State has growing gap between road needs, funding

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The report predicts a growing gap between the state's highway needs and funding unless new revenue sources are designated, said Ellen Saltzman, a research associate at the institute.

South Carolina ranks 48th in the nation and next to last in the 12-state Southeastern region on per capita transportation spending.

The report examined Federal Highway Administration data to see how other states fund transportation including roads, bridges, highways, public transit and safety-related services.

It found that South Carolina, with 41,518 miles of state-maintained roads out of nearly 64,000 miles of roads in the state, has comparatively more roads and less money to spend on them.

The report comes on the heels of a separate report to the governor and the state Legislature from the Business Alliance for Transportation, which recommends increasing the gasoline tax, vehicle registration and driver's license fees and new safety and rental car fees.

The alliance report notes that South Carolina has the nation's fourth-largest state-maintained road system.

Bills now before the state House and Senate address the issue, however state Sen. Larry Martin, R-Pickens, said the "timing" is bad because of the debate over a tobacco tax for Medicaid.

"It's real difficult to sell more than one tax at a time," Martin said. "I don't sense among the members of the Senate that there's enough support to do both."

Next year is an election year, and "the timing will even be worse," Martin said.

A new report from the state Department of Transportation projects a $57 billion pricetag on road and transportation needs identified in a 20-year state plan, Saltzman said.

Currently anticipated funding is slightly more than $11 billion, almost entirely from the gasoline tax, she said. That leaves a $46 billion revenue shortfall.

Those numbers bode ill for projects like the city of Clemson's second railroad crossing, which has gone begging for two decades. The project recently received money for an engineering study, but there's still no money to build it.

"The second rail crossing is a perfect example of a very badly needed roadway transportation item that needs to be addressed," said Elouise James, a Clemson city councilwoman. "It's a life safety issue. It's not just to make traffic flow easier. There's no way to get it done without money."

The state Department of Transportation gets 92 percent of its state funding from the state gasoline tax, which now is 16.75 cents per gallon, Saltzman said. The last increase in the state's gasoline tax was in 1987. Only five states have a lower gas tax.

"We have a very low rate, but we're very dependent on the gas tax," Saltzman said.

A higher gas tax rate could be part of the answer, but isn't enough because the state is too dependent on this single source of revenue, she said.

A more comprehensive revenue package that meets immediate and long-range transportation infrastructure needs could likely include additional fuel taxes as well as other funding options, she said.

The institute is at work on a report, due out later this year, to assess revenue options to meet projected state transportation needs.

Bills now before the state House and Senate would increase the gas tax, and the House bill goes further to impose other fees, similar to the Business Alliance for Transportation recommendations.

"We've got to have some money there to keep those roads in good shape and improve them," said Martin, who supports increasing the gasoline tax as a starting point. "If we don't address it, we'll get so far behind it will create a more ominous problem for us down the road."

Findings in the Strom Thurmond Institute report include:

* South Carolina lags behind the region and nation in generating money for transportation needs. Since 1965, state revenues have increased 2.7 percent compared to the average Southeastern state growth of 51.1 percent and the national average of 37.7 percent.

* Only five states have lower gasoline fuel taxes and fees than South Carolina. Low revenues put the state in a cash bind because South Carolina depends heavily (88 percent) on federal and state fuel taxes. Other states rely on taxes for about half the money spent on highway needs.

*At a 2000 spending level of $242 per resident, South Carolina ranks 48th in the nation ($319 per person) and next to last in the 12-state Southeastern region ($299 per person) on per capita transportation spending.