The Burton K. Wheeler Center for Public Policy: What’s down the road for Montana transportation?

Montana is transportation-dependent in a way that few states are. It is far from major cities and market centers, and even within the state distances from one town to the next are great. The recent run-up in the price of fuel makes the situation more difficult, and more expensive, for consumers, producers, and shippers.

There are many questions that need to be addressed. One stems from the fact that so much of our agricultural product is sent out of state for processing. The price of food is going up. Another is that the cost of its production is keeping pace. Of course, the same is true of other commodities. A third issue has to do with the eventual downturn in tourism.

There was little disagreement during a recent Wheeler conference concerning the fuel-based challenges facing Montana. But two important public policy issues that will have to be dealt with arose from that discussion. The first has to do with whether or not the tax on fuel should be kept steady or increased to pay for aging roads and bridges. Jim Lynch, director of the Montana Department of Transportation, argued that raising the fuel tax would be offset by less consumption. Ray Kuntz, C.E.O. of Watkins and Shepherd and president of the American Trucking Association, denied this, saying that the demand for gasoline of necessity will remain high. Whoever is right, it is going to be difficult to maintain, if not also expand, infrastructure.

The second public policy issue has to do with how the interstate highway system, in particular, can be replaced or significantly upgraded. There is a growing movement to privatize the system. The difficulty is that traffic volumes in Montana are so low as to return adequate yields, via tolls, for investors. In my view, we have been and will remain dependent on the federal government for funding.

There are fewer answers. All of the participants at the conference stressed the need for greater conservation and new and more efficient technologies on the consumption or demand side of the equation, and more focus on oil and gas exploration and the development of alternate energy sources on the production or supply side. There is room for some optimism. Indeed, changes underway, as well as a slowing world economy, have already brought prices at the pump down considerably.

Perhaps because of my own interests in design, the idea that most appealed to me had to do with re-thinking the layout of our communities, making them more energy efficient, and more accessible to non-motorized forms of transportation. Steve Albert of the Western Transportation Institute at MSU spelled out the way a number of different towns across the country have instituted comprehensive transportation plans. The Yellowstone Business Partnership has such a plan for the Greater Yellowstone area. What strikes me as crucial is that in the process of rethinking more efficient layouts for our communities, we have an opportunity to re-center them as well, providing the possibility for more traditional and perhaps deeper interactions between people than were possible when our lives, thanks in part to cheap fuel, became increasingly unconnected and scattered.

Ralph Johnson is the executive director of the Burton K. Wheeler Center for Public Policy http://www.montana.edu/wheeler/ at Montana State University in Bozeman. These comments are made in connection with a recent Wheeler conference in Billings titled "The High Cost of Fuel: What’s Down the Road for Montanans?"

Contact: Ralph Johnson, executive director, Burton K. Wheeler Center at MSU (406) 994-0336, [email protected].