percentage of crumbling roadways even higher, saying almost three-quarters of Massachusetts' major roads are in poor shape. A serious problem, made worse, Cohen says, by the fact that local communities, like the Pioneer Valley, count on Federal funds for up to 80-percent of their transportation dollars.

COHEN: That is funded through the 18-cent federal gas tax. That gas tax was established in the early 1990s. It was never indexed. So the amount of revenue coming out of the federal gas tax hasn't grown virtually at all.

CHAKRABARTI: And, because it's not keeping pace with inflation, Cohen says the federal highway trust fund may be three years from falling into the red. Meaning Massachusetts will have to pay its own way out of the transit funding gap.

But on Beacon Hill, the House and Senate budgets show negligible change in transportation funding, according to an analysis by the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. The money, says Joseph Giglio, will have to come from other sources.

JOSEPH GIGLIO: There are only two sources of financing for transportation. One is taxes. The other is user fees.

CHAKRABARTI: Giglio is a business professor at Northeastern University, and author of "Driving Questions: Developing a National Transportation Vision". Raising taxes is a tall order for politicians, Giglio says. He advocates a controversial, but increasingly popular, alternative.

GIGLIO: Going in the direction of market-based pricing, which I might add is where many large states are moving in that direction, and we would be charging people for actual road miles traveled based on time of day, based on the type of vehicle that they travel.

CHAKRABARTI: At least 14 states already have, or are developing, what's called "congestion pricing". New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently proposed charging roadway user fees across much of Manhattan. What would that look like in Massachusetts? Giglio explains:

GIGLIO: Theoretically, the Mass Turnpike authority could use congestion pricing on portions of route 128, 93, portions of 95. Those are all cash cows that would generate a substantial amount of money which in turn, one could consider using to subsidize other transportation assets that don't function at a break even level.

CHAKRABARTI: We already pay market prices for water, power, and gas, Giglio adds, so why not roads? But are you, and average drivers like Methuen resident Rick Collins, willing to pay?

RICK COLLINS: I think we pay enough. I think the problem is somewhere else. Maybe, somebody that's handling the money, I think that's where the problem stems from.

STEPHEN SILVERIA: Somewhere, someone was able to coin the phrase freeway. There's nothing free about them.

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Stephen Silveria is chairman of the Transportation Finance Commission, an independent panel created by the legislature in 2004. The Commission plans to release recommended solutions to state government this summer. But ultimately, Silveria believes people's attitudes about transportation need as much updating as the roads. Pavement, he says, comes at a price.

SILVERIA: They're not free to design. They're not free to build. They're not free to maintain. I mean I don't know what there is, outside of air, that millions of people use every day that doesn't turn out to be particularly expensive to operate and maintain.

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Silveria won't say if the commission will recommend new taxes, tolls, or congestion pricing. The transportation secretary says those options and more are on the table. Experts insist: to climb out of this funding crisis, Massachusetts must raise new revenue. But they wonder if lawmakers are willing to spend the political capital to get it.

For WBUR, I'm Meghna Chakrabarti.