By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 23 1998; Page A04

The huge highway bill that Congress is getting ready to thrash out this spring is all about funding formulas, pork-barrel politics and power. But it's also about roads that don't work, like U.S. Route 7, a two-lane commuters' nightmare in western Vermont that runs north to Burlington and handles the traffic load of an interstate.

On their way home from a girls' basketball tournament in Burlington last June, a local building contractor named Ronald Gilligan, his wife and daughter and another teenage girl were all killed in a three-car collision on a notorious stretch of the road. Gilligan crossed the center line to try to pass a slow-moving minivan but, in the process, his Chevrolet Lumina plowed into an oncoming milk truck and the mangled remnants of the two vehicles were swept along with the van into a wooded gully.

Traffic jams, pileups and fatalities have become so common along Route 7 that some residents and local officials display macabre bumper stickers saying "Pray for Us, We Drive Route 7." But the death of four widely known and popular residents "touched every household in the city," said Rutland Mayor Jeffrey Wennberg, and energized a long-languishing effort to fix the road. The problem is, the money's tied up in Congress.

Nearly 100 miles to the north, the crumbling, 80-year-old Missisquoi Bay Bridge on the northeastern edge of Lake Champlain is another accident waiting to happen. Several years ago, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) reported seeing large chunks of concrete falling from the bridge as he passed nearby in a boat. Last year, a state structural report rated the bridge a 7.2 -- out of 100. Last summer it was closed for weeks to patch gaping cracks in the deck.

Beyond the safety issue, the rickety structure is posing commercial and economic problems as well. The bridge sits at the nexus of key trucking routes between the United States and Canada, and as such has become a choke point along the NAFTA highway.

"What's at stake here is trade, commerce and life safety of people trying to go across that bridge," said Tim Soule, president of the Franklin County Industrial Development Corp., a quasi-government agency serving northwestern Vermont.

The money to fix it is frozen in the federal highway trust fund.

Vermont's situation is hardly unique. Dozens of states struggling with long-festering highway, road and bridge problems are anxiously awaiting congressional action this year on a new six-year highway reauthorization bill that would provide billions of dollars earmarked for special projects as well as formula funds for routine road paving and improvements.

But after putting off a decision on the legislation last fall, Congress once again is in a muddle over efforts by House Transportation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster (R-Pa.) and others to boost highway spending beyond the limits of last summer's balanced budget agreement. Shuster and his allies in the House and Senate, citing looming surpluses, want to spend $25 billion to $30 billion more for highway and transit projects in the coming years. Overall, Shuster would spend $218 billion for highways and mass transit -- using the full amount of money that comes from the federal gasoline tax, rather than allowing some of it to fund other government programs, as is now the case.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) are mildly sympathetic to the concrete and asphalt boosters. But they also want to use future surpluses for tax cuts, retiring the debt and other spending initiatives. With the outcome of this power struggle in doubt, state and local officials cannot be certain when -- or if -- they will get the funds needed to deal with their most pressing and costly problems this year.

But they know they're getting increasingly anxious for the money. Northern states with long winters and relatively short construction seasons are especially hurt if they can't commit to projects soon. If Congress misses its latest deadline of May 1, many states stand to lose billions of dollars of funding commitments for projects on the drawing board. Missouri recently put a hold on the awarding of new highway construction contracts until Congress acts.

"We've never been faced with this situation before so no one knows what to expect," said Francis Francois, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials in Washington.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), a master of bringing pork-barrel projects home and a champion of putting more money in the highway pot for everyone, has described the unmet needs as a "ticking time bomb" about to go off. "When 42,000 people are dying on the highways every year and we're told that 30 percent of those deaths are caused by poor road conditions and poor design, then yes, I'm one of those saying put highways first," Byrd said recently.

While some highway experts say privately that the states' highway funding picture isn't nearly as bleak as Byrd and others are suggesting, there is little doubt that pressure is mounting for congressional action.

Lawmakers from Washington state, for example, are lobbying intensely for new funding for an Interstate 405 project east of Seattle that is needed to relieve traffic congestion and reduce the number of serious accidents. Members of Congress from North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas have warned that their states may be forced to postpone important highway widening projects and other safety-related improvements. In Utah, officials may have to put off construction of a number of road and highway projects keyed to the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.

Vermont normally receives about $80 million annually in federal funds to help finance the paving or resurfacing of about 230 miles of roads and highways, according to state officials. This year, officials say, they could lose nearly a third of those funds. "We are developing contingencies if Congress doesn't act, such as delaying some work or shifting state money around, but chances are we won't be able to cover that gap," said Jeffrey Squires, Vermont's deputy secretary of transportation.

While Vermont officials may somehow muddle through on its routine paving program -- and indeed, the state can tap sizable surpluses in its own highway trust fund -- the prospects for improving the most treacherous stretches of Route 7 and replacing the Missisquoi bridge are more problematic.

Few question the need: Route 7 last received a major face-lift in the 1930s, yet the recent boom in housing, manufacturing and the ski and tourism industries has pushed ever more traffic onto the narrow corridor from Burlington south to Rutland and beyond.

"By northern New England standards, we're carrying interstate traffic loads on what remains a 1930s-style two-lane highway," said Wennberg, Rutland's mayor. As commuting times keep growing, motorists say their patience is wearing thin and they are more inclined to take chances -- as did Ronald Gilligan.

"People trying to pass" are getting angry, said Pete Billings, an official in the Rutland city equipment maintenance department. "It can be a pain if you get behind some old woman driving 37 miles per hour." Kevin Blanchard, a technician with a local photocopy manufacturing firm, added that "it's dangerous and really nasty out there -- especially in the winter."

The same goes for the Missisquoi bridge and causeway. Motorists and truckers particularly dread the nearly one-mile trek under snowy or icy conditions. With no shoulder for making emergency stops, even minor accidents on the two-lane bridge can tie up traffic for hours.

Yet it handles heavy and fast-growing truck traffic rumbling between Montreal and New England. When the bridge was shut down for several weeks last summer, traffic was forced to detour 60 miles or more.

"From our perspective, we see [the proposed bridge replacement] not as a Vermont pork project but one to enhance safety and to benefit the economies of Canada, New York and Vermont," said Catherine Dimitruk, executive director of the Northwestern Regional Planning Commission.

Construction of a new bridge would cost an estimated $35 million while the cost of widening portions of Route 7, adding median strips and pedestrian pathways and possibly building a bypass around Rutland could cost considerably more than that.

The competition in Washington for the limited pool of funds earmarked for these projects traditionally has been fierce and this time will be no exception. That Vermont could get all the funds it needs at once would be unlikely in the best circumstances. What's more, officials acknowledge that money isn't their only problem. Both projects would have to overcome important environmental and land-taking issues. But with the stalemate in Congress, state and local officials can't even begin making their case.

"We're very worried about what's going to happen down in Washington," said Earl Fournier, a dairy farmer and chairman of the governing board of Swanton, a small town at the foot of the Missisquoi Bay Bridge. "This is a small state and we can't afford to build a new bridge all by ourselves."