A year later, no federal transpo bill

Past DOT heads decry inaction

Jon Boyd, Oct 10, 10.

In a new report called “Well Within Reach: America’s New Transportation Agenda,” Former US Department of Transportation Secretaries Samuel Skinner and Norman Minetta are calling for action on a new transportation bill, according to Stephen Lee Davis at Transportation for America:

Former secretaries of transportation Norman Minetta and Samuel Skinner want less talk on infrastructure and more action.
[snip]
In a briefing on Capitol Hill yesterday, the duo called for increased attention on the nation’s infrastructure and declared the existing gas tax an insufficient funding source for the future.

“Transportation policy is very important in this country,” Minetta said. “It is the basis of everything that happens.”

Added Skinner: “We have to find new and creative ways to invest in infrastructure and generate the revenue to do so.”

Ashley Halsey of the Washington Post summarized some of the report’s key findings:

If Congress were to do the report’s bidding, the task would be far broader in scope than simply coming up with trillions of dollars in long-term funding to rebuild a 50-year-old highway system.

The experts also advocated adoption of a distinct capital spending plan for transportation, empowering state and local governments with authority to make choices now dictated from the federal level, continued development of high-speed rail systems better integrated with freight rail transportation, and expansion of intermodal policies rather than reliance on highways alone to move goods and people.

Minetta and Skinner’s bipartisan report also cited “nurturing livable communities” as a smart, needed strategy for reducing congestion and improving quality of life. They wrote:
Creating communities conducive to walking and alternative modes of transportation, especially in dense metropolitan areas, should be an important goal of transportation policy at all levels of government.

Federal law requires all Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) to create financially constrained four-year and twenty-year transportation plans. Yet Congress has not passed a new six-year transportation bill, with over a year passing since SAFETEA-LU expired at the end of September 2009. In the same month last year, Mineta and Skinner chaired a group of transportation experts, who met at the University of Virginia to talk about the state of transportation and produced the report Well Within Reach, according to Ashley Halsey III writing for the Washington Post. These experts sought to reverse what they view as a degraded and underfunded national transportation network, symbolized by the bridge collapse in Minneapolis in 2007, says the Washington Post:

Co-chaired by two former secretaries of transportation - Norman Y. Minetta and Samuel K. Skinner - the group estimated that an additional $134 billion to $262 billion must be spent per year through 2035 to rebuild and improve roads, rail systems and air transportation.

“We’re going to have bridges collapse. We’re going to have earthquakes. We need somebody to grab the issue and run with it, whether it be in Congress or the White House,” Mineta said Monday during a news conference at the Rayburn House Office Building.

The key to salvation is developing new long-term funding sources to replace the waning revenue from federal and state gas taxes that largely paid for the construction and expansion of the highway system in the 1950s and 1960s, the report said.

“Infrastructure is important, but it’s not getting the face time with the American people,” Skinner said. “We’ve got to look at this as an investment, not an expense.”

A major increase in the federal gas tax, which has remained unchanged since it was bumped to 18.4 cents per gallon in 1993, might be the most politically palatable way to boost revenue in the short term, the report said, but over the long run, Americans should expect to pay for each mile they drive.

“A fee of just one penny per mile would equal the revenue currently collected by the fuel tax; a fee of two cents per mile would generate the revenue necessary to support an appropriate level of investment over the long term,” the report said.

Fuel tax revenue, including state taxes that range from 8 cents in Alaska to 46.6 cents in California, have declined as fuel efficiency has increased. President Obama mandated that new cars get 35.5 miles on average per gallon by 2016, and government officials said last week that they are considering raising the average to 62 miles per gallon by 2025.

Well Within Reach: America’s New Transportation Agenda
Smarter transportation case study #1: Yellowstone LINX Cooperative
http://t4america.org/blog/2010/10/07/smarter-transportation-case-study-1-yellowstone-linx-cooperative/
Smarter transportation case study #3: Specialized Customer Information: Pittsburgh, Pa.