The Highway Establishment and How it Grew and Grew and Grew
All roads have to go somewhere; but it could be that roads in Texas are going the wrong way.
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The density and decentralization problems are serious obstacles, to be sure. If the Manhattan subway system could somehow be inserted in the swampy muck that underlies Houston, it still would not fully solve that city’s transportation problem. Mass transit advocates merely deny that these obstacles are insuperable. “No mass transit system is feasible in Texas,” says Buck Wood of Texas Common Cause, “if you start from the premise that everybody has to drive his car to work.” Pointing to the rail commuter societies of Long Island and suburban Philadelphia, where residential density resembles Texas’ and people take a bus, drive, or are driven to rail terminals, Garrett Morris remarks, “this density argument sounds good, but I’m not sure it’s as valid as people would have you believe. When you’ve got the necessity for conservation of fuel, density is not the argument it once was. Anyway, the old streetcars worked with lower density that we have today.”
Commercial decentralization is not so severe as to prevent the creation of a mass transit system serving major shopping centers as well as the central business district. If our present decentralized shopping patterns grew up in the last 30 years as a direct result of the increased mobility that private automobiles provide, is it not reasonable to expect that with reduced auto use and better mass transit our shopping patterns will swing back toward greater decentralization, giving downtown stores a badly-needed shot in the arm? Is that so bad a prospect?
At the moment, however, mass transit plans in Texas are hamstrung by problems far more elementary than density and decentralization. Though thousands of commuters need to cross municipal boundaries, the cities face difficulties extending their own systems across these lines. The counties lack mass transit authority altogether. An effort to establish a regional transit authority in Houston last fall collapsed in a roar of recriminations. Revenue sources are shaky. The smaller cities cannot (or will not) put together enough revenue to qualify for federal matching funds (Since 1964, Texas has received only $35.6 million in federal aid for improving mass transit, less than one-tenth as much as California, that bastion of the private car, has gotten, and far behind the $260 million for Illinois, the $210 million for Massachusetts, and the $200 million for Pennsylvania. Under the law, Texas could have gotten $762.5 million.) Good transit is expensive, like police, fire protection, waste disposal, and other city services. Because it was a profit-making business until very recently, the cities are doggedly reluctant to assume the responsibility of supplying it at a loss.
The Boys on the Bus: The TMTC
THE AUTHORITY THAT HAS BEEN charged with helping the cities overcome these problems is the Texas Mass Transportation Commission. In a state where impotent agencies outnumber the eunuchs in a Turkish harem, the TMTC sings its soprano song to an audience of benign neglect. Established by the Legislature in 1969 to “foster ... the development of public mass transportation, both intracity and intercity, in this state,” but without being given funds to do so, the Commission existed for twenty months, after September 1971, with no chairman, no quorum, no employees, no money, and no telephone. In January 1973, it received an appropriation of $80,100, of which $58,000 goes to pay the salaries of Executive Director Russell Cummings and his three employees, “leaving,” in his words, “about 22 thousand to do all these great wonders the Legislature requires us to do.”
Cummings, a folksy 48-year-old former legislator from Houston’s Montrose district, is sensitive to the inconvenience that the present meager public transportation systems impose on racial and economic minorities. He is not, however, a visionary, and he talks a lot about buses. “We’re not set in concrete on any particular mode,” he says, adding “-but every rail system in the US. lost money last year.” takes a modest view of his agency’s duties: “We are a service organization, not a regulatory authority.” Unlike other mass transit advocates, moreover, he takes a hands-off approach to the dedicated highway fund, insisting that where the Legislature gets the money is their decision. We’re not seeking anybody else’s funds.”
Cummings’ caution is understandable in view of the interests of the six appointed commissioners who hired him.
• Chairman Albert Rollins is a member of an engineering firm who previously served as Engineer Assistant for the Texas Highway Department.
• Member Joe P. Cain is president of Lake Truck Lines, Inc.
• Member Robert H. Cutler is Chairman of the Board of ICX Illinois-California Express, Inc., a motor freight carrier. A 32-year veteran of the trucking industry, he has held office in the Texas Motor Transport Association and is past president of the American Trucking Association.
• Member J. W. Porter is Executive Vice-President of Gifford-Hill & Co., Inc., manufacturers of ready-mixed concrete, Portland cement, sand, and gravel. (And, for the record, railroad cross-ties.)
• Member Clyde Malone is the Manager of the Austin City bus system and a member of the TGRA’s Urban Mass Transportation Advisory Council.
• Member James W. Ward was, at the time of his appointment, chairman of the Amarillo Chamber of Commerce traffic committee.
• Five of the six (excepting only Porter, a Briscoe man) are the legacy of Governor Preston Smith.
The selection of these particular men to establish policy on the Texas Mass Transportation Commission is compelling evidence that the Highway Lobby has moved as swiftly to neutralize this faint potential threat to highway dominance as they customarily move to influence the selection of the highway commissioners themselves.
So Russell Cummings sits in his tiny office on South Congress Avenue twenty blocks from the Capitol, a distance too far to walk and too humiliating to drive, and types the lead on his latest press release:
1974 is the Year of the Tiger in China, but it may be the Year of the Bus in Texas... .
Shootout at the Watering Trough
WITH THESE ISSUES, THE CURRENT Constitutional fight over the dedicated fund is being waged. The texas Highway Department insists that every penny of its allotted funds, and more, will be needed to finance highway needs for the next 20 years. Even ex-Commissioner Morris agrees with that. The planned reconstruction of 12,000 to 14,000 miles of non-interstate primary highways will, the Commissioners say, require 13 billion dollars. Thirteen hundred bridges are substandard, some of them “damn dangerous,” according to Simons. Another 10,000 miles of farm-to-market roads are planned. The suburban loops that were being built five years ago around cities the size of Tyler (pop. 60,000) are now being constructed around Vernon (pop. 12,600), Taylor (pop. 9616), Monahans (pop. 8350), and Perryton (pop. 8100). “Towns that used to threaten to secede if we built loops now ask for us to build them,” says Simons. Since the money is available, the loops are built.
The Department’s philosophy of loops is interesting. Spokesman Marc Yancey explains:
If you look at history you see that ... the cities that last longest have a radial design. The center deteriorates, but because it’s practical to drive within the radial loop, the center rebuilds itself, like Montrose in Houston is doing now.
Loops have a very good purpose. Rome is a classic example. Athens, Greece, has a radial highway.
Today Athens, tomorrow Dripping Springs.
Maintenance costs are continuing to rise. In the 1973 fiscal year they amounted to $116 million, but Yancey says “costs have gone right through the roof” and the figure will rise to $132 million this year and $150 million in 1975.
Pie graphs distributed to the Convention by the TGRA show the same maintenance figures for Fiscal 1973, $116 million, along with figures for “right of way and construction” totaling $432 million. Apparently the pie graphs were embarrassing. In a season when both the gasoline supply and the dedicated fund are in danger, expenditures for “maintenance” are better public relations than expenditures for construction. The TGRA and the THD quickly began to distribute new charts for Fiscal 1974 containing a “Maintenance and Operation” category that had swollen to $296 million and “right of way and construction” categories that had shriveled to $171 million. Yancey explains that the figures originally described as “maintenance” include only routine things like mowing grass, picking up litter, and filling potholes. He attributes the increase to a simple re-classification of serious maintenance—work designed to prolong the life of a highway by resurfacing, sealcoating, or improving its base. Randall Wood of Common Cause contends that it includes the cost of four-laning existing two-lane highways as “maintenance.” There is, in any event, something suspicious about a statement captioned “TEXAS HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT INCOME & EXPENDITURES” that includes $40 million for the Department of Public Safety under the category of “Maintenance & Operation” for the Highway Department.
A similar sort of confusion surrounds the impact of the energy crisis on highway revenues and needs in Texas. The Department has based its projections on the assumption that the number of motor vehicles will increase by nearly 50 per cent by the year 2000, and that these vehicles will consume about twice as many gallons of gasoline as were sold in Texas last year. Both assumptions now seem dubious, yet the Department has projected that this much traffic will need new roads, that this much traffic will tear up the roads that currently exist. Commissioner Simons says, “we haven’t been affected by the energy crisis at all yet.”
His confidence is shared by the Department’s estimate of its income from the motor fuels tax this year. Even though gasoline stations are closing on every corner, the Department expects to collect $24.7 million dollars more from these taxes than it did in 1973. How can this be? The 5^ tax rate remains unchanged. The prestigious Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations estimates that gasoline tax collections this year will be 17 per cent below those in 1972—a cut of about $39 million dollars for Texas. Does the Department know something the rest of us don’t know? Asked about the apparent discrepancy, a THD spokesman said mysteriously that he was confident the estimates were correct and the reason would become apparent “very soon.” And laying a finger aside of his nose, and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
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