Twists on the Highway

Ever since it was started in 1956, the Highway Trust Fund has been as sacrosanct as motherhood. Its purpose was to build interstate highways, and the money rolls in, mainly from a 40 tax levied on every gallon of gasoline sold in the U.S.--all of it to be spent on highways. But even the most enthusiastic motorist has begun to realize that most cities cannot stand any more new highways pouring cars into their already congested streets. This year the Senate decided that the priorities need some reordering. In its version of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1972, the Senate allows cities to use their $800 million share of the now $5 billion trust fund for mass transit, including rail systems. Last week, highway opponents were working feverishly to get a similar provision into the House version of the bill.

What the House bill does mention is billboards. Though declared illegal along most rural roads by the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, and vehemently opposed by Transportation Secretary John Volpe, the unsightly signs still stand. With curious logic, the new House bill will allow "directional signs" to remain indefinitely. In fact the House bill would allow six of them to flank each mile of rural road.

What is a "directional sign"? The House Public Works Committee defines it so broadly that almost every extant billboard could qualify: SLEEPY TIME, MOTEL, 12 MILES, for example, or SUPER GAS, NEXT RIGHT, Or STRAIGHT AHEAD FOR MAPLE SYRUP. But that is not the worst of it. There are now some 800,000 billboards--technically illegal under the beautification act's language --lining about 200,000 miles of rural roads. If Congress authorizes six outdoor signs per mile, the U.S. could legally have 1.2 million billboards in its future--a net addition of 400,000 signs.

Feasible Alternatives. Another provision of the Highway Act has even more serious implications. San Antonio, Texas, has long yearned for a new 9.7-mile highway link between Interstate 34 and Interstate Loop 410. Engineers have routed the asphalt swath right through some of the city's least built-up land, which unfortunately includes about 250 acres of the heavily used Brackenridge and Olmos Basin public parks. Aroused local conservationists, while arguing unsuccessfully for another, more expensive route for the road, successfully stymied the project in court. For one thing, the proposed road violates the Transportation Act, which bans federally assisted highways from cutting through parks unless there are no "feasible alternatives." For another, the Transportation Department has not published a federally required statement describing the environmental "impact" of the road.

To get around the objections, Texas Senators John Tower and Lloyd Bentsen drafted a bipartisan measure which transfers the highway project from the federal to the state government. By so doing, no federal funds would be lost (the money could go to build another Texas interstate highway somewhere else).

Critics are aghast at the precedent, which effectively permits construction of any environmentally dubious road anywhere in the U.S. "If the Texas highway department is granted specific relief here," New York Senator James Buckley argued in Congress, "every other state highway department will demand similar legislation, and I do not see on what basis we could refuse the request." But approval of the Highway Act of 1972, flaws and all, is expected in the House this week.

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