State Of Disrepair Dilapidated Roadways Costing Washington Lives, Prosperity

The road of life changed for Teresa Waunch on Jan. 6, 1994.

That’s the day her son’s best friend was killed on the way home from a wrestling tournament on two-lane U.S. Highway 395, north of Spokane. He died in a two-vehicle collision at an intersection with no traffic signals.

Since then, Waunch has spent much of her time trying to get the road widened to four lanes between Spokane and Kettle Falls.

In the past five years, that 70-mile stretch of the highway has been the site of more than 1,000 accidents. More than two dozen people have died there.

“It’s been called blood alley,” said Waunch, who lives at Loon Lake, north of Spokane and just west of the highway. “People know that road is a death trap.”

Highway 395 is just one of the Washington roads in need of major improvements, and lawmakers have been meeting privately this summer trying to find a way to pay for them.

There’s not much dispute that the roads need work.

Road and bridge conditions throughout the state are below average, said Bill Outlaw, a spokesman for The Road Information Program, or TRIP, a nonprofit transportation research group based in Washington, D.C.

Driving on Washington’s streets, roads and highways racks up an average $123 a year in extra maintenance costs for state motorists, Outlaw said. Twenty-eight percent of the state’s bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

Safety and maintenance issues are clearly priorities, but congestion is the biggest concern, state Transportation Secretary Sid Morrison said in a recent telephone interview from Olympia.

His department would like to widen Highway 395 north of Spokane, complete the last half of the state’s 304 miles of carpool lanes, and construct snow sheds over parts of Interstate 90 at Snoqualmie Pass, he said. Interstate 5 needs to be widened from four lanes to six between Olympia and Vancouver, Wash. And I-90 east of Spokane and State Route 12 between Walla Walla and Pasco need to be widened from two lanes to four.

Congestion threatens the state’s trade advantages and economic viability, says Gov. Gary Locke, who has made pursuing money for transportation a top priority while the Legislature is out of session.

“The key component is going to be to have a gas-tax increase,” the governor said in a recent interview. “We can look at other funding mechanisms but none will raise as much as the gas tax.”

Those supporting an increase in the state’s 23-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax call it a user fee. Washington’s gas tax is the 13th highest among the 50 states, more than 4 cents above the national average, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

But congestion carries costs as well.

Heavy traffic in the central Puget Sound area costs Washington businesses $1.3 billion per year in lost productivity, according to research conducted by the state Legislative Transportation Committee.

Traffic congestion complicates Boeing’s ability to move parts from its different Puget Sound plants, said Terry Lewis, Boeing’s director of community affairs.

“That kind of movement is very vital,” he said. “If a component doesn’t get to a production line when it is supposed to, the line stops.”

The Association of Washington Business, based in Olympia, is making transportation concerns a priority this year and is likely to push it during the next legislative session at the demand of its 3,500 member businesses.

Congestion is limiting business access to the Pacific Rim, said Tom Dooley, the lobbying organization’s Seattle-based director of fiscal policy.

“We don’t want it to get to the point where businesses choose to ship in different ways that hurt our economic vitality,” Dooley said.

“Do Eastern Washington farmers go through Seattle ports … or is it cheaper to send their goods from Los Angeles?”

AWB will support a gas-tax increase if money can’t be found elsewhere, he said.

Existing highways can be maintained without new revenue sources, Morrison said, but more money is needed if the system is to be expanded.

“My greatest fear is we will gradually revert to providing maintenance and preservation only,” he said. “We will not be in a position to meet the demands of the population growth we know is coming.”

Legislation this spring from state Sen. Eugene Prince, R-Thornton, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, would have increased the tax to 30 cents per gallon, but it ran into problems with party leadership.

State Republican Party chairman Dale Foreman stepped in personally to help quash the proposal.

“We didn’t feel like the gas tax was a long-term solution,” Foreman said.

“I’ve never had the rug pulled when I had the votes before,” said Prince, who is still smarting from his legislation’s demise.

Though Locke and Prince want to revisit the gas-tax idea during the 1998 session, Foreman and other Republican leaders have been meeting to consider alternatives.

One option would be to reallocate the state’s motor-vehicle excise tax revenue, Foreman said. More than $370 million of the $1.6 billion generated by the tax during the 1997-99 budget cycle will go to the state’s general fund.

The money would be better spent on roads, Foreman said.

Prince is concerned shifting those funds could compromise other state programs, especially education.

Despite growing pressures to improve state roads, legislative approval for a gas-tax increase is even less likely next year, he said.

“I don’t see how you do it in an election year,” Prince said.

Morrison recognizes the challenge.

“It’s hard to convince people we are not paying enough taxes,” he concedes. “But with term limits, when do you vote on it?”