Element to fuel cars abundant – stations aren’t

The Chevrolet Equinox fuel-cell vehicle draws onlookers at the University of Arizona Mall.

The last time I heard anyone talk about using hydrogen for transportation, some guy on an old newsreel was yelling, “Oh, the humanity” and the Hindenburg was crumbling to the ground in a huge fireball.

That, J. Byron McCormick assures me, will not happen with the fleet of hydrogen-powered SUVs General Motors has deployed under his leadership.

No explosions. No fireballs. No newsreel spectacular.

But also no gasoline. And no exhaust except for water and warm air. And a very green vehicle running on a fuel that could be manufactured with power from the sun.

Technically, it is possible – and it is being done now on a very small scale. Jay Leno drives a GM car powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.

But daunting practical barriers must be overcome before you can buy a car that runs on hydrogen and ditch the gasoline habit forever.

McCormick is executive director of fuel cell activities at GM – and he got his start at the University of Arizona, where he received bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering. (For UA history buffs, McCormick is not related to a former UA president with the identical name: J. Byron McCormick.)

It was at UA that this McCormick first became interested in the technology of fuel cells, a device that breaks hydrogen into its two chemical components – oxygen and water – and in the process produces power to run an electric motor.

The technology is used on space vehicles and in nuclear submarines – mostly to produce water and oxygen, not power.

This week, McCormick returned to the UA campus with two Chevrolet Equinox sport utility vehicles that have been modified to run on hydrogen instead of gasoline. Except for fuel cell graphics plastered all over the SUVs, there was little obvious difference.

The vehicle drives like an “ordinary” one. But with an electric motor, it is totally silent while stopped and makes only a low hum when moving. Acceleration is impressive, with the vehicle leaping away from stops faster than gasoline-powered cars.

It will go about 200 miles on a hydrogen fill-up – but then what? There are no hydrogen pumps at your neighborhood gasoline station. There are a few around, but they are inaccessible to the public.

That’s the chicken-and-egg problem keeping all of us from driving hydrogen-powered cars: There isn’t a network of hydrogen fuel stations because there aren’t any hydrogen cars. And there aren’t any hydrogen cars because they have nowhere to fill up.

To nudge this problem off dead center, GM has hand-built about 100 hydrogen-powered SUVs and lent them – free – to drivers who live where there are a few fueling stations. Most are in the Los Angeles area, with a few in New York state and a handful in Washington, D.C.

Late-night host Jay Leno, well known as an automobile connoisseur, received one of the coveted vehicles. Most went to ordinary people willing to drive them and report any problems.

More will be built and distributed in Germany, South Korea, Japan and China, which have better-established hydrogen distribution networks.

There is no shortage of hydrogen. Vast quantities are vented as waste, often in the processing of petroleum. Or it can be made as needed, using electricity. If the electricity comes from solar cells, wind or some other renewal resource, the process is totally clean.

However, hydrogen also can be extracted from natural gas, releasing carbon dioxide. That makes the process less environmentally friendly.

McCormick predicts that production models of a GM hydrogen-powered vehicle will be rolling off the assembly lines by 2015 – only seven years from now. At first they are likely to be expensive boutique vehicles, but within five more years, they should be comparable in price to gasoline-powered vehicles of that time, McCormick said.

And what about the specter of scads of vehicles carrying Hindenburg-type fuel? Don’t worry. Fuel tanks are protected with Kevlar. And should they leak, the gas dissipates far faster than gasoline does, McCormick said.

Whew.

Mark Kimble appears Fridays on “Arizona Illustrated” on KUAT-TV, Channel 6. Reach him at mkimble@tucsoncitizen.com or 573-4662.

UA graduate student Grace Shih checks out the interior of the hydrogen-powered SUV.

McCormick

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THE BENEFITS OF HYDROGEN

• Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and is available from a wide range of sources on Earth.

• There are large hydrogen production sites throughout the United States.

• Enough hydrogen is produced each year to fuel 180 million fuel-cell vehicles. Production is forecast to increase by 45 percent in three years.

• At current costs and production rates, hydrogen for a vehicle would cost the equivalent of $2.50 per gallon of gasoline, on a cost-per-mile basis. In the long term, that is expected to drop to $1-$1.50 per gallon.

• The only emissions from a hydrogen-powered vehicles are water and a little warm air.

Granted, it took horrendous gas prices and a wicked economic downfall, but large numbers of Tucsonans finally are riding buses.

And while we empathize with those complaining that some Sun Tran buses are overcrowded, that scenario is far preferable to the longtime one-person, one-car trend in Tucson.

Tucson-area roads are woefully unequal to their task; they cannot begin to meet the needs of our burgeoning population.

That’s largely why voters throughout Pima County approved the Regional Transportation Plan in 2006, designed to generate $2.1 billion in transportation improvements over 20 years.

About $533 million is designated for transit improvements, including more buses, a modern streetcar, rapid transit buses, more express routes and service to areas outside city limits.

Money spent on Sun Tran anytime soon, though, will go to replace deteriorating old buses – not to buy new ones.

Since the Regional Transportation passed two years ago, prices for gasoline and diesel fuel have skyrocketed – and as a result, so has Sun Tran ridership.

Bus usage last month was up nearly 19 percent from July 2007.

And sales of the U-Pass, a discounted bus pass for students, faculty and other employees at the University of Arizona, have shot up 38 percent this semester over last semester.

That’s good news on many fronts.

It means less crowded roads, cleaner air, reduced sales of foreign oil and a positive local contribution to our global warming crisis.

In addition, of course, it means more money in the pockets of bus riders, who don’t have to fill up their gas tanks as frequently.

We recognize that crowding of buses can pose dangers if passengers do not behave appropriately.

But Sun Tran will not accept more passengers on a bus that the driver considers full.

And jam-packed buses with standing room only give riders an opportunity to practice their good manners.

When a person who is elderly, pregnant or infirm steps aboard the bus, any able-bodied passenger should be leaping up to offer the newcomer a seat.

When riders are tightly congregated toward the front of the bus, they should cooperatively spread out so no one will even inadvertently step over the white line behind which passengers are supposed to stay.

We look forward to the day Sun Tran can increase its fleet, even if that requires an increase in bus fares.

But until then, bus riders are to be congratulated for doing the right thing for our community and for our planet.

May their numbers continue to increase even more.

The failure to get them to the ballot resulted from almost a comedy of errors. The initiative drives were launched too late in the political season. Management was turned over to political consultants loyal to Napolitano but with scant experience in ballot measure campaigns.

The first thing that needs to be observed about the demise of the transportation sales tax initiative is that it represents an astonishing debacle for Gov. Janet Napolitano’s political operation.

The transportation sales tax, along with an initiative to preserve state trust lands, were to be Napolitano’s legacy markers.

They were largely her creations. She negotiated the policy and political deals that formed the initiatives.

The failure to get them to the ballot resulted from almost a comedy of errors. The initiative drives were launched too late in the political season. Management was turned over to political consultants loyal to Napolitano but with scant experience in ballot measure campaigns.

Given the tightness of time, standard verification checks appear to have been skipped or done shoddily. Then the Democrat’s legal A-team for election issues missed a filing deadline to challenge invalidations by the Secretary of State’s Office.

Make no mistake about it: Napolitano still rules the political roost in Arizona. Still, this is a big and should be a deeply embarrassing failure.

Not being able to get legacy markers to the ballot shouldn’t happen to a politician of Napolitano’s stature and clout.

Rather than blame events, surprising legal requirements or others, there should be some soul-searching in Napolitano- land.

Substantively, however, the demise of the transportation sales tax initiative is a very good thing. This was a monumentally bad transportation finance plan. Its demise provides the opportunity to start over and do transportation finance right, if anyone has the inclination to do so.

Rather than being based on the prioritization of transportation needs and sound transportation finance principles, this initiative was based upon a series of political calculations.

The first political calculation was about what revenue source would be politically the easiest and how much could voters be persuaded to pony up? The answer was a one-cent increase in the state sales tax.

After that, the allocation of the money wasn’t driven by transportation needs, but stitching together the political coalitions necessary to get it passed.

As a result, huge pots of money were simply given over to local governments throughout the state to do with pretty much whatever they want. Another big pot was set aside for environmental stuff.

While some highway improvements have been specified, most of the money was designated for stuff that hasn’t even been fully conceptualized, such as passenger rail, or without any specificity at all, such as the local subventions.

Here are what would be some elements of a sensible approach:

• First, there shouldn’t be a statewide proposal. Whenever there is one, the urban areas end up heavily subsidizing the rural areas.

In this transportation proposal, for example, rural areas were to receive nearly 40 percent of the funding even though they constitute less than a quarter of the state’s population.

Yes, urban residents use roads statewide and some degree of subsidization is probably in order. But that should be discussed separately, not as a political price of admission to get the funds the urban areas want to devote to their own transportation improvements.

• Second, transportation needs should be considered separately rather than all together in one comprehensive package. Lower priority items shouldn’t be permitted to free ride on higher priority items. Each should stand on its own merits to justify its funding.

• Third, no funding commitments to projects until there are specific proposals to consider. Passenger rail may very well be an important transportation option for the future and funding to study and develop a specific proposal would be in order. This transportation proposal committed nearly $7 billion to building passenger rail when there is no specific proposal on the table.

• Fourth, to the extent possible, keep to the concept of user pays, at least for roads. Many of the major new highway improvements needed are to connect developing nodes with the already developed urban areas.

That’s a situation where toll roads, or benefit districts or impact fees are highly appropriate. This transportation proposal jumped instantly to the sales tax, which should be the last rather than the first resort.

Existing funding sources probably can’t get the job done for Arizona’s transportation future. However, a rigorous evaluation needs to take place about how existing funds are being used and how far reprioritization could take us.

There is, however, a right way and a wrong way to go about transportation finance. The right way is more painstaking than trying to calibrate the politics of raising a big pot of money for purposes to be decided later.

But it would be fairer and cheaper to taxpayers, and do more to actually improve transportation.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

A push to place a transportation initiative on the November ballot was done with such haste that Arizonans may not have a chance to vote on the measure.

It never should have come to this.

The Secretary of State’s Office this week threw off the ballot a 30-year, $42.6 billion statewide transportation plan that would have been paid for with a penny per dollar increase in the sales tax.

Supporters of the initiative gathered 260,698 petition signatures. But a random check of the signatures estimated that 122,247 were not valid, knocking the measure from the ballot.

The TIME Coalition, backers of the initiative, disagrees with the signature-checking process and vows it will fight to put the measure before voters.

But it should not have required an army of paid people madly gathering signatures to formulate a plan for improving Arizona’s overburdened transportation system. That is something the Legislature should have tackled.

In her January State of the State speech opening the 2008 legislative session, Gov. Janet Napolitano listed transportation as one of the major issues lawmakers should address.

“We need a statewide plan to create functional new transportation corridors that serve growing communities . . . ,” Napolitano said seven months ago. “This plan must include not just necessary freeway construction, but also transit options – including a robust rail element – because we simply cannot out-freeway the problem.”

Her advice was ignored.

Legislators frequently complain about the plethora of initiatives that clutter biennial ballots. But many of those citizen-driven initiatives come only because the Legislature has shirked its responsibilities.

Lawmakers spend time instead talking about allowing guns in bars and on campuses, whether gay people should be allowed to marry and new ways to harass illegal immigrants.

Arizona’s population will nearly double in the next two decades – and legislators can’t make the time to craft a transportation plan and debate a funding source, be it higher sales taxes, higher gasoline taxes or a combination of the two.

Into this legislative vacuum step citizens with their own ideas and their own plans. And sometimes, they fall short – as they may have done with the transportation initiative.

The initiative wasn’t perfect. We would have preferred to see a combination of higher sales and gasoline taxes instead of just higher sales tax. But at least it was a proposal – which is more than legislators produced.

This initiative may fail to make the ballot, which means we are no closer to a transportation plan. For that, we can thank the elected members of the Arizona Legislature.

Transportation in America was once an engine of progress and an inspiration. Railroads opened the West, and automobiles brought mobility for a footloose nation after World War II.

Nowadays, getting around is a source of more problems than solutions. Traffic delays waste an average of 38 hours a year for urban commuters – almost an entire work week and more than twice as much as in 1985.

The major source of our addiction to expensive foreign oil, transportation consumes two out of every three barrels and is the fastest-growing source of global warming pollution.

The $130-plus cost per barrel of oil and our crumbling infrastructure are drags on the economy.

And the once-flush federal transportation trust fund, like many of its state counterparts, is expected to run out of money in the next two years.

Since fulfilling President Eisenhower’s 1956 vision of an interstate system to link our major cities, national transportation policy has stumbled on without a clear purpose.

Federal transportation spending has become little more than a giant public works program.

To keep our nation moving efficiently, the federal government must ensure dedicated funding and hold states accountable for roadway upkeep.

The responsibility today is left almost entirely up to states, where it competes for scarce dollars with popular programs and typically loses out to expensive projects that offer big headlines and ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

Federal transportation funds also continue to be distributed through the false assumption that more is better when it comes to roadways.

States receive highway funds based on three outdated criteria: the previous year’s gasoline consumption, lane-miles of federal highways and the previous year’s vehicle miles traveled.

So more driving garners more federal dollars. States that do their part to reduce America’s oil dependence and global warming would lose out on federal dollars.

The federal government should reward states and localities that reduce gas consumption and miles driven by emphasizing public transportation.

Light rail, rapid bus transit, commuter rail, high-speed intercity rail and other forms of public transit are energy efficient and encourage development patterns that require less driving.

A recent report by the Arizona PIRG Education Fund shows that public transit saved 3.4 billion gallons of oil in 2006 – saving $9 billion at the pump and preventing 26 million tons of emissions.

Public transit trips have been growing more quickly than auto miles or population since 1995.

Likewise, 53 percent of Americans tell pollsters they would take more public transportation if it were available near where they live and work.

Giving people the transportation choices they want will require Congress to make changes.

Since 1956, federal, state and local governments have spent nine times more on highway subsidies than on public transportation. This ratio has improved, but not fast enough.

President Bush’s proposed 2009 budget would take us back in time, cutting federal transit money by $200 million, slashing Amtrak’s budget by 40 percent, and diverting $3.2 billion from the federal transit account to highways. Such cuts would move the country in exactly the wrong direction.

Congress will have a golden opportunity when the transportation authorization bill expires next year.

Public leaders must recognize that our transportation problems stem from a lack of purpose. They must rewrite policy to address our rapidly aging infrastructure, urban congestion, oil dependence and an overheating planet.

Instead of simply “reauthorizing” the transportation act with higher spending levels, Congress must reinvent how it funds transportation.

Diane E. Brown is executive director of the Arizona Public Interest Research Group, a public interest advocacy organization. E-mail: dbrown@arizonapirg.org

Good for Hein in publicly admitting there were problems and promising to fix them.

Last month’s blowup between the City Council and City Manager Mike Hein apparently has led to something productive.

In a memo to the council late last week, Hein apologized for “confusion over budgeting practices” and said he is taking steps to ensure that it will not happen again.

It was that confusion that led Councilwoman Karin Uhlich to send a stinging memo to Hein last month, accusing him of “deceit, incompetence or just being overwhelmed.” Councilman Steve Leal followed up with his own memo asking for Hein’s resignation.

The issue was the budget for the Sun Tran bus system. The council secretly believed Hein had reduced the city subsidy for Sun Tran to justify a fare increase.

Eventually the issue was smoothed over and Hein received a unanimous vote of support from the council. But Hein’s memo and a city report issued last week showed there clearly were reasons for the council’s displeasure.

The city did lower the subsidy for Sun Tran. But when higher fuel prices are taken into account, the city subsidy is higher than in previous years.

That overly complicated budgeting process did not give the council all the information it needed to decide if fares should be increased, as Hein was recommending.

“It is clear a combination of organizational communication lapses coupled with confusion over budgeting practices resulted in the elected body receiving incomplete information on which to make decisions,” Hein wrote to the council. “I will be taking the necessary steps internally to ensure that it does not happen again.”

Good for Hein in asking David Cormier, the city’s interim finance director, to look into the budgeting process and make it as transparent and understandable as possible.

And good for Hein in publicly admitting there were problems and promising to fix them.

All of this lays a solid foundation between Hein and his bosses on the City Council.

We have been exceptionally pleased with the job Hein has done since being named city manager more than three years ago. His openness with this rough spot makes us even more confident in his judgment and abilities.

The state budget approved by the Legislature this week includes a good reason to slow down on Arizona’s highways.

Photo enforcement of speed limits is coming. The Department of Public Safety has plans for 100 cameras, to be deployed in mobile units and at fixed locations.

The program will save lives. It also will raise money – as much as $90 million, if Gov. Janet Napolitano’s estimates are correct – for a state that can sure use it.

The cameras work. A pilot program on the Loop 101 freeway in Scottsdale in 2006 reduced speed and accident rates.

Something needs to be done to make Arizona’s increasingly congested highways safer to navigate. The cameras will give motorists an incentive to apply a lighter touch to the accelerator.

While Americans warily eye gasoline prices marching towards $4 per gallon, it becomes more apparent each day how acute these effects are on manufacturers, airlines, small and large businesses, and average Americans.

Only 10 years ago, the average cost of a gallon of gasoline was just above a $1. It is clear that our country’s need for energy security and access is more crucial than ever.

The truth is America has abundant energy resources. We simply choose not to develop most of them. We cannot, and must not, ignore key energy resources available to us here at home.

Working with Congress, President Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which specifies a national mandatory fuel standard of 35 miles per gallon by 2020 for new vehicles. This will save billions of gallons of gasoline.

It also requires fuel producers to supply at least 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel in 2022.

These are good steps toward ensuring our future energy security. The year 2020 seems a long way away when many of our nation’s industries and citizens are struggling now.

A recently released study of oil and gas resources on federal lands and limitations on their development paints a dramatic picture in an era when energy access and security are so important.

The report, the third in a series of congressionally mandated scientific inventories, identified 31 billion barrels of oil and 231 trillion cubic feet of natural gas on these federal lands, mostly in the West.

However, the study estimates that of the 279 million acres of onshore federal mineral lands that contain these energy resources, 60 percent are off limits to development and 23 percent face restrictions on development, limiting the amount of oil and gas that can be produced and when.

In terms that every driver can appreciate, that means that of the estimated 598 billion gallons of gasoline and 214 billion gallons of diesel that could be produced from these oil resources, about 372 billion gallons of gasoline and 133 billion gallons of diesel currently can’t be tapped due to prohibitions and restrictions.

In addition, oil shale deposits in the U.S. represent potential reserves that may be twice as large as those of Saudi Arabia. Yet Congress has prohibited us from taking the steps necessary to make this vast resource available for development.

Some feel renewables are the answer. Renewables such as wind, solar, hydroelectric, biomass and geothermal will make up a growing part of our energy portfolio.

But renewables will not solve our supply problem. Projected to supply 12 percent of our energy by 2030, renewables face similar challenges as oil and gas: they affect the environment and people do not want production or transmission facilities in their backyards.

Environmental plans for U.S. energy production already are among the most restrictive anywhere in the world. Despite this, protests and legal challenges besiege energy development decisions, delaying or derailing production.

Meanwhile, we transfer trillions of U.S. dollars to buy oil from countries that do not have the same political and environmental standards we enjoy. It just doesn’t make good sense.

The picture is even more striking offshore, where 85 percent of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf is off limits to development in the lower 48 states.

Yet most of the nation’s oil and gas is offshore – an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That’s enough to fuel almost 40 million cars and heat 92 million homes for 15 years.

We produce less than half of the oil we consume and import the rest. Demand in China and India is expected to more than double by 2030, which will heighten competition for supplies. These trends all point to increasing difficulties in obtaining energy at a reasonable cost.

According to the Energy Information Administration’s latest estimates, even with new energy efficiency standards, U.S. oil consumption will rise 10 percent by 2030.

Better gas mileage will be offset by more cars. Total energy use will increase 19 percent.

Meeting near-term energy demand will require increased access to lands and resources for oil, gas and renewable energy, together with increases in conservation and energy efficiencies.

No single approach is enough. The health of our economy and our national security require a balance of these strategies.

While balancing access to our energy resources with other land uses is important, how many limits can we afford? With each fill-up, Americans are paying the price for these limits.

It’s time we look within our own borders for solutions, rather than rely on the shifting energy policies and politics of other countries.

C. Stephen Allred is assistant secretary of the interior for land and minerals management at the U.S. Department of the Interior.

On schedule. No major problems to report. You don’t normally associate those phrases with a road project. But they sum up the Arizona Department of Transportation’s widening of Interstate 10, which is about halfway done.

Tucsonans have been understandably nervous about expanding I-10 to four lanes in each direction from 29th Street to Prince Road, temporarily closing bridges and underpasses at seven major cross streets and shunting traffic to frontage roads.

Our headlines reflected those worries: “Three years of pain begin tonight,” we said June 15. “No pain on I-10 . . . yet,” we said June 19.

But there have been fewer than a half-dozen major accidents on I-10 and frontage roads since the project began, ADOT officials say. And there has been no loud outcry from surrounding businesses, ADOT maintains.

So instead of agonizing pain, motorists are dealing with persistent, low-level discomfort, which will last until the project’s completion in January 2010.

Nowadays, that’s about the best we can hope for.

The Port of Long Beach, Calif., and other West Coast ports working at capacity are unable to handle an influx of shipping to and from Asia. A proposed port on the Baja California coast will pick up the slack - and send the cargo through Tucson.

‘Tucson at a Crossroads” was the headline of a recent newspaper series about growth and development in the Tucson region.

However that headline may be even more appropriate to something else happening in our region. Over the next few years, we may find ourselves at an actual crossroads – one that puts us in the midst of a major international trade route.

We already see increased truck and train traffic passing through the region. However these increases pale in comparison to what may be on the horizon.

In April 2006, I accompanied a delegation to meet with Mexican trade officials in Baja California. The delegation included economic development officials from Tucson Regional Economioc Opportunities, the University of Arizona and the Metropolitan Tucson Convention & Visitors Bureau.

I learned a proposal is under way for the construction of a $4 billion megaseaport called Punta Colonet. This massive new facility, on a windswept bay on the Pacific Ocean about 150 miles south of San Diego, would be the first major port constructed in North America in decades.

According to a March 25 Los Angeles Times article, this new port is being planned to offset the growing demand for Asian goods and the congestion of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Several bidders, including a Mexican conglomerate and Hong Kong and Dubai investors, are hoping to fund this development to provide an additional transportation corridor from Asia to U.S. markets.

The official construction bidding process will begin within the next few months with contracts to be announced by the end of the year. Construction is planned to start in early 2009 with completion projected for 2014.

Upon completion, initial port deliveries will approach 1 million containers per year with annual growth to 5 million containers within five years. It takes 10,000 trains to transport 1 million containers. With 5 million containers, we could see 50,000 more trains per year through Tucson.

One idea that was seriously discussed during my trip to Mexico was extending rail lines from the port that would then be connected to the United States through a series of new and existing rail lines running through Yuma, Red Rock and Tucson.

This route would handle all container rail transportation from the port into the United States from Mexico into Arizona. Once in the United States, Union Pacific could then transport these container trains across southern Arizona along existing rail lines, which parallel Interstates 8 and 10 to Picacho Peak.

Could the primary purpose of Union Pacific’s proposed Red Rock rail yard at Picacho Peak be to accommodate the sorting of these loaded containers onto trains for their final destinations within the United States?

Union Pacific is installing new parallel tracks throughout the region and is aggressively pushing a controversial six-mile-long classification yard to be located next to Picacho Peak State Park.

This classification yard is not for goods moving to and from Arizona; it is for sorting cargo passing through, destined for the rest of the country.

The rail companies have repeatedly blocked efforts for the public to have meaningful input into future trade route plans. Many stories have been written about the difficulties of Yuma and Red Rock property owners trying to get information from rail officials.

I am asking state officials to support state Rep. Jonathan Paton’s legislation requiring increased public input into rail expansion plans. However this alone is not nearly enough.

Discussions are taking place on the feasibility and desirability of a truck bypass route. However no such efforts or discussions are taking place on the impacts of rail traffic expansion.

The state and the region must embark on a serious effort to understand the impact of this increase in rail traffic and trade. We must establish a mechanism to take advantage of opportunities while minimizing the potentially serious impacts.

We truly may be at a crossroads – one that will define the future of the entire region.

Our city has long been a house divided by a rail line and an interstate highway. If our future is not to be defined by the ever-increasing widening of this divide, we must have greater local, state and federal participation in planning for the flow of international trade bisecting our community.

Otherwise, Tucson could find itself on the wrong side of the tracks – turned into a train and truck stop for the economic benefit of the rest of the country.

Ann Day is a Republican member of the Pima County Board of Supervisors and a former state legislator.

The state and the region must embark on a serious effort to understand the impact of this increase in rail traffic and trade. We must establish a mechanism to take advantage of opportunities while minimizing the potentially serious impacts.

Making a freeway attractive could be considered a losing proposition from the start.
Not so with the widening project for Interstate 10 now under way through the heart of Tucson. Artwork is being built into the freeway sidewalls, bridges and underpasses, pleasing the eye and proving beneficial to the overall appearance of the city’s center.
Predictably, the naysayers are out in force, calling the art a waste of money, the artwork itself ugly and the whole concept a boondoggle.
Wrong, wrong and wrong.
The cost will be $1 million to $2 million, 1 percent or less of the widening project’s total cost, a state transportation official told Tucson Citizen reporter Teya Vitu this week.
Thus, it’s not much, certainly not enough to add a lane to the widening, as some have suggested, or to spend significantly on other public projects.
The introduction of this form of attractiveness to such an intrusive piece of construction as a freeway should bring praise, not polemics.
“It’s taking the old freeway style a step further in a way that celebrates the place,” Liba Wheat told the Citizen. She is a partner at Wheat Scharf Associates, a local landscape architecture and design firm that oversaw parts of the I-10 art project work.
That celebration of place includes art depicting desert flowers in purple, red and orange at the Grant Road underpass and spots for Pascua Yaqui artists to contribute their own design work.
At Speedway Boulevard, artwork will honor the University of Arizona and Kitt Peak National Observatory, along with desert symbols.
The St. Mary’s Road underpass is in the hands of tile artist and photographer Steve Farley, who plans mosaics of images from the nearby historic neighborhoods Barrio Hollywood and Barrio Anita. A fine sample of Farley’s work is in the Broadway underpass at downtown’s east entrance.
Luminated and painted metal artwork will decorate the unerpasses on Congress and Cushing streets, with design work by the local firm of Gresham & Beach. The motif will be in what has been developed as a local art genre, “Pueblo Deco.”
Concrete barrier walls with molded flora and fauna symbols eventually will get decorative coats of paint in desert hues of greens and rusts.
The total effect will be one of transforming this human-made necessity into artwork celebrating Tucson’s heritage, history and contemporary life.
Alternatively, we would be faced with sheer concrete walls that will be utilitarian but, frankly, ugly.
The creativity and thoughtfulness going into the project and the relatively small amount of money being spent on it should gain the community’s admiration and instill a sense of pride in this gateway to Tucson.

The mortgage crisis may not have hit you directly. But you will be affected by this financial tidal wave sweeping Tucson and the nation.
A two-day Tucson Citizen series “The Mortgage Crisis in Tucson,” (Part 1, Part 2) which concludes Friday, spells out the breadth and depth of this nationwide problem. And for Tucson, the worst may still be ahead.
There is no quick fix. But even if you are a renter or have a mortgage that you can afford, this is or soon will be your problem.
The scope of the problem is breathtaking. In 2007, there were 4,471 foreclosure filings in Pima County. But 1,700 were in the fourth quarter – a staggering 430 percent increase from 2006.
And it is far from over. Nearly 70 percent of the Pima County subprime loans have an adjustable rate. Half of those borrowers will see their interest rates increased within the next year.
The peak is forecast to hit in August.
Even if you are not among those unfortunate borrowers, you’ll be impacted. If homes in your neighborhood are foreclosed and remain empty, it will hurt your home’s value and the quality of life in the area.
A national study found that the violent crime rate increases in neighborhood where there are vacant homes. And the loss of a home may be the trigger that causes a family to break apart – another loss for a neighborhood and for the community.
Time is the only sure cure for the mortgage crisis. But for some, time is working against them.
There are things we can do as a community. But it was a series of individual decisions that led to this crisis and it will take individual actions to ameliorate it.
Local governments and nonprofits are talking about programs to buy vacant homes to increase the stock of affordable housing. That’s a double benefit, but a costly one. Money is available to buy only a handful of the thousands of foreclosed homes.
More promising is a program in which local agencies are teaming up to offer “foreclosure clinics” in areas of Tucson with a large number of filings.
There may also be federal help, with a bill in the U.S. House that would provide money to refinance loans and reduce interest rates.
But those in the crosshairs of this crisis cannot wait, hoping such a program comes through. Individual responsibility is essential.
If you struggle or get behind in your mortgage payments, contact your lender immediately. Or seek help through one of the numerous intermediaries listed in Friday’s installment of this series.
There is some good news ahead. Tucson is a growing community that will grow its way out of this crisis – something that many other communities cannot count on. But it won’t be soon, and it won’t be easy.

The biggest single project in the Regional Transportation Authority’s half-cent sales tax plan is the widening of East Grant Road.

Work on the five-mile, $166 million project won’t begin until 2013. But planning for the project between North Oracle and Swan roads is under way.

Grant is one of the busiest east-west streets in the metro area, so alignment of the new, wider road will affect many Tucsonans.

There are two meetings this week. Both will be at the Tucson Association of Realtors office, 2445 N. Tucson Blvd., from 6 to 9 p.m.

• Wednesday’s meeting will focus on the stretch between North First Avenue and North Tucson Boulevard.

• Thursday’s meeting will be on the stretch from Oracle to First.

This is the time to have your say.

Sad to say, it’s the best way to fix Arizona’s transit system. Boosting the state sales tax isn’t.

Morning traffic makes its way along westbound Tanque Verde Road, between East Grant Road and East Pima Street.

Raising Arizona’s sales tax by 1 cent to provide billions for transportation improvements is a bad idea.

But the business group proposing it, the Time Coalition, is on the correct path.

We need a comprehensive plan to increase revenues for roads and transportation systems, including light rail in Tucson and Phoenix and commuter rail between the two cities.

The plan simply should not rely on one source, the sales tax. More appropriately, it should be based on taxing people directly for their use of the state’s roads and transportation systems. That means motorists who pay fuel taxes, tolls and license fees.

The Time Coalition is preparing a ballot measure and initiative petition drive for November’s election to ask voters to increase the state sales-tax rate by 1 cent to 6.6 percent.

It would raise what the coalition estimates to be $42.6 billion in 30 years, to be spent on a long list of road and transit needs around the state.

We urge the group to rethink the funding mechanism in favor of one with multiple sources, both because it would hedge economic downturns and would encourage transportation efficiency as users pay the way.

The starting point for transportation funding must be gasoline taxes, followed by vehicle registration and driver’s license fees and then toll roads. Yes, some sales taxes will be needed to round out the funding.

But bear in mind that a sales tax is regressive, hitting low-income people hardest, and that Arizona’s 5.6 percent rate already is above the national median of 5.4 percent.

Arizonans in 2005 paid the eighth most sales taxes per household, $3,970 on average, the Tax Foundation reported.

On the other hand, the state’s 18-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax hasn’t been raised in 18 years and is 10th lowest in the nation.

Raising it by 2-cent increments in each of the next five years, to the national average for state gasoline taxes of 28.6 cents a gallon, would raise $300 million more a year by 2013 at current gasoline use rates.

A fuel-tax increase would promote conservation – prices rise, consumption falls – and help road system expansion that is paid for by motorists, those who use it the most.

Arizona Department of Transportation statistics show the gasoline tax made up 36 percent of total state Highway User Revenue Fund income in 2006-07. By 2016-17, it will make up less than 30 percent at the current 18-cent rate.

Those numbers should go the other direction.

There are many reasons not to raise the gasoline tax – No. 1 being that we don’t want more taxes, period – but just two good reasons for an increase: We need to improve the road system, and this clearly is a user fee, more so than any other tax or fee for transportation.

Make it the starting point for funding transportation. Add in other revenue sources as needed to round out the picture.

Don’t burden Arizonans with an onerous 18 percent increase in the sales-tax rate, which already is too high.

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BY THE NUMBERS
ARIZONA TRANSPORTATION AND TAXATION
• The 18-cent gasoline tax brought in $497.7 million in fiscal 2006-07.

• Arizonans consumed 2.85 billion gallons of gasoline in 2006-07, the 17th highest among the states.

• The gasoline tax was implemented in 1921, at 1-cent a gallon. The last increase was in 1990, when it went from 17 cents to 18 cents.

Sources: Arizona Department of Transportation, Tax Foundation, statemaster.com.

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• The Highway User Revenue Fund, known as HURF, pays for most state transportation costs. It brought in $1.38 billion in 2006-07, and gasoline taxes made up the largest share. It is forecast to bring in $2.26 billion in 2016-17, a 63.2 percent increase in 10 years, with the vehicle license tax making up the biggest share.

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The proposal was made to show that the Republican Party's nominee-to-be (he's running for president, you know) is a man of the people, a populist who, unlike his elitist Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama, understands the gun-owning, church-going, pickup-driving Average American.

Sen. John McCain has said that he’s no expert on the economy. His proposal to give Americans a summer holiday from the federal gasoline tax bolsters that notion.

McCain said he will introduce legislation to suspend the 18.4-cent per gallon federal levy from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

McCain must know that the proposal will go nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate in an election year.

The proposal was made to show that the Republican Party’s nominee-to-be (he’s running for president, you know) is a man of the people, a populist who, unlike his elitist Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama, understands the gun-owning, church-going, pickup-driving Average American.

But Average Joes and Janes wouldn’t benefit much from suspending the tax. For a Tucsonan with a 20-mile round trip to work, driving a vehicle that gets 20-22 miles a gallon, it means saving about $12 this summer.

Additional mileage accrued during vacation and other travel could increase savings. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials estimates the average American would pocket $28. That will pay for three full-price tickets to a summer blockbuster movie. But not the popcorn.

That’s why economists have labeled the plan a “sop” and a “gimmick.”

Actually, according to some analysts, the big winner would be – surprise! – the energy industry.

Making gasoline less expensive during peak driving season will increase demand, sending prices higher.

Leonard E. Burman of the nonpartisan Urban Institute told the Los Angeles Times that the proposal is “a huge windfall for refiners” and not for consumers.

That Big Oil stands to make more money isn’t even among the worst aspects of McCain’s plan, however.

The federal Highway Trust Fund, which pays for construction and maintenance of our rapidly aging roads and which already is facing a $3.4 billion shortage, would take a hit of as much as $8.6 billion, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The group says every billion dollars spent on highway construction generates 30,000 construction jobs a year.

McCain’s plan thus endangers tens of thousands of jobs in what is already an industry on the ropes.

Underinvesting in our nation’s roads to realize a short-term political gain is a bad idea. The country needs a gasoline tax that pays for infrastructure and encourages conservation, which would cut greenhouse gases.

McCain had an opportunity to educate Americans about hard choices coming down the road.

But he missed the turnoff. Instead of straight talk, all he offered voters was an election-campaign detour from reality.

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