[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
SURFACE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM: CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE
=======================================================================
(110-3)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JANUARY 24, 2007
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman
NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia JOHN L. MICA, Florida
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon DON YOUNG, Alaska
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
Columbia JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
JERROLD NADLER, New York WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland
CORRINE BROWN, Florida VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
BOB FILNER, California STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD, JERRY MORAN, Kansas
California GARY G. MILLER, California
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South
LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa Carolina
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
RICK LARSEN, Washington SAM GRAVES, Missouri
MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
JULIA CARSON, Indiana JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine Virginia
BRIAN HIGGINS, New York JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California TED POE, Texas
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington
DORIS O. MATSUI, California CONNIE MACK, Florida
NICK LAMPSON, Texas JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New
ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio York
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia
BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr.,
JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania Louisiana
TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
HEATH SHULER, North Carolina CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania VERN BUCHANAN, Florida
JOHN J. HALL, New York
STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
JERRY McNERNEY, California
(ii)
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS, TRANSIT AND PIPELINES
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
JERROLD NADLER, New York DON YOUNG, Alaska
JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD, THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin
California HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania GARY G. MILLER, California
MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
JULIA CARSON, Indiana HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South
TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York Carolina
MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
BRIAN HIGGINS, New York TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania Virginia
TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania
HEATH SHULER, North Carolina MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
MICHAEL A ARCURI, New York CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania TED POE, Texas
JERRY MCNERNEY, California DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington
BOB FILNER, California CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr.,
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland Louisiana
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
DORIS O. MATSUI, California THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio VERN BUCHANAN, Florida
BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa JOHN L. MICA, Florida
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona (Ex Officio)
JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
(Ex Officio)
(iii)
CONTENTS
Page
Summary of Subject Matter........................................ vi
TESTIMONY
Bronzini, Michael S., George Mason University, Dewberry Chair
Professor, Fairfax, Virginia................................... 43
Heminger, Steve, Executive Director, Metropolitan Transportation
Commission, Oakland, California................................ 34
Lomax, Timothy J., Texas Transportation Institute, Program
Manager, Mobility Analysis, College Station, Texas............. 43
Pisarski, Alan, Private Consultant, Falls Church, Virginia...... 43
Schenendorf, Jack, Counsel, Covington & Burling LLP, Washington,
D.C............................................................ 34
Schwieterman, Joseph P., Professor, DePaul University, Director,
Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development, Chicago,
Illinois....................................................... 43
Shane, Hon. Jeffrey N., U.S. Department of Transportation, Under
Secretary for Policy, Washington, D.C., accompanied by Richard
Capka, Administrator, Federal Highway Administration........... 9
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Altmire, Hon. Jason, of Pennsylvania............................. 61
Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., of Maryland............................ 91
Lipinski, Hon. Dan, of Illinois.................................. 107
Matsui, Hon. Doris O., of California............................. 118
Mitchell, Harry E., of Arizona................................... 120
Rahall, Hon. Nick J., II, of West Virginia....................... 136
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Bronzini, Michael S............................................. 62
Heminger, Steve................................................. 97
Lomax, Timothy J................................................ 111
Pisarski, Alan.................................................. 123
Schenendorf, Jack............................................... 137
Schwieterman, Joseph P.......................................... 148
Shane, Hon. Jeffrey N........................................... 152
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Bronzini, Michael S., George Mason University, Dewberry Chair
Professor, Fairfax, Virginia, report, Transportation
Information Assests and Impacts: An Assessment of Needs, J.L.
Schofer, T. Lomax, T. Palmerlee, and J. Zmud, Transportation
Research Circular E-C109, Transportation Research Board, Data
and Information Systems Section, December 2006................. 69
Shane, Hon. Jeffrey N., U.S. Department of Transportation, Under
Secretary for Policy, Washington, D.C., Older Drivers Driving
Older Cars: A Snapshot analysis of the National Household
Travel Survey 2001............................................. 18
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
SURFACE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM: CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE
----------
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Highways
and Transit, Committee on Transportation and
Infrastructure, Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:03 a.m., in
room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Peter A. DeFazio
[Chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Mr. DeFazio. The hearing of the Subcommittee on Highways
and Transit will come to order.
This hearing is on the surface transportation system
challenges of the future. A couple of preliminaries.
Just to make a point, which I think is in the grand
tradition of this committee, I am convening the committee with
a gavel which was given to me by Speaker Hastert after the
completion of the SAFETEA-LU on the floor. It was autographed
by Speaker Hastert and I brought it to make a point that
transportation and transportation infrastructure are not
partisan issues. They have not been. They should not be. They
benefit all of the American people and the economy; and I
certainly intend to continue in that tradition.
Beyond that, we are also adopting the Don Young rule--some
will recall it--and I do not know that Don ever did it, but he
often threatened to confiscate cell phones that rang during the
hearing and take them to the men's room where they would
disappear. So if everyone would please put their BlackBerrys,
cell phones and others on vibrate, that would be helpful for
the decorum of the committee.
Then, beyond that, we are going to have a few brief opening
statements. I actually did have one here, and I do not know
where it has disappeared to, but I did it yesterday.
OK. I certainly want to thank my ranking member--oh--and
the full committee ranking member, Mr. Mica. Jimmy Duncan and I
have worked together in Water Resources and Aviation before
that, so this is not new. I just normally sit to his left,
which is probably where I more belong, but I am sitting in the
Chair, and we changed sides, so it did not work out quite that
way. But he will be a great leader for the Republican side, and
I look forward to working with him and, certainly, the full
committee ranking member, John Mica. He and I worked together
on aviation issues, particularly in the post 9/11 environment,
and I have always enjoyed a good rapport and relationship with
John.
I am pleased to preside over this first hearing today--20
years in Congress, and I finally get to wield the gavel--but I
should put it in perspective. I had breakfast with a former
colleague, Les AuCoin from Oregon, who was on Appropriations.
He pointed out that if he was still here after 32 years, he
still would not have a subcommittee gavel on Appropriations.
So, you know, you need to keep it all in perspective.
I expect the subcommittee to be very active in the next 2
years. We are going to do oversight on the implementation of
SAFETEA-LU, and then we are going to begin the work to build
the foundations of the next reauthorization. SAFETEA-LU, in my
opinion, was essentially the last transportation bill of the
last century, very traditional ways of financing, a pretty
traditional approach toward what we were funding.
The next bill will be very different. At this point, we do
not know exactly how it will all be constructed, but it will be
something that needs to look toward the future in terms of the
system and what it will support and what we will construct, and
we are going to have to look at new ways to pay for those
needs.
This past summer, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the
Federal Aid Highway Act; and, you know, that was the foundation
for this interstate system and the transportation
infrastructure today. It is now time to look toward those next
50 years.
I am particularly looking forward today to hearing from the
witnesses who are members of the National Surface
Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, which we
created in SAFETEA-LU. We created the Commission in the hopes
that we would get that kind of analysis, that they would look
both at our needs and potential ways of increasing revenues to
fund it; and we are looking forward to hearing from them. We
will also hear from some administration witnesses.
Thanks for everyone's attendance here today; and, with
that, I will turn to my ranking member, Mr. Duncan.
Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, but I want to go
first to our ranking member of the full committee, my friend,
John Mica, for his statement.
Mr. Mica. Thank you.
I do not have a formal statement prepared today,
fortunately, but I want to, first of all, congratulate my
friend and colleague, Mr. DeFazio, on the assumption on the
chairmanship of this subcommittee. He is a hard worker, a hard
charger. He referred to some of the work that was done in post-
9/11. The country owes him a great debt of gratitude for his
untiring efforts to make certain that in aviation and
transportation that we are safe and secure. So he is a delight
to work with. We share one thing in common. We both sometimes
have a little temper tantrums, but everybody takes us in
stride, fortunately, Peter, but--------
Mr. DeFazio. I think it is the Italian heritage.
Mr. Mica. I think it is. It is something. You know, maybe
it is in the pasta genes or something. But we do get a little
excited, and people all take us in stride.
But I look forward to working with you. Today, I am glad
you are kicking off today's business with looking at the long
term; and that is part of our responsibility, is setting that
long-term policy.
I was thinking we are a bit, though, addicted to surface
transportation in the traditional sense in this country; and
one of the things is, even though it may go beyond the scope of
the Commission and some of the highway subcommittee
responsibilities, looking at getting us into the era of mass
transit, we are woefully inadequate as far as keeping up with
the rest of the world and moving people in a cost-effective
manner. Maybe some of our urban areas are better, but we have
got to look at that.
I will give you just one quick example in closing.
We are going to build about 20 miles of interstate through
metropolitan Orlando. It is not even in my district. It is
going to give us two lanes more in each direction which have a
maximum capacity of 4,000 cars per hour. Most of the cars have
one person in the car. The cost is $2.2 billion, and I can
build an entire commuter rail system that will handle 12,000 to
15,000 people per hour for about $600 million, a fraction of
the cost. We need to be looking at other ways to move people.
Of course, with surface, we have our challenges, and
financing these great costs is not part of today's discussion
but will eventually be part of it, and I look forward to
hearing from Mr. Shane and the other witnesses you have
assembled. I look forward to working with you on the challenges
that we face in surface transportation, moving people cost-
efficiently around our country, and I am pleased to yield back.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman for that.
Yes, I call that the sort of least-cost transportation
planning approach, Mr. Mica; and it is something that--we have
really got to begin to break down some of these stovepipes. I
mean, that is an excellent example.
Mrs. Tauscher, I believe, has an opening statement.
Mrs. Tauscher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and congratulations
on your assumption of the chairmanship.
I want to thank you again for allowing me to make a brief
statement.
Certainly, as you have outlined and as our witnesses will
outline, our Nation's transportation infrastructure needs are
not unknown. It is true that the last highway bill put a
significant down payment on addressing these needs. However, we
cannot avoid the fact that infrastructure is aging, our economy
is changing, and highway and transit systems built 50 years ago
are being used in ways never before contemplated.
Addressing this challenge will certainly require some
ingenuity on our part and on the parts of the Department of
Transportation, the Policy and Revenue Study Commission, the
State DOTs, and certainly the local MPOs. It is with that in
mind that I would like to especially welcome to today's hearing
Mr. Steve Heminger. Steve will join us today on the second
panel.
As many of you already know, Steve serves as the Executive
Director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in
Northern California's Bay Area, where I am from. He also serves
on the National Service Transportation Policy Revenue Study
Commission and as an appointee of Speaker Pelosi. Steve's
experience in the Bay Area will certainly provide the
Commission and this committee with important insights as to how
to aggressively and smartly manage, as he does with his MPO,
the leveraging of Federal, State and local funding sources to
address issues of congestion capacity and development in one of
our Nation's most transportation-dependent regions. I am
looking forward to Steve's testimony today, and I appreciate
his taking time to come before the subcommittee.
Again, Mr. Chairman, I thank you and congratulate you for
assuming this great job. I yield back.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentlelady. I thank her for being
so succinct.
Mr. Duncan.
Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman; and,
first of all, let me also congratulate you on assuming your
first chairmanship.
As you mentioned, I had the privilege of chairing the
Aviation Subcommittee for 6 years and then the Water Resources
and Environment Subcommittee for 6 years. You have worked with
me throughout that time, part of the time as ranking member on
the Water Resources Subcommittee; and it was always a privilege
and pleasure to work with you. You and I have already met, and
I have expressed my hope and desire that we have a very active
subcommittee for this next 2 years, and I believe we will.
I served in the minority my first 6 years in the Congress,
and certainly, my preference is to be in the majority, but your
side treated me very fairly during those first 6 years. There
was rapid turnover of chairmanships in that time period, and I
served under three full committee chairmen in those first 6
years, but this committee, as you previously mentioned, has a
history of bipartisanship, and I hope that and believe that we
will continue that during this Congress.
I am pleased to begin our subcommittee's work with this
first hearing, and I am glad that we are aiming high and
tackling such an important subject. In the 110th Congress, the
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will begin to lay
the groundwork for the reauthorization of the Federal Highway,
Transit and Highway Safety Programs, all of those that we have
had in place and those that were last authorized in the 2005
SAFETEA-LU legislation.
It is critically important that we understand the needs of
the Nation's surface transportation systems before we begin to
write legislation and finding national programs to support that
system. Over the last 50 years, transportation in this country
has radically changed, and those changes have not appeared in a
vacuum. Changes in the national surface transportation system
have been driven, in part, by the goals and policies put in
place by Federal, State and local governments.
In addition, market forces in our ever-changing economy
have played an important role in the development of our surface
transportation system. As we try to determine what the national
surface transportation system will look like over the next 25
or 50 years, it is clear that the system must respond to the
needs of the U.S. economy and a society that continues to
rapidly grow and change.
One problem with the national surface transportation
system, a major problem, that we must address is congestion.
Congestion is choking our economy and degrading our quality of
life. Congestion costs motorists more than $60 billion a year
by the most conservative estimate, and the most conservative
estimates in wasted time and fuel costs the average person in
this country approximately $800 a year by the lowest estimates.
Part of the congestion crisis has been caused by the fact
that infrastructure investment has not kept pace with the needs
of the transportation system. For example, the total number of
highway miles grew by only 2 percent between 1980 and 2000.
Yet, during those same years, the number of passenger car miles
driven increased by 50 percent, and truck miles increased by 95
percent. The expected population and freight traffic growth
over the next few decades will make what is already a terrible
problem much worse.
We have to tackle the congestion problem with real
solutions. As one of our witnesses will say in his testimony
later this morning, transportation projects are not about
faster travel; they are about supporting an economy that
competes in the global marketplace, supports families,
encourages innovation, and creates options that allow citizens
to improve their lives. That is what this hearing this morning
is about, and that is what the work of this subcommittee is
about.
Another national trend for which we must be prepared is the
graying of America. As our population grows in size, the
average age of our citizens is also increasing. In 50 years,
the percentage of the population over 65 will almost double,
and that is an important thing that we need to take into
consideration.
I look forward to hearing from all of our distinguished
witnesses this morning, and I yield back the balance of my
time.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman for his statement.
Mrs. Napolitano.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Mr. Chair; and I am very, very
happy to be on this committee, very honored. After 8 years, I
have made it.
I represent the 38th District of California, which is a
major surface transit area and has major problems, specifically
dealing with one of the major freeways, the Santa Ana freeway,
the I-5, which is a major transportation corridor from Mexico
to Canada, and it is very heavily congested in Los Angeles
County. However, in my area, there is an 18-mile bottleneck of
three lanes coming in from six lanes from the Orange County
area into my district. You can get on that freeway any time of
the day, and you are sitting in traffic. It is used by 25,000
trucks a day--that is not counting cars, just trucks--on a
three-lane highway.
The joint powers authority have been working to expand it.
Ninety-nine percent of that funding is coming from State, local
and regional; and it concerns me that there is very little
Federal support or funding to be able to work on this traffic
congestion issue in one of the biggest areas of California.
I would like to, as we move along, try to figure out how
the Federal Highway Administration and the Department of
Transportation can provide support for these major regional
congestion relief projects. Also, California just passed a $20
billion transportation bond package, and I would like to be
able to ask the Department of Transportation how they plan to
supplement that initiative with Federal support to address some
of the major issues of transportation in California.
I have also discussed with you separately the grade
separations. The Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors, next to
each other, handle over 50 percent of the world's goods through
train transportation. They come up through Long Beach up into
Los Angeles, and then they take an eastern route through my
whole district. There are 38 miles, roughly, 40 some odd, of
the rail corridor, serving 1.9 million residents in 30 cities;
and it distributes $314 billion in annual trade through 54
total grade crossings along what is called the Alameda Corridor
East.
The Authority of ACE plans to do 20 grade crossings. Two
have been completed, eight more are funded, and ten are
proposed. That is not enough, ladies and gentlemen, because
most of the transportation problems that we have in my area are
caused by traffic accidents at the rail crossings.
We need to look and see how they prioritize, how they can
help or how we can work with the railroads; and I am already
working with the Subcommittee Chairwoman, Corrine Brown, over
the issue of the rail traffic increase in that area, which is
going to go 10-fold in the next 20 years, they tell me.
So that is a major issue for me, and I am glad to be here,
and I thank you for the ability to be able to address this
committee. I yield back.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentlelady, and I would now
recognize Henry Brown.
Mr. Brown. I thank you, Mr. Chairman; and I also would like
to extend my congratulations to you and to Ranking Member
Duncan. I look forward to your leadership as we proceed for the
next 2 years. I appreciate your holding this hearing this
morning, and I thank the panelists for their thoughtfulness and
informative testimony.
I understand that this hearing is focused on taking the
long view, perhaps 50 years, into the future, where our surface
transportation will be and what steps we will need to take to
get it there, but I want to take the opportunity early on to
discuss the present.
Just last week, every member of this subcommittee sent a
strong message about the challenges facing our current
transportation system. We wrote Mr. Obey and Mr. Lewis about
the funding levels we passed into law as part of the Highway
Bill. As we begin the discussion about the challenges facing us
in the future, I am hopeful that the major challenges of the
day will not be far from the minds of the folks assembled here
today.
My district depends upon transportation. Tourism is the
number one economic generator in the 1st District of South
Carolina; and the work of our ports, moving goods in and out of
the State, is not far behind. To continue to be strong
economically in my district, just like the entire Nation, we
must figure out better, faster, more efficient ways to move
people and products.
Indeed, the population challenge is facing our Nation,
especially the 1st District. It is steadily putting us in a
situation where we must make these transportation improvements
simply to stay on a level playing field. It already is becoming
more difficult.
Myrtle Beach, in my district, has been one of the top
tourist destinations on the East Coast for decades, with over
14 million visitors coming each year. In recent years, it has
evolved into one of the fastest-growing areas on the coast.
Highway projects that were designed to meet a certain level
of demand are hitting their capacity level years in advance.
The basic two- and four-lane highways are insufficient to meet
the needs of the community. With the help of this committee,
South Carolina is making great strides towards the construction
of Interstate 73, the first interstate access to this growing
Grand Strand. This is one example of capacity crunch I see in
my district, but more and more individuals and organizations at
the national level are recognizing it.
The Federal Highway Administration estimated freight
bottlenecks on our Nation's highways has cost upward of $8
billion a year. While the rail carriers are making historic
improvements in their infrastructures, studies continue to show
they still face challenges meeting the needs out there to
ensure efficient goods movement.
As South Carolina has met the future so quickly, the State
and the counties on the coast have been innovative in regards
to developing innovative ways to meet the financing needs of
future highway projects.
We developed the State Infrastructure Bank. In our State,
local transportation taxes have all been instrumental in
helping South Carolina achieve many of its major transportation
goals we have three such counties in my district; two have a 1-
cent sales tax which is dedicated to transportation and one has
a half-cent sales tax. In addition to there being a new
interstate for South Carolina, there will also be the first
project of South Carolina to take advantage of a private-public
partnership.
That said, the future of our transportation system must be
one where there is a commitment from all parties--local, State
and Federal Governments, planners, users, and industry. Only
then can the future of our transportation system be assured.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this important hearing,
and I look forward to hearing from our witnesses.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Arcuri.
Mr. Arcuri. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am extremely pleased to serve on this subcommittee under
your leadership and in the company of my distinguished
colleagues on both sides of the aisle.
There are serious challenges facing our communities with
regard to economic development, and it is necessary that we
address these challenges by assessing some of the root causes.
The state of our Nation's roadways and transportation
infrastructure is deplorable in some regions, and it manifests
itself quite often in some of the most economically depressed
areas of the country. Why is that so? Because time and again
throughout our Nation's history we have seen that the key to
economic growth is the ability to transport goods and services
in a quick and efficient manner.
The logic is simple. The creation of high-quality
transportation networks in areas with struggling local
economies will spur increased opportunities for private
investment and economic development.
I have firsthand knowledge of what some of these budding
economies are like. There are many cities in my Upstate New
York district that have been plagued by lack of substantial
funding to repair aging roadways, in turn, continue to lack
economic growth. Even though there are areas of the country
that may exert greater demands on the system as a whole, it is
of the utmost importance to not let that need overshadow the
need for additional investment in other areas.
I look forward to hearing testimony from the witnesses here
today, and I thank you.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman. I thank him for his
brevity.
Dr. Boustany.
Mr. Boustany. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be very
brief. I am very pleased to be on the subcommittee and to join
you in this very important work.
We have critical needs in Louisiana, and I look forward to
working with you as we go into the future. Specifically, I-49
South is a project that we have been working on for a number of
years, and this is something that needs to be completed because
it is a critical hurricane evacuation route. I mean, this is
absolutely critical for our State for safety and also for
commerce; and we also have some ongoing needs with Interstate
10, which is a very frequently used commercial route. There are
some major areas that are in dire need of repair, and so I hope
and look forward to working with you as we go forward on these
issues.
Thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you.
Anyone else on the Democratic side?
OK. We have one more on the Republican side, and that would
be Ms. Fallin from Oklahoma.
Ms. Fallin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Duncan.
It is a great pleasure as a new freshman to be on this
committee. I know it is a great honor, and there are so many
members on this committee who have a wealth of knowledge and
experience. I am looking forward to learning from them.
I represent the 5th District of Oklahoma, and I have had
over the past 16 years the opportunity to work in the
legislature and also as Lieutenant Governor of our State with
two different governors and with the legislature on various
highway issues. Of course, highways are very important to our
State.
In my district, in the 5th District, we are in the process
right now of realigning I-40. I know that this committee has
allocated money in the past to that particular project, which
is very important to me and our citizens, and, of course, our
highways in general and their condition. I have to say, in some
cases, Oklahoma does not rank too well in the condition of our
highways and of our bridges, but I hope on this committee I
will be able to hear from the experts, listen to the testimony
and work with the various members to improve our highway
structure in our State and, of course, across America. We have
I-35 and I-40, which we consider to be the crossroads of
America, coming right through my district.
I will look forward to hearing the testimony today and
working with you. Thank you so much for the opportunity to
serve with you.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentlelady. Welcome.
Now we move to the panel.
The first witness would be--well, I guess you are the
witness, accompanied by--so the witness will be the Honorable
Jeffrey Shane, Under Secretary for Policy, accompanied by
Richard Capka, Administrator of the Federal Highway
Administration.
Mr. Shane, we have your testimony. I am sure most members
have read it and have digested it, and we would be happy to
have you summarize and make the most cogent points you can.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JEFFREY N. SHANE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
TRANSPORTATION, UNDER SECRETARY FOR POLICY, WASHINGTON, D.C.;
ACCOMPANIED BY RICHARD CAPKA, ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL HIGHWAY
ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Shane. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.
It is a delight to be here, and may I just add my voice on
behalf of Secretary Peters and everybody else at the Department
in congratulating you on this chairmanship. You have come to
the head of this very important subcommittee in perhaps one of
the most important periods in its history as we look forward
to, as you rightfully said, a very different approach to
surface transportation as we move into the 21st century.
I am delighted to be accompanied by our extraordinarily
capable Federal Highway Administrator, Rick Capka, my friend
and my colleague. He is not just a potted plant, and I would
encourage members to address questions to him as the need
arises. He is here to address your needs.
You have asked us, Mr. Chairman, to look ahead 50 years to
examine what kind of economy we will have and what kind of
surface transportation we are going to need to serve that
economy. We have been analyzing that for a while. I would not
call that analysis complete, but I think enough of the work has
been done for us to at least see the broad outlines of the task
that lies before us, and we can talk about that this morning.
Over the next 50 years, we expect the U.S. population to
rise by 60 percent and GDP to quadruple. We expect both freight
and passenger transportation to increase by 2 1/2 times over
the next 50 years. There are going to be changes in our
requirements for transportation. The U.S. manufacturing base is
shifting to a high-value, high-tech product kind of economy
that will require an expedited transportation system that
relies increasingly on overnight truck and air freight.
Globalization will continue, of course; and we will rely
increasingly on our key ports of entry like Los Angeles and
Long Beach. Landside connections to those ports linked to an
efficient domestic intermodal rail and truck freight
transportation system will be essential to keeping the costs of
those commodities in check and, thus, essential to the very
health of our national economy.
On the passenger side, as Ranking Member Duncan explained,
an aging population will increasingly challenge our
transportation system. The percentage of the population over 65
will almost double so that the percentage of VMT--that is
"vehicle miles traveled"--by older people will grow
appreciably. We know that drivers in their late 70's have
triple the fatality rate of drivers of the ages of 30 to 65.
That is a statistic that we know. We will therefore see a
serious safety challenge, and a demand for urban transit will
increase to almost twice the current level by 2050.
Our dynamic economy results in uneven economic growth in
different regions. Almost two-thirds of all VMT growth will
take place in only six States so that, even if we keep up with
the transportation demand in general, it will be difficult to
keep up with the demand we experience in these high-growth
States where demand is growing most rapidly.
How will we address these transportation requirements?
Again, as Ranking Member Duncan pointed out, we have seen the
growth and demand increase far more rapidly than we have seen
the growth in lanes built and capacity actually added. So we
can expect that, similarly, although traffic levels will more
than double between now and 2050, it is likely that lane miles
will increase by only 10 percent. So it is simply a given that
raw transportation capacity is not going to keep up with
transportation demand.
Congestion already imposes heavy costs on our economy. The
DOT estimates that the total costs of highway congestion are
about $170 billion a year. I know that the conventional wisdom
is it is somewhere north of $60 billion, but we think that
understates the real cost to productivity and a whole host of
other factors so that we look at a much larger number.
Moreover, the costs of congestion have been growing at more
than double the growth rate of the economy at large so that, by
2050, they could be over $6 trillion, more than 14 percent of
GDP, if we do not take effective action now.
Let me explain what we mean by "effective action".
First, we need to find ways to use our existing
transportation system more efficiently. The best approach is a
multifaceted, comprehensive approach that takes advantage of a
multiplicity of strategies. In planning the Secretary's
groundbreaking Congestion Initiative, for example, we have
emphasized four complimentary strategies: congestion pricing,
expanded transit capacity, greater use of Intelligent
Transportation Systems technology, and far more widespread use
of telecommuting. All of that is amplified in the prepared
remarks that I have presented.
So it is clear we can make considerable progress in
addressing congestion even without building new lane miles,
but, at the same time, we know that we cannot handle 2-1/2
times the increase in demand without more capacity. A big
challenge for us is going to see how we get that capacity
built, what tools we find, what financing mechanisms we develop
in order to address the actual need for more infrastructure
construction as we move forward; and we look forward to working
with this subcommittee and starting this process now. The
current authorization does not run out, as we know, until the
end of 2009, but, by all accounts, we are going to have to
start working now if we are going to be prepared to meet the
real needs that we see not just in 2050 but the needs by that
time.
Thank you very much, again, Mr. Chairman, for the
opportunity to appear here today; and we look forward to the
questions the members may have.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank you. Thank you for your testimony--
your prepared testimony and the discussion we had yesterday on
these important issues.
I will first recognize myself for questions and then move
on to other members of the panel.
You know, on the congestion pricing, obviously, depending
on how it is applied and where it is applied, there is more or
less controversy surrounding it. I would just ask you about an
interesting conundrum which applies here locally. If you move
toward congestion pricing--on the highways here, you know, they
have the commuter lanes and they have other ways of dealing
with that, but Metro has also moved to congestion pricing. This
becomes--you are sending all of these great price signals, but
the price signals in the end just say you need more. The mass
transit is overcapacity at rush hour, as is the rest.
What sort of solutions--and I suspect that, in many areas
of the country, you would find the same thing. I mean, when we
built our rail system in Portland, we have so far exceeded the
projections for usage, it is not yet as crowded as Metro, but,
as the city grows, we are headed in that direction.
At some point, I think the question becomes, we have got
all of the price signals here in the world. We are using
congestion pricing. Employees do not have flexibility, and if
their employers do not change their shifts or their commute
times, then what?
Mr. Shane. Well, we know we need congestion pricing to
shave those peaks. It is a tried and true technique. It has
been used across the transportation system for many years, so
it is really--it is nothing new. I agree with you. It is not
going to be sufficient.
We are using congestion pricing now in many areas on our
highways, and we are also using it in public transportation as
a way of encouraging the spreading of the burden. But, as I
indicated, we do have to have a suite of strategies if
congestion pricing alone cannot be sufficient; if, in fact,
employers are not helping to address the issue by staggering
work hours. There needs to be, I think, a real dialogue within
the country about the importance of doing that.
With technology coming on, the nature of the workplace
itself is changing; and I think, as we look forward to the kind
of transportation system we are going to have, we need to take
into account the nature of that changing workplace and how we
can encourage, perhaps, more of those changes such that we do
not have everybody coming to work at the same time every day,
taking with them 4,000 or 5,000 pounds of steel and trying to
find some place to put it.
This is a long-standing issue for the country, and no one
strategy is going to be sufficient. Congestion pricing, I would
say, is absolutely necessary today, but nobody is suggesting,
Mr. Chairman, that it is sufficient.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. Now the growth that you point to, the two-
thirds of VMT growth, is going to be, as we understand, over
the next 25 years in six States, so the problems of the growth
is not equitably distributed, so I guess I have a two-part
question to that.
If those areas begin to resolve those problems more on
their own, whether through various other funding mechanisms or
public-private, whatever, how do we maintain the integration
and the integrity of the national system in light of those
pressing local needs? Or, in the alternative, how do we fairly
address that disproportionate need in selected regions in a
nationally financed system?
Mr. Shane. Well, we have all lived with a donor-donee issue
through the national system for a long time, and there is no
doubt that the country is going to need to address that in any
system that we develop going forward, but it is important, I
think, to recognize again the changing nature of the challenge.
Back in the '50's when we were beginning to talk about
having an interstate system, the challenge to the country was
what I would characterize as "connectivity". We wanted to draw
the country together and to make it an efficient national
economy for the first time. The interstate system was an
extraordinary achievement, and it had to be funded at the
national level and driven by the national government in the way
we did. It is one of the great accomplishments in public works
and humankind. I think none of us challenges that.
Today, it is not connectivity in that way that is our
challenge. Today, our challenge is congestion. It is a
challenge that is experienced far more at the local and State
and even regional levels. It is not just about the movement of
people; it is about the movement of goods. We are beginning to
see the movers of those goods--the shippers, the companies that
drive our economy and really make the world turn on its axis
today--coming in to talk to us for the first time in my
experience in the Department of Transportation--talk to us
about the efficiency of the transportation system.
The efficiency of the transportation system is identified
as a fundamental contributor to our economic health. That is an
equation that many of us in the transportation sector have
understood for a long time. I have never seen it understood so
well in the business community at large as it is today. So we
do have to recalibrate, I think, in the way we address some of
these issues; and perhaps, in looking at national solutions,
"one size fits all" is not going to be necessarily an
ingredient in the system of the future.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman.
My time has expired. I recognize gentleman from Florida,
the full committee ranking member.
Mr. Mica. I will not take too much time.
Mr. Shane, you know, I think one of the problems lately, at
least since I have been in Congress, is we suffer sort of from
peanut-brain thinking in terms of transportation priorities. We
do not really have a strategic national transportation plan, do
we?
Mr. Shane. Well, I like to think that we do. I do not know
that we have--------
Mr. Mica. Do you have a copy of it?
Mr. Shane. The last big transportation plan that the
Department produced--and I do have a copy of it--was produced
in 1991, and an awful lot of what we said in 1991 actually
applies today. We have not spent a lot of time writing a big
plan--------
Mr. Mica. So, basically, our policy, too, has been like we
cut off the interstate. When did we really stop expanding the
interstate?
Staff? Mr. Oberstar, do you know? When did we stop really
expanding the interstate, Dr. Oberstar, Chairman?
Mr. Oberstar. Actually, the last 100 miles of construction
was under way in 1990 and completed in about 1991-1992.
Mr. Mica. But again, you know, you have got to go back to
Dwight David Eisenhower. He sent Richard Nixon to Lake George
in the summer of 1953 to propose an interstate system. At that
time, I think he got back and checked--the Federal budget was
about $78 billion. He proposed a half a trillion dollar system,
and this was a national plan.
Basically, our interstate is at a standstill. I mean, if
you drive up 95 and I guess up I-5 in California and on some of
these other interstates, it is a parking lot. We have not gone
beyond--we do not have a strategic plan.
Now I see Mr. Schenendorf, and we have got others here. At
least we do have a policy in place to create a commission to
come up with a surface transportation policy, but we need a
plan, and we need a plan with vision for the future, a
strategic transportation plan.
I have been very disappointed in my own administration.
Nobody has a vision or a plan for the future to deal with
surface transportation. We have cast in stone, in place, our
interstate system. Oh, my God, if you talk about alternatives,
we are knuckle-draggers in the Dark Ages compared to Europe and
other places. We passed ISTEA Intermodal, but, really, that was
to stop us from passing in Congress a nonconnecting or a
nonintermodal system, but we have no big system plan. So I am
hoping that our commission and the administration and others
can put together a strategic national plan.
These States, God bless them. California just passed $20
billion, but this is going to take concerted national effort
with a national plan to develop--and again, we are drowning in
congestion. Anywhere you go, we are drowning in congestion, but
we do not have a plan to deal with that, whether it is I-95, I-
5, the interstates, rail.
Rail is just beyond belief. We should be moving. We are
moving 26 million people on Amtrak for the entire country. Two
lanes, north/south high-speed lanes, built by the private
sector in England, now carry 34 million people on the high-
speed system. They are trying to get from 120 to 160 miles an
hour on average. So we have no plan.
Don't you think it is time--final question--that we develop
a new plan or update our 1991 plan?
Mr. Shane. Well, I do not want to pretend I am against
having a strategic plan. I guess what I would point out--------
Mr. Mica. You are against it?
Mr. Shane. I said I do not want to give you the impression
I am against it. I think we have one in the Congestion
Initiative, and that is why I referred to having a suite of
different strategies.
No, there is not any argument about the fact that we are
going to have to do something very big and very different going
forward. The Chairman has said that. The Commission is working
on that, and we are all looking forward to the results of that,
so this is not really an argument between us about that.
I just do not want the record to reflect an absence of any
attention to the problem of congestion. The Secretary of
Transportation is putting the entire Department behind a major,
multifaceted initiative to address congestion in all of its
forms, not just on the surface but in the air and in every
other mode, and what we are looking for is some attention to
that.
We, obviously, in the executive branch must work within the
authorizations and the appropriations that we have from
Congress, but, within that framework, I believe that we are
trying to take the ball forward and are doing some interesting
things, and we look forward to spending more time with the
subcommittee, talking about those things.
Mr. Mica. Thank you.
I yield back, and I look forward to working on "the" plan.
Mr. DeFazio. Well, I thank the gentleman from Florida.
Again, I think that is why we have the Commission here
today, and we will get to them on the next panel. That, in
part, was the charge in SAFETEA-LU. It was for them to take a
look at that big picture and the next generation, so to speak,
of transportation in this country.
With that, I recognize the gentleman, the full committee
chairman, Mr. Oberstar.
Mr. Oberstar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to congratulate you on your first hearing as Chair
of the Surface Subcommittee. Goodness knows, you have prepared
yourself for many years for this position. And the gavel, the
gavel which was distributed after the passage of the conference
report on SAFETEA-LU, I keep that on my desk in the office as a
reminder. I know that, under your leadership, we are going to
do good work and good policy inquiry and lay the basis for our
continuing work on the extension of safety in whatever form or
whatever name it will have. It will have a very simple name
when we do the reauthorization, I assure you.
When I started here 44 years ago as clerk of the
Subcommittee on Rivers and Harbors, it was called the "Highway
Bill". It passed the House on voice vote. No one asked for
recorded votes. Now we have recorded votes on the least little
hangnail amendment that comes to the House floor or in
committee.
In those days, there was great consensus. This was, you
know, the rebuilding of America. This was the great post World
War II legacy of Eisenhower and the World War II generation of
Americans.
Mr. Mica asked a question about the completion of the
interstate.
In 1944, when Roosevelt could see the end of the war
coming, he asked Congress for an appropriation of about $50,000
to study post World War II transportation needs. That study
recommended an interconnected system of highways, divided,
access controlled highways, for America, 44,000 miles. But in
the rush to rebuild America and to reintegrate the 16 million
returning veterans after World War II, the first priority was
to pass the GI Bill. Others were to civilianize the wartime
economy.
There was a huge buildup of savings, the highest savings
rate we have had in the history of this country, all pent-up
demand to put America back to work and to reeducate or complete
the education of our veterans, to build the housing. But by
1952-1953, our highways were congested, people were buying cars
in greater numbers than ever before, fatalities were rising.
The prediction was, if we did not do something about it, we
would be killing 100,000 people a year on America's highways;
and we needed a new highway system.
The 1944 study was resurrected. General Eisenhower--
President Eisenhower, to his great credit, commissioned General
Clay to head that commission and make a recommendation; and
they updated the study and proposed the National System of
Interstate and Defense Highways. You could pass anything in
those days in the name of defense. Just add it to education,
the National Defense Education Act, the National System of
Interstate and Defense Highways, and a whole host of other
things. So it was launched with a goal of 42,500 miles at a
cost of $22.5 billion.
It has taken 46,000 miles and $114 billion in Federal funds
on the 90/10 basis with States contributing the balance, but
now we are in the post interstate era, and as Secretary Shane
said, our challenge is not just connectivity--we have that. We
have the connectivity--our challenge is to maintain the
mobility of this system.
I just came from a meeting of the U.S. Conference of
Mayors. Every one of them is fired up about reducing
congestion, improving mobility, improving the connectivity of
America's cities; and I quoted Lewis Mumford, who was, in my
mind, a philosopher of urban America, who said, "The city is
the crossroads of civilization. The city is the place where the
great issues of society are joined. The city is the great
intermodalist." And you, Mr. Shane, are our intermodalist at
the Department.
As Chairman DeFazio said, this set of hearings is the start
on our responsibility to assure that the policies that we have
now in place and those that will follow on will maintain
America's mobility, improve that mobility, improve our
productivity, continue to lower the cost of logistics, which is
the cost of moving people and goods.
In 1987, logistics consumed 17 percent of our gross
domestic product, but because of the work that this committee
has done in our ports, our waterways, our inland navigation
system, our airways, our Coast Guard system, and our highways
and our bridges and our transit systems, the cost of logistics
was down to 9 percent. That is an $800 billion gain in an $11
trillion economy.
Our challenge and the Commission's challenge is to keep
that cost going down, mobility going up and keep America the
most productive economy and the most mobile society in the
world.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the chairman for his observations.
I do not think, Mr. Shane, it is fairly directive. I think
there is room for agreement. I will not ask for a response.
I will turn now to the Republican side and recognize Mr.
Duncan.
Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, when we talk about completion of the interstate
highway system, one of the key things about this subcommittee
is that the interstate system has never been completed. We
always will need to expand and improve what we have, and that
is one of the main things this subcommittee is about.
For instance, you know, I mentioned in this subcommittee
before that I remember when the first interstates were put into
Knoxville in the mid-1960's. They were two lanes, and for
several years we did not have any delays or traffic jams. That
was primarily because, when I was growing up, most families had
one car. Some families had two cars, but almost no families had
more than two cars. Now you have the mother, the father and
both the teenagers who have cars. Sometimes they have a fifth
vehicle. There are just so many more vehicles on the roads
today.
So our interstate system in Knoxville went to three lanes
and just massive traffic jams, and now we have just added five
lanes or we have added two more lanes so we are five lanes now,
and we really have seen great improvement from that. But, like
Ms. Fallin, I-40 comes through Knoxville, and I-75 runs down
through Knoxville and then we have a third interstate that
comes just outside of Knoxville, I-81 and we have over 9
million visitors to the Smokies and millions more coming
through to and from Florida and other places, and so the
traffic--sometimes I have faced worse traffic in Knoxville than
I have here in Washington, and many of these other members have
seen that. Sometimes our traffic problems far exceed the
population of some of the areas.
I have got just two quick questions, and I will get them
both out of the way at the same time, Mr. Shane.
First of all, I would like to know--you have got the
Secretary's Congestion Initiative, and you have also got
another program called the Corridors of the Future. Can you
tell me what specific plans or programs have come out of those
two initiatives and have they been accepted well by the State
Departments of Transportation?
And then a totally unrelated question. You mentioned that
the number of deaths of drivers over 65 has tripled in recent
years, but just yesterday, in the Washington Post, there were
some statistics from NHTSA showing that the 16- to 20-aged
drivers had 1,330 crashes per 10,000 drivers and those over 74
had the safest record of any age group. They had 250 crashes
per 10,000.
So is there some misunderstanding? Is there some
discrimination going on against older drivers, who, by those
statistics, are the safest drivers that we have?
Mr. Shane. Thank you, Mr. Duncan.
Let me address the Congestion Initiative and Corridors for
the Future first.
The Congestion Initiative, as we have outlined, actually
involves six separate strategies, one of which is the Corridors
of the Future Program. So it is a subset, if you would like, of
the Congestion Initiative overall.
In addition to the Corridors of the Future thing, we do
have a program for relieving urban congestion through the
creation of urban partnerships of which we are reaching out to
communities all around the country to develop. There is
tremendous interest in that. We do want to unleash to a greater
extent private sector resources that we know are available for
infrastructure now. We are promoting technology as another tool
to be used against the scourge of congestion. We want to
address major freight bottlenecks. We are also accelerating our
focus on aviation capacity. That is, perhaps, a little far
afield from the subject matter that we are discussing this
morning.
On the Corridors of the Future Program, what we have done
is we have asked for applications from communities or States or
regions who wish to be considered as part of a Corridors of the
Future Program through a notice; and the Federal Registry has
received, as I recall, 38 responses to that. We are now going
through a second-phase screening through which we will whittle
down the number to a number that we can actually accommodate
with the resources that are available.
The idea, really, is to address problems like those which
Congresswoman Napolitano was speaking about. We just have a
huge challenge in trying to move goods into the country, to
move people through major corridors. It is not strictly a local
problem any longer. We have to see the transportation challenge
in all of its dimensions, and the Corridors of the Future
Program is designed to tackle these issues in what we think is
a fresh and more appropriate way. It is a toe in the water of a
different approach, and we are hoping that we will learn from
it and that that experience will inform the reauthorization
process as it goes forward.
On the statistics regarding elderly drivers, I do not know
what I can say to you about the difference in the statistics
that you have and the ones that I have. What I was talking
about was the rate of fatalities, that is to say, fatalities
per 100,000 or 100 million passenger miles. Our statistics show
us that the drivers that are above a certain age--it looks like
85 plus, according to a chart which Rick Capka has just put
before me. The number is 12 driver fatalities per million
vehicle miles traveled in the age 85 and above category. Well,
we will put this chart in the record.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Shane. It is a small fraction of that, and it drops off
very dramatically as you move to younger age groups, even
groups that are in their 70's and early 80's. So we will try to
validate those statutes.
Our information is that it is just a fact of life that, for
whatever reason, elderly drivers have a greater fatality
record. I am not talking about the number of crashes, mishaps.
You have a greater fatality record; and, therefore, as the
population ages, it is reasonable to think that we are going to
have to address that in a more direct way than we have.
Mr. Oberstar. Would the gentleman yield? Would the ranking
member yield?
Mr. Shane, those numbers are right, but recent
information--that is, just within the last month from the
Centers for Disease Control--shows that a higher number of
fatalities among older persons--that is 80 and above--is
because of the frailty, not because they were at fault as
drivers but because of the frailty of the person of an advanced
age, and you ought to look at those statistics. You also ought
to review the two-volume study on the older driver done by the
Center for Transportation, a study by the University of
Minnesota, which has some interesting data.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. I thank the gentleman. Thanks for that
clarification.
Mrs. Tauscher, do you have questions?
Mrs. Tauscher. I do, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Under Secretary Shane and Administrator Capka, thank you
for being here.
My area, the Bay Area, is not only a beautiful place to
live, but we have, obviously, fabulous congestion problems that
are well-noted, and I am a big fan of Intelligent
Transportation Systems, ITS. I actually think that the name
should be "I4TS" because it not only has to be intelligent, but
it has to be intermodal, it has to be invested, and it has to
be instinctively put into people's frame of reference. People
have to know that it costs a lot of money to invest in these
things.
As the chairman so wisely stated, logistics for
transportation funds have come down dramatically because we
have infused--I do not want to call the highway systems dumb
but, basically, brick and mortar systems with the capacity to
have these intelligent systems that tell people, "Do not go on
that highway, take this one, this is what time the bus is
coming to get to the BART station," things that really enable
people to make wise decisions so that they are good consumers
of transportation, move themselves faster, which is even
better.
And obviously, it has a big leap in providing our abilities
to move goods in an efficient, cost-effective way. But these
systems are expensive, and they do not necessarily penetrate
the average driver as something that is aiding their
development to move faster and so there is a conundrum that
local MPOs, and I think the country and DOT has in really
putting it forward, and my question really is, do you think
that there is something that we can do, the administration and
the Congress, to provide incentives to transportation agencies
to implement ITF technologies? And is there more a robust
separate pot of funds that we can be using to kind of incent
folks, which is the fourth, incent, incent folks to begin to
embrace these technologies and take booklet forms that are a
little older and a little dumber and really and move them up
the food chain intellectually so that you can then have people
get the best bang out of their buck and the most use out of
them.
Mr. Shane. Thank you, Congresswoman Tauscher. It is a great
question. We have invested billions of dollars in ITS research
at the Federal level, and I suspect there is a lot of other
money that has gone into it as well, and I won't pretend that I
am not disappointed at the rate which we have deployed the
results of that research. It is one of the things that we feel
we have really got to focus our attention on. Congress, a
couple of years ago, in response to Secretary Mineta's request
created research and innovative technology within the
Department of Transportation. I think that is a profound change
for the Department of Transportation and will be reflected in
the profound change in the way DOT attacks some of these issues
in the future. The ITS program has been housed in the Federal
highway administration, and it moved along subject to
governance by ITS management council. I sat on that. Rick sits
on that. Again, we weren't seeing the deployment. We weren't
seeing really results being exploited for the benefit of the
public. Secretary Peters has just moved the ITS program into
RITA, the Research and Innovative Technology Administration,
where it will be the focus of a culture that is about applying
technology solutions to the problems that we experience.
As part of the congestion initiative that we talked about,
we are citing ITS in particular. We have found some ICT
earmarked money that wasn't obligated, and we have applied $25
million of that money. I hope we won't get into trouble for
using unearmarked funds but 25--------
Mr. DeFazio. The appropriators will know.
Mr. Shane. To, particularly to ITF. More than that, it is
not a glib answer. I guess we are in violent agreement about
the importance of applying ITS solutions to these problems. We
can increase the flow of traffic in so many areas so
effectively to things just like managing the traffic lights,
things like that. Managing the flow of emergency traffic when
necessary. These are being tried out within the country. I have
seen them. It is just astonishing the results you get from a
relatively minor investment without having to build an enormous
new infrastructure, and why it is not more ubiquitous is
something that continues to baffle all of us, and we would love
to work with the subcommittee in making that happen.
Mrs. Tauscher. I think the integrated piece of this is a
good news story that is not really out there. I think people
have to be incented to do it, and I think that perhaps a robust
pot of money directed towards this kind of investment is really
what we need to do. I look forward to working with you.
Thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentlewoman.
Mr. Coble.
Mr. Coble. Thank you. I was at a Judiciary meeting. I
missed a good part of your opening statement so it is good to
have you here. One of the issues that plagued me is vehicular
congestion. I think vehicular congestion, it negatively impacts
productivity. It results in excessive consumption of gasoline,
and I think the best way to combat it is sound highway
construction, the use of carpooling, public transportation,
rail and bus. I gave a dedicatory speech back home when our new
depot was dedicated, Mr. Chairman, and I had 275 people there.
I urged them, if they did not need their automobiles in their
daily work, to carpool, use public transportation. After that
meeting adjourned, one man came to me said, "I never thought
about it before. I am going to start using public
transportation." so I had one convert out of 275. Billy Graham
does a lot better than that. But at least I think we are--we
Americans are addicted to the use of our automobiles whether we
need it or not. So I would like to hear from you about that
issue, Mr. Shane. And also and perhaps you might consolidate
these. What is the future of the interstate system, and what is
the future for financing the transportation system?
Mr. Shane. Thank you, Congressman Coble.
On the question of transit, I think Congress made a very
important change in our transit program as part of SAFETEA-LU
in allocating the highway transit--highway trust fund moneys
that are allocated to the trust found account to specific
activities within the Federal Transit Administration and using
General Fund moneys for other specific activities. So we don't
have sort of the crossing of the line that we did that ended up
spending down the available funds faster than they were
available. We also have more money available now as a result of
SAFETEA-LU than we did before. Such that worries that we had
about highway trust funds, highway accounts don't necessarily
spill over into our concerns about the transit account.
We think the transit account is likely to be solved longer
than the highway account. What we really need to do is find
ways of providing incentives to people to use transit more
effectively. The use of congestion pricing on highways, which
we think about as a means of calibrating demand on the highway,
actually is a way of providing an incentive to use transit.
Those people who wish not to pay a congestion charge might be
directed to transit as a way of avoiding it. As the chairman
pointed out, of course, we also use congestion pricing in
transit. So perhaps if there is no escape, if you are living in
a congested area, that is just the cost of living in an area
where you can be as productive as you can in our major cities.
The fact is, though, the congestion pricing on highways is a
way of moving people to transit in greater numbers. You have to
provide those facilities, naturally, or else there would be
nothing to move to.
The larger question about how we fund transportation going
forward is of course a big question before the government right
now. It is what we are looking forward to working with this
subcommittee, working with the commission as it reaches its
conclusions. There is no doubt that traditional models for
financing our transportation system, literally our surface
transportation system, are not sustainable for the future. We
know that. We have used taxes as a way of financing our system.
When you use taxes as a way of financing the system, it is a
given that you are going to have political difficulty expanding
that sort of financing. It doesn't have to be about philosophy.
It is just a difficult thing for people to embrace. So we are
going to have to find different ways of financing the system.
The private sector has enormous pools of capital available.
There is controversy about that. We have other kinds of user
fees that we might begin to develop. Technology gives us tools
that we never had before in terms of calibrating the use and
charging people for what they actually do with the system. All
of those issues are going to be before this subcommittee and
before the administration as we move into the next authorizing
process, and it is time to do that. It is going to be a very
interesting conversation.
Mr. Coble. Thank you, Mr. Shane. I think my time is about
to expire. I yield back.
Mr. DeFazio. Ms. Napolitano.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One of the things
that I am listening to, and I totally agree with Congressman
Mica, on the focus of the areas where we need to be ensuring
that we do not have gridlock whether it is New York, Los
Angeles, Washington, for the movement of goods and people. Back
in the time when Los Angeles had the Olympics, the State
Department of Transportation and others came to the business I
happened to be working for, Ford Motor Company, and they agreed
to do nighttime delivery of trucks. That worked so effectively
that to this day Ford still is doing it.
Now, that is one of the many solutions, if I could put it
that way, to be able to get some of the trucks off the road,
and of course, I live in an area where there are over 11
million people. So it isn't just the transportation grid, the
congestion. It is the pollution and the effect on the people
that live around the cities where most of the traffic is
congested. When you sit on a freeway or you sit in the rail
yards or when you sit on the ports, all that emission gets
blown into the cities, and it causes a lot of other side costs
to the people in terms of health. So that to me would be one of
the other things.
I haven't heard anybody begin to talk about other than just
appealing to the many factors to the people who utilize a lot
of the services in those big areas. And in Los Angeles, as you
know, we don't have mass transit. You have it in major cities
but nothing in L.A. That moves the masses. MTA went in and
started on the bus system. Well, buses also get gridlocked, and
it can only carry so many passengers.
So it is somewhere along the line, I think, not only do we
need to come to you and require some of your planning, include
the possibility of future mass transit in those areas where it
is key to be able to handle the future growth, which will come,
and of course in The Alameda Quarter, the fact that it is going
to grow exponentially by the year 2020, I understand, where
there will be a train every 6 minutes going through my district
causing another backup of people waiting for those trains to go
by, and you have emissions that affect the people's health in
those areas.
And then, of course, one of the other things that I haven't
heard is how you are going to begin to look at utilizing media
to inform and educate the public to get out of the cars and use
mass transit or how it affects their children's health or the
seniors' health or how we can save time, money, health and all
of the other stuff about how the effect on the general public
is. And I can understand some of the smart technology systems
that are being talked about, but I can tell you, in my area,
MAGLA would be out of their reach. You will not have people
going and utilizing those systems.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
Mr. DeFazio. Any response.
Mr. Shane. I didn't hear a question mark.
I think, again, I don't disagree with anything you have
said, Congresswoman. I do think we have to--first of all, about
the environment. Your area is vital to the economy of the
Nation as a whole, and I think people in southern California
specifically around the port complexes are paying a huge price
for the contribution that they are making to the national
economy because of the volume of trade that moves through that
complex. It is true of other ports as well, but nobody is
experiencing anything like what they are experiencing in that
region. I have seen stunning presentations just on the
epidemiology of that area. And it is something that--and
California on the one hand is on the cutting edge of moving
trade but, on the other hand, is on the cutting edge of trying
to address these issues. So very strange regulations have been
established at the State level and local level for ensuring
that ships are not idling their diesel engines while waiting
for berth at one of the ports. That they use equipment that is
environmentally friendly.
I worry about the truck movements through the area. We have
actually shaved the peak through the peer pass process, that is
to say again, congestion pricing at the ports of L.A. And Long
Beach, which have the effect of using those port facilities 24
hours a day. That is a great thing in terms of using assets
more efficiently. Not such a great thing if you happen to be
living in a neighborhood that those trucks are going through.
So there are really two sides of this very important coin,
and I don't think we get to make any progress in addressing
gridlock or bottlenecks or throughputs if we can't address the
environmental and health issues that arise at the same time.
Those have got to be forefront really and squarely in front of
our attention.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentlelady.
Mr. Brown.
Mr. Brown. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shane, I appreciate this dialogue. I guess we have some
concerns and also some questions about what the next step is
going to be. I know the chairman of the full committee
mentioned about how, in 1954, when he mentioned when he put
together the interstate plan, and we stopped it back in 1991 in
my district. I was particularly concerned about, you know, the
corridors in this study that you are actually dealing with the
cities now, who is going to be included in that? I don't know
what criteria you are using in this, but I listen to my good
friends from California and their concern about the traffic
generated by the ports. And you know that, as we speak, the
Panama Canal is in the process of expanding. So that is going
to cause, I guess, a lot of the traffic that goes through the
west coast will be going through the canal and coming to the
east coast.
I represent two ports in South Carolina, so they are going
to be impacted. And I mentioned in my opening statement, we
have got 14 million tourists coming through Myrtle Beach
without an interstate connection. We do have I-73 that is part
of ending that problem. I would certainly hope that that would
be one of those charter legs that you are all talking about
dealing with. So if you could kind of give me a little bit of
update of exactly how you propose to, I guess, benchmark this
new study.
Mr. Shane. I do not know. I was checking with Administrator
Capka as to whether or not, if we actually received the
application for the Corridors of the Future program from the
ports. We don't know the answer to that. What I would like to
do is perhaps get that for the record. The criteria that we
apply have been laid out in Federal register notice, and we can
supply that for the record, too, but more importantly, we will
be delighted to come back and see you, Congressman, and talk
about those things and specifically in greater detail than we
have here.
Mr. Brown. I certainly would like to be updated on the
progress of that study.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Cohen.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was also, like Mr.
Coble, at the Judiciary meeting. I know Mr. Oberstar talked to
you about the safety challenges that you mentioned in your
speech. We will face safety. I know for younger folks we have
graduated drivers licenses and the death rates of young folks--
do you have any proposals on reducing the fatalities in the
aging populations or perhaps a study that you suggest we look
into?
Mr. Shane. I suspect that NHTSA, the National Highway
Traffic Administration, has done those studies. I do have--I do
not have that information at my fingertips. I would like to
provide that after the fact.
Mr. Cohen. I suspect that will be difficult, but testing
for folks over age, is that a factor, do you think?
Mr. Shane. I know that, at the State level, there are a lot
of programs that do ratchet up the criteria that are applied to
the population as it ages, and let me just say that when I talk
about this issue, it is not in any way to cast an aspersion on
the aging population. I am not suggesting that they are not
more careful. I suspect they are probably better drivers, all
things considered. I was talking about the fatality rate. They
simply, as statistics and Chairman Oberstar has indicated,
there is just a higher fatality rate among that group of people
simply because they are as old as they are. That is the nature
of the problem. So we do have to address it, and I don't have
any very glib answers for how we address it right here this
morning. What I was simply pointing out in my testimony as we
address these problems in the future, that is going to be a new
dimension for us. The number of aged drivers will be much
higher.
Mr. Cohen. More mature drivers.
Have you all done these studies on speed limits on
interstates? And at one time, I think when we were all 55 or 60
and we got to 70, and it didn't really seem to affect the
fatality rate. Is the 75 all right?
Mr. Shane. I think the geometrics of the interstates are
designed to particular speeds, and I will defer to
Administrator Capka in terms of what those engineering metrics
are. The 55-mile-an-hour limit was not a safety initiative. It
was under President Carter, as I recall. And we didn't notice
any--I don't think we saw a dramatic change in the safety
statistics once we changed to the rated speeds.
Mr. Capka. I also can add a little bit to that. Certainly
the effect of speed on crashes and fatalities is known.
I can't answer specifically how the rates adjust as we
incrementally move from 55 to 65 to 75. What we have seen over
the past year, I mean, just looking at some of the fatalities
statistics is that there are two areas where the fatalities
have been increasing to the point where our national rate as
well as the total number of fatalities increased last year.
Motorcycles and pedestrian incidents have pushed the numbers
up. So it is a rather complicated issue to read through all of
the statistics. Certainly as the vehicles become safer and we
have additional improvements on the infrastructure, there will
be some adjustments in what we see in terms of crashes and
speed. But I think no one would argue that as the speed
increases, the potential for fatalities and crashes and
aggressive driving also increase.
Mr. Cohen. Well, we increased our speed limit in Tennessee
to 70. We didn't have any increase in fatalities. The problem
is either the slower drivers, the mix of drivers, some going 60
and some people wanting to get to 70 and then getting to what
people want to do was 70, you have less fatalities. So
sometimes you have to have law follow your human engineering,
and you end up with a better result.
Mr. Capka. You are correct. When you have a remarkable
difference in the driving speeds on the same highway, you are
going to get that differential effect, and we have seen the
crashes in that kind of situation.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you. I yield the balance of my seconds,
Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DeFazio. Mr. Poe.
Mr. Poe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I represent southeast Texas where Hurricane Rita hit last
year. It was the largest evacuation in U.S. history with 2
million people disbursed. Most of them have found their way
back to southeast Texas, but most of them have come back. Most
of them. One of the things I want to talk to you about, the
NAFTA superhighway that goes from Laredo and Canada through the
middle of the country taking Highway 35 through this side of
it, 10 lanes, 12 lanes, however many it is. And what is the
administration's position on the NAFTA super highway? Then I
have a follow-up question.
Mr. Shane. I keep hearing about the NAFTA superhighway,
Congressman, but I have never had a meeting about it. I have
never had anybody discuss it with me. I am not even sure it
exists. I don't even know what is referred to as the NAFTA
superhighway.
Mr. Poe. Are you familiar with the trans-Texas corridor
where the Spanish are going to build a toll road? Texas is not
going to stop them against Oklahoma, and it is supposed to keep
going north. Is that part of the NAFTA superhighway, or is this
a different project completely?
Mr. Shane. The trans-Texas highway is a project that we are
interested in. It is one of the cutting-edge projects that we
have seen around the country. We are looking at that as part of
the highway system. It is not driven, as far as I am aware, not
at the Federal level by any reference, to NAFTA. We do intend
to try to integrate North America to the greatest extent. The
President has talked about it. We have NAFTA. It is a North
American Free Trade Agreement. We expect real economic benefits
to flow from that. There is no question there is going to have
to be a transportation component to that. But that is not to
subject that we have this grand plan for a highway that is
going to traverse the United States for that purpose.
Mr. Poe. Is there any plan, then, under the NAFTA concept
to have some type of road for NAFTA and KAFTA or whatever? I
mean, you said you haven't had any needs. Is there any plan at
all?
Mr. Shane. I am not aware of any plan to establish a
highway or a highway system expressly in connection with cross-
border trade. No, sir.
Mr. Poe. I am sure you have heard of this NAFTA highway?
Mr. Shane. I have heard the term.
Mr. Poe. Is it just a myth, or is it something that
conspiracy theorists are throwing around, or do you know?
Mr. Shane. My own experience is it is an urban legend.
Mr. Poe. That is all I have.
Mr. DeFazio. Just to follow up. There are some substantial
plans for a major transportation route which would happen to go
to Mexico which would come up through Texas. I understand
Indiana's thinking of building a segment now, which I guess
would be near the northern terminus of it. It may not be called
the NAFTA Highway, but the transportation route is being
planned by the States who seem to be somehow coordinating these
efforts. I just--Mr. Poe, I thought you raised an interesting
point, and I don't think it is exactly an urban myth, but it
may be an issue of semantics or independent of who is
organizing it.
Mr. Capka. I think you are referring to I-69, which is an
interstate highway regionally coordinated and state-to-state
coordinated, and we are certainly very interested in how that
is being worked. And it is run from Texas and up through States
through Indiana and eventually link up, of course, in Michigan.
And it is designed to move traffic in that corridor more
respectively.
It wasn't designed specifically to support NAFTA. And so
maybe there is some semantics with respect to that. But there
is a coordinated effort on I-99.
Mr. DeFazio. The point, on Mexico on one end, so I think
that gives some substance to where Mr. Poe was raising the
question. And I understand there is also a lot which would be
beyond the jurisdiction of your department, but we have heard
from Homeland Security how Customs might or might not be
conducted on vehicles traveling that route and where they might
be conducted. I think it is a bit more than an urban myth.
There is some reality here, but there is a question of the
actual coordination intent.
Sorry to interrupt.
With that, Mr. Higgins.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I represent an area in western New York which includes the
City of Buffalo, and Buffalo is an old industrial area, and I
think there are some unique surface transportation needs in the
northeast because a lot of the problems relative to economic
development to places like Buffalo experience is because of
old, aging infrastructure. And that poses a unique challenge to
the Federal and State governments because often times you have
to dismantle before you can rebuild, and the role of the
Federal Government is very clear here. It goes back to Lincoln,
who talked about modern infrastructure in terms of land
improvements. He believed that building bridges and
constructing railroads were fundamental to the obligation of
the Federal Government. Not as a portion, not as earmarks, but
as sound investments in promoting and creating the conditions
that make older urban areas like Buffalo attractive places for
private sector investment.
Buffalo a hundred years ago was the eighth largest economy
in the entire Nation, among the strongest and most diverse
economies in the entire world. We were a major port of
midshipment. Today it is measured by population loss and job
loss. Buffalo is the weakest economy in the entire State of New
York and among the weakest economies in the entire Nation.
Fundamental to revitalizing these economies, you can't do it
unless you address the elemental issue of transportation
infrastructure. And I want to emphasize that in standing up for
my community but also as a member of this committee, the
chairman of the Transportation Committee, chairman Oberstar,
was in Buffalo. He understood fundamentally the importance of
this, and I would like to hear from you relative to it as well.
Thank you.
Mr. Shane. Thank you, Congressman.
We agree with you. Nobody is, believe me, suggesting that
the government does not have a very important role to play in
the provision of basic transportation infrastructure. That is a
fundamental implement of our policy, and that will continue
well through the next authorization and beyond.
You are correct in citing the very special issues that
exist where infrastructure is in fact aging or more mature, I
should say. And we have to--we have to ensure as we move into
our next authorization that if we have not--if we have not
embraced the very special nature of that problem in the
programs that we have, if we need some legislative fix that
will provide the incentives to address aging infrastructure
more directly, that we include that in the legislation. We
would be very pleased to work with the subcommittee and work
with you personally on ideas that you may have for improving
the programs that we have. It is undoubtedly a special need
that isn't separately addressed, as far as I am aware.
I don't know, Rick, if you would know of any specific
provisions.
Mr. Capka. I have no specific provisions. We work through,
of course, the New York State DOT, and of course, they are
responsible for executing their highway program, and we
certainly provide a good number of Federal dollars and along
those lines. But they prioritize the work when and where it
needs to be done, and we work with them on that.
But I would certainly be more than happy to come by and
meet with you individually and discuss the issues there that
you have in your district.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you very much.
Mr. DeFazio. Ms. Miller.
Mrs. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me just tell
you how delighted I am to be a member of your subcommittee here
and certainly to join the full committee with our ranking
member or, excuse me, Chairman Oberstar, and I know you are
somewhat familiar with my district as we have talked many times
in the port hearing area with your family members that have
lived there. In my district that I represent, we have some
interesting dynamics with aging infrastructure. It actually is
the genesis of I-95 as well as I-69 which was mentioned by my
colleague, Mr. Poe, and our chairman also about the NAFTA
corridor or superhighway, I think is how he characterized it.
It is something we talk about as well. It has its genesis in my
district in Michigan right at the foot of the Blue Water
Bridge, which is the second busiest commercial artery in the
northern tier of our Nation as well, all tied in with the fee
and rail tunnel. So it is an unbelievable economic impetus for
the Nation, and we do look at that as it is completes its way
sort of transcontinental there being a superhighway for NAFTA
as well.
And as we talk about some of the aging infrastructure, and
I know we have had quite a few questions on this, but I wanted
to mention this as well about our elderly drivers. Because in
your testimony, you were mentioning that population over 65
expected to double in the next 50 years. That is really a huge
part of our customer base as far as our highways and transit
systems. In a previous life, before I got this job, I was a
Michigan Secretary of State, and in Michigan, the Secretary
does all of the motor vehicle administrative kind of things. We
were responsible for the licensing of the drivers. I was
director for the Michigan State drivers association. We did a
lot with the younger drivers, graduated drivers licensing
system; and like every State, we labored about whether or not
we should have mandatory retesting for elderly drivers. But I
do think, as a Nation, we need to take a look at some of the
real things we can integrate all the time to help our elderly
drivers. I am talking about the paint on the road, the lane--
what am I trying to say--lane markings. And as well as even the
traffic signs that need to be bigger. I hate to admit it. I am
now wearing these bifocals. We can't see as well. We can't see
at night.
Taking away an elderly drivers license, it is such a
critical part of their independence, and they will sometimes
think they need to get a drivers license to get a photo ID,
when they could have a State ID card and use that as well. I
think, whatever we are doing, if we can think about how we
could transport our elderly in a way that would not make them
think that they are giving up their independence but get them
off the road in many ways. That has got to be a critical part
in our thinking as we go forward because they are a huge part
of our customer base. It is so important.
I think this committee has every opportunity to have a huge
impact on that thinking and educating our population as well
about how we assist our elderly drivers to go on with their
lives without being on the highway all the time. I don't know
if you have any more comments on the elderly drivers.
Mr. Shane. Well, that puts it so much more articulately,
the point I was trying to make about the challenge that our
system takes as elderly drivers increase over the years. I am a
card-carrying member of AARP myself, and I worry about my
ability to drive on the highways. Like most other Members, I
have no intention of retiring.
It is a very important part of the challenge that this
subcommittee is going to face as we authorize these, perhaps,
in the future. We want to maintain everybody's independence and
want to maintain everybody's dignity, and we want to maintain
safety, particularly for those individuals who are of that age,
and our systems have to accommodate what will be a very
substantial portion of our population going forward. So it is a
very interesting challenge, and I have no doubt that we will
find innovative ways of addressing it.
Mrs. Miller. Mr. Chairman, when you talk about aged
infrastructure, I just want to let you know the very first mile
of concrete highway was laid in Detroit, Michigan, on Woodward
Avenue between Six and Seven Mile Road. So we really do have
aging infrastructure.
Mr. DeFazio. Is it a historically designated place?
Mrs. Miller. It is. And every summer, we have the dream
cruise which is the most fantastic--we have all of these
antique automobiles. They come from all over the world, and
they want to drive on that first mile of concrete highway. So
it is a very big thing for us.
Mr. DeFazio. Mrs. Drake.
Mrs. Drake. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would also like
to join Mrs. Miller in saying I am delighted to be on the
subcommittee. I am the first member from Virginia for a number
of years to serve on House Transportation, and I think everyone
knows, the big issue in Virginia is transportation, but I
represent the southeast corner of the State where we have the
largest naval base, the Port of Virginia, the tourist
destination of Virginia Beach, and we talk all the time about
our huge needs for hurricane evacuation routes. So I am very
happy to serve on the subcommittee.
What I was thinking about as we first began the meeting is,
how do we manage transportation, and how do we put all of these
pieces together? So to hear Mr. Mica talk about a strategic
plan I thought was very important. But in a lot of your
answers, you have talked about things like traffic lights and
things that we can do that aren't quite as expensive. I would
like to ask you if there is a way for you to look at more
flexibility with our States. In the southeast corner of
Virginia, we have HOV lanes. They don't work. Northern
Virginia, they work very well, and, in fact, Virginia has even
stopped the license plates to allow the hybrids on the HOV
lane. We have an absolute problem. So if there is some way if
you could look at that and allow States the flexibility within
their State to manage their transportation and say, in this
region, it just doesn't work at all. We are at our least amount
of time, 2 hours morning, 2 hours afternoon, but we have a huge
parking lot of cars and six cars on the HOV. It is very
difficult.
The other thing I would like to bring to your attention,
and I am going to say it exactly the way my brother said this
to me when I was a new Member of Congress in 2005. He said, "I
would like for the first bill that you put in," and I didn't do
this, he said, "would be a bill to say, you cannot have a
highway sign if it isn't true." and you know we haven't talked
about that. You talked about traffic lights and markings,
lines. You talked a lot about seniors. But you can go right out
here on 395 where they mark to come into the Capitol and the
sign says "U.S. Senate right lane," "U.S. House extreme far
left lane." So you have got people that don't know--I tell
everyone, get in this lane. Do not move. Do not follow signs.
So somewhere along the way, we need to have your people
reporting back or us telling you that that doesn't work. In my
region, I was a realtor. I would have out-of-town buyers call
me on my cell phone to say, "I am on 64, this is what the sign
says. What do I do?" So, you know, we can't continue to do that
type of signage that puts people in the wrong direction.
So my first question is about, if you would consider some
sort of more flexibility with the States; some sort of pilot
project maybe using southeast Virginia as an example. And I was
also curious about, you mentioned early partnerships, to know
what that means. Because I don't know this. That is kind of a
more regional approach. But in 2005, for the last highway bill,
I really didn't see a regional approach from our State as to
what we were asking the Federal Government for, and I thought
that was a mistake.
Mr. Shane. Well, Congresswoman, the first thing I guess to
say about the program is, the center of gravity is with each
State government. The Federal Government is in effect a conduit
for funds that are collected for the most part through the gas
tax. And the Federal Highway Administration gives out a large
part of that money through a formula grant, and some money, of
course, we know, is specifically designated for a particular
project, but it is the State in just about every case that is
making the fundamental decisions for the distribution of that
money within the State. So we place--basically rely upon the
State Highway Department, the State Transportation Department,
to indicate to the Federal Government what exactly it plans to
use money for, and that is simply essentially policed by the
Federal Government as the check is written.
If there is a particular way in which Federal rules or
Federal law is denying flexibility that you believe the State
should enjoy, we would want to know that.
Mrs. Drake. On the HOV, we are told we have to reimburse
the Federal Government if we open them up full time. We would
like to be able to open them up. My friends, they serve within
the Virginia legislature. Maybe we can talk more about that. I
wanted you to look at that and think about that for other
States as well or maybe the other States need to bring it to
you that this is what is holding us up. But that is what we
have always been told.
Mr. Capka. Mrs. Drake, we have had that problem in other
areas. We have unused capacity in the HOV lanes. And just to
give you an idea of what other States have been doing to try to
take advantage of that unused capacity: In Denver, just a few
months ago, they opened up a hot lane program along with the
HOV that is a high occupancy, told that would allow single
drivers, individual drivers, if they pay a toll, to use the
available capacity on the HOV lanes. Of course, the requirement
and the use of those hot lanes is that the toll traffic will
not consume the capacity to the appointment where it becomes
less than freefalling.
There are available plans like that that we can help you
with right now.
As far as just doing away with the HOV lanes, we would have
to sit down and go through some of that.
Mrs. Drake. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DeFazio. I think that is a very interesting question
because we wanted to utilize capacity that we have, so that
merits continued discussion, I believe.
I am going to Ms. Hirono.
Mr. Oberstar. A question without comment or response at
this point. When is the Federal Highway Administration going to
issue a standard on retroflectivity so that we can have a
dependable standard? There are technologies available in
retroflective material that are a hundred times more
luminescent than what exists today. I don't want a comment
right now because that will be too long.
The Chairman. All right. Ms. Hirono.
Ms. Hirono. Thank you. It has been said that the minute a
road or highway is built or expanded, it is obsolete because
there is immediate congestion. So it is kind of a vicious
cycle. I realize that we have a major responsibility to keep
our infrastructure going and to help our communities with the
congestion problems. But as we look to the future, you know,
for the next 50 years, are there some directions that
communities should be going into States and districts regarding
moving people from point A to point B that does not require us
to continue to build more and more highways?
Mr. Shane. We encourage public transportation. We have a
Federal Transit Administration that has a part of money that is
part of the Highway Trust Fund. There is also money in the
General Trust Fund for Transit. And public transportation is
something that every mass transit organization should be
thinking about as a strategy for addressing the problem,
recognizing that the communities are constructed in different
ways, and it is easy to do transportation in some than in
others. But what we hope is that there will be a comprehensive
planning process embraced at the local level which thinks those
issues through. All of us, I think, are aware that the Federal
programs have, in many cases in the past, distorted the amount
of flexibility that is available at the local level. And one of
the big challenges, I think, as we go forward is to try to
remove those distortions to have a Federal transportation
program that allows communities, whether locally or regionally
or at the State level, to embrace those solutions that make the
most sense. Without reference to that will be--would be great
if we could do it, but there is no money for that.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentlemen, and the committee will
stand in recess for--well, we will return immediately after the
second vote. There are two votes, so hopefully by noon.
[Recess.]
Mr. DeFazio. Please excuse the delay.
TESTIMONY OF JACK SCHENENDORF, COUNSEL, COVINGTON & BURLING
LLP, WASHINGTON, D.C.; AND STEVE HEMINGER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.
Mr. DeFazio. Mr. Schenendorf, welcome. And I would be
pleased to receive your testimony.
Mr. Shenendorf. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a great
honor, indeed, to be here today to testify before the committee
on which I served as a staff member for so many years. I am
Jack Shenendorf with the law firm of Covington and Burling. I
practice in government affairs and transportation.
Before joining the firm, I served on staff of this
committee for over 25 years, and in between leaving the
committee and going down to Covington, I was head of the policy
transition for the Bush-Cheney transition team.
I am testifying here today in my capacity as the vice chair
of the National Transportation Commission. And the commission
is made up of 12 members. The Secretary of Transportation is
the chair, three other members appointed by the Executive
Branch, four members appointed by the House, four members
appointed by the Senate, and I was appointed by Speaker
Hastert.
The Congress, in putting together the commission,
recognized that a perfect storm was gathering. And it starts
with and really the elephant in the room, in many cases, of the
huge maintenance needs facing the country on just maintaining
our existing interstate and our existing Federal aid systems
and highway systems. And most of the numbers, the "needs"
numbers that you see in maintenance, do not include the
enormous cost of replacements that we are facing for replacing
segments of the interstate. You can see it in this area, $2.4
billion to replace the Woodrow Wilson Bridge that originally
cost $14 million; almost $800 million to replace the
Springfield interchange that cost $10 million when it was first
built. So it--there is a huge cost there.
Secondly, the huge investment needs that are going to be
needed to increase capacity on the system to provide for
efficiently using the system to maximize the through-put of
what we have today and then adding capacity.
And the third piece of this is the funding sources have not
been able to keep up with this. Congress recognized this and
established the commission, and nothing that we have heard so
far in the commission would indicate that this perfect storm is
not coming, if not already here.
I was asked to talk today about what the commission is
doing, challenges facing the commission and to say a few words
about the second commission that is being set up.
The commission's work--the commission's charge is we have a
needs--we are looking at the entire picture. We are looking at
needs. We are looking at the roles of government, the Federal
role, what State and local roles should be private sector and
also looking at the financing options in order to meet the
investment needs.
We are also looking at this from a short-term, a medium-
term and a long-term perspective. So we are looking at all of
the different time frames involved. And we are also looking
across modes. We are looking at highways. We are looking at
transit, intercity freight rail, intercity passenger rail, bus
transportation, intermodal facilities. We are looking across
the entire range of transportation. You directed us to come
back with a conceptual plan with alternative approaches,
including specific recommendations regarding Federal policies
and legislative changes and including recommendations for
alternative revenue sources to support the trust fund.
The commission is proceeding on a time schedule where we
would have our work completed by December 31st, 2007. You had
included a provision in the technical bill that would basically
adjust the deadline from July 1st to December 31st, but we
thank you for also telling us that even if that doesn't pass,
that we have until December 31st to get the job done right.
As part of our work, we are doing public outreach. Dallas,
Portland, New York, Memphis, are hearings we have already had.
We are going to be going to Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago,
possibly Minnesota, and we are also going to have a hearing
here in Washington on March 19th, and I have actually already
talked to the committee staff about possibly using this room
for the hearing we are going to have in Washington, DC.
The policy backbone of the commission's work are technical
analyses that are under way. You can see from this list that we
have a huge number of papers in development across a wide range
of subjects. Those papers are currently being prepared. Some
have already been delivered and are in pretty good shape from
consultants and from the DOT staff. Others have been prepared
and are now being revised or sent back for more, and then there
is another whole view of them that we have yet to receive the
initial drafts. And it covers a whole range from current status
to baseline needs and to the financing alternatives.
The commission's work also includes a blue ribbon panel
consisting of 74 members. The first meeting is going to be in
February. They are going to provide peer review, and they are
going to do selective projects that the commissioners give
them.
The challenges facing the commission. We got off to a slow
start. We were 6 months late because of the executive branch
appointments being late. And then we have had three successive
chairpersons, Secretary Mineta, Deputy Secretary Cino and now
Secretary Peters. So that has kind of slowed things down, but
we are now up and running under the good leadership of
Secretary Peters.
The resources: We had $2.8 million. We have asked for an
additional $2 million, which you were kind enough to include in
the technical bill which we really do need to make sure we get
all of these studies and all of the scenario analysis work that
we are going to do to make sure we have sufficient resources to
do those properly.
The biggest challenge has been finding the vision, what you
were talking about. What should this system look like 50 years
from now from a national perspective and trying to define that.
It is multi-mobile. It is not going to be as simple as a map of
the interstate and how one defines that and what that is.
Almost every witness says we need a bold vision, and we are
asking everybody well, what is your idea of what that bold
vision should be? And so we are working on that.
Another challenge is going to be to diverse views that the
commissioners bring. We have got 12 good hardworking
commissioners that come at this from different viewpoints. We
are going to have a very, very healthy debate, and if we are
able to reach consensus, it is going to be a product that is
worth your attention because of the different views that people
have had coming into this.
With respect to the second commission, that is something
that was set up in the Ways and Means and finance title. It has
a much more narrow mandate than hours, and that it is only
looking at the financing piece. It is not looking at the levels
of government. There was no actual money put in for it. And so
that is another factor. We did discuss this at the last
commission meeting. I think there was a consensus among the
commissioners that the existence of that second commission does
not in any way detract from what we are supposed to do. We
still need to meet the requirements of the statute, and,
secondly, the funding that is made available the resources from
DOT are made available for the Section 1909 commission. It
cannot and should not be used directly or indirectly for this
other commission, that it needs to find its own source of
revenues.
Thank you. I look forward to questions.
Mr. DeFazio. I want to apologize.
Ranking Member Duncan, he was going to come back before
this 15-minute vote, and I said there is another vote because
we are in the middle of a procedural tussle here, and I think
that he perhaps misunderstood the communication because I don't
want to keep all of the witnesses here for--this could go on
until this evening some time. So that is why I am trying to
squeeze this in now. It is no disrespect on the part of the
ranking member. He is trying to get back, and we are probably
going to have another vote soon.
So Mr. Heminger.
Mr. Heminger. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and good afternoon.
I do appreciate Mrs. Taucher's introduction. So I can
dispense with that for me and get right to the meat of my
presentation.
Jack, I think, has laid out for you a good sense of our
process. I would like to identify for you, and in my testimony,
I do have five key issues that we have focused on to date, and
I would--they are responsive to the issue that you and Mr. Mica
raised about a national vision, a national strategic plan, if
you will, that we currently lack for our transportation system.
And I have put this presentation together under the theory
that a picture is worth a thousand words. So on page 4 of my
testimony, I show the picture about traffic congestion which is
two maps of the U.S. The first is from 1982 where in only one
city in America did the average commuter spend more than 40
hours annually in congestion. That is now, as of 2003, more
than two dozen communities. It is a very significant problem, a
real sap on our economic strength and mobility in those areas.
Mr. Shane earlier gave you sort of at the top end of the
tree one of the potential solutions, which is congestion
pricing. At the lower branches, there are things, very low cost
operational strategies that we believe we ought to be
considering with much vigor because half of the congestion is
related to incidents and accidents. It is not recurring. It is
not related to capacity, and we have barely scratched the
surface in terms of deploying those solutions.
The next page, on page 5, my second page picture, I don't
think "tsunami" is too strong a word to describe what is
happening to our ports in terms of international trade. And
these forecasts from U.S. DOT out to 2020, not to 2050 but at
least out to 2020, show very sizable increases throughout the
United States at these ports. This is especially true where I
live on the west coast because a lot of what we buy these days
is made in Asia and makes its way to the United States
throughout the country through the port of Los Angeles and Long
Beach. The very significant increase you see there, Mr.
Chairman, is really not going to occur, in my view, unless we
make significant infrastructure improvements at that port. That
kind of increase with their current capacity and with the
current community concerns that Mrs. Napolitano has mentioned
is simply not sustainable. This is an area, in my view, that
clearly qualifies as one of national interests because of
interstate commerce, international trade, as of yet national
leadership is lacking. And it is a main focus of our commission
activity.
The third picture I have for you on page 6 has to do with
safety, and I am certainly not going to reengage the debate
about older versus younger drivers. The fact is there are too
many drivers of any age being killed on our highway system
today. What this chart shows, it is the latest release of
information for NHTSA is that we basically made no progress in
reducing fatalities over the last 20 years. In my reading on
this, I came up with one really startling comparison. Since the
advent of the automobile, 3 million Americans have died on our
highways, which is five times the number of U.S. war deaths in
the history of the Nation.
If we don't have some better progress on this problem in
our work, in your work, in re-authorization, I think we really
will have failed ourselves and the rest of the country.
The fourth picture is a bit of an oddball, I will admit,
and this is one that the commission has not spent as much time
on. It is on page 7, and it comes with a lot of names, whether
it is national energy security or energy independence or energy
efficiency, and I think it is fair to say that the
transportation community, generally speaking, regards this
issue more or less as a threat, you know, that if fuel
efficiency gets better, our revenue source goes down, and that
is how we ought to look at the question. And I think that is
not looking at the question correctly. I think we need to look
at it also as an opportunity for our sector for our community
to contribute to a national goal. The chart I show you shows
some of the increasing trends around the world, and in my
State, California, although our standards are now under
challenge in Federal court by the automakers to improve fuel
efficiency, you can see where the U.S. ranks compared to the
rest of the world, which is at the bottom.
But the fact is, there are different ways to skin this cat.
As you know, the vehicle fleet in Europe is much more fuel-
efficient and that has in large part to do with very high fuel
taxes, and fuel taxes, as you well know, raise revenue which is
one of the things we are desperately lacking in our
transportation system. So I do hope that we will, and that you
will, examine this question in the context of our
transportation system, not just in isolation as an energy
strategy.
The last one I will touch on briefly is clearly the revenue
question itself. I have included two pictures in my
presentation. The next to last has to do with the problem that
you are very familiar with which is the short-term issue of the
Highway Trust Fund entering into negative balances. I won't
spend much time on that because you are well aware of it.
The last picture in my presentation to me is even more
worrisome because it shows the very large gap that exists by
this account from a U.S. Chamber of Commerce study a couple of
years ago on the order of $50 billion to $100 billion per year
in the cost to maintain and improve our transportation system.
As Jack indicated, our work plan calls for a thoroughgoing
review of this question, and I think one of the things where we
will really add value is an objective assessment of where we
think the Nation ought to move forward in a national strategy
and what the needs that will accompany that strategy might be,
and then working our way to the revenue question about how we
might raise the money to do so.
One worrisome footnote I will leave you on this last
picture is that these numbers are probably, in all likelihood,
understated. What you have seen recently, what we have all seen
around the country in construction costs, has been a
substantial escalation over the last few years because of
materials, especially steel and concrete. China is using a lot
of those, just as we are, and we will be factoring that and
other issues into the estimates that we provide you.
In conclusion, you have clearly given us a tall task, but I
know both Jack and I love a challenge, and that is what you
have given us, and we look forward to providing you our report
later in the year and to consulting with you frequently in
between times.
Thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you.
I am going to withhold questions at the moment. The way we
are going to do this is, if Ranking Member Duncan shows up, he
is recognized for questions. I will run and vote and then come
back, and hopefully that way we will sort of overlap here and
maximize your time, because I really bemoan the fact that we
invite witnesses, and you are sitting around for hours because
of something we are doing of no particular consequence in terms
of procedural votes.
So, if you could just sort of not go from the room
because--do you think he is going to come back on this vote, or
is he going to--it was a 15?
OK. So he was on his way back, and then he went back to
vote, so he is now on his way back again--we are giving him his
exercise--and when he comes in, he is immediately recognized to
ask questions. And then I will come back and ask a round after
he does, and then we will move on to the next panel. If any
member of the committee shows up in the interim, they are
recognized to ask questions.
[Recess.]
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you.
I just saw Ranking Member Duncan on his way back to vote,
so if I talk slowly, perhaps I will just be finishing at about
the time he can turn around and come back. I have a few
questions that occurred to me.
As sort of a general question to either or to both of you,
do you perceive any barriers or problems in achieving the
rather ambitious--I mean, other than the very difficult nature
of the subject matter which we have put before you in terms of
wanting you to look into the future, analyze future
transportation needs, and then also come up with innovative and
a different range of options to fund them, other than the
difficulty of the charge, are there any barriers? Mr.
Schenendorf discussed the extension of the timeline, which is
certainly going to happen in the technical corrections; the
additional funding, which I do not believe will be a problem
even in these new tighter times, because that would be trust-
funded, so we should not run into the "pay as you go" problem.
Are there any barriers that you care to enlighten us on
here that we could deal with? I am just giving you a chance if
there is anything that you did not--------
Mr. Schenendorf. No. As long as we are able to basically
look at the full mandate of what we were asked to do, I do not
think there are any problems as long as--I mean, it is a big
task, and it is going to take the resources and the vision, but
as long as we are able to look at all of the options from
raising the gas tax, new fuel taxes to congestion pricing--
everything is on the table--then I do not see any problem. And
if we are looking into defining the vision and saying which of
these financing sources can get us there, then I do not see any
problem. And right now, everybody has said that everything is
on the table, so I have not sensed among the Commissioners that
anybody is trying to constrain this in any fashion.
Mr. DeFazio. And there would be, as I would understand it,
no review authority beyond the Commission. That is, if you come
up with a range of financing options, those do not have to go
through the Office of Management and Budget? I mean, you are an
independent Commission with technical assistance and that from
DOT, but if the Commission--you are not aware of any--------
Mr. Schenendorf. No, I am not aware of that.
In fact, I think when that question came up we were told it
does not have to go through OMB. We are an independent entity.
Mr. DeFazio. So you are looking at everything from the
traditional raising of the gas tax, to innovative ways of
assessing the cost of the system and putting them on users, to
public-private partnerships? All of that is on the table?
Mr. Schenendorf. Yes, sir, that is my understanding of how
we will be operating.
Mr. DeFazio. Great.
Mr. Heminger, do you want to add to that?
Mr. Heminger. I agree with Jack's response, but would add
one thing.
I think one of our barriers is to aim too low. You know, I
think Mr. Mica mentioned it earlier about bean counting and all
the rest of it. You know, we are all used to the system that we
are in, and I think our greatest challenge is to think beyond
that system and to think big, and that will involve, obviously,
political challenges when you think that big. We are going to
leave them largely to you because you are the elected body, but
we are going to give you our best advice across the range of
the issues that we have got before us.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. Now, internally, have you determined how
the report will ultimately be written; i.e., are you only going
to put in items which reach consensus? Are you going to have
majority vote? Are you going to have a minority report on
certain issues?
Have you worked through those procedures yet?
Mr. Schenendorf. We have not worked through those
procedures yet. I think everybody there is hoping that we can
reach a consensus. That would be the ideal thing. I think that
would be a report that would be most helpful, but you know, I
think all of those options are open if it gets to that, but we
have not had any discussions. I think everybody is working hard
to be able to reach a consensus.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. Well, I would hope, if there are items
that certain individuals on the Commission feel very important
that cannot achieve consensus but would be instructive or
informative to this committee and to the Congress, that they
would be in either dissenting views or in appendix or annex or
something along those lines.
I was involved in formulating a commission on the causes
and the magnitude of the trade deficit, and they had hoped to
do things by consensus and ultimately could not, so their major
findings were done by consensus, but then there were
essentially two sets of dissenting views or additional views,
should I say, included, which were very, very instructive and
informative. So we do not want to forego that knowledge because
you cannot reach consensus, and I think most of my colleagues
would agree on that.
Now, I am curious about the second Commission. I mean, one
of your charges is to look at financing and the full range of
options. So I guess my question to you would be: Do you see
that there is duplication with that Commission? Do you feel in
any way it might dilute your efforts or inhibit your efforts?
Any thoughts on that?
Mr. Schenendorf. No. Well, again, aside from the point of
deferring to Congress--I mean, Congress did put the two
Commissions in, so they are there.
I would say it does seem duplicative of the financing
portion that we do, and I guess I have a personal concern as to
what the perception of that is, you know, why people--you know,
does it make sense having two. And then, you know, at the end
of the day, if the recommendations are different, then, you
know, what does that do? And then also from a resource
perspective, since that Commission does not have any dedicated
resources, is it going to somehow at some point dilute our
effort even though we are trying to make sure that it does not?
So I do have those concerns, but really I think it is a
question for Congress to decide and to decide whether or not to
make any adjustments.
Mr. DeFazio. Well, I actually intend to have a conversation
with my colleagues on the committee and others who are involved
on other committees of jurisdiction for the second Commission
in the hope that we could assure the members of the Ways and
Means and Finance Committees of the House and Senate that their
concerns will be fully addressed by the existing Commission, in
fact, better addressed by the existing Commission, if there is
not a duplicative effort or any diversion of resources, and I
am hopeful--of course, we have to deal with the Senate on that
issue, too, but I am hopeful that they may be agreeable to that
as part of the technical corrections.
I am certainly going to raise that issue because, you know,
one Member who insisted on this is no longer in Congress, and,
you know, we do have a new majority in the Senate where one of
the originators does still sit, but I would hope we could
convince him and others that you can give them the tools or the
items for discussion that they need.
I mean, I feel--and contradict me if you think I am wrong--
but given the limited resources available and the fact that you
need more resources, that this potentially could divert some
staff time and/or resources from your vital work and difficult
work.
Mr. Heminger. Mr. Chairman, I do agree with that, and I
think there is another point, and you just referred to it.
We have had many discussions at our Commission about the
fact that we need first to proceed to a national vision and the
needs to carry out that vision, and then, second, to address
the revenue questions. And I personally do not think it does a
lot of good to address the revenue question separately from the
needs and the vision because very often the revenue mechanism
you select could work for or against some of the vision and
needs that you are trying to carry out. Some of them are
preeminently local, like tolls, where the tolls generated in
the United States right now are kept right where they are
generated. Unless you want to put in place a national tolling
apparatus, you really do not have a revenue source that matches
up with the national program, just as an example.
Mr. DeFazio. Just one last question. I appreciate the fact
that you have been here so long.
You did, Mr. Heminger, mention that there are a lot of low-
cost things out there we have not done yet, and in particular
when you talked about half of the delays being due, actually,
not to capacity issues, but to incidents and accidents. Could
you address how we would creatively address that in a low-cost
way?
Mr. Heminger. Well, you know, one of them Mrs. Tauscher
mentioned at the outset of her question, and that is we have
got a hodgepodge system out there in terms of the information
we collect from the road, and that means we do not have as much
for the planners and the builders, and we do not have as much
for the travelers, most importantly.
If we had a dedicated fund source which would be a one-off,
essentially, to get that system instrumented especially in the
major metropolitan areas, that would be a huge advance at a
very cost-effective investment.
The second thing, some of this we have been doing a long
time in some areas and not in other areas. A lot of this is
accidents. If you get the accident off of the road faster, the
traffic flows faster. We have got 70 tow trucks in my region in
the Bay Area doing that very thing, but not every region has
it. To some extent, Mr. Chairman, it involves, I think, a
culture change in the profession. The profession is an
engineering profession, and, you know, when you are a hammer,
every problem looks like a nail. Well, they tend to try to
solve problems by building something, but these are problems,
especially in these incident areas, that you do not need to
build something, or at least what you build is antenna wire and
the rest--it is not asphalt and pavement--and I think
incentives and encouragement from the Federal level, from
Congress, as well as some direct assistance to get some of
these critical elements put in place could go a long way.
Mr. DeFazio. Not to be insensitive here, in the case of a
fatal vehicular accident, obviously, we need to both take care
of anybody who is injured, and we have to document the
incident, but in your region, does that--in my State, it
becomes a crime scene, and then it involves the State police,
who will often block off the highway for hours. They have no
concern over the flow of traffic. That is not their job. Their
job is to investigate.
I mean, how does California handle those sorts of things?
Mr. Heminger. Probably just as poorly. I have heard,
though, of some States that have come to agreement with public
safety officials whereby the sort of crime scene, as you
described it, can be relocated to the side of the road as best
as possible so that the traffic can flow again. You know, no
one, as you suggest, wants to be insensitive to what has
occurred, but at the same time, I do not think you are doing
anything--you are really compounding the injury that has
occurred by causing needless backup in the traffic down the
road.
Mr. DeFazio. Right. The backup often has accidents at the
far end of the line because the traffic suddenly stops on the
interstate, and then you have another incident back here,
hopefully not a fatal one, but another one and another one.
Mr. Heminger. And this is something we do not do as readily
as we should, working across jurisdictional boundaries. It is
not just a transportation issue. It is not just a public safety
issue. It is both.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. Thank you. Let me just consult with
counsel.
I was just trying to be sensitive to the--I am sorry again.
What we are going to do is I am going to go over and vote, and
that should give us, at least by the time I get back--I am just
guessing--but probably as much as a half an hour, who knows, to
get into the next panel. But if you could, just stay, if your
schedules permit, in case Mr. Duncan arrives back until we
convene the next panel, and if he has some questions. I would
appreciate it.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
[Recess.]
Mr. DeFazio. Gentlemen, Mr. Duncan is recognized for
questions.
Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I will be
very, very brief since we have got another panel that we need
to get to. And I did not get to hear the testimony, but I will
say this.
I have certainly had the privilege of working with Mr.
Schenendorf over the years, and everybody who ever did that has
always had a lot of respect for Jack, so--you know, one thing I
was trying to remember, though, Jack--you know, we had this big
delay in the highway bill this past year. Maybe my memory is
just not really good, but I do not remember having anywhere
close to that long of a delay on the original TEA-21
legislation.
What was it? Do you recall if there was much of a delay on
that legislation?
Mr. Schenendorf. That legislation was supposed to be
completed in the first year of the session. It was supposed to
have been completed by October 1st, and it actually went over
into the spring of the following year.
Mr. Duncan. So it was not nearly as much as this time.
Mr. Schenendorf. Right.
Mr. Duncan. So, October. Around here that is not bad,
October to the spring. Hopefully we can beat that this time,
but thank you very much for being here and for all that you do,
both of you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DeFazio. I want to thank both of you. I want to thank
you for your service on the Commission. We look forward to your
product. We will do the best we can to accommodate your budget,
your timelines, and then I will also be in discussions with Mr.
Duncan and with our full committee Chairman and Ranking Member,
seeing if they share the view that we might be able to get the
product that finance folks need out of your report and your
committee and not have to have a duplicative committee, and
hopefully that will expedite things.
So thanks again. Thanks for your thoughtful testimony. I
appreciate it.
We now call the next panel to the table: Mr. Pisarski,
Professor Schwieterman, Dr. Bronzini, and Dr. Lomax.
Gentlemen, thank you for your time. Thank you for your
indulgence. I regret the fact that this has gone on much longer
than we had anticipated, and hopefully none of you were unduly
inconvenienced, but I appreciate it.
I have read your testimony, and I appreciate any summary
that you want to give at this time within the 5-minute limit.
In addition to that, if something has come up earlier that you
would like to respond to or to contradict or agree with, you
can also do that in those 5 minutes, and then we will have a
round of questions, and I guess we will just start in the order
on the list here.
So the first would be Mr. Pisarski.
TESTIMONY OF ALAN PISARSKI, PRIVATE CONSULTANT, FALLS CHURCH,
VIRGINIA; JOSEPH P. SCHWIETERMAN, PROFESSOR, DePAUL UNIVERSITY,
DIRECTOR, CHADDICK INSTITUTE FOR METROPOLITAN DEVELOPMENT,
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS; MICHAEL S. BRONZINI, GEORGE MASON
UNIVERSITY, DEWBERRY CHAIR PROFESSOR, FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA; AND
TIMOTHY J. LOMAX, TEXAS TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE, PROGRAM
MANAGER, MOBILITY ANALYSIS, COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS
Mr. Pisarski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking
Member. I am Alan Pisarski, and it is a great pleasure for me
to appear before this committee once again to discuss with you
the substantial challenges the Nation faces in transportation.
I was struck by the discussion earlier this morning,
particularly with Chairman Oberstar, remembering the history of
the interstate. I Chair the Committee on Transportation History
at the Transportation Research Board, and have spent a lot of
time over the last 2 years studying that history, and the
Chairman, by the way, has it right. It was a 20-year effort,
sir, and I think this is useful to this body. It began with a
sense of vision in the 1930's with President Roosevelt and was
followed by a plan in the 1940's and then was followed by a
financing plan in the 1950's.
So I think it is very appropriate to recognize the
necessity for vision, but also to recognize that this is a
long-term effort. If you look back and see the successes they
had, and we measure ourselves against that, we are deficient,
and we really need to rediscover the vision and the power of
that vision that they were able to accomplish.
In my paper there is a page-long summary statement, of
where I think some of the key problems are going to be. I will
not go through all of those here with you today. In fact, I
want to just pick out three of those to emphasize.
I really do feel that the Nation will be facing what I
think is perhaps the most dramatic changes in its demography
since the great immigration waves of 100 years ago. I just
completed a book for the National Academy of Sciences called
Commuting in America III, and I do want you to know that AASHTO
is distributing copies of it to each of the Members, that you
will be receiving next week. What I talk about there is the
fact that we are going into a new phase of commuting where, in
fact, the issue may be too few workers rather than too many.
The issue is going to be how do we replace the baby
boomers? We are going to need to keep the older workers
employed. We are going to need to get more women involved in
the workplace. We are going to need to get minorities more
involved. Rural populations are going to have to connect better
to urban jobs markets. The great issue is going to be using
transportation to sustain the workforce.
The second area of great concern is going to be the
expanding of metro areas. I expect 15 metro areas over 5
million, probably half the population of the country in those
massive areas of 100-miles across by 2020. The dominant pattern
is going to be suburb-to-suburb commuting, kind of a "doughnut
metro", people flowing out to the suburbs from the center
cities and people flowing into those suburbs from other metro
areas and from rural areas.
Finally, I suggest to you there is an affluent, time-
focused society that we are going to be seeing. If I were going
to pick a vision for the society, it would be "Think of a
transportation system that will serve people whose value of
time is $50 an hour and a freight system that has triple the
value of today's average value of goods." I will just simply
point out here that transportation is going to be critical in
responding to each of those areas.
This display is a map of the Nation's counties that are
exporting more than 25 percent of their workers to other
counties every day---the red counties. As you can see,
everything east of the upper Great Plains--has become a
phenomenon in just the last 15 or 20 years. We are talking
about half of the new workers are now leaving their home
counties to work in adjacent counties and, in fact, crossing
over into other metropolitan areas. So it has really become a
critical pattern, I think, for the future.
Mr. DeFazio. Is that in your book?
Mr. Pisarski. Yes, sir.
Mr. DeFazio. That was in your testimony.
Mr. Pisarski. Yes, Mr. Chairman, and there is a discussion
of how that trend and pattern are moving.
The attributes of my vision are the seven listed, but I
will simply point out that the first has been discussed this
morning. There are immense things we can do in operational
terms that do not need massive investment and that we need to
do first I think the public expects us to do them first before
we start talking about massive investments and capacity.
At the same time, and the last point I am making here, is
that we do have a tremendous backlog of congestion-related
infrastructure, physical-condition-related and capacity-related
issues. I think once we get past that backlog, we have a future
that, in fact, we can readily address.
I cannot go into all of the elements that I have proposed
in my paper, the national system's elements. I will just point
out a couple here.
The first is an expanded and enhanced Interstate. I am
working on a project on the future of the interstate, at the
National Academy, and we have addressed some of those
questions.
The second two I will point out is that I think we are at
the stage where we are going to have to recognize in the future
that we have to separate cars and trucks. I am suggesting here
the idea of a national parkway system and the idea of a
national truck freight system. On the nationally pervasive
units that we are talking about--I will not pursue all of them
here--two points that I will make are a lot of it comes down to
the need for beltways serving the circumferential pattern that
I have just identified.
The final point I want to make is that our data systems are
pathetic. The Department of Transportation has not done well in
that area, and I think it is something that really needs
congressional cognizance and concern. I believe we need a
performance-based system for the future, and we cannot do
performance measurement without the data, and the Department
has not provided it.
But my very long-term view is I see a very positive future,
much more operable problems with the resources to address it.
We simply need to recognize the central role of mobility in our
society, and we must be willing to act to focus those
resources.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you.
Professor Schwieterman.
Mr. Schwieterman. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the
Ranking Member, for a chance to be here.
My remarks are really shaped by my 24 years of experience
in transportation. I spent nearly a decade at a major private
transportation company, more recently as a professor. I have
written several books. My most recent book looks at the effect
of changes to rail service in smaller towns and cities, and I
would really like to start-- and I have been very pleased with
what I heard this morning, which is that, in the next bill, the
interdependency between highway and rail and waterway is going
to be at center stage. And we have really missed opportunities
in the past to have a lot of lip service to intermodalism. We
have had some good progress, but not as much as those of us who
celebrated the first IT had hoped. And so I think we are
learning, and I think the next bill may be the window of
opportunity to really push that onto a new level.
My second proposition really relates to this new bill and
changes we make. We need to leverage private capital, and that
needs to be at center stage, and, you know, this could take
many forms. I think toll highways are the most prominent thing,
but there are intermodal, joint partnerships, public-private
partnerships for transit facilities, freight railroad systems,
and so forth.
So I want to commend the architects of SAFETEA-LU, and many
of them are on the committee here, for really pushing us toward
that, and there are some things that I am really pleased to see
are working.
There are loans for local short-line and regional
railroads. There are tax credits for major railroads. That is
exciting stuff. We have more grade-crossing money. That is
facilitating major freight corridors to become more efficient.
We also have the projects of national significance, the CREATE
Program in Chicago, to unclog our freight yards. Similar
projects around the country, I think, are giving focus to this
idea of private-public partnerships, and we also have the $15
billion of allowances for private activity bonds for State
governments. We heard some talk here about Texas' plan this
morning, one of the first States to actually receive approval
for these private activity bonds, and this is big stuff, and it
really has the potential to bring an infusion of capital to the
table.
So, as we look at the problems of the Highway Trust Fund,
and we have heard a lot about that this morning, I think the
real temptation here is to avoid the quick fix, to avoid the
expedient approach to just look at highway user fees, and to
step back and say this is an opportunity, really, to think
outside the box a bit. And I would like to share, just very
briefly, two bits of research I have done at DePaul University.
The first is we looked at the changing reach of the rail
system and how policies that have been very punitive of the
railroads have affected the access of a lot of towns to rail
service, and we found there are 2,500 towns in the United
States with populations of more than 3,000 people who no longer
have any sort of rail service, freight or passenger.
We also found a few metropolitan areas now with more than
100,000 people who have not a single mile of active railway
track, and we have found that, you know, it is a combination of
things. It is highway user fees, cross-subsidies to heavy
trucks. It is outdated Federal labor law in some cases. It is
also punitive property taxes. Big money for railroad property
taxes has never really been addressed in any sort of Federal
way, and a lot of cities are struggling to bring the rail
service back and to make it more relevant in the freight
picture. And there are at least two dozen cities we found that
have been successful in restoring our rail links, and some in
the districts of committee members here, and I will not go
through the list, but I can tell you SAFETEA-LU has been pretty
much at the back seat of all of that; that there are a lot of
countywide efforts to shore up intermodal use and so forth, and
SAFETEA-LU, unfortunately, has been pretty much background
music as opposed to being there to really facilitate some of
this.
Two days ago at the TRB conference, I gave a presentation
looking at all of the proposed high-speed railway corridors
around the country that have gotten government backing, and
there are 15,000 miles proposed of various stages of planning,
but it became clear that the States are really looking to the
private railroads to form partnerships to try to move some of
these things forward. They understand that this cannot be done
with a simple Federal allocation, it needs to be done in
partnership with the private sector. And there are 21 freight
railroads that are affected by routes that are being proposed,
2,000 miles of transit agency track. Several thousand miles of
interstate highway has been slated. There is no illusion that
these high-speed systems are going to arrive any time soon, but
it shows that, at the State level, there is real interest in
working with private carriers to develop partnerships, to make
capacity improvements that can push us into the next level.
So, in closing, I just offer three recommendations. First,
the States are still looking for more flexibility. SAFETEA-LU
gave them considerably more flexibility, but they need more. To
manage the highway-rail interplay, they need much more freedom
to think outside the box with their spending. Kansas, Virginia,
Georgia, and Iowa are just four States that are at the
forefront of that.
Secondly, I think more incentives for private investments.
These private activity bonds should be the foundation for a
much larger package. Funding and expedited processes for
private tollways, truckways, investment credits for railroads
really should be at center stage.
So I bring much good news from the American heartland. I
mean, we have got--the Chicago Skyway has been turned over to a
lease and so is now on safe financial footing because of the
private capital we have enlisted. An Indiana toll road is being
leased. The Detroit railroads are investing in a huge way in
facilities to unclog the freight system. I am not sure we will
be cooperating with Indiana quite so much on Super Bowl Sunday,
but I can tell you that there is a lot of synergy going on
there.
So, as we move the new transportation bill, avoiding the
quick fix and seizing this private capital is really where I
see a great opportunity.
Thank you for the time to express my views.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. Thank you, Professor.
Dr. Bronzini.
Mr. Bronzini. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It is a pleasure to be here today, and especially to be
talking in front of Mr. Duncan, who, for many years, was my
Representative in Congress when I lived in Knoxville. So it is
nice to see you again. It is a pleasure to be here.
You have heard a lot about the challenges facing the
system, the congestion, so I am not going to go over that
ground again, and I did not in my testimony, but rather, I want
to highlight what I believe are some important principles and
issues that need to remain in the forefront or not get lost as
we do with some of the details in the long discussion about
funding that will certainly ensue.
I think there are some basic principles that we need to
remain cognizant of, and I touch on four of these in my
testimony, and I will just mention three of them and elaborate
on the fourth one.
First, it is basic to our system that it is a partnership.
It is being developed as a partnership between the Federal
Government, the State government and local government, and this
works well. It has served us well over many years and many
decades, so whatever we do in the future, we need to maintain
that partnership as a central focus of how the program
progresses. And it is not just a funding thing, it is a real
partnership. There is more than money behind this.
Second, the system is really a system. Even though the
Interstate Highway System is largely completed and, of course,
will need to be expanded in the future, we cannot lose sight of
the fact that there is a system. Where there is a system, we
need to focus on how the system works. It does not work well if
each piece is off doing its own thing. There has to be some
kind of a central organizing principle behind it to guide what
we do and how we find the balance between local, State and
national needs. So the system aspect is really paramount.
Third, this may not be the best place to bring this up, but
I think earmarks have become a problem, and I suspect there are
as many views on that as there are people in the Congress, but
I think it may have gone over the tipping point this last time
around, and I think the level of earmarking is such that it is
starting to raise many questions around the country and
threatens to have the public lose faith in the credibility of
the program.
Now, I also mention in my remarks some of the reasons why
earmarks exist besides the critical ones, so a system to try to
control the earmarks--and I would commend Congress that has
actually started down this path, and I hope it bears some
fruit, but that system has to also take care of the root causes
of why earmarks exist in the first place. If we just treat the
symptom and do not treat the root causes, we may not be able to
stave off the bad side of earmarks in the future.
With the rest of my remarks, I want to focus on the issue
that Mr. Pisarski raised on information requirements. It is
pretty fundamental to most enterprises that good system
decision-making has to be founded upon good performance
measures and good information and the data to support that, and
this is certainly true in transportation. The Transportation
Research Board last month, in fact, published a very short,
concise document. It is Research Circular E-C109, which, in a
few pages, lays out very well why we need data, and it has a
lot of good, concrete examples of how good data helps us to
make good decisions in transportation.
So I would like to add this to the record, if I could, to
make sure you get that.
Mr. DeFazio. Without objection.
Mr. Bronzini. OK. And right now, as has already been
mentioned, the Transport Research Board is having its 86th
annual meeting across town at Woodley Park. There was a session
on Monday focused on information needs and trying to understand
what those needs are in a variety of agencies, public and
private, and just a few things that were mentioned there, I
think, are relevant to what we are doing here.
The CEO of a State department of transportation, quite
large, said that we have the problem of frailty of decision-
making based on weak data systems. Data collection and
management are cost-effective. They are not cost drivers.
From a division manager for another large State DOT,
assisted monitoring and evaluation is the base upon which
system development is built. Cutting data programs limits
decision-making.
Then from a private sector entity, which I think is maybe
even more telling, there was a representative of a large
technology company, which they are not in the transport
business, but they use transportation, and this is a $65
billion company in annual revenue, and he said their company
relies heavily on performance metrics as the basic way that
they manage the enterprise. And they spend 1 percent of their
revenue on performance metrics, and of that, they spend 10
percent of that just on research, just on how to make their
performance metrics better.
I think that standard is much higher than what we see
happening in our own transport system where the output of good
data is even more important. So the need to measure how the
system works and to put in place the mechanisms to make that
happen, I think, should be a major concern of the future
program development.
Thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. Thank you, Dr. Bronzini.
Dr. Lomax.
Dr. Lomax. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and Mr.
Distinguished Member. I appreciate the opportunity to be here
to talk about the future of transportation.
Our country's system already faces a number of challenges,
and those will undoubtedly grow and evolve, but I am optimistic
that our society can overcome them. Please let me know if I can
answer any questions today or in the future.
We have studied urban congestion issues for more than two
decades, and I think I am safe in saying that congestion is
going to get worse, especially in the metropolitan regions.
Moving millions of new travelers and freight, that Alan pointed
to, to their destinations, and doing that quickly and safely,
will mean adapting to some new realities, new technologies and
even new travelers.
Consider that the current grade-school and college students
will be the decisionmakers of 2040 and 2050. Their experiences,
for example, with instant access to information will mean a
much different set of expectations than you or I grew up with.
Most of the challenges we face can benefit from a
combination of two approaches. Technology or infrastructure is
one, and information or policies is another. I think this is a
type of niche marketing. There is not any one big program or
technology that is going to solve the problem. There will be
many different solutions, and those solutions are going to be
different in different areas. Larger urban areas may have
different solutions than smaller ones, suburbs different than
urban areas, and regions of the same size and with generally
the same character may choose to make decisions just because
that is what their citizens want to do. I think that is the
reality, and I think that is good.
Our Urban Mobility Report has consistently promoted a broad
set of strategies to solve congestion problems. These require
efforts from many groups, not just the agencies, but the
business community, and the public needs to be involved as
well. Just broadly, those solutions have been talked about. But
I sort of characterize one of them as do the small, simple
things. Time traffic signals. We do not do that as well as we
can. We do not clear the traffic collisions, or vehicle
breakdowns as fast as we can, and there are ways to do vital
road maintenance functions more rapidly with less congestion
and less time. These are very simple improvements, and they are
very cost-effective.
We also need to do more. A solution set of strategies must
also emphasize adding highways, public transportation service,
bike lanes, ferries, sidewalks, everything to our system
because we are going to need that to address the growing
populations.
Then information, enforcement and education can play key
roles in the solutions. Reliable information, enforcement of
traffic laws that improve safety, and education programs all
provide elements of improvement and increase the trust between
the operators and the public.
There are also substantial benefits to these improvements
that should not be ignored. Connecting effective strategies to
those citizens' concerns using reliable information should be a
key component of any transportation improvement program.
Transportation projects, after all, are not ultimately about
faster travel. They are about supporting an economy that
competes in a global market, supports families and encourages
innovation, and creates options that allow citizens to improve
their lives.
To wrap up, I have a few suggestions on how to translate
the future situation I have outlined and the challenges we face
into tangible advice for members of the subcommittee.
With respect to number one, recognize that some problems
are regional and interregional, but many of the operating and
governance structures are not. How do we make these match or
work better?
Congress, I think, must recognize that the current system
of decision-making is based on States or metropolitan regions.
They examine within their own boundaries for solutions to
current or future transportation problems. The current Federal
program reinforces this natural inclination to stop solutions
at the border, thus resulting in a patchwork of solutions to
large interregional problems. We already recognize regional
and, in some cases, national consequences flowing from these,
and I had an example in my testimony. We should make the
solutions match these problems more closely.
Number two, people will react to incentives like price or
time savings, but we rarely provide them opportunities to do
so. We have heard about incentives here today. At the same
time, States and regions have the responsibility to maximize
the efficiency of the transportation infrastructure. These two
facts can work together to recapture the unused existing
capacity through tools that spread demand over longer periods
of time. Concentrated travel demands are the single worst
congestion problem in big cities. Transit, congestion pricing,
carpooling, telecommuting, and many other tools address that
concentrated travel demand. I think we should be coordinating
those much better.
Number three, no one is really paid for eliminating
congestion. Why is that? It is clear that more aggressive
congestion reduction approaches exist, combining technology,
information, policies, regulatory changes, private sector
partners, public sector agencies. Each element doing what it
can do best without regard for jurisdictional boundaries or
turf issues can be successful. The Federal program could
reinforce these aggressive approaches with support for
innovation and coordinate the development of monitoring,
reporting and performance standards.
Number four, building on what Mike and Alan have said,
data-driven and results-oriented approaches to problems have
proven their effectiveness in many fields of government. We
should expand those in transportation, and this refers to
analytical processes, monitoring data, communication
strategies. The report for both improving the operation and for
improving the ability of the technical folks to communicate
with the public, the cycle of planning, testing, deployment,
and evaluation of innovative strategies may turn over much more
rapidly, not unlike the private sector freight shippers now.
Congressional support for data collection and analytical
improvements will be returned in the form of better service,
improved communication with the public and more reliable
operations.
Thank you very much for allowing me to provide some ideas.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you, Dr. Lomax.
I will lead off with a few questions.
I mentioned to Under Secretary Shane, but also, I think it
is implied in some of the testimony we have just heard, that we
have pretty much a stovepipe system. Remember, we talked about
intermodalism, but that is sort of at interstice, I mean, where
you are off-loading ships or--you know, we do not really
integrate the system in a way where we can get to the point of
doing what I call "least cost transportation planning." What is
most efficient? What is most effective? How are we going to
move the things more quickly, more fuel efficiently and with
less expense to shippers or for individuals?
I guess I am interested in any ideas any of you have about
how we would approach that. You know, there are a lot of
problems. Where does the share come from if you start getting
into these kinds of partnerships? How would we thoughtfully
begin to break down some of those barriers and, as I think one
person said, give more flexibility to the States in these
issues? How do we do that while we are still meeting the
concerns over here of the maintenance of existing
infrastructure, underfunded? Then, you know, we have these
other competing modes that could complement that.
Does anybody have any ideas?
Yes. Go ahead, Doctor.
Mr. Pisarski. Yes, Mr. Chairman.
I have thought a lot about the notion of efficiency and
productivity, and I think the thing we have to be guarded about
is not to get too excited about the notion of the productivity
and the efficiency of the system. We need to focus on the
efficiency of people and on the efficiency of the goods that
are in movement, and sometimes the people efficiency is more
important than the system efficiency.
The efficiency of the guy delivering pizza to your house
would be much greater if everybody in the neighborhood asked
for the pizza at exactly the same time, but the fact is he does
a lot of work so that people can be more efficient, and I think
that is something that we really need to put into place and
recognize.
It is not the system. We want the system to respond
efficiently, certainly, but it is the efficiency of the public,
and that is why I raise this point of the value of time of a
society where people's value of time is $50 an hour. The
pressures, the willingness to pay a lot of money to save time
is, I think, going to be critical in the future, and people's
responsiveness to that will be very important. So we have to
focus on their efficiency more than simply on, quote/unquote,
the efficiency of the system.
Mr. DeFazio. I think it is an excellent, very interesting
point.
Just one thing that occurred to me when you were testifying
earlier, and you were talking about--and I agree with basically
the value of time and how it can become more and more valuable
in very busy lives, but there is another side to that.
In an aging society there may be a new group of people who
do not have those time pressures who are a very large cohort.
This is one of my arguments why we maintain a national Amtrak
system, because I think you might find people choosing that
option over hectic air travel.
Mr. Pisarski. One of the things that I talk about in my
paper is the growth in people with discretionary time and
discretionary income, and the boomers, the first of them, are
going to hit 65 in 2010. You could very well see for the next
25 years a boom in leisure travel, recreational travel and
tourism. I do do a lot of work on the tourism side on the
international scene, and there is no question that we are going
to be seeing very dramatic increases in those opportunities,
and I mention this national parkway system and, in fact, part
of that thinking, and the interaction between air travel and
ground travel particularly will be significant.
Mr. DeFazio. Anyone else?
Yes, go ahead. OK. Go ahead, Dr. Bronzini.
Mr. Bronzini. Yes. Back on the intermodal system question,
there are just two observations I would like to make. One is
that--one reason we have all of the stovepipes is because to
execute a project in a particular mode, it takes some
concentrated efforts, and historically we have had different
committees who were the authorizing committees, or who had some
jurisdiction over those projects, who had a relic from the past
to some extent, and we keep it around because it works until
you get projects built.
Now, to make it intermodal, of course, and to make it work
better as an interconnective system, there are two things we
can do. One is to pay some attention to the interconnection
points and to make sure that we have as much of a contingency
for that as we do for the pieces themselves, and the other is
to try to remove any legislative barriers to cross-modal
thinking and cross-modal projects.
Mr. DeFazio. In my home State of Oregon, the Governor is
partnering with Union Pacific to build more sidings to make the
freight more efficient in the hope of keeping the increase in
truck traffic on I-5, which has become problematic in terms of
capacity, down.
So, are they thinking along the lines of those sorts of
things as those kinds of partnerships?
Mr. Bronzini. That is a great example, and also, it brings
to mind the fact that we have sort of ignored the private
sector for most of the day, and they are certainly an important
player. And so finding ways--and some parts of the private
sector work with government better than others, so it is trying
to find ways to--so the railroads historically have not been
big fans of working with government, so this is something new
for them as well. So finding those examples and showing that
they can work and removing the impediments to those kinds of
projects, I think, would be a great idea.
Mr. DeFazio. OK.
Dr. Schwieterman, do you have a comment?
Mr. Schwieterman. I will add to that.
When the Alameda Corridor was approved, people thought this
was the beginning of a golden age of private-public
partnerships, and I think, for Federal leadership, there was a
window, and there is a window now for Federal leadership to
really push that mile all around the country--of course, in
Chicago, with CREATE, that is the whole dynamic--and I think
the freight railroads are coming around.
I think there is a great deal of reluctance to working with
the Federal Government historically because strings are going
to be attached, and we are going to be viewed as a public
utility, but I think the game is changing now as they have
really hit a roadblock with capacity that they can be brought
to the table, and the Cascade Corridor you mentioned is a good
example of that, where there, I think, is sort of a shared
destiny view that is a bit of a breakthrough that we did not
see 5 years ago.
Mr. DeFazio. Right. OK, go ahead.
Dr. Lomax. I might suggest that you think about this in a
problem-solution mode inasmuch as the solutions in Portland
came from a problem, and then a group of folks, agencies,
private sector getting together, that might be the same notion
for addressing some of the stovepipe issue.
It may be that you need some sort of incentive program here
where you require three governors to get together, or five
metropolitan regions to get together to talk about a problem
that goes through all of their areas which might not be solved
by a particular highway or a particular State or a particular
solution, but it may be that in requiring some broader set of
regions to get together that not only do you reinforce this
notion of a national system and regional interconnectedness,
but you also address some of the stovepipe issues as well.
Mr. DeFazio. Requiring or incenting might be a little
gentler way to get there.
Dr. Lomax. I think that was where I was going.
Mr. Pisarski. Dr. Lomax and I have worked in a couple of
States together, and one of the things that we have done that
could go very much to your question, we recommended, in Georgia
and Texas particularly, the notion of reduction of hours of
delay per million dollars invested as the metric for
metropolitan areas to look at. How many hours of delay you have
saved with the money you have spent. And what we have suggested
is that that solution be open to anyone, whatever proposal they
might have, whether it is a highway or a transit proposal; but
that is the metric you would base your planning on.
It seems to me that kind of performance metric, kind of
opens the door, at least in some sense. In Georgia the State
has restructured their planning process around that kind of
thinking.
Dr. Lomax. And you could add the other elements in--your
lease cost planning idea, air quality, safety and other
elements to talk about the productivity of that improvement.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you.
Mr. Duncan.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Pisarski, you have sort of an optimistic statement
about your belief that the money is going to be there to
finance the improvements; and we, a lot of times, don't hear
that. We have a lot of concerns about decreasing revenues from
the gas tax and so forth. But you also, on your last line just
before your optimistic statement about the economy being good
enough to pay for everything that we need to do, you have the
words "more operable problems."
Do you think that--do you mean that we are going to have
more of the same types of problems that we have had over the
last few years, or do you mean that we are going to see newer,
different kinds of problems in the future, and if so--in other
words, just elaborate a little bit on that.
Mr. Pisarski. Thank you, sir. It is an excellent question.
By "more operable problems," my point was simply that if
you go back and you look in the 1950's when they were
addressing America's transportation issues, I would call the
interstate system Phase I. They addressed the needs of the next
150 million people that were being added to the 150 million
that were already here.
Phase II, today, we need to be thinking about the next 150
million that will be needed. But adding that number today is
going to be really a whole lot easier to deal with than it was
for that society back in 1956. They were growing at twice the
rate as today. Their resources were far more limited than ours.
And our technological resources are clearly superior.
The very big forecasts that they made of popultion and
travel growth was growing, which scared everybody, were wrong--
low, dramatically wrong, low. The system produced much more
than they had planned. And I think in the future we have a
capacity to address the problems in a somewhat more
straightforward way than I think they were able to.
The problems are going to be more of the same in some
respects, but I think bigger. The focus of the metro areas is
going to be circumferential; 46 percent of the commuting flows
today is suburb to suburb. Two-thirds of the growth is suburb
to suburb. What you are seeing now are dramatic flows, live in
one suburb and work in another suburb of another metropolitan
area.
One of the great descriptions somebody said, I think
Fredericksburg south of here is a great example: Work in one
metropolitan area, shop in another metropolitan area, and don't
live in either one. And I think that is--in effect, where I
think we are going to be going.
So we are going to have to recognize that in getting people
involved in the workforce and reaching out to them in the
transportation system is going to be critical. We are not going
to have the labor force that we--I guess I would say, in
summary, that commuting in America, if you look at the baby
boom, we might have thought of it as, isn't it wonderful that
we had the jobs that provided the jobs to those baby boomers
when we could have been talking about unemployment instead of
congestion.
Mr. Duncan. It was a very interesting slide you had about
the 28 percent of workers who are crossing county lines and
that it is more so among the younger workers because the
younger people are having to move further out. That is
something that we really--that is important that we take that
into consideration in everything that we do.
Mr. Pisarski. One positive point that hasn't been mentioned
here: As people reach over 55, they tend to work at home; they
tend to walk to work, they tend to shift away from their past
driving habits. Also, because of the lack of skilled workers, I
think you are going to see dramatic amounts of flexibility on
the part of employers.
You are going to be seeing, Well, when can you work? Yes,
Tuesdays and Thursdays.
You want to come at 10 o'clock? That is fine.
We are going to see a lot more flexibility out of employers
simply because they can't get at those skilled workers. That
will be one of the positive forces that we will see.
Mr. Duncan. Let me move to some of the others.
Professor Schwieterman, I was pleased that your testimony
was about all of the various intermodal activities; I think the
staff and members of this committee were among the first ones
to really recognize that and promote and advocate the need for
intermodal systems or that type of thinking; and, in fact, Mr.
Schenendorf was on the forefront of that.
But you said we need to leverage more private capital. How
do you think is the best way we can do that? You mentioned toll
roads, but they are extremely unpopular where they don't exist
today. You mentioned private activity bonds; and, you know, I
like that, private activity bonds, but they are very, very
little in use so far. How do we go about that?
Mr. Schwieterman. To the extent to which we are now
embracing the idea, the congestion pricing needs to enter the
mix, and the highway system opens up a lot of doors thinking
creatively about point partnerships, private ways to use toll
financing for major improvements that can support private-
public investments in highways. And I don't completely agree
with your proposition that toll roads will remain extremely
unpopular once the public adequately sees that the other option
is the status quo, which is endless traffic congestion.
In Illinois, we are looking at the privatization of the
tollway system. The tri-State tollway has been getting
discussion. Controversial, yes, but it is a tidal wave of
private capital that we are prepared to tap.
I think the freight railroads--this year alone, CSX has
doubled their capital with a little inducement from the Federal
Government to help really make mainline corridors equivalent to
interstate highways for intercity freight. I think we could see
a massive increase in freight investment by the railroads if
the government provides a platform to ensure that they are
going to do their part to help eliminate some of the
bottlenecks as well.
Mr. Duncan. You know what has happened over the last many
years? We at the Federal, State, and local levels, we have
taken so much land off of the tax rolls and that--and we have
done that at the same time that the schools and all of the--
every department and agency of the government at all levels is
demanding more and more money. So we have raised the sales
taxes about as high as the public will stand for, and income
taxes, too, and so now all of the States are going heavily into
gambling--you know, the lotteries and so forth, but that is
going to hit its limit at some point.
But I will tell you that in my area, we have never had any
toll roads. I can tell you that would be one of the most
unpopular things I could ever advocate. I will just tell you, I
wouldn't want to do it.
Dr. Bronzini, what years did you live in Knoxville?
Mr. Bronzini. I lived there between 1978 to 1986 and 1990
to 1999.
Mr. Duncan. Why did you move and when are you moving back?
Mr. Bronzini. In 3-1/2 years.
Mr. Duncan. Well, I will tell you Fortune Magazine about 7
years ago said the Knoxville metropolitan area had become the
most popular place to move to in the whole country, based on
the number moving in in relation to the most fewest moving out.
And it said that Las Vegas and a lot of other places had a lot
more people moving in, but they had large numbers leaving; and
we had large numbers moving in and nobody leaving, hardly. But
we will be glad to have you back sometime.
I also noticed that you got your Ph.D. At Penn State. If
you move back, you might not want to mention that too often
especially after the bowl game.
Mr. Bronzini. It happened twice, too.
Mr. Duncan. Let me ask you this: You mentioned how
important the research dollars are, and you say that we are not
doing enough at the Federal level. And most of us would agree
on that, that we are--they are doing very little at the State
levels and zero at the local levels.
Do you think that might be because at the local level, you
know, they are not worried about things too far in the future
or too much research? We don't see the potholes in Peoria as we
sit here, but the local government, people, and their citizens
drive over those potholes every day and they want something
done right then.
Mr. Bronzini. That is a large part of it. I think as you go
from the local to the Federal level, you see an increasing
ability to focus on the longer-term solutions. The States have
some ability to do this.
The locals, particularly in transportation where their
responsibility tends to be pretty focused, they have a hard
time getting beyond today's needs given the limited access to
revenue in many cases. In many cases, they are spending this
off of sales taxes or local income taxes depending on where
they are. So they have a hard time looking to the long term for
the program where they often are the recipient of grants and
are providing matching funds for longer-term things.
The States have some more ability to do this, and they do
have a partnership with the Federal Government on research
activities. But I think, for the most part, most States tend to
underinvest. I believe they underinvest on research on
transportation, and they look to the Federal Government to take
care of the research aspect of the program.
Research money has gone down over time and even research
money has been earmarked. So it makes it hard to have a
coherent research programs. So as long as--the natural order of
things, the Federal Government, because of the leadership role,
is able to take the longer-term view.
Mr. Duncan. You sound a little bit like President Bush last
night talking about earmarks.
Let me ask you this: Was it you who said that our system is
not really a system? Somebody said that. Or was that one of
the--you said that? I just was--------
Mr. Bronzini. I think that might have been you, Alan. I
said it is a system.
Mr. Duncan. All right.
Well, Dr. Lomax, you talked about incentives, and that is
something that I think--that is a direction I would like to
head in. And, actually, Mr. Pisarski got into the note I made
of that.
I was going to ask you about the possibility of this
doubling of the population over 65 and how much opportunity you
see there for people who may have more flexibility, you know,
in their drive times and not have to drive necessarily in the
peak, most congested times.
Do you see a lot of opportunity in that direction, or do
you think we should start charging people in some way to drive
in the more congested time period? What do you see in that
regard?
Dr. Lomax. I think I agree with almost everything in there,
one way or another. There is certainly a role for incentives. I
think when--your question about the older workers, I think they
are maybe only one of the groups that has an incentive or has a
way to adjust their travel time.
Alan talked about the notion of very experienced workers
being very desirable. I think when you see tight labor markets,
you see employers that are more willing to pay--pay higher
salaries--or adjust to some sort of flexible work schedule.
An extreme example would be Roger Clemens with the Houston
Astros; show up on the day he pitches and take the rest of the
time off. I don't think I would have access to that schedule.
But the notion of being able to create a flexible work
environment that works for both the commuter and the employer,
when you see what has happened around the country with
businesses who have tried this, they find their bottom-line
benefits. Their workers are more productive, they get to work
on time, they have less stress, there is less turnover. So they
have less money going into workforce development.
So there is a whole range of bottom-line benefits to the
employers. It is not that we are asking them to do public good
just for its own sake. They see a real bottom-line effect.
And then I think when you talk about charging, I think
there is a role for that if there is a service component that
goes along with it. I think people have been shown to be
willing to pay more to drive on some of these high occupancy
toll lanes in return for the ability to drive the speed limit
to get to where they want to go.
The typical research outcomes of these are that not
everybody does this every day. They do this when they have a
value of time that exceeds the toll that they are going to pay.
So if they are late to get to the airport or a meeting or their
son's or daughter's sporting event or cultural event, they are
willing to pay that. Other days, when getting home 10 minutes
early means you have to start mowing the yard 10 minutes
earlier, you are willing to sit in traffic 20 minutes longer.
We haven't created that many options for people. You can
sit in traffic or not go in many places. Those are your two
options. And I think there are a whole lot more options that we
can explore.
Mr. Duncan. I can't resist the temptation to tell you that
I spent five and a half seasons as batboy for the Knoxville
Smokies baseball team, and my freshman year at the University
of Tennessee, I was the public address announcer. So I love
baseball analogies or examples. The only thing I really can't
relate to is, back when I traveled with the baseball team, we
got $22 a week in meal money; and now somebody like Roger
Clemens probably makes $22,000 a minute, which I think is
totally out of whack.
At any rate, thank you very much. All of your testimonies
and answers have been very, very good and very informative, and
I appreciate your being here very much.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman for those questions.
Two last questions that hopefully can be answered quickly.
I think three of you, perhaps all of you, referred to how
pathetic the data is out there. I guess the question is, what
can we do about that? And if you can briefly answer that.
Mr. Pisarski. In the SAFETEA LU legislation, the Department
was requested to conduct a study of national transportation
date needs and, so far, hasn't done so. The money has not been
forthcoming to make that happen, and I think obviously one of
the things that somebody has to be asked is, what happened to
that. A study was done by my data section at TRB where we
volunteered to do it because there was no money forthcoming.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you.
Mr. Pisarski. That is step one. The department needs to
identify the requirements here, and they can be laid out very
readily. It is going to take some money, but compared to the
cost of ignorance, it is very inexpensive.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. We will follow up on that.
Does anybody else want to quickly add to that?
Dr. Lomax.
Dr. Lomax. I will very quickly say, the important notion is
outlines of data as an asset. It is not that we are suggesting
that data get collected for its own sake; it is that we have
got to improve decisions. In order to do that, it takes time.
It is takes effort. It takes somebody paying attention to it,
but it also takes somebody going back to the data folks and
helping them understand they are creating information for
policies and operations.
And so connecting up the data folks with the people who use
it I think is a real key in the good data programs that we have
seen.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. Thank you.
Mr. Bronzini. I would like to add, this is a near-term
issue. Some data sets we have had for a long time are
disappearing because of the funding slowdown. So we should
either decide that that data is needed and therefore we better
save it, or if it is meeting a need, such as one example is
large vehicles, vehicle uses, the only data that we have, if we
would need data use vehicles, we should pose quickly what is
going to take its place.
Mr. DeFazio. Then just this last one, which I was going to
forgo, but I am easily provoked.
Professor Schwieterman was waxing about the Indiana and the
Chicago model and that--I guess I want to get something out
again for a quick response, because I don't want to belabor
this, and this is the subject of a next hearing.
On private-public partnerships you mentioned the toll road
in Illinois. I guess I think we need to--and I will put out for
comment, enter very cautiously into privatization agreements
because they are not really public-private.
When you cede control for 75 years, you sign noncompete
agreements and a whole host of other things, and you don't,
unlike the State of Virginia, have the right of recapture,
private sharing or anything else. What you are dealing with is
existing infrastructure which is low risk, no risk; and you get
a certain amount of money up front versus a green field, new
construction partnerships as part of the funding for massive
projects, those sorts of things, or even what we envisioned in
SAFETEA-LU, which is, if you had capacity, you could do tolling
and that--and get private investment recapture.
I just wonder, I don't know that Professor Schwieterman
would share my concerns. I just note with the State of Indiana,
Macquarie puts up 10 percent, great, they put up 10 percent.
The State of Indiana could have put up 10 percent in G.O. bonds
and then got partners and had revenue flow from year 25, when
the whole thing is totally paid for and profit is already
gained, to year 75 which it will now forgo. It has foreclosed
that option.
And I am also concerned about the noncompete agreements.
There are two ways to meet your congestion standards: you
can enhance capacity, or you can charge them enough to drive
them off the route. I think those are problematic to enter into
with private entities.
Mr. Pisarski. I would agree. I wrote a paper on the Indiana
and the Chicago arrangements, and my first question was, what
mayor 50 years from now is going to look back in Chicago and
say what a great move that was. I can see it coming in New
Jersey; I can see it coming in Pennsylvania. And at least in
Indiana, the notion is, you are going to increase the total
transportation assets in the State; and the greatest concern on
my part is the diversion of that money into other areas--
basically paying your operating cost with a capital loan.
Mr. Schwieterman. All of those trappings are well stated,
and you look at British Rail privatization, all of the problems
we had there.
But I think moving aggressively to understand how we can
make that mechanism work, my fear is while the proceeds won't
go towards transportation infrastructure, it will go towards
pensions. And that is, I think, where the new transportation
bill can show real leadership to sort of lay out how it can set
the ground rules of these things. We can tap into that global
capital, get some things done while protecting the need for
major transportation investment from the hungry hands of other
government agencies.
Mr. DeFazio. Anybody else?
OK, great.
Well, again, thank you. I really appreciate it. Great
testimony. Thank you for your work in the field. Thank you for
your patience. Sorry that it took so long.
The committee is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:35 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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