New approach for America's transportation future

A clean and historic break with the past is needed to encourage the future vitality of the nation's transportation network, said US Transportation Secretary Mary E Peters on July 29 in unveiling the Bush Administration's new plan to “refocus, reform, and renew” the national approach to highway and transit systems in America.

“Without a doubt, our federal approach to transportation is broken,” she said. “And no amount of tweaking, adjusting, adding new layers on top will make things better. It is time for a new, different, and better approach.”

The new plan has a renewed federal focus on maintaining and improving the Interstate highway system, instead of diverting funds for “wasteful pet projects, and for programs clearly not federal priority areas, like restoring lighthouses.

Addressing urban congestion, and giving greater flexibility to state and local leaders to invest in their most needed transit and highway priorities is another key focus of the reform plan, said Peters.

As part of this focus on congestion, the plan would create a Metropolitan Innovation Fund that rewards cities willing to combine a mix of effective transit investments, dynamic pricing of highways, and new traffic technologies.

Further, the plan calls for greatly reducing the more than 102 federal transportation programs which have proliferated over the last two decades, replacing them with eight comprehensive, intermodal programs that will help focus, instead of dilute, investments, and cut “the dizzying red-tape forced upon local planners.”

A hallmark of the plan, she noted, is a “refocused and redoubled emphasis on safety,” using a data and technology-driven approach that also gives states maximum flexibility to tackle their toughest safety challenges.

To improve the current 13-year average it takes to design and build new highway and transit projects in the US, Peters said the federal review process would be streamlined.

She emphasized that central to any reform for transportation is finding new revenue sources to supplement the unpredictable and unsustainable gas tax - “an antiquated mechanism,” in order to fund maintenance and pay for new needed projects.

More direct pricing options like tolling are needed, she said, and states must be empowered to take advantage of infrastructure investments from the private sector. “The idea is simple: use federal funds to encourage new sources of investments for transportation, instead of replacing them.”

Peters said the plan lays out the Administrations' framework for completely overhauling the way US transportation decisions and investments are made, and is intended to spur local, state, and federal debate about how best to incorporate the new reforms into surface transportation legislation slated to be considered by Congress in 2009.