Town hall calls for sustainable transportation funding

Citizens also want private businesses and government agencies to partner for mutually beneficial transportation projects

Albuquerque, NM, August 13, 2008 -- Protecting the state’s investment in transportation infrastructure by securing revenues and changes in legislation that would encourage public and private partnerships to implement projects were just a few of the suggestions participants discussed at a three-day town hall meeting last week. The event, attended by 150 citizens, business and community leaders, and state and local lawmakers resulted in ten recommendations, each reflecting the consensus of the participants.

Held August 7-9 in Santa Ana Pueblo and titled “Sustainable Transportation: Paying Our Way From Here to There,” the event brought together a wide range of citizens from 33 communities and 20 counties in New Mexico. They came from rural and urban areas representing businesses, people with special transportation needs, and the interests of state and local governments; each with the common goal to meet the required preservation and expansion needs for a modern and sustainable transportation system.

“Transportation is not only the roads we drive on; it is connecting people, connecting communities, and moving our economy forward,” said State Transportation Secretary Rhonda Faught. “With transportation funding continuing to dwindle, we realize that we need to start getting creative with our approach so that New Mexicans are not left out.”

“For the past several years, inflation has been eating up our road projects,” said State Transportation Commission Chair Johnny Cope. “Our biggest issue and our biggest challenge is what we do with the funding we have, and I think we’ve come up with several viable solutions.”

“We had a fantastic group of committed citizens at this town hall,” said New Mexico First President Heather Balas. “They recognized that our transportation infrastructure is a key driver of our economy and that this infrastructure has an impact on the quality and safety of our everyday lives.”

In addition to the recommendations described previously, participants at the town hall called for:

Technical assistance to local communities to ensure that new housing and commercial development integrates transportation, land use, economies, and the environment within a framework of sustainability
Establishing a permanent transportation trust fund and a state transit fund
Development of a strategic plan for implementing transportation priorities that will address the unmet needs for urban and rural connectivity and underserved populations
Indexing existing sources of funding to account for inflation
Educating the voting public about the impact of transportation on their local communities
Improving the interstate and intrastate collection of the weight-distance tax from the trucking industry

Teams comprised of volunteers from the event will take the recommendations to state and local leaders in the hopes of implementing some, if not all, of the recommendations. A full report on the results of the town hall will be released within two weeks and will be posted at www.nmfirst.org.