Michigan's Economic Future: A New Look

3. Michigan’s Physical Resources: Transportation, Land, and Environment

2 103 2 Michigan’s Physical Resources: Transportation, Land, and Environment C hapter 2 was concerned with Michigan’s human resources. In this chapter, we turn to Michigan’s physical resources. We begin with a discussion of the transportation system, with special emphasis on highway construction and maintenance. Later in the chapter, we consider the closely related issues of land use and the environment. Michigan’s Transportation System If you drive often in Michigan, you probably know that many of our roads are bone-jarring, teeth-rattling nightmares. By not maintaining our roads and bridges, we in Michigan are doing damage to our economy. A well-maintained road system is extremely important to the success of many industries. When trucks and delivery vehicles are damaged by bouncing on Michigan highways, it hurts the economy. When companies have to use extra packaging material to avoid damage to their merchandise in transit, it hurts the economy. And when trucks and delivery vehicles waste time in traffic bottlenecks, it also hurts the economy. 3 104 2 MICHIGAN'S ECONOMIC FUTURE It is not just that the roads in Michigan are poor in an absolute sense; they also are not as good as the roads in neighboring states. Kenneth Boyer of Michigan State University discusses Michigan’s transportation system in detail in Michigan at the Millennium: A Benchmark and Analysis of Its Fiscal and Economic Structure.1 Although Boyer discusses various aspects of the system, including air, water, and rail transportation, his main focus is on the roads. This is because automobile and truck travel account for such a large part of the travel that occurs in Michigan. Rough Roads and the Policies that Encourage Them Boyer presents data from the Federal Highway Administration for the percentage of roads that met various standards for roughness in the year 2000. Michigan’s rural interstate highways are far worse than the rural interstates in the United States as a whole or in the other states of the Great Lakes region. The same is true for every type of major road in urban areas, including interstatehighways ,noninterstatefreeways,andotherarterialhighways.Theworst roads of all are the nonfreeway arterial highways in urban areas. A recent poll of truck owner–operators by Overdrive magazine ranked Michigan as having the second-worst roads in the United States.2 On the other hand, minor arterial roads in rural areas are somewhat better in Michigan than in the rest of the United States or the rest of the Great Lakes region. In Michigan, roads that carry a few hundred vehicles per day are likely to be in pretty good shape, but the roads that carry tens of thousands of vehicles per day are likely to be poor. These data suggest a few questions that need to be answered. First, why are Michigan highways of generally poor quality? Second, why are the most lightly traveled rural roads relatively better than other roads? It appears that much of the problem comes from the way Michigan allocates its road dollars. Highway funds in Michigan are allocated on the basis of formulas that were developed many years ago. These formulas are biased in favor of rural counties. Under the formulas, the most heavily populated county in the state (Wayne County) gets less than $40 per person for its roads every year, while sparsely populated Schoolcraft County gets more than $1,000 per person per year. Michigan also allows heavier trucks than most other states. The gross weight limit on trucks in Michigan is more than twice as heavy as the limit imposed on federal-aid highways in some states. (Michigan was allowed to MICHIGAN’S PHYSICAL RESOURCES 2 105 keep its higher weight limits, based on laws from the 1960s.) It is hard to ignore the apparent relationship between the fact that Michigan allows unusually heavy trucks to travel on its highways and that Michigan’s highways are unusually poor. However, the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) claims that heavier trucks do not cause disproportionate damage, as long as the weight is evenly distributed over an appropriate number of axles. MDOT also points out that if the weight limits were reduced and the same total amount of freight is carried, there would have to be an increase in the number of trucks on the road. This could have negative implications for traffic congestion and safety. In my view, first and foremost we need to...