2009: A Defining Year For Transportation in U.S.

This year, we have the rare opportunity to fundamentally reform our country’s broken transportation policy. With Congress soon to begin debate on a new transportation bill, now is the time to embrace a 21st century program. This includes dramatically boosting investment levels, taking a more balanced approach to transportation, and better serving the needs of metropolitan areas (where three quarters of Americans live). If a smart reform agenda is ultimately enacted into law, in coming years transportation investments will drive the nation toward economic recovery, greater energy security and much lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

Right now, there are a number of helpful factors at play that combine to create this chance for meaningful reform: Obama has brought with him to Washington a strong interest in fixing and improving how we get around in this country; the highway trust fund is beginning to experience chronic shortfalls, spurring interest in overhauling the whole funding system; and it’s been nearly twenty years since the last substantial revision.

But before we dismantle any policy and erect structures in its place, it’s worth understanding the history that brought us a sprawling federal institution comprising 108 different programs.

Way back in 1916, Congress passed the first federal bill establishing the partnership between the federal and state governments in the creation of a national highway network. An anti-urban bias that is still apparent in current policies was enshrined in that law, which was explicitly enacted for the purpose of aiding states in the construction of “rural post roads.” It also established the enduring institutions of funding distribution formulas and a regular Congressional reauthorization routine.

The next big milestone was the Federal-Aid Highway Act, enacted in 1956. Among its major provisions, the bill “created a Highway Trust Fund supported by increasing the federal tax on gas and diesel fuel from 2 to 3 cents,…increased the federal portion of construction costs for Interstate highways to ninety percent,…and pledged to complete the Interstate Highway System by 1972.”[1] The program took much of its current shape in this bill, which launched the construction of more than 40,000 miles of roads. Another big addition was in the 1982 reauthorization, which contained a new provision that 20 percent of a five-cent increase in the gas tax would flow into a new Mass Transit Account, dedicated to financing the construction and maintenance of public transportation systems (such as light rail, commuter rail and bus lines).

And then Congress took a big step forward in 1991 with the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (known as ISTEA, or “ice tea”), which contained new planning requirements and funding for transportation alternatives. New programs provided funding for transportation projects other than roads, such as bike paths and improved public transportation. Additionally, it provided “flexible” funding that could be used for traditional road construction projects or for alternatives such as transit (unfortunately, the list of states that have made good use of this flexibility is woefully short).

In spite of the progress in the 1982 and 1991 statutes, the federal program is still steeply tilted in favor of rural road-building. While this has given America a world-class highway system, our public transportation system belongs in a remedial class. As a leading analyst of government programs put it when ranking the highway system among the nation’s 25 greatest endeavors of the last quarter of the 20th century: “…the federal government encouraged Americans to travel to and from work by car, thereby stimulating much of the urban sprawl that vexes commuters today, while diluting public support for urban mass transit. Thus does one endeavor’s success sometimes precipitate another’s failure.”[2]

Now is the time for a new program architecture and more appropriate investment levels.

Enter Transportation for America, which unveiled its preferred policy architecture at an impressive event on Capitol Hill this morning.[3] Speakers included Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and several practitioners from local, transit and regional agencies. The architecture has three important components:

1) The What and the How: Six objectives for the program — economic competitiveness, improved conditions, energy security, improved environment, ensured safety and access to transportation options — tied to specific performance standards to be achieved by 2030 (one example dear to NRDC is a 40% cut in CO2 emissions).

2) The New Structure: A set of multimodal (highway, rail, bus, bike/ped, etc.) access programs targeted at the state, metropolitan and local levels; programs which will complete the national system (i.e., bring other modes up to the highway level) including intercity rail, green freight and ports, major transit projects and projects of national significance; priority programs including planning and research, system preservation and renewal, access-independence-and-mobility-management, safety, energy security; and last but not least innovation incentive programs including sustainability challenge grants, a smart communities program, and an active transportation program.

3) How to Pay for It: Transportation for America agrees with Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Oberstar that the program needs to be doubled in size to about $500 billion in order to take care of a backlog of maintenance needs and to make a down payment on a system that offers users a variety of viable transportation options. Several means will be necessary to achieve this end including more road and public transportation pricing, new ways of capturing value from developers who benefit from construction of projects around transportation facilities, allocation of revenues for the new climate bill to transportation, accelerated planning for transitioning to a vehicle miles traveled tax, extension of the gas guzzler tax to SUVs and light trucks, and new public-private partnerships to finance projects.

This is, admittedly, an ambitious reform agenda. However, it is also long overdue.

Deron Lovaas is the Federal Transportation Policy Director at the National Resources Defence Council.

Image: Flickr - Antydivulian