Cracking the Highway Trust

John A. Volpe must enjoy confounding his critics. A millionaire highway builder and former Republican Governor of Massachusetts, he was expected to pave over America when he became Richard Nixon's Secretary of Transportation. Instead, Volpe has stopped highway projects that would have thrust through park land and destroyed low-income housing and historic buildings. Says he: "We've got to provide a national transportation system with the least possible harm to the environment."

This week, when Volpe presents the Highway Act of 1970 to the House Public Works Committee, he plans to go even farther. He proposes to open the hitherto untouchable--indeed, almost sacrosanct--Federal Highway Trust Fund to purposes other than building roads. By so doing, Volpe will antagonize the highway lobby, a powerful amalgam of contractors, oilmen, billboard companies, automakers and others. The fight of his political life appears imminent.

Idealistic Lobbyist. The fund takes in about $5.5 billion a year, mostly from a 4-c- levy on every gallon of gas purchased in the U.S. Since 1956, when the fund was started, this money has automatically gone directly into building more and more interstate highways--about 30,000 miles' worth to date. Now Volpe wants to broaden the uses of the fund to include such nonconstruction projects as driver-education and billboard removal for beautification.

Catalyst for Volpe's startling proposal was Douglas T. Snarr, the most active exponent of the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. To obey the law, Snarr, who himself owns 1,300 outdoor signs in the Rocky Mountain area, last year became a one-man lobby against billboards (TIME, Oct. 31). Although the Senate approved a measure in November to pay billboard owners to remove their own signs, Snarr's crusade had hardly begun. Idealistic, insistent, resplendent in purple suits and iguana cowboy boots, Snarr seized every chance to plead his cause. This winter, he astonished politicians by convincing John A. Volpe to act.

Billboard Blight. Wheels within wheels began to turn. Volpe swayed a reluctant Bureau of Public Roads to attack billboard blight. White House staffers, recognizing the benefits to the visual environment, lent their approval. Then Illinois Representative John C. Kluczynski, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Roads, insisted that a highway-safety program be started too. But where would the money come from? Everybody thought of the Highway Trust Fund.

In quick order, the Budget Bureau and Justice and Treasury Departments approved the idea of opening the fund's bulging coffers. The changes in the flow of money from the fund amount to only $120 million in fiscal 1972, or about 2% of its total. But if the program is approved by Congress, which appears likely, some environmentalists hope for more far-reaching changes. For one, the fund conceivably could finance development of new, cheaper, faster and pollution-free means of transportation. By cracking the trust fund, the Nixon Administration may be taking its biggest step to improve the U.S. environment.

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