We all know we need to halt our dependence on oil. But knowing this and doing it are two vastly different things. Few people are more aware of this fact than Federal Transportation Policy Director (and blogger!) Deron Lovaas. As the member of a new coalition on the future of U.S. transportation, he is working to put initiatives in place that will do more than just preach the dangers of foreign oil — they’ll get us to stop using it. He has kindly agreed to explain his work:

Driving on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway with my family, I marvel and fume at the horrible traffic. It isn’t just annoying — it’s also quite costly due to aggregate time lost and fuel burned. In fact, a 2007 study by the Texas Transportation Institute found that total congestion costs in Maryland alone amount to more than $3 billion a year – a number that doesn’t even include health and environmental damages from vehicles, which a recent National Academy of Sciences study pegged at $56 billion annually (and this doesn’t include climate change). Nor does it include the cost to our security of boosting revenue for a handful of hostile or unstable oil-rich nations. These costs, the environmental damage they bring, and the resulting energy insecurity add up to a serious threat to the nation.

Last week the Institute for the Analysis for Global Security launched a new coalition to tackle our transportation challenges, motivated especially by the need to cut our nation’s perilous oil dependence. I’ve joined the group, the purpose of which is to provide consumers with more choices in transportation, since that’s what accounts for the lion’s share of our oil use.

Our mobility choice agenda is underpinned by four broad goals:

• Align price signals to consumers closer to a full and transparent reflection of costs;
• End federal bias for any particular transportation mode by basing investments on performance criteria and allocating costs based on use;
• Push responsibility down to the metropolitan level; and
• Aggressively deploy technology to improve operations in each transportation mode.

From these goals, we have derived a 10-point plan for boosting mobility choice: (more…)