Busting the Trust

Since Congress established the Federal Highway Trust Fund in 1956, the Government has spent $40.1 billion to build the 34,000-mile network of interstate highways. Because the highway fund, now $5.5 billion, keeps accumulating new money from federal taxes on gas and tire sales, it can theoretically finance new highway building until the country is paved over. At least some of this money, urban experts argue, should be spent on financially hard-pressed railroads and mass-transit systems, but despite Administration approval of the idea, the highway builders vehemently oppose any diversion of funds. Last year the two forces fought each other to a standstill, so no highway bill was passed at all. That threatened to bring the building program to a halt.

New Atmosphere. After two years of congressional debate, 3,460 legislative man-days of hearings, and a ten-week stalemate in House/Senate conference committee, the legislators have now worked out a compromise. It gives most of the money to the roads, but mass-transit forces have scored what they consider a significant breakthrough. The bill, which is expected to be approved by Congress this week, provides for spending $20 billion over the next three years and preserves the trust fund inviolate through fiscal 1974. But beginning the following year, a portion of the highway fund will be freed for mass transit. In fiscal 1975, $200 million will be available to metropolitan transit systems exclusively for the purchase of buses. In 1976 cities will have the option of spending $800 million on mass transit, including rail systems.

In a separate section of the bill, the legislators also decided that if a city, a state and the Secretary of Transportation all agree that a specific stretch of interstate highway need not be built, then funds equivalent to the road-construction costs will be made available for mass transit instead.

The funds released are not themselves very significant when compared either with the size of the highway program or with the need for mass transit. But the Highway Action Coalition, an ad hoc group of environmental organizations that fought to open up the Highway Trust Fund, is nonetheless delighted. "We got three-quarters of what we wanted," says the coalition's young director John Kramer. "We wanted to change the atmosphere in which urban transport decisions are made--to be sure public transportation alternatives are available to cities. That's happened. We also wanted to change the national transportation spending priorities. That's been accomplished too, at least for urban areas."

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