10/8/04-North Carolina is squandering money on new road projects that should be spent on repairs to existing highways, a University of North Carolina-Charlotte transportation professor says.
David Hartgen’s findings in a study released Oct. 6 said an emphasis on new capital projects instead of maintenance is causing the state’s existing roads to deteriorate.
He suggested that the state rank its highway capital projects by cost effectiveness, taking the money intended for the least promising and using it instead for repairs.
The study, financed by the John Locke Foundation, a conservative Raleigh-based group, reviewed 349 major road projects from 1990 to 2003, using data from the North Carolina Department of Transportation.
The report said about $2.5 billion spent on projects of “questionable value” could have been reallocated to road repairs. That would have increased the state’s highway maintenance budget by 40 percent over the 13-year period without raising taxes.
“We need to spend our highway dollars more wisely, not ask our taxpayers for more of their money,” Hartgen said in a statement. “North Carolina no longer has the luxury of distributing road funds without regard to need.”
Hartgen said state lawmakers must create a plan to rank highway projects by cost and benefits, then spend money only on the most vital and divert the rest of the funding to repair existing roads.
State Rep. James Crawford, a Democrat from Oxford who is co-chair of the Legislature’s joint committee on transportation oversight, told The Associated Press he agrees that the state should spend more on road repairs. A study committee on highway financing will begin meeting in November to set priorities as Hartgen suggests, Crawford said.