Earlier this year, leaders and thinkers from around the state gathered in Tucson for the 106th Arizona Town Hall.
The town halls are held to bring people together to look at issues and solutions for Arizona on any variety of important topics.
The nonprofit was founded more than 50 years ago to let people in Arizona explore the important issues of the day and potentially provide solutions or new approaches to problems.
This most recent town hall focused on transportation issues here in the Grand Canyon State.
Others have focused on things like the economy, which is also connected to transportation.
Some of those who attended the town hall and others met to brainstorm and discuss the state of transportation last week at Yavapai College’s Clarkdale campus, one of several regional follow-up meetings organized by the town hall organization.
Attendees at the Thursday, Oct. 22, Clarkdale meeting included representatives of organizations like the Arizona Department of Transportation and Arizona Public Service.
“We connect people to each other and resources,” said Tara Jackson, president of Arizona Town Hall.
Jackson said that the town halls are a fairly intense process.
“We talk about issues, but we also want to know how they actually affect people on the ground,” Jackson said.
When it comes to transportation, there’s no getting around that the state doesn’t have all the money that would be needed to meet infrastructure needs, said Eric Gudino, public affairs manager with the Arizona Department of Transportation.
“We’d need $87 billion on the state level,” Gudino said. “Then the economy crashed.”
After the recession hit, Gudino said that then-Gov. Jan Brewer tried to refocus priorities.
“She said we just can’t focus on transportation alone,” Gudino said.
Instead, Gudino said that the state was looking to focus on the infrastructure that supported international trade.
“Mexico, Canada and China,” Gudino said. “We’re a truck drive away from the Port of Los Angeles and the Chinese market. Two truck drives away from the Dallas-Fort Worth area.”
Gudino said that the state was looking at $20 billion in transportation-related to trade.
Gudino illustrated the importance of good infrastructure by pointing to the recent wash out of a bridge on Interstate 10 in California, cutting the main link between the Phoenix area and Los Angeles.
The bridge was closed for only a short time but the closure cost the economy millions, Gudino said.
“A transportation system is only as strong as its weakest link,” Gudino said. “We don’t want something like that to happen.”
The issue is compounded by the fact that ADOT is funded through the state tax on gasoline and vehicle registrations.
“The gas tax hasn’t been increased since 1994,” Gudino said.
While fuel efficiency isn’t a bad thing, Gudino said that more fuel efficient cars over the years have also led to a decrease in available funding.
Gudino said that it might be worth considering alternative ways to pay for the state’s transportation infrastructure.
Interstate 17 and I-10 are particularly important pieces of that transportation network, said Mary Malloy, a member of the Prescott Valley City Council.
“We just need the political will to do what we need to do as a state and get our highways where they need to be,” Mallory said.
Mallory said she knows it’s not easy to go before the public to ask for things like tax increases but the economic downturn also led to the state legislature withholding funds that were designated to pay for roads.
Coming up with ideas to solve these kind of problems is a focus of Arizona Town Hall.
“One little failure can have a large impact,” said Patrick McDermott, a community affairs manager for Arizona Public Service. “We need you to use your influence to get recommendations out there.”
