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a multi-year highway funding program.
The current FY 2007-2012 program, introduced in February, totals $10.425 billion; $1.975 billion of that is for FY 2007,
which began July 1.
"What this multi-year program will allow us to do," said Smith, "is to make 4,280 miles worth of highway improvements and
884 bridges worth of improvements. The Illinois interstate system accounts for only two percent of all road miles, but it
carries 28 percent of all the traffic and 50 percent of all the goods shipped on state highways," he added.
The problem: Highway user fees and other means of revenue that have traditionally funded the bulk of IDOT's budget are no
longer generating enough dollars to fund basic maintenance of the system, according to Linda Wheeler, who spent 28 years
with IDOT and is now a consultant for the Transportation for Illinois Coalition. TFIC is a diverse cross-section of business
and organized labor interests that has joined together to support a strong transportation alliance for Illinois on both
federal and state transportation funding needs.
"With a replacement cost estimated at greater than $150 billion, these highways represent the state's single-largest
capital investment," Wheeler said. "Yet Illinois is not investing adequately to protect and improve its investment."
IDOT's current funding allotment per year, she said, is well below the annual range of actual needs - totaling anywhere
from $2.6 billion to $4.1 billion - that IDOT estimated back in FY 2003.
"The enactment of the multi-year federal highway authorization bill will provide significant funding increases to
Illinois, but even with those increases, IDOT estimates its annual highway improvement program will average only about $1.8
billion. At that level, the state cannot begin to address its $3 billion-plus interstate reconstruction and modernization
need."
Illinois also can't afford to undertake new projects to reduce highway congestion, she said; and the state can't build
new four-lane roads critical to prosperity in Southwestern Illinois. Approximately 85 percent of Illinois' interstate
mileage is more than 20 years old, according to IDOT.
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"At the current level of funding, the state doesn't have enough state funding to take full advantage of the $1.2 billion
in federal funds earmarked for Illinois in the new federal transportation bill," Wheeler added.
So what's the problem? Why aren't the multiple sources of roads and bridge funding - such as federal and state motor fuel
taxes, state license plate fees, truckers' fees and annual license plate fees - generating enough dollars like they used to?
According to Wheeler, the answer, like the revenue streams, is multi-faceted.
The sales tax revenue - the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal tax and the 19-cent-a-gallon state tax - are user fees channeled
into the fund for roads and bridges, as are dollars generated via the $78 annual license plate fee. In FY 2005, for example,
the federal gas tax brought in $1.05 billion, the state tax $1.317 billion and the license plate fees $1.068 billion. Also,
a total of $891 million in state sales tax and a portion of local municipalities' sales taxes by statute went to the roads
fund. Other user fees - such as truckers' fees and drivers' license fees - brought in additional revenue to the road
coffers, bringing the FY 2005 highway fund user fee revenue total to $3.906 billion.
But where the rubber meets the road, Wheeler says, is in stagnant motor fuels tax revenues and vehicle/motorists fees
like the license plate fee revenues that are keeping pace at only half the rate of inflation - and at about one-sixth of the
rate of construction-specific inflation. The motor fuel tax has not been adjusted since 1990.
"While predictable, these revenue sources grow at only about one to two percent a year and do not keep up with inflation,
let alone inflation in the construction industry," she said, noting that since 2003, construction costs have risen on
average 13 percent annually. "As a result, funds for road improvements at both the state and local levels erodes as
inflation outstrips the growth in user fee revenues."
Contrary to what some may think - the errant assumption that higher gas prices mean more motor fuel tax dollars for the
highway fund - Wheeler says the price of gas is irrelevant.
"The gasoline taxes that go toward highways are based on the number of gallons sold," she said. "There is a sales tax on
the price itself, but that goes to the state and not specifically to roads and bridges."
In FY 2005, according to Wheeler, $692 million in highway user fee revenues that was supposed to go to the highway trust
fund - about 25 percent of all state user fees collected - was diverted to other state uses, compounding the problem.
"The diverted amount was equivalent to 11.5 cents of the 19-cent-a-gallon state gas tax," she added.
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