Meanwhile, other conservatives states might eventually establish public road enterprises, as the University of Minnesota transportation economist David Levinson has proposed:
The United States should follow Australia and New Zealand’s lead, and transform its state Departments of Transportation (or the highways divisions thereof) into separate, publicly regulated, self-financing corporate entities. Full-cost accounting—as already performed by Arizona’s Department of Transportation—constitutes a necessary first step in this direction. In making the transition, policymakers should strive to impose regulation only where absolutely necessary, to minimize the anti-competitive effects of any such regulation, and to leave social objectives to the government, thereby freeing road enterprises to focus on economic ones. Accordingly, road enterprises should be permitted to pursue cost-effective contracting and public private-partnerships as they see fit.
The new road enterprises should also be given latitude to make greater use of user fees—as opposed to general revenue—for funding their activities. Such charges are not just more efficient and equitable than traditional funding sources; if properly designed and implemented, they are also better suited to reducing congestion through effective pricing. Vehicle-miles-traveled charges, weight-distance charges and electronic tolling are all options that road enterprises should be free to pursue.
Over time, states will develop transportation strategies tailored to their particular circumstances. Densely-populated states like New York and New Jersey might choose to devote resources to creating Helsinki-style mobility networks while a state like Utah might instead choose to invest in a more expansive road network to support exurban development. States would no longer be hampered by the imperatives of national politics, and the most cost-effective, consumer-friendly state transportation bodies will find eager imitators across the country.
It takes only a few minutes of driving on Wisconsin streets in winter (or even in summer) to reach the same conclusion about local roads and bridges that national experts Matthew Kahn (University of California, Los Angeles) and David Levinson (University of Minnesota) reached in 2011 about the dismal condition of the country’s state highways: “The roads and bridges that make up our nation’s highway infrastructure are in disrepair as a result of insufficient maintenance — a maintenance deficit that increases travel times, damages vehicles and can lead to accidents that cause injuries or even fatalities.”
He further correctly diagnoses the problem:
As we drivers make our way through city streets, along local roads and down big highways, we still use up a huge volume of gas. When we refuel at the pump, our gas purchases give government — the state Department of Transportation and the federal DOT — hundreds of millions of tax dollars. License fees add additional large sums to government’s coffers.
The problem is that our state DOT, the Wisconsin Legislature and Wisconsin governors have refused to return to local government a large share of the tax revenue that is generated by driving on local streets in the first place.
Cities, villages, towns and counties cannot fix local roads with dollars that the state DOT refuses to send them. Nor can local governments afford to underfund public safety (police, fire, etc.) or other vital local services in order to literally fill in the potholes. Nor do local taxpayers and governments want — and state law makes it tough for them anyway — to raise property taxes to fill in the potholes.
So the potholes go unfilled, or get patched too late or imperfectly, year after year after year.
Where, then, do the gas tax dollars that local drivers pay end up instead? The sad answer is that, regardless of which party controls power in Madison, the state DOT sucks up most of the huge sum of gas tax revenue already collected from local drivers, and siphons it off to DOT’s wasteful pet projects.
Rather than fix local roads with tax revenues generated by local driving, DOT diverts hundreds of millions of gas tax dollars to pay to widen interstate highways that already are wide enough. And DOT diverts hundreds of millions more to finance new roads that are simply not needed.
My co-author Matt Kahn comments “David Levinson and I have had a good run with our Hamilton Project paper.”
One number that continues to vex Metro Transit, however, is a slower-than-advertised travel time.
According to timetables released before the line opened, a trip from Union Depot to Target Field was expected to take about 48-49 minutes. Metro Transit officials said last week that the westbound Green Line is averaging about 54 minutes, end to end and that the eastbound train is averaging about 53 minutes.
On a Tuesday morning last week, a westbound trip took 67 minutes while an eastbound trip took 57 minutes. The next morning, a westbound train took 61 minutes while an eastbound trip finished in an hour.
Traffic lights along the route — even at quieter cross streets — are clearly slowing travel times, said David Levinson, a University of Minnesota professor who specializes in transportation. Officials decided not to give the Green Line what is called pre-emption — the ability to change a light to green when a train approaches. Doing so would speed the train, but probably slow car traffic.
Trips taken Tuesday and Wednesday included several minutes stopped at traffic lights.
“That is just seriously bad engineering,” Levinson said. “If you are serious about transit and encouraging people to take transit, you need to make it as efficient as possible. My guess is that politicians don’t understand the intricacies of traffic signal design.”
John Siqveland, a spokesman for Metro Transit, said officials continue to look at making improvements, including “the sequencing of Transit Signal Priority to allow light-rail trains to continue through these smaller cross streets continuously.”
David Levinson, Transportist 
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