In short, now is not the time to ask for major rail projects, state leaders say, and the foreseeable future is just as bleak. Lawmakers siphoned more than $235 million in local highway aid to help cover a $2.5 billion budget shortfall this year. While that cuts into local maintenance efforts – filling the enormous number of potholes caused by the nasty winter among other projects – the prospect of expanding the state’s transportation system are even worse.

The Greater Baltimore Committee, one of the state’s leading business lobbies, has routinely chastised lawmakers for cutting transportation funding when faced with multibillion-dollar budget shortfalls as has become routine in the last few years.

Among other uses, transportation dollars were diverted to repeal the so-called tech tax, which had passed during the 2007 special session, GBC President Donald C. Fry noted in a recent commentary.

“It’s a counterproductive habit that our state leaders must break. They must find a way to make the state’s Transportation Trust Fund a true “trust” fund instead of a slush fund,” Fry wrote in a February commentary.
Transportation advocates have focused most on building the Red Line project in Baltimore and the Purple Line project in the D.C. suburbs.

The prospect of building both projects, liberally estimated to cost $3.1 billion combined but easily expected to cost hundreds of millions dollars more, is daunting at best right now.

“It’s going to be a challenge,” said Del. John Bohanan, a Southern Maryland Democrat and one of the leading lawmakers in crafting the state budget.

“We’re not currently keeping up as well as we should, we’re going to have to figure out how to fund new projects,” he said.
The state pays for transit and highway projects through a mix of state money (culled from the gas tax, vehicle excise tax and a portion of the state sales tax). When it comes to paying for new projects, the new money from the sales tax increase approved in 2007 was expected to help start to cut into a multibillion-dollar backlog in projects.

“It’s better than it could have been if we started cutting the Transportation Trust Fund, but there’s still a problem of sustainable funding for transportation that depends on ever-increasing vehicle-miles traveled and ever-increasing fuel sales,” said Brian O’Malley, director of transportation and policy research for the Central Maryland Transportation Alliance.

CMTA has been at the front of lobbying for the Red Line in Baltimore, and while the numbers seem daunting, a restructuring of the requirements for federal support will make it easier for the state to compete for federal dollars, O’Malley said.

The GBC has been leading a transportation review, which is expected to wrap up soon, O’Malley noted.

But transportation reviews have not always carried water in Annapolis budget discussions.

In 2007, transportation supporters cited studies showing tens of billions of dollars worth of unfunded projects necessary to get the state’s system back to a so-called “state of good repair.” That appeal yielded a sizable increase in money for transportation after the 2007 special session, but much of that was scuttled by the economy and through special-fund transfers used by lawmakers to cover budget gaps.

The Red Line proposal adopted by state planners carries an immediate price tag of $1.63 billion, but that was calculated in 2007 dollars. Accounting for inflation, using the industry standard, the cost increases by $100 million in current dollars and by close to $300 million if the work is started around 2015.

Kil Huh, research director for the Pew Center for the States, noted that economists have estimated a lag time of four to six years for states when it comes to crawling out of the recession. That puts an optimistic return to normalcy somewhere in 2014 to 2016.

“Nothing is ever realistic until you make it happen,” said Sen. Jamie Raskin, a Montgomery County Democrat. “Politics is the art of doing the same thing over and over again until finally, one day it works. I think one day the Purple Line will happen.”

- May 2010 Edition