BusinessTN

The right to say "I told you so" is no prize when it comes at the cost of 13 lives. But last summer's fatal collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis gave sudden, dramatic legitimacy to the drumbeat warning by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE): that the nation's aging infrastructure is chronically, dangerously under-funded. For a few weeks, Minnesota became the poster child for a nationwide disease. Faced with growing congestion, rising construction costs and scarce funding, states are scrambling just to keep their highways and bridges safe, not to mention adequate to the needs of changing populations.Tennessee is no exception. In its 2005 long-range plan, the Tennessee Department of Transportation projected it would fall $2 billion short of what it needs to effectively maintain and grow the state's transportation system through 2015—and that was before the federal government rescinded $4 billion nationally in transportation funding. Those rescissions punctuated a point that's become increasingly clear: Washington is shifting back to the states more of the burden for what has been a federally subsidized highway system.Late last year TDOT revised its shortfall projection upward, to $5.5 billion through 2015. "This equates to a $1.3 billion shortfall over the next five years," says TDOT spokesman Julie Oaks. "If current trends continue, the funding gap could grow significantly."

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters is urging states toward the edge of the federal nest, touting toll roads and promoting private investment in infrastructure projects. Having passed pilot toll legislation last year and with public-private partnership (PPP) legislation in the works, Tennessee—historically among the most conservative states regarding transportation funding—seems ready to take the plunge into alternative financing.

TDOT Commissioner Gerald Nicely says the state faces a long-term problem that will demand "fundamental change" in the way infrastructure is funded—a forecast echoed by industry insiders and lawmakers in Tennessee and across the United States.

James Weaver, general counsel to the Tennessee Road Builders Association (TRBA) and the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry, says the problem is multi-faceted, involving policy at every level of government, and it is indiscriminate, impacting quality of life or economic opportunity in every part of the state. "It can't be a partisan issue," Weaver says. "I have Republican friends who are just as interested in economic issues in the rural areas of the state as my Demo- cratic friends are. I have Republican friends who represent and work in urban areas, and they don't like sitting in traffic jams any more than my Democratic friends do. At the end of the day, they will be able to address the issue because it won't be partisan, we'll all be Tennesseans, and it's just about what's best for Tennessee."

Easier said than done when the problem is complex, the solutions are largely political, and the conversation must begin with a gut-check for lawmakers and taxpayers alike.

The rubber meets the road

Overseeing 14,150 miles of roadway and 19,519 state- and locally owned bridges, Tennessee has a lot on its plate with upkeep alone. According to the ASCE, vehicular traffic increased 48% in the state from 1990 to 2003. Much of that is commercial traffic—and trucks today are far heavier than road designers anticipated 40 years ago. The resulting wear and tear comes at a steep price. In 2005, according to TDOT's report, the state faced a $37.4 billion backlog of road and bridge projects addressing safety and congestion problems. That's part of $54.4 billion TDOT says it needs just to maintain and modernize the existing transportation system through 2030.

Those numbers have forced tough choices at the department. "TDOT's doing the best it can, but if you look at the way we're maintaining our roads today versus the way we maintained them seven, eight, 10 years ago, we're painting our roads rather than doing some really good maintenance on them," says Kent Starwalt, executive vice president of the TRBA.

But convincing Tennesseans that TDOT needs more of their money may be a hard sell. In 2003, Gov. Phil Bredesen took office having campaigned on the disparity between the quality of Tennessee's roads and its schools. Tennessee's infrastructure is still well-maintained relative to most other states; its highways get good marks from the trucking industry, which in 2006 and 2007 called I-40 in Tennessee the best road in the nation.

The problem, says Pete DeLay, chairman of the Tennessee Infrastructure Alliance, is that gradual degradation is not dramatic; the time between a funding cut and its effect dulls any sense of public urgency. The result can be both dangerous and expensive, he says. "Our road system is not much different from your house. If you let your house reach a certain point of disrepair, you almost don't have enough money to fix it."

Pete Rahn, director of the Missouri Department of Transportation and new president of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, agrees. "You have to get into a crisis circumstance for the public to recognize it," he says. "We've already gone off the curve, where things that could have been fixed for $1 now cost us $5."

The cost of congestion

Weaver has a theory for why truckers rate Tennessee's interstates so highly: "Every road is smooth when you're sitting still in a traffic jam." Weaver says the interstate "parking lot" he sees from his office window in Nashville suggests Tennessee's infrastructure crisis isn't looming—it's here. Congestion is "probably one of the top two quality-of-life issues facing every urban area in the state," he says.

Darek Bell, co-owner of Bell and Associates Construction Co., notes that in 2006 Nissan chose to locate its headquarters in Franklin, a Nashville suburb, rather than to Atlanta—a city whose gridlock has cost billions of dollars in potential new business, he says. Now Franklin is gridlocked, too. According to TDOT, Middle Tennessee is home to 21 of the state's most congested stretches of urban interstate; the ASCE calculates Nashville commuters spend $730 annually in excess fuel and lost time. But all of metro Tennessee is feeling the crunch. While Memphis is less congested than Nashville, according to the Urban Mobility Report, its rate of congestion from 1982 to 2003 was 1,000%—nearly triple Atlanta's.

It's a scene "repeated from Mountain City to Memphis," Weaver adds. "There's no construction out there. It's just too many cars and too few lanes." Indeed, there has been no new road construction in Tennessee in Bredesen's five-year tenure. In 2006, budget concerns prompted TDOT to defer temporarily 12 projects already on the board and include no new projects in its three-year plan. Maintenance has been TDOT's funding priority, Nicely says. "I think the real hit is going to be expanding capacity and widening and building new transportation facilities."