Pitts: It’s time for a vote on roads

THREE hundred nineteen days. That’s how long the South Carolina Senate has had the House plan to fund our infrastructure and reform the state Department of Transportation to increase accountability. For the past 319 days, our roads have been crumbling, our bridges in a state of continued deterioration, our businesses suffering with every blown-out truck tire and our citizens constantly at risk as an accident happens every three hours on the S.C. section of I-85 alone. This is politics at its worst.

The people of South Carolina deserve more from our senators, and that is why the S.C. Chamber of Commerce has called on senators to put politics aside and take a vote for the good of our state. Bad roads affect us all — Democrats and Republicans and everyone from the Upstate to the Lowcountry. No one politician’s reelection is more important than the urgency to fix our roads.

Bad roads are bad for business. They increase the cost of transporting goods, they cause traffic jams and reduce efficiency in getting things from point A to point B, they pose a threat to truck fleets, and they deter new businesses from choosing South Carolina. The S.C. Department of Transportation estimates that traffic congestion in the Palmetto State has cost our economy $2.6 billion.

In Greenville, congestion cost you $260 million last year — and one whole day of your year was spent in a traffic jam. In Columbia that figure was $409 million. In Charleston, drivers spent nearly two days in traffic last year.

The costs are personal too. Through our #SCSPEAKSOUT for roads campaign, South Carolinians have told us about everything from spending $1,000 on blown-out tires in two days, to potholes causing collisions, to five broken windshields, to a commute time that is doubled due to traffic. These things take place every day on our roads — yet the Senate seems to have all the time in the world.

What’s even worse for business is jeopardizing the safety of our citizens — our state’s workforce, our state’s moms and dads, our state’s children. We are the eighth most dangerous state to drive in. Each day, as we send our children off to school, they travel over nearly 1,000 structurally deficient bridges and pothole-ridden roads of which half are rated in poor condition.

2015 was one of our deadliest years. According to the Department of Public Safety, traffic fatalities increased by 15 percent, with a staggering 952 lives lost on our roads. Safety should not be overlooked in this debate.

In many ways we agree with senators who say the Transportation Department and the State Transportation Infrastructure Bank need structural reform in order to enhance accountability to the taxpayers. Our Competitiveness Agenda notes that the Transportation Department should be accountable to the governor and the Infrastructure Bank should follow a prioritization process for allocation of funding.

But how are we ever going to get to a place where we can make these reforms if the Senate can’t even hold a vote on any of the hundreds of amendments before it? The clock is ticking as the Senate sputters down its road of inaction. All the while, 319 days have gone by with more accidents, more traffic jams and continued deterioration of our roads, affecting businesses and citizens alike.

The continuing filibuster is a traffic jam in the worst kind of way. We have one car holding people up while the rest rubberneck and complain about the traffic.

The state’s business community is taking notice, and we collectively say to our senators: Put an end to the inaction. Put an end to the politics. It’s time to vote.

This story was originally published February 28, 2016 at 7:45 AM.