U.S. Rep. Bud Shuster, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, made a field trip to Tampa the other day to see our port, airport and highways.

There is general agreement here on the importance of air and sea transport, but the community is divided on ground transportation--whether to continue to depend entirely on roads or to augment them with a commuter rail line that would largely follow existing freight rail rights of way.

Shuster's advice: If you can, build rail.

``When you have right of way, you're half-way there,'' he told us. ``Light rail seems to be pretty darn efficient.''

This from a solidly conservative congressman representing a Pennsylvania mountain district that has been Republican since 1860.

Shuster helped deregulate trucking and has consistently pushed to give local governments more say in how federal transportation money is spent. Now up to half the federal gasoline tax revenue in any one category can be diverted to another, which means some highway money can be spent on transit and vice versa. This flexibility gives state and local governments more power, which puts them under more pressure to make intelligent choices.

The new transportation law is sending Florida about $440 million more per year, a sum that partially corrects the old funding formula that for years shortchanged fast-growing states.

Shuster argues convincingly that all federal gasoline taxes should be spent on transportation and that all airline ticket taxes should be spent on aviation improvements. If the money isn't needed, reduce the tax rate. But the money is desperately needed, so Congress should invest it to improve the national economy and public safety.

He dismisses as ill-informed the often repeated criticism that Congress loaded the latest highway bill with pork. High-priority congressional projects account for 5 percent of the spending, and all those projects required the written support of the state departments of transportation. Even if all these special projects are unnecessarily fat, which they aren't, the remaining 95 percent of the money is going back to state and local governments.

Shuster, a veteran of the endless tug of war over limited revenues, conceded. ``These decisions are not made by angels up in heaven.''

They are made largely by men and women here at the local level, and the better informed they are, the more wisely they will invest tax-payers' money. It should interest them that the neutral advice from conservative Bud Shuster, who is neither campaigning here nor speculating in local real estate, is to seriously consider rail.

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