STATE MUST NOT REVISIT LONG-TERM HIGHWAY PLANS

After the fiasco with Missouri's 15-year highway improvements plan, the Missouri Transportation Commission would be wise to heed state Sen. Danny Staple's suggestion that Missouri revert to a five-year plan for highway improvements.20It also might give consideration to toll roads, as Staples also suggested.

The state sold voters on a 6-cent fuel tax hike that has been phased in over five years to carry out the 15-year highway plan. The plan is $14 billion underfunded, and there is no way all of the programs included in the plan can be carried out without higher taxes.

Staples and other lawmakers are skeptical about any new transportation plan and any effort to try to raise taxes to meet the shortfall. Well they should be after the gross miscalculation in the 15-year plan that was blamed mostly on a failure to consider higher costs from inflation.

Consider this: The federal transportation department estimates all of the nation's deficient bridges could be brought up to par at a cost of just under $9 billion, yet the shortage for the state's 15-year improvements plan tops that by $6 billion.

Missouri indeed would have a hard time trying to sell anyone on higher taxes to fund the 15-year plan, which should never have been promised in the first place.

Instead, the state should have stayed with its short-range plans as it has done through the years. Three- to five-year are more realistic than plans for improvements 15 years down the road. Staples understands that fact and must relay his message loud and clear to other members of Missouri's Total Transportation Commission. The commission is preparing a recommendation for Gov. Mel Carnahan on improving transportation in the state.

Short-range plans have proven to be manageable in the past and Missouri's only shot at longer-range planning has been a disaster. Hopefully, the state has learned its lesson about long-range highway planning.