Wyoming highway official, others, urge Senate committee to consider rural factors in infrastructure funding - Entrepreneur Generations

The head of the Wyoming Department of Transportation is urging Congress to take account of rural roads and what they mean for the country overall when passing an infrastructure bill, Liz Carey reports for The Daily Yonder.

“Significant federal investment in highways and transportation in rural states is a sound policy that must be continued, for many reasons,” K. Luke Reiner said in prepared testimony to the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee. “Consider truck movements from West Coast ports to Chicago or the East Coast. These and other movements traverse states like ours and benefit people and commerce in the metropolitan areas at both ends of the journey. In Wyoming, about 90 percent of trucks on Interstate 80 have origins and destinations beyond Wyoming’s borders. This is clearly national transportation and warrants federal investment.”

The Financing American Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, which provides funding and oversight of the Highway Trust Fund, expires Sept. 30, 2020. Congress is working on bipartisan legislation to continue FAST.

In his testimony, Reiner stressed the burden of infrastructure on rural states. They have a dwindling tax base for road and bridge work. And residents of rural states have a high per-capita expense for the country’s transportation system.

“We have very few people to support each lane mile of federal-aid highway even as preserving this aging, nationally connected system is expensive,” he said. “Yet, citizens from our states contribute to the effort significantly. Nationally, the per capita contribution to the Highway Account for the highway Trust Fund is approximately $117. The per capita contribution to the Highway Account attributable to rural states is much higher. In Wyoming, it is the highest of the states at $312 annually per capita to the Highway Account; North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana are the next highest.”

Lawmakers disagree on environmental policy for highway projects, Carey’s report notes.

Republican Wyoming Sen. John Barasso, who chairs the committee, favors streamlining the environmental permit approval process for major highway projects.

But Sen. Tom Carper, D-Maryland, the committee’s ranking member, said climate change policy should be part of the legislation.

Wildlife migration is another consideration in rural areas, said Carlos Braceras, president of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

“The infrastructure system that we’ve built over the last 100 years is not the infrastructure system that we’re going to need for the next 100 years,” Braceras testified at the July 10 committee hearing. “It needs to change and we need to help it adapt.”




from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2Krjwmv Wyoming highway official, others, urge Senate committee to consider rural factors in infrastructure funding - Entrepreneur Generations

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