Road Warriors

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The pyrotechnics in the Senate left no time for any serious debate over the merits of the 121 demonstration projects at the heart of the struggle. The - $890 million cost of the projects amounts to barely 1% of the overall bill. But these individual road programs, each catering to the needs of specific congressional districts, symbolize the perennial difficulty in a representative democracy of defeating any spending measure that spreads its benefits across the political landscape.

The larger issue underlying the veto fight was serious: Should Congress have the right to mandate the construction and repair of individual roads and bridges? Almost all the money in the $88 billion, five-year authorization bill is passed on to the states according to complex allocation formulas. But legislators know that it is hard to take credit for such indirect funding in a 30-second campaign spot. So in 1982 Congress decided to build a few roads and add a few expressway exits on their own. Thus was born the demonstration project, a legislative fiction that claimed these congressional highways, byways, off-ramps and repair programs were merely scientific experiments to advance the art of roadbuilding.

Some of the purported "research" justifications for the demonstration projects in the current bill sound as if they were lifted from a Monty Python skit. Building a road and an access ramp from U.S. Route 219 to the Johnstown (Pa.) Flood National Memorial is described in circular fashion as "demonstrating methods of improving public access to a flood memorial." What is the construction of two parking lots on the Southwest Side of Chicago supposed to prove? According to the legislation, the lots will "demonstrate methods of facilitating the transfer of passengers between different modes of transportation." But each of these projects has a zealous congressional defender ready to hail it as a boon rather than a boondoggle. Democratic Congressman William Lipinski is the man behind the $3 million Chicago parking lots, which are designed to serve a rapid-transit line that will not be completed until 1992. "The lots tie directly with the mass-transit line," Lipinski says. "There's no pork here."

Even critics admit that many of the demonstration projects will alleviate serious local bottlenecks and spur economic development. Take the $53 million in federal funds to raise the height of the 136-ft.-tall Talmadge Memorial Bridge spanning the Savannah River. According to Georgia officials, the Port of Savannah has lost an estimated 1 million tons of shipping because modern container vessels cannot get under the existing bridge. "Something has to happen," says Robert Goethe, assistant director of the Georgia Ports Authority. "The ships are getting bigger, and the bridge is not getting taller."

But the question remains whether even the most laudable local programs need to be funded through explicit clauses in the highway bill. After all, the bill already gives states $81 billion in discretionary authority to use on eligible projects as they see fit. David Chapin of the Maryland department of transportation admits that his state had been planning to pay for three of its demonstration projects ($34 million) that were included in the bill. Skeptics might wonder in this case why Montana taxpayers should help Maryland residents foot the bill.