Obama urges private highway funds at Del. traffic disaster site

UPDATE from my column in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer: After getting stonewalled by Obama's Transportation (Foxx) and Treasury (Lew) secretaries about what the president was actually suggesting for highway funding, I asked Frank M. Rapoport, the Berwyn-based lawyer for Peckar & Abramson P.C., who has been mobilizing for a return to private road-funding almost since the government bought Lancaster Pike from the Pennsylvania Railroad, tore down the tollgates and tacked up those Lincoln Highway signs, to explain what's really going on.

"There was not an 'agenda' by the Republicans to help public-private partnerships directly," Rapaport insisted. "They were just against the gas-tax increase. Thus, Obama is doing what he can, to help the governors and mayors."

OK, I told Rapoport. But your construction guys couldn't have planned this better if it was a conspiracy with the GOP. He laughed.

I asked Rapoport and his friend Tim Rutten, the Fluor Corp. lobbyist who heads the government affairs committee for the Association for the Improvement of American Infrastructure, what types of privately funded projects we should expect in the Philadelphia area under Obama's new plan.

"It's up to the mayors and governors to seize the initiative," Rapoport said. Gov. Christie appears "deep-down supportive."

But Gov. Corbett's Rapid Bridge Replacement Program is Exhibit A: "Go on the PennDot website. They got 300 bridges ready to go" for private repairs and long-term structural maintenance contracts, Rapoport reminded me. Public costs, still to be disclosed.

EARLIER: On his visit to Delaware Thursday, President Obama used I-495 - the out-of-service six-lane highway that stretches from Delaware County almost to the end of the New Jersey Turnpike and includes a damaged bridge that has jammed traffic this summer on nearby I-95 - as a backdrop for a vague speech about encouraging private investors to finance upgrades of American highways, bridges, ports, and airports. The President has been reduced to asking the private sector, because his administration has been unable to get higher highway taxes passed by Congress.

Delaware Gov. Jack Markell used the occasion to effusively thank Obama, his fellow Democrat, for bailing out East Coast drivers by shifting bridge- repair assets from elsewhere to I-495 so the state could accelerate repairs. Markell also praised his own state Department of Transportation leadership.

That went down all right with the state and city Democrats and safety-vested union workers sweltering in the bleachers set up between cargo containers at the Port of Wilmington for the video opp. But it didn't sit well with one leader, who was on the edge of the Democratic crowd, both physically and politically: State Sen. Greg Lavelle, a Republican from Wilmington, reminded me that Markell's DelDOT had failed to act on months of warnings that the bridge was tilting, and may have helped cause the problem in the first place by allowing contractors to dump hundreds of truckloads of soil along the bridge pilings. "They screwed up," Lavelle told me. "There's a lack of accountability here."

I asked whether there were going to be hearings in Dover on the matter. There's already private lawsuits, Lavelle said disgustedly, from shippers and commuters who have been losing hours a week to the traffic jams. The state says the highway should be at least partly reopened by Labor Day.

Separately: On his quick tour, Obama visited the Charcoal Pit on US 202, an unrenovated 50s-style burger joint where the specials are named for local high school teams (and, I'm told, a picture of two of my sons hangs on the wall: they are among the few living people to have eaten an entire Kitchen Sink, which is a lot of ice cream. When you eat it all, you don't have to pay.)

The Capano family, local builders, founded and owned the Pit, which is why some local residents in recent years avoided the place: go there: the late Tom Capano, once a prominent lawyer, died in prison for killing then-Gov. Tom Carper's scheduling secretary, Anne Marie Fahey. Her large family still grieves her loss. Carper wasn't with Obama on the Pit visit.

But the joint was busy enough for a little Delaware color on the President's visit: Our own Laura McCrystal (in the story linked above) noted one of the patrons, 67-year-old Pat Grim of Newark, cheerfully bragged of having "partied" with Vice President Joe Biden, a hometown boy.