DOT Issues Transport Plan

By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter

This story appears in the Aug. 4 print edition of Transport Topics.

Declaring the current system irrevocably “broken,” Transportation Secretary Mary Peters unveiled the Bush administration’s final major surface transportation policy initiative — a reform of the highway program that includes unlimited tolling and an increased emphasis on private capital.

Peters unveiled the plan during a July 29 event in Georgia. During a conference call with reporters after that event, she said that “without a doubt, our current approach to surface transportation is broken,” and this new plan “creates an easier and more sustainable way to pay for and build roads and transit systems.”

Peters cited reduced receipts into the Highway Trust Fund, as well as extensive use of earmarks, as reasons why “no amount of tweaking, adjusting or adding new layers on top of things will make [the system] better.”

The plan, Peters said, begins the “long-overdue process of weaning ourselves off the gas tax.”

She said it would make it easier for states to establish infrastructure banks, eliminate taxes that discourage private investment and “make it easier to implement road pricing . . . to take advantage of over $400 billion available worldwide for infrastructure investment from the private sector.”

Some of the plan’s other components would:

• Establish a pilot program to let five states “opt out” of the federal-aid highway pro-grams “in exchange for their loss of a small percentage of federal funding.”

• Require all projects of more than $250 million to consider using public-private partnerships in order to receive federal money.

• Establish a pilot program to allow 10 states to “enter into agreements with the private sector to rehabilitate and operate” designated rest areas.

• “Remove the general prohibition of tolls and pricing on federal-aid highways,” with some conditions on how the revenue may be spent, including reasonable return on  private investment.

• Consolidate the number of federal funding programs into five: the federal interest  highway program, the metro mobility program, a mobility enhancement program, a highway safety improvement program and one from which agencies like the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration would derive funds.

• Support a shift to “moving long-distance freight by rail, including intermodal shipments,” rather than by truck.

The plan was not warmly received by transportation officials, with many saying they did not think it would have any effect on next year’s highway bill.

“It is a collection of the same uninspired and uninspiring policies that this administration has offered over the past five years: toll it, privatize it, lease it, sell it, or congestion-price it,” said Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

“In putting forth this proposal as it enters its final months in office, the administration is attempting to place its dead hand on America’s transportation future. This administration leaves town in January.”

Tim Lynch, senior vice president of federation relations and strategic planning for American Trucking Associations, said it was “laughable that they would be putting this out and have some expectation that anybody on Capitol Hill is going to take them seriously.”

“It expresses one viewpoint about what the program should look like going forward; we don’t happen to share that viewpoint,” he said. Lynch added that while it may find sup-porters, “I don’t think those folks are in the majority any more.”

Jack Schenendorf, vice chairman of the national commission that called for a 25- to 40-cent increase in the fuel tax to fund infrastructure improvements, said the DOT’s proposal fell short of what is needed to rebuild the nation’s transport system.

“The major thing I don’t see is where are the major investments are going to come from?” he said. “This proposal seems to rely almost entirely on the private sector putting up the money, and that just isn’t enough.”

NATSO President Lisa Mullings said the part of the proposal regarding rest stops was “astonishing.” She said allowing private groups to commercialize rest stops would have “detrimental effects on drivers, highway-based businesses and local communities.”

In addition, Mullings said tolling represents “a system of double taxation for the commercial trucking industry” and would cause truck traffic to divert to smaller, secondary roads.

“The administration is on its way out and is simply hanging a ‘For Sale’ sign on our highways as a last-ditch effort to reward their friends on Wall Street,” said Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.

“We are hopeful the next administration and Congress will have a more reasoned, positive view of transportation and infrastructure.”