MISSOURI WATCH: DETOUR OR DEAD-END?

State government has no greater problem at the moment than resolving the impasse that has developed in meeting Missouri's highway needs well into the next century. Well planned, constructed and maintained roadways are essential to every resident of this state, and the ability of highways to meet a constantly increasing traffic count will literally assist or detract from the entire economy for generations yet unborn.

How Missouri currently resolves the well publicized dilemma created by a monumental underfunding of the 1992-enacted 15-Year Road Plan, and how the state deals with the recommendations of Gov. Mel Carnahan's 34-member Total Transportation Commission, are essential in determining the direction the state takes well into the year 2050 -- and beyond.

We had better be right, then, or some very innocent and extremely annoyed citizens a generation from now will cast their worst spells on today's Missourians.

To date, much of the state's time and efforts have gone into trying to understand just exactly what caused the apocryphal estimates of the 15-Year Plan and just what the Total Transportation Commission report is proposing. There have been nothing but hints and innuendoes thus far about what actions will be taken by the official who nominally controls the Department of Transportation, the Governor of Missouri, and not much more reaction from the 197 members of the Missouri General Assembly who must, in one way or another, either put their stamp of approval or rejection on whatever solution is offered by the chief executive. There has been little reaction, thus far, from the members of the Highway Commission, presumably because these persons were as shocked as the remainder of the state, even if they had news of the problem before the rest of us. Being forewarned is not the same as being forearmed.

There are several problems raised by the alleged $14 billion shortfall in the 15-Year Plan. Not the least is the original goal of constructing 4-lane highways into every town and small city with a population of at least 5,000. Retrospect should reveal that while this goal may have been established to create political support for the proposed 6-cent fuel tax increase, the creation of hundreds of miles of four-lane highways had never been the principal, or even the secondary, part of any development plan ever embraced by highway commissions in the past. One section of the TTS report suggests that this portion deserves another look before adopting it whole cloth.

A serious problem created by the TTS study is the cost attached to a plan that is really not a plan at all but a promise to spend the money wisely. This dog won't hunt, at least as far as the average Missouri taxpayer is concerned. After years of blind faith in a proposal that turns out to be as bogus as last year's campaign speeches, the average Missourian is not about to embrace a tax increase on everything he purchases to salvage a poorly prepared highway program or find credence in a promise that new revenue will be spent wisely, equitably, efficiently. We aren't known as the Show-Me State for nothin'.

In the 12-month state budget- period that began on the first day of last month, the Department of Transportation will spend $1.1 billion from sources as varied as federal grants and the few pennies each motorist leaves at a service station when he fills his car with gasoline. The latter source, by the way, provides the big chunk of the MoDOT's revenue -- 86 percent, to be exact. In other words, the system that has worked for Missouri in the past -- users paying for services they use -- has until recent years made our state the envy of motorists around the country, where diverting gasoline taxes has long been a political way of life.

Missouri's pay-as-you-go roads, however, have picked up a large number of hitchhikers over the years, and these free rides have been extremely expensive for the financiers, namely the motorists of the state. There has been such a diffusion o, these "riders" that MoDOT activities include everything from building million-dollar "economic development" 4-mile railroad lines in a Bootheel county to attempting to unsnarl rush-hour commuter traffic in the urban areas. MoDOT is now charged with oversight of light-rail transit systems in the large cities and operation of busing systems in outstate areas. It must oversee local airports, regardless of how dinky, and pay the salaries of an ever-expanding Highway Patrol system.

The result of all of these added duties gets us to the bottom line of Missouri's highway system: only 58 percent of the agency's billion-plus-dollar revenue is spent on both the construction and maintenance of all Missouri highways. Years ago, before more and more duties were assigned to the agency and before semi-trailers delivered more than 80 percent of the nation's goods, 58 percent of $1 billion would have built a superhighway to Mars or Jupiter. Not today, and assuredly, not tomorrow and the day after that.

Before Missouri has a plan it can live with, it must determine what activities are essential and which are fluff; it must compute how much will be needed to keep an escalating traffic flow moving on well-maintained surfaces; it must stop trying to appease civic dreamers and those who want to save the pink bollworm from extinction and then lay down as much well-engineered highway as the dollars in any year will permit.

The state must also stop believing the promises of congressional politicians who take every dollar in sight with one hand and develop rheumatism in the other hand when it comes time to divvy up the loot. And our officials in Jefferson City should stop tossing us promises they can't keep -- and know they can't keep when they make them. Trust comes when highway construction is completed -- not when signs reading "Progress As Promised" are posted at every mile marker. Missourians are looking for the leadership promised by their elected officials.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.