Aside from the current debate about funding transportation infrastructure needs, it’s important to objectively understand how much we all rely on the transportation and logistics network for our jobs and quality of life.
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Aside from the current debate about funding transportation infrastructure needs, it's important to objectively understand how much we all rely on the transportation and logistics network for our jobs and quality of life.
The Connecticut transportation network includes highways, local roads and streets, bridges, airports, transit and rail, freight railroad, and ports and waterways. Together, these facilities move Connecticut travelers, businesses and freight, driving the state's economic growth.
There are more than 730,000 full-time jobs in Connecticut ranging from tourism and retail sales to agriculture and manufacturing that are completely dependent on the state's transportation infrastructure network. These jobs generate $34.8 billion in wages and contribute an estimated $6.3 billion in state and local income, corporate and unemployment insurance taxes and federal payroll taxes.
In the foreseeable future, Connecticut's projected growth includes another 60,000 new residents and 110,000 new workers, according to a 2017 analysis from the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. This growth will put additional pressures on our transportation network for people to get to work, school and social functions, and allow our economy to continue to function.
Emphasizing the relationship between transportation and logistics is the fact that more than 75 percent of freight shipments by state businesses are carried by trucks on our highways and roads. It is estimated the value of truck shipments will reach $292 billion annually by 2040, up from $139.1 billion in 2015.
The average Connecticut driver traveled more than 12,000 miles in 2013 with most of those miles driven for commuting or work-related purposes. In fact, 87 percent of commuters in the state get to work by driving.
With so much time on the road, Connecticut commuters, like those in many metropolitan areas across the nation, are familiar with the frustration of congestion. In Hartford alone, each commuter incurs about 45 hours of delays annually due to congested roads and highways, at a cost of $1,038 per commuter, and with a total annual cost of $656 million, according to the Texas Transportation Institute 2015 Urban Mobility Scorecard.
With a projected annual transportation budget deficit of more than $388 million by 2021-22, the choices are stark, but Connecticut's transportation challenges are not unique.
Across the nation, the need to find sustainable, reliable revenue solutions to these transportation challenges is recognized. Public opinion polls conducted by HNTB Corp. show 72 percent of Americans support tolls to fund transportation projects that can reduce time stuck in traffic. And 84 percent of Americans are willing to pay tolls, and more in taxes, if funds are guaranteed by law for use only toward transportation infrastructure spending.
Now under consideration in Connecticut, tolling provides infrastructure funding in 37 states, including all of Connecticut's neighbors. Many of these states have found tolls can be sources of long-term revenue funding decades of maintenance and operations, system improvements and other critical transportation projects in growing metropolitan areas.
Today's tolling technology provides many advances including the automation of the toll collection process and eliminating the need to stop at a tollbooth, which facilitates traffic flow while lessening pollution from idling vehicles.
Transportation infrastructure is a complex network, a resource that has received significant investments over the years. Maintaining this asset through thoughtful management includes recognition of on-going support in the form of sustainable investment funding, sound planning and prioritization that reflects a community's values.
The system of roads and other transit modes delivers people to jobs, and goods and materials to manufacturers, distributors and retailers, enabling the economy to grow and thrive while servicing the people of the Nutmeg State.
Carrie Rocha is the Connecticut office leader and a vice president of HNTB Corp., a national infrastructure solutions firm.
