Soucie
takes road less traveled
Anyone
who spends some time looking at the state Department of Transportation's
books is familiar with a dismal tale.
Transportation
debt is expected to triple in the next decade, the state has no
money to carry out a $6.2 billion reconstruction of the freeway
system around Milwaukee County and WisDOT's main source of revenue,
the gas tax, is losing its buying power as cars become more fuel
efficient. What's a state to do?
Kevin
Soucie, a former state legislator and chairman of the Assembly
Transportation Committee, thought long and hard to come up with
an answer. He decided the very way WisDOT raises money is doomed
to long-term failure, and he offered a solution the state could
use for its next big road project: the nearly $1 billion reconstruction
of the Marquette Interchange in Milwaukee.
Working
with an internationally known expert in public-private transportation
investment, Soucie penned a report last year suggesting WisDOT
could ease its money problems by turning the tangle of highway
bridges into one big toll road. A private company would assume
responsibility for paying for and building the project, recoup
its money through an electronic toll system and in one fell swoop
erase a financial headache and guarantee swift delivery of a scrubbed-up,
vital transportation link.
"I've
been thinking about transportation and how we finance transportation
for many, many years," Soucie said. "I've never been
enamored with the model. It tends to be a big-government model.
The world is moving away from the model we use. That model is
failing us, and it's failing us miserably."
In
preparing the report and in the months since, Soucie has driven
on highways around the world that have relied on this form of
public-private partnership. He said he found the roads are pristine,
but more important, he discovered that the partnerships were spawned
by political parties that are normally associated with broad government
control over every aspect of economic life, including transportation.
Back
home, state lawmakers quickly denounced Soucie's proposal as politically
implausible, although the state transportation secretary, who's
most familiar with the red ink at WisDOT, seemed to embrace the
idea before being quickly reined in by his boss, the governor.
There's simply no will, critics said, for tolls in Wisconsin.
Undaunted,
Soucie said it's only a matter of time before people realize the
current model will lead to either a scaled-back transportation
program or a massive tax hike.
"It's almost like there's a denial of reality," he said.
"In any situation, reality eventually comes crashing down
on you, and this is no exception."
It's
also a matter of making it clear that the toll system he's talking
about won't in any way resemble the barriers of Illinois.
"It's
a very risky issue because it's very easy to knee-jerk,"
he said. "It's a paradigm shift for the way we do transportation
financing. It really changes the way we think about transportation
because we have to make sure projects make economic sense."
Though
proposed for the Marquette, the model Soucie is touting could
be used for any project. And in the last year, he's toured the
state to deliver his message to mayors, chambers of commerce and
others.
"I'm
not carrying a political agenda," he said. "I don't
have a dog in this fight. This comes out of years of thinking
about this and a desire to offer an alternative."
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