10
Texas Association of Builders
May/June 2015
Feature
T
he state demographer recently
released new projections that
predict Texas’ population will
double to 54.4 million by 2050. As
population centers and economies
in Texas continue to grow, the role
of the building industry is pretty
straightforward: create and/or expand
business and residential spaces to meet
the demand for those spaces. In short,
build more.
The role for transportation agencies
and policy makers, however, is not
as simple. That’s because expanding
our transportation network at a pace
equal to population growth is neither
practical nor affordable. For a variety of
reasons, we cannot simply build our way
out of traffic congestion, a problem that
worsens every year in our biggest cities,
threatening the continued prosperity
that rapid growth has brought to us.
This problem can hit close to home for
builders. Roadway gridlock impedes
mobility, making it more difficult and
more costly to simply get around. It
can limit peoples’ employment options,
which in turn can prevent them from
trading up in the housing market.
It restricts home buyers’ choices of
where they can live, and threatens the
viability of new subdivisions, because
neighborhoods are not marketable if
they are not accessible.
Worsening
traffic
and
roadway
conditions
can
also
discourage
businesses from building or expanding
here. Those decisions involve a hefty
financial investment. And if those who
make such decisions don’t believe the
state is making sufficient investments
of its own – transportation in this case
– it’s easy to see why they’d take their
new jobs somewhere other than Texas.
How things got this way
How things reached this point is
fairly simple. In recent decades, the
population of Texas has more than
doubled. The number of registered
vehicles has almost tripled, and the
number of miles those vehicles travel
has more than tripled. Over that same
time, highway space has hardly grown
at all, only about 20 percent. A lot of
people are moving to Texas every month.
Just about all of them are bringing their
cars and trucks with them, but none of
them are bringing along any driving
space to accommodate those vehicles.
Roadway supply simply hasn’t kept up
with demand – not even close.
At
the
same
time,
available
transportation funding in relative terms
has been shrinking every year. The state’s
motor fuels tax, at 20 cents per gallon,
has remained the same since 1991. Since
that time, inflation has doubled the cost
of most things – construction included.
That 20 cents a gallon in revenue to
the state buys about half what it did in
1991. And here’s where you’ll find the
downside to fuel efficiency. As cars and
trucks get better mileage, drivers buy
less gas, meaning the per-gallon tax
is assessed on fewer and fewer gallons
purchased. Cost-conscious drivers win,
but the same can’t be said for the state
highway fund.
To help fill this ever-widening funding
gap, officials have turned to debt
financing, an option granted by voters in
2003, allowing the state to borrow money
By Ginger Goodin, P.E.
To Ensure a Healthy Building Industry,
Our State Needs a Viable Transportation System
