[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CONGESTION AND MOBILITY
=======================================================================
(110-48)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 7, 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
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland JERRY MORAN, Kansas
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California GARY G. MILLER, California
LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington Carolina
RICK LARSEN, Washington TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
JULIA CARSON, Indiana SAM GRAVES, Missouri
TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
BRIAN HIGGINS, New York SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri Virginia
JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
DORIS O. MATSUI, California TED POE, Texas
NICK LAMPSON, Texas DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington
ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio CONNIE MACK, Florida
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New
BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa York
JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia
TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr.,
HEATH SHULER, North Carolina Louisiana
MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia
JOHN J. HALL, New York MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin VERN BUCHANAN, Florida
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
JERRY McNERNEY, California
VACANCY
(ii)
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
JERROLD NADLER, New York DON YOUNG, Alaska
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana
JULIA CARSON, Indiana GARY G. MILLER, California
TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South
BRIAN HIGGINS, New York Carolina
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
HEATH SHULER, North Carolina Virginia
MICHAEL A ARCURI, New York JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
JERRY MCNERNEY, California CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
BOB FILNER, California TED POE, Texas
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr.,
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois Louisiana
DORIS O. MATSUI, California JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia
BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona VERN BUCHANAN, Florida
VACANCY JOHN L. MICA, Florida
JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota (Ex Officio)
(Ex Officio)
(iii)
CONTENTS
Page
Summary of Subject Matter........................................ vi
TESTIMONY
Catlin, Peggy, Colorado Department of Transportation, Deputy
Executive Director............................................. 28
Lomax, Timothy J., Research Engineer, Texas Transportation
Institute, Mobility Analysis Program, College Station, Texas... 28
Shane, Hon. Jeffrey N., Under Secretary for Policy, U.S.
Department Of Transportation, accompanied by the Honorable J.
Richard Capka, Administrator, Federal Highway Administration
and the Honorable James S. Simpson, Administrator, Federal
Transit Administration......................................... 4
Stone, Craig, Deputy Administrator, Washington State Department
of Transportation, Urban Corridors............................. 28
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Carney, Hon. Christopher P., of Pennsylvania..................... 40
Carson, Hon. Julia, of Indiana................................... 42
Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., of Maryland............................ 43
Walz, Hon. Timothy J., of Minnesota.............................. 49
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Catlin, Peggy.................................................... 50
Lomax, Timothy J................................................. 68
Shane, Jeffrey N................................................. 82
Stone, Craig J................................................... 101
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Catlin, Peggy, Colorado Department of Transportation, Deputy
Executive Director, presentation slides........................ 53
Lomax, Timothy J., Research Engineer, Texas Transportation
Institute, Mobility Analysis Program, College Station, Texas,
response to questions from Rep. Carson......................... 80
Shane, Hon. Jeffrey N., Under Secretary for Policy, U.S.
Department Of Transportation:
Responses to questions from Chairman DeFazio................... 88
Responses to questions from Rep. Carson........................ 92
Responses to questions from Rep. Napolitano.................... 97
Stone, Craig, Deputy Administrator, Washington State Department
of Transportation, Urban Corridors, ``Low Cost, High Benefit
Congestion Relief from Better Highway Management,'' Washington
State Department of Transportation............................. 106
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HEARING ON CONGESTION AND MOBILITY
----------
Thursday, June 7, 2007
House of Representatives
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,
Subcommittee on Highways and Transit,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in
Room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Peter
A. DeFazio [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Mr. Baird. Good morning. I want to welcome you here to this
hearing of the Transportation Committee and thank our
distinguished guests and my dear friend and colleague, the
Ranking Member, Mr. Duncan.
Mr. DeFazio, who is the Chair of this Subcommittee, will
join us in a little while. I am Congressman Brian Baird and I
have the privilege of filling in until he gets here.
As you know, today's hearing is on congestion, and as we
all know, anybody who drives at all knows, that many of the
regions of the Nation have really what you could call a
congestion crisis. The surface transportation system is a
national network that serves the mobility needs of the entire
Country, but localized congestion has effects that ripple
across the entire Nation. Addressing this situation will
require a national response and strong Federal leadership.
The most recent report by the Texas Transportation
Institute found that congestion continues to grow in urban
areas of every size. Congestion places a significant cost on
the Nation in terms of wasted time and wasted fuels. In 2003,
overall traffic delays totaled 3.7 billion hours; an extra 2.3
billion gallons of fuel was consumed due to congestion; and the
total cost was estimated at $63.1 billion, up from $12.5
billion in 1982.
There is no silver bullet to solving this congestion
crisis, but to begin reversing congestion, all levels of
government must implement a range of strategies and policies.
Solving the problem will require a multi-pronged approach
involving expanding roadway and transit capacity, but--and I
particularly want to emphasize this--solving this problem will
require more than just additional capacity. We need to provide
more travel options; we must improve the operational efficiency
of transportation networks; there must be better demand
management; employ new technology; and better align land use
development and transportation planning. All must be part of
the solution to this crisis.
I personally believe we need particularly to encourage
people to try to live closer to where they work and where their
kids go to school, because a lot of folks think they are saving
money on houses far outside of town, but when you factor in the
cost of driving in and the time commitment, the savings is
actually illusory.
Congestion is a critical issue that must be addressed by
this Committee as we begin our efforts to reauthorize Federal
surface transportation programs which will expire in 2009--
seems like we just did them, Jim--but we must look at the
structural policy needs of our surface system before our
congestion crisis worsens.
I thank our witnesses for being here today. We look forward
to the hearing.
I recognize Mr. Duncan for opening remarks and, I
understand, a presentation of some sort.
Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I know
you will very ably fill the chair until Chairman DeFazio gets
here, but I want to thank you and Chairman DeFazio for holding
this important hearing on congestion and mobility. As you have
very ably pointed out, this is an issue of great importance to
not only large cities, but also our fast-growing communities
around the Country.
In my own hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, Knox County has
a population of about 410,000. Even more than that, though, is
that we have two interstates that meet in Knoxville and a third
that comes to within 37 miles outside of the city, so we have
just many millions coming through there, both going east and
west and north and south. It has also become one of the most
popular places in the Country to move to, so as our region
continues to grow very rapidly, as it is, I am sure that our
congestion problems will also continue to grow.
Across the Country, in communities large and small,
congestion is choking our economy and degrading our quality of
life. Congestion costs motorists. There are all sorts of
different estimates, but the most usual estimates you see are
60 or 65 or 70 billion a year in wasted time and fuel costs,
and this means that it costs the average person at least around
$800 a year.
In addition, congestion has an impact on the cost of moving
freight. Freight choke points at the Ports of Los Angeles and
Long Beach, and domestic freight hubs like Chicago, tie up
goods and raw materials that add to the final cost of just
about every product we buy. These freight choke points and
highway bottlenecks are no longer confined to our Nation's
older large cities; over the past 10 years, transportation
experts have seen dramatic growth in bottlenecks in fast-
growing cities such as Charlotte, Phoenix, Denver, and Dallas.
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. We need to come up with a
comprehensive approach to solving this problem that includes
additional highway capacity and better access to public
transportation. I think the Chairman has also pointed out that
we need to work on programs to encourage people to move back
into some of our inner cities, and we see that happening in a
lot of cities around the Country.
The success of the U.S. economy is dependent, as we all
know, on a good transportation network that can move people and
goods around the Country efficiently and reliably. The
congestion crisis in the U.S. is so bad that the mainstream
media carries stories on this issue on a regular basis. I saw
the piece that we are about to show two months ago on NBC and I
think it does a pretty good job of framing this problem, so we
will show that. I think it lasts a minute and 50 seconds.
Hopefully show it.
Mr. Baird. Look, the traffic is dead-stop.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Duncan. Well, can we get some sound?
Mr. Baird. Mr. Duncan, I think this actually shows how we
can solve the congestion problem: cars are able to overlap one
another.
[Video played.]
Mr. Duncan. Well, at any rate, thank you. Thank you very
much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Baird. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. I think we all appreciate
the message of that, even though it was a little bit hard to
hear. Most of us probably live with this on a regular basis
ourselves. When you are just driving around in this town at
almost any time you experience it.
The general procedure of this particular Subcommittee is to
try to limit opening comments so we can hear from our
witnesses, but if someone is dying to say something important,
I would be happy to recognize them; otherwise, we will hear
from our witnesses.
Mr. Coble?
Mr. Coble. Mr. Chairman, I will be very brief. You and the
Ranking Member have already mentioned it, but I think vehicular
congestion negatively impacts productivity, negatively impacts
our quality of life, and I thank you for staging this hearing.
I hate to be the eternal pessimist, but I am afraid that
congestion is going to get worse before it gets better, but
hopefully our panel may bring us through this maze. I thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Baird. Thank you, Mr. Coble. I spoke to the three
panelists. Actually, we have two panels today. They promised
that by the end of today they will have all the problems solved
and we will be able to move forward judiciously to implement
them.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Baird. We are privileged today to have two panels. I
will read the names of all of them and then we will hear from
our first panel. Our first panel is comprised of the Honorable
Jeffrey N. Shane, U.S. Department of Transportation Under
Secretary for Policy; accompanied by the Honorable J. Richard
Capka, Federal Highway Administrator. Good to see you again,
Mr. Capka. And the Honorable James S. Simpson, Federal Transit
Administration.
Our second panel will be Dr. Timothy J. Lomax of the Texas
Transportation Institute; Ms. Peggy Catlin, Colorado Department
of Transportation, Deputy Executive Director; and Mr. Craig
Stone from my home State of Washington, the Department of
Transportation Deputy Administrator for Urban Corridors out of
Seattle.
So we have got outstanding people who will, I promise you,
solve this problem, and all we will have to do is follow their
sound wisdom and implement the legislation, and everyone will
drive freely ever after.
More seriously, though, I look forward to great testimony
on a challenging topic. Appreciate the witnesses being here.
Mr. Shane, we will start with you and then proceed in order
from right to left.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JEFFREY N. SHANE, UNDER SECRETARY
FOR POLICY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, ACCOMPANIED BY:
THE HONORABLE J. RICHARD CAPKA, ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL HIGHWAY
ADMINISTRATION AND THE HONORABLE JAMES S. SIMPSON,
ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Shane. In the interest of time, Mr. Chairman, what we
decided we would do is I'd present the opening statement, and
then you may have access to all three of us.
Thanks again, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Duncan,
Members of the Subcommittee. We are very grateful for the
opportunity to come before you today and testify about this
important subject, congestion and mobility issues generally. I
can't tell you how delighted I am to be accompanied by our
Federal Highway Administrator, Rick Capka, and our Federal
Transit Administrator, Jim Simpson.
Last May, the Department of Transportation announced a new
effort to respond to the growing crisis of congestion in our
transportation system, the Secretary's National Strategy to
Reduce Congestion on America's Transportation Network, which we
often refer to as the Congestion Initiative.
The President underscored the importance of this effort in
this year's State of the Union policy initiatives in which he
directed DOT to work with the States and the cities to utilize
new approaches to reduce traffic congestion, save fuel, shorten
commute times. This year's Economic Report of the President
further amplified the importance of the issue with an entire
chapter--the first time in the history of the republic--
dedicated to transportation and energy.
Protecting the public interest requires policymakers and
lawmakers to consider seriously the fundamental causes of the
congestion crisis and to enact policy reforms that respond
directly to those causes. The Congestion Initiative reflects
the Bush Administration's commitment to keeping our Nation
moving.
Let me talk for a moment about the real costs of
congestion. Transportation system congestion is an enormous
drag on our economic prosperity and way of life, as the opening
statements we have heard already this morning have made clear.
Transportation delay and unreliability costs America, we think,
an estimated $200 billion a year and have begun to chip away at
one of our Nation's most important economic assets: an
efficient transportation system that allows businesses freedom
of location and the ability to quickly reach customers across
the Nation and around the world.
Congestion also imposes substantial costs on our Nation's
families. We don't often think about this sufficiently, Mr.
Chairman. Congestion forces parents to miss events with their
children, limits the time that friends and families can spend
together, and reduces opportunities for civic participation.
While difficult to quantify, these social costs of traffic
congestion are enormous and they are growing.
America isn't alone in this experience. I represented
Secretary Peters at an important meeting of transport ministers
from around the world last week in Sofia, Bulgaria. The entire
two-day meeting was devoted to the single topic of
transportation congestion. A great many countries, in addition
to the United States, are taking aggressive steps to combat
this problem, which they all believe has the potential to
compromise economic growth significantly.
The Department's Congestion Initiative is founded on two
key premises: first, we do not have to accept growing
transportation congestion as a permanent feature of our
national life; second, chronic congestion is the result of poor
policy choices, a failure to distinguish between solutions that
are effective and those that are not. The Congestion Initiative
includes a broad range of activities, not all of which I will
discuss today. In the short time that I have, I would like to
focus on the Department's Urban Partnership program, which is
arguably the most critical component of the entire Initiative.
Within that program, the Department plans to sign Urban
Partnership Agreements with up to 5 metropolitan areas that
agree to implement comprehensive congestion-reducing strategies
that include congestion pricing, enhanced transit services, and
increased emphasis on telecommuting and flex scheduling, as
well as the deployment of advanced technology. In exchange for
their policy commitments, the Department will support its urban
partners with financial resources, using current budget
authority, as well as regulatory flexibility and expertise.
The Department received applications from 27 metropolitan
areas, from which we have just short-listed 9 preliminary urban
partners. We will soon enter into negotiations with all of them
regarding the specifics of their proposals, following which we
will select up to 5 final partners. This targeting of
discretionary grant funding in support of urban partners will
allow the Department to strategically and intermodally focus
its scarce discretionary dollars toward national priority, the
national priority of congestion reduction.
In closing, let me just commend the Subcommittee for
holding today's hearing. We all share enormous responsibility
for ensuring that future generations can experience the freedom
of an efficient and productive transportation system. It is
important for Americans to understand that congestion is not an
insurmountable problem, but that solutions will require a
smarter approach to capacity expansion, as well as improving
the productivity of existing transportation assets.
Thanks again for inviting us, and Administrators Capka,
Simpson, and I all look forward to your questions.
Mr. Baird. Good. I appreciate that, Mr. Administrator.
Thank you for your comments. We want to commend the
Administration for recognizing the importance of the congestion
issue. I have a few questions and then I will yield to my
friend, Mr. Duncan.
One of the questions I have as I look at our whole
transportation strategy, which sometimes I think it is over-
complimentary to refer to it as a strategy. No comment on you
folks per se, but all of us, we seem to approach things post-
hoc and piecemeal. By post-hoc I mean we wait until the
development or the new construction or whatever has come into
place and then our constituents come and say, gosh, development
has exceeded capacity, we need you to scramble post-hoc to get
the money; and even as we are chasing the money to meet the
already excessive demand, the new development is going on,
which will chase us on the next transportation version.
The second thing I see is for me a question of fungibility.
In other words, if the real issue is getting freight and people
to and from their workplace, our transportation dollars tend to
be dedicated towards just putting more asphalt or bridges or
whatever the remedy is.
I sometimes wonder, if we spent that money differently,
could we actually address the problem more efficiently, and I
will share with you what one right thinker suggested to me. He
said he if we spent money on improving our urban schools, we
could substantially reduce congestion in the outlying areas,
and the reason was, apparently, if you ask people, why did you
move from the inner city to the suburban area, oftentimes the
answer is schools; and the premise being if you had a better
school in the inner city, people wouldn't have to live so far
away to get to the schools. So they move outside so their kids
can go to better schools, and then they drive a long way into
work.
So could you address those two issues, the issue of sort we
are always swinging late, to use a baseball metaphor, but,
secondly, fungibility? Could we spend our dollars or our
resources in a more effective way than just laying down
asphalt, putting up bridges?
Mr. Shane. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. I don't think
any of us disagree that we could be doing things smarter. The
idea of comprehensive planning, looking at all sectors that
affect the transportation problems, the transportation
equation, it is something you really can't quarrel with. I
think, within the Department of Transportation, we are
necessarily slaves to the appropriations process and to the way
in which our programs are defined.
We have limited resources within the Department of
Transportation and they are specifically focused on
infrastructure. The Congestion Initiative is an attempt, within
the scope of what is available to the Transportation Department
to do, to try to use that money in a smarter way, and that is
why the urban partnerships that we are engendering right now
are being graded on their ability to look across the board at
smart solutions; not just more asphalt, as you say, but the use
of technology, the use of flex scheduling for our workforce, a
variety of approaches which go beyond the traditional
transportation solutions and address the problem of congestion
in a more holistic and societal way. But there are real
limitations in that within, as you know, the transportation
programs, so perhaps more intergovernmental interagency
coordination with respect to transportation is something we
should be focused on to a greater extent.
Mr. Baird. I appreciate that and understand well the
limitations. I guess I would just invite you folks to feel free
to share with us--we always refer to thinking outside the box;
I think I would say think outside the freeway a little bit--if
you feel there are options to be more efficient. The goal is to
get goods and services and people to and from where they need
to be in the most efficient way, and there may be a lot of ways
to do that.
And if there are better ways to do it but your hands are
tied, I would appreciate the feedback about we look at some of
those alternatives, not only for the issue of congestion, but
congestions directly related to consumption of our fossil
fuels, which affects our foreign policy, which affects our
environment, etc., etc. So anything we can do to not just focus
on what our own stovepipe authorization or appropriation is,
but on what is the most effective way to actually achieve the
goal would be most welcome.
With that, I would yield five minutes to my friend and
colleague, Mr. Duncan, the Ranking Member.
Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, I want to commend all three of you because,
while we talk about these problems here, it is pretty clear, as
I travel to other countries and read about what is going on in
other countries, that we have by far the best transportation
system in the world; it is just that you always need to be
trying to improve and get better, and we do have some of these
problems that we definitely need some work on.
Mr. Shane, in the aviation sector they always say that
roughly 70 percent of the delays are caused by weather. What
percentage of the delays on the highways are caused by weather,
accidents, work zones, things that are at least partially or
totally out of your control?
Mr. Shane. Thanks for the question. It is an excellent
question. We think that what we characterize as non-recurrent
delays attributable to accidents, incidents, weather, the like,
represent something like 60 percent of the delays that we are
dealing with today. So, therefore, we actually are focused to a
great extent on trying to address some of those. Better
incident management produce enormous dividends.
Federal Highway Administration has a really forward-looking
program on weather as it affects our surface transportation
system, something that is not recognized enough. We are doing
that in close concert with NOAA and really delivering
tremendous amounts of better information to communities around
the Country so that they can manage their resources better. But
this is a very important part of the congestion problem, no
doubt.
Mr. Duncan. I understand that this urban partnership that
you are talking about you have narrowed down from, now, I
think, 27 cities to 9 cities, and you are going to narrow it
down to 5 more, is that correct?
Mr. Shane. That is correct, yes, sir.
Mr. Duncan. And the plan is that you are going to spend
approximately $1.1 billion on that? That is the figure I have.
I just figured how that money was going to be spent. How is it
primarily going to be spent, is that going to be up more to the
Department or is that going to be up more to the local cities,
and are they going to submit proposals on what things they want
to try, or how is that going to work?
Mr. Shane. Yes, Congressman Duncan. The applications came
in pursuant to our request for applications. We will end up
with, we hope, 5 final urban partners. The funds that are
dispersed to them will be dispersed pursuant to current
statutory authority, pursuant to the programs that are
currently available to us, targeted to initiatives which fit
within the framework established by statute by emphasizing
congestion relief through a variety of different tools.
I think the $1.1 billion--I will ask Rick Capka to talk to
this a little bit, as well as Administrator Simpson--that is
money that would be available to the States in any event. We
are simply attempting, again, to use these programs in a
smarter way. The President's budget for fiscal year 2008
includes--or, I am sorry, is it 2007?--2008, forgive me,
includes $175 million of found money, we think, money that had
been earmarked for other purposes but not spent, such that we
actually can increase the amount of money that would otherwise
have been available for this purpose. But the rest of the money
is money that would have been received by the States in any
event, but, Administrator Capka, perhaps you want to supplement
that answer.
Mr. Capka. Thank you, sir.
Ranking Member Duncan, that is a great observation, a great
question, and as Mr. Shane said, the Urban Partnership
Agreement aspect to the Congestion Initiative is right there at
the center. In addition to the funds that Mr. Shane talked
about, we have discretionary funds in the Federal highway. With
the 2007 appropriations process, we were given discretion that
we did not have before, so it is another $300 million that we
have to work with within Federal highways.
Of course, as Mr. Shane said, those dollars will first meet
the statutory requirement, as they have to do, and will support
the programs under which those programs were authorized and
appropriated, but we will apply those to wherever they can fit
best within these urban partnerships as another criteria that
we would include in the process there.
Mr. Duncan. Mr. Simpson?
Mr. Simpson. Yes. I guess traditionally, in the past, the
DOT was pretty much stovepipe. Highways did their thing;
transit did their thing. We have got this slogan: one DOT. So,
strategically, together, we are looking at where we can best--
highway and transit and other modes--come together to have a
synergistic relationship with our stakeholders, and a lot of
that is from the implementation of SAFETEA-LU.
SAFETEA-LU said to us very early, with the MPOs and
planning, we are not just going to look at building another
highway; what is the problem in the corridor and is it best
served with transit or is it best served with highway. Also,
the flex funding that we have, the CMAC funding that allows
funds to be flex and the STIP funding over to transit. So we
are working as a unified, cohesive one DOT in order to get this
done within the statute.
Mr. Duncan. Well, I want to give these others a chance to
ask some questions, but let me just ask all three of you what
is the initiative or what do you see for the near future that
you are the most optimistic about? What proposals are out
there, a proposal that you have seen that you think is going to
make the most improvement in relieving some of this congestion,
increasing mobility? What are you the most hopeful about?
Mr. Shane. I will take a crack at it and then we will ask
our----
Mr. Duncan. What is the best idea that you have seen
recently?
Mr. Shane. To my mind--and I am not sure we all have the
same answer, but my answer is pricing strategies are probably
the most important near-term fix we can deploy. With the advent
of electronic tolling, which really reduces--and not just by
virtue of not having to stop at a tollbooth makes a big
difference, but being able to calibrate price and keeping with
demand, really keying the cost of using the facility to the
amount of congestion that is on the facility.
Not just in the United States, but around the world, this
is probably the most important advance, I would say, in
transportation planning that we have seen. Not without
controversy, to be sure--we are all aware of that--but we see
wherever this pricing strategy has been used as a new tool for
congestion management, in addition, of course, to raising
revenue, the public embraces it, notwithstanding the fact that
we know all of the mousetraps that a pricing strategy may pose
to segments of the community. Nevertheless, we see broad
support for pricing strategies in those communities which have
actually adopted them because of the results that they deliver.
So that would be my first answer, but, Administrator
Simpson, perhaps you have an answer.
Mr. Simpson. Congressman, some project that I am really
familiar with from my hometown in New York City, just for a
moment, back in 1985 I ran a trucking company and I would send
out about 100 workers a day and maybe 15 to 20 trucks from
Staten Island, New York, which, in the most recent U.S. News
and World Report is the number one community in the Country
with gridlock. So that is where my corporate headquarters was.
We would pay these 100 workers on an hourly basis, and from
my depot it was 15 miles to the center of Manhattan on one
interstate, Interstate 278, which, by the way, has not expanded
since the early 1960s. It would take our drivers 45 minutes,
and with traffic at the time, at the most, an hour each way,
from depot to job site--let's call it the Empire State
Building--and back to the depot.
Three years ago and today it is taking over two hours each
way. So these high-paid workers at a fully loaded cost of $25
to $30 an hour, with a $100,000 truck, you can do the math.
They are spending four hours in the truck, totally
unproductive, for eight hours work. So that is a 50 percent
waste in productivity. These are real dollars.
Now, New York has been very bold, so they--let me first
start by saying the Department has been going all over the
Country--this is not a static thing, this is a dynamic thing.
The Department has been going all over the Country talking
about these solutions like this urban partnership. New York is
really bold. What they are proposing now, which is going to
take some legislation, but almost everybody is on board, to
have an access fee, similar to London, south of 86th Street to
Lower Manhattan to free up maybe 5 or 10 percent of the traffic
so that the goods and services.
And by the way, those trucks that are traveling to
Manhattan every day, people on Express Buses, which is a
misnomer, stuck in the same traffic two hours each way, so the
Express Buses are not the express buses. We have this limited
capacity. So New York has got this bold initiative, which
includes a pricing initiative. There will be a transit
component and maybe a highway component to it.
So we are looking to see how we can take our resources--our
financial resources, our technological resources--and help New
York with that to break this gridlock. And the beauty of this
program is whatever we invest in now, Mayor Bloomberg said that
this congestion pricing will throw off about $300 million a
year to finance such things as a $6 billion or $7 billion 2nd
Avenue subway, more Express Bus service, and all those things
so the commuters and everybody else can get to work in a lot
less time. That is the real problem, and that problem plays
itself out, maybe not to that magnitude, but it plays itself
out in probably 50 to 60 cities around the Country day in and
day out.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you.
Administrator Capka?
Mr. Capka. Sir, that was a great question you asked, and I
think one of the things that excites me about the Congestion
Initiative is not just one piece that makes progress for us,
and I would like to kind of take an example. I think you have
heard the pricing piece, but there are a lot of efficiencies
and innovation, and the program itself is designed to stimulate
innovation; not prescribe steps that need to be taken, but
really reach out and tap the creativity that is there.
In our Highways for Life program--you had asked a question
about non-recurring congestion and the impact, and Mr. Shane
mentioned it takes up about 60 percent of the congestion. Our
Highways for Life program reaches out and looks for new
construction techniques to minimize the work zone exposure
time; get things in and out very quickly and have them last
longer.
You have probably seen images of bridges being floated
down, fully complete, on a barge, raised and put into position
overnight so that the driving public did not have to go through
the inconvenience and congestion associated with reconstruction
onsite. These are examples that are occurring across the Nation
right now, and we are trying to, rather than have them the ad
hoc examples of excellence, to make them mainstream, and the
Congestion Initiative is focusing on that side of the equation
as well.
Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you very much. Very interesting
answers.
Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Mr. Baird. The gentleman from California, Mr. McNerney, is
recognized for five minutes.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was definitely
intrigued by some of the discussion so far. In fact, the
Chairman's comment about schools being better funded in the
urban areas might actually have some impact. I have also
noticed that in our region school buses aren't funded, so a lot
of parents are dropping their kids off, and that causes a lot
of early morning and late afternoon congestion.
But in terms of Federal actions, you are talking about
advanced planning being important, regional transportation
authorities, things like flex schedules and telecommuting. How
can we, at the Federal level, help encourage those kinds of
behaviors and regional transportation authorities to do the
kind of work that is needed for future planning in congested
areas?
Mr. Shane. Thanks. We think the answer is to create
incentives through programs like the urban partnership program,
in other words, provide a reason why local planning
organizations and State transportation departments need to
think more aggressively about how to implement teleworking, for
example, or encourage teleworking among businesses throughout
the region.
The Urban Partnership Agreements program is designed by
rewarding innovative applications to stimulate that sort of
thinking, and we think that it is in fact already doing that. I
am not suggesting there isn't an awful lot of creativity
already there, but strong Federal leadership, the use of the
bully pulpit and the use of our programs, to the extent that
they make it possible, to encourage some of this innovation are
probably the ways to go.
Mr. McNerney. Well, in the Bay Area, which is my home area,
we had an incident lately where a crash took down one of the
highways, and the Caltrans had that replaced within about a
month, and, boy, I would like to see some way that the Federal
Government could encourage that sort of aggressive and
efficient repair or planning that could get things done.
You also mentioned Bulgaria, which was interesting, because
in Eastern Europe I know they don't have as many cars as we do,
but they are already experiencing congestion? Is that because
their infrastructure is less capable than ours, or what is the
scenario going on over there?
Mr. Shane. So many countries in Eastern Europe,
particularly those that have recently joined the European
Union, are experiencing unprecedented economic growth and,
predictably, that is producing more real personal income, more
vehicles on the roads, just as is the case in developed
economies like ours. That increase in vehicular use and traffic
is far outstripping the pace at which they are able to increase
their infrastructure.
But the meeting was in Bulgaria not because of a unique
congestion problem there, but because it just happened to be
the venue for a global meeting. We had ministers of transport
from around the world basically telling exactly the same story;
not just in their urban areas, but across all segments of their
societies.
Mr. McNerney. I have one other comment. You were talking
about congestion pricing. That sounds a little bit like a tax.
How does that work? You said that it is acceptable to the
population. How do they react to that sort of thing? Does it
cause more problems by pricing? How does it work?
Mr. Shane. Well, it can work in a variety of different
ways. There are cities in other countries where they have
established cordoned pricing, something that New York is
beginning to think about now. Administrator Simpson was talking
about Mayor Bloomberg's thinking on this front. You put a
charge in place that you get charged if you want to drive your
car into the inner city everyday, and that charge is at a
sufficient level, maybe what economists would call a market
clearing price, that it actually does drive an awful lot of
traffic out of cars, personal vehicles, and onto public
transportation. And if you can just reduce the vehicular use by
even 5 to 10 percent, you make a tremendous amount of
difference in the flow of traffic.
We experience this in Washington every August, when we have
a number of us go on vacation. Well, the actual reduction in
vehicular use during August in Washington is probably not more
than 5 or 10 percent, but it is a different world during that
month just because of that small reduction. So cordon pricing
is one approach to it.
But just variable tolls on roadways used for commuting
purposes area a way of ensuring that a lot of discretionary
traffic, traffic that wouldn't have to be there during rush
hour, chooses a different time of day. That is the whole idea.
I mean, congestion pricing is precisely what it is, it is meant
to reduce the peak load on our assets such that they have a
much longer and more efficient life.
With electronic tolling, of course, it is very easy to vary
the level of the toll during the day, and we have seen a lot of
successful examples of that, particularly in California.
Mr. McNerney. Well, I understand in ancient Rome they
didn't let certain vehicles on the road during the day; they
had to use the roads at night. So maybe that is sort of an
approach that would be useful too.
Mr. Shane. I think we are doing that in many places. Modern
Rome, Administrator Simpson said, is still doing that.
But there is no question but that rules of that kind can
make a tremendous amount of difference consistent with, of
course, the need for people and businesses to use those roads.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Baird. Thank you.
Mr. Coble.
Mr. Coble. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good to have you all with us this morning, gentlemen.
Mr. Capka, let me ask you this question. The primary focus
of the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program seems to
be improving air quality, as opposed to relieving congestion.
But would not relieving congestion inevitably result in air
quality improvement?
Mr. Capka. Sir, that is an accurate observation. In fact,
the CMAC program that you referred to does focus on air
quality. In fact, the application of the program is designed to
work in areas where the air quality has not reached standard.
But the C in the CMAC program is for congestion mitigation, and
in the program, as it has worked over, oh, a number of years,
73 percent of the projects--and these are State discretionary
projects--focus or at least have an impact on congestion. So
there is a direct application of congestion mitigation
associated with the program.
I will say that it is a State administered program and the
States set up the priorities for it. For our Federal Congestion
Initiative, we don't have the discretion to work those dollars
as effectively as some of the other discretionary programs we
do have.
Mr. Coble. I thank you. Not unlike most every district,
probably, congestion is a growing issue. In my district there
are two major interstates, I-85 and I-40, that are vital
corridors. Furthermore, there is a third project, I-73/74,
which has work progressing, which will add another thoroughfare
to hopefully reduce growing demand. I also believe it is
important that we continue to promote mass transit--as I
suspect you all do--as a way to reduce congestion and offer
commuters an alternative.
My question is this. In light of these efforts, how do you
all balance funding to add additional capacity on existing
infrastructure, on the one hand, as opposed to promoting
alternatives to reduce congestion?
Mr. Capka. Sir, we have encouraged States and local
planners to take a holistic view of transportation
requirements, and as was suggested earlier, early in the
planning process is where these kinds of balancing decisions
are taken. As Mr. Simpson mentioned earlier, we are trying to
set the example with our Congestion Initiative to show how all
modes of transportation can come together and seek a balance in
terms of how we move freight or how we move people from point A
to point B. So a major foundation piece in the Congestion
Initiative is to ensure that we are looking across all modes of
transportation.
Mr. Simpson. If I could add on, Congressman.
Mr. Coble. Sure.
Mr. Simpson. Secretary Peters just had an executive one-day
planning conference to come up with 21st century solutions to
our problems today, and one of the questions was how do we
increase capacity with existing infrastructure, because we
don't have a blank check. So she challenged everybody in their
mode to go back and to turn research upside down and do all
those other things.
On the transit side, we are doing a lot and it has been an
ongoing thing. A perfect example is rather than have a new--
let's say you need more capacity on the Metro. Rather than
putting in a new line, you elongate the stations so that they
could accommodate more cars.
Secondly, technology has really done a lot for us not only
in rail, but also in bus. But if you look on the rail side,
with the signaling technology today, you can run trains closer
together so you can get more throughput in the same fashion.
Those are just two examples. So we have been hammering away
at that in all the modes on transit and we have been working
with the stakeholders, and trying to squeeze more capacity out
of existing infrastructure is the number one priority at the
Department.
Mr. Coble. I thank you.
Mr. Shane, do you want to add anything to that?
Mr. Shane. No, sir.
Mr. Coble. All right. Thank you.
Yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Baird. I thank the gentleman.
Elijah?
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary Shane, can you give us an update on the state of
the Highway Trust Fund?
Mr. Shane. I would like to defer to our Federal Highway
Administrator, who is in charge of writing the checks out of
the Highway Trust Fund and probably can give you a much more
relevant answer.
Mr. Cummings. That is fine.
Mr. Capka. Congressman Cummings, that is one of the major
topics we have going on between the Administration and the
Committee here, is the status of the Trust Fund. As you know,
during SAFETEA-LU, in order to reach the $286.4 billion size of
the bill, we had to spend down the balance in the Trust Fund,
so we consciously took a look at the Trust Fund and decided
that at the end of 2009 we would not have an extra dollar in
the Trust Fund.
Because we are spending down the Trust Fund, it is clear
that revenues are not keeping up with the current level of
expenditure. At the end of 2009, we will have to take a look at
how to restructure and re-look at the financing of highways. We
may or may not get to the complete end of 2009 before we have a
problem, and we are looking at that very carefully. In our
budget submission for 2008, we have made some recommendations
in order to mitigate the potential that the Trust Fund would
not be able to support full SAFETEA-LU funding before the end
of the SAFETEA-LU period.
Mr. Cummings. Well, in the longer term, do you believe that
the gas tax can or will continue to be the primary source of
transportation funding at the Federal and State level? If so,
why? And, if not, what funding mechanisms do you believe are
most likely to be able to supplement the gas tax?
Mr. Capka. Looking into the future, the interesting thing
about the gas tax from the highway infrastructure perspective,
the more gas we burn, the better for revenues coming into the
Trust Fund. It is counter to national programs that we have,
national priorities with respect to dependency on foreign oil,
with respect to the greenhouse effect and the carbon loading.
We certainly don't want to encourage the continued use of
fossil-based fuels.
So I would say, looking into the future, we have got to
find ways to weaning ourselves off of the gas tax and looking
to something perhaps like vehicle miles traveled, as is being
experimented with in a couple of States, Oregon being one,
where vehicles are in this pilot program. They are not charged
gas tax when they fill up at the fuel pump; they are charged
for the miles they have traveled and the periods they have
traveled, much like a taxi meter rolling up a taxi fare.
I think there are innovations like this with the technology
that is emerging, with our sense that we are going to have to
use some technique to help also throttle demand on our highways
to work congestion, that these types of solutions are the ones
we need to be experimenting with today, looking at them very
carefully, and then working them into our long-range plan for
the funding of the highway system.
Mr. Cummings. Well, what, if any, steps is the
Administration taking in its Congestion Initiative to promote
improved land use planning and to create the kinds of
communities that can shift people from cars to other modes of
transportation?
Any of you.
Mr. Simpson. Congressman, on the transit side, you know,
our discretionary program, which is for new fixed guideway
systems like rail--and Baltimore has plenty of rails, so you
understand that discretionary program--one of the things that
we look at in statute and we pay very close attention to is the
development around stations. In order to have sustainability,
you need to have the right density. So we look for cities in
area--while it is a local decision--if they are going to get
funded with the Federal dollar, to make sure that they have
good land use patterns that are supportive to transit
investment.
We are a big supporter of transit-oriented development and
we have got, additionally, HUD and FTA have a MOU, and we just
completed a report and sent, I believe, to this Committee
talking about not only housing around transit, but affordable
housing, as well; that the people that need transit the most
have to be able to live near where transit is and have to be
able to afford to live so they can access transit and have
mobility.
Mr. Cummings. All right, thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. DeFazio. [Presiding] I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Brown.
Mr. Brown. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank the gentlemen for coming and giving us all this
good information. My question is to the Under Secretary. We
have heard a lot about the corridors of the future. Can you
tell us a little bit more about how the Department is defining
the corridors? Would it be on a case by case basis based upon
the application submitted to the Department or based on need.
How would that be determined?
Mr. Shane. Thanks, Congressman Brown. Yes, we received 38
proposals under the Corridors for the Future component of the
Congestion Initiative. We, so far, selected 14 of them last
February. We are going to winnow that list down--we have been
working on that for quite some time--to the point where we are
going to finally have five that will be chosen by the middle of
the summer, we expect.
Clearly, what we are attempting to do in the Corridors for
the Future program is reward comprehensive planning that is
designed to link together various regions of the Country in a
productive transportation thoroughfare that will benefit not
just one community, or even a group of communities, but a
number of States, really enhancing the flow of commerce and
trade in a much more effective way.
Mr. Brown. And you will be able to identify those by the
summer, those five?
Mr. Shane. By mid-summer, I think.
If you have anything to add, Rick.
Mr. Brown. And what will be the next step after the
identification?
Mr. Capka. Sir, the selections will be made mid-summer. At
that point an agreement will be set up with the sponsors for
the Corridors of the Future, setting up the objectives and
milestone deliverables, those sorts of things, and we will work
then very carefully with them to provide the support resources
that we have available in that program.
Mr. Brown. I noted that there has been a lot of pressure on
the Department of Transportation, I guess, since 1954, when
they started the interstate system, and not much has been done
about enhancing it since then other than maybe expanding the
number of lanes, and that sort of thing. I think the Corridors
of the Future is certainly a great innovative thing to look at
doing some new planning based upon the population shift.
I know down in my region--I represent South Carolina, which
is a tourist destination, but we also have a port, which is a
commerce destination, too, and I know that we have one
interstate connecting Charleston. We don't have any interstates
connecting Myrtle Beach, which has 14 million visitors a year
coming. So you can imagine the congestion we have during the
summer months. But I would hope that those criteria would be
placed upon whatever selection process you might have so that
those type situations would be included.
I know, Mr. Under Secretary, we talked about dealing with
the shortfall of the Trust Fund, and I know that your idea
about using miles driven, rather than gasoline purchased,
because of the increase of the efficiency now of the new
automobiles and constraints placed upon the carbon emissions,
this sort of thing. How would you go about collecting miles
driven? How would a user be able to tell you that?
Mr. Shane. There are a number of technologies, Congressman,
that are being experimented with right now, not the least of
which is the use of GPS. You simply have a transponder on a car
and it is possible to monitor the movements of the vehicle.
There are ways of protecting the privacy of the owner and so
forth, which obviously have to be part of the program, but
which end up being metered automatically and just producing an
invoice at the end of every month which goes out and is paid.
That is one way of doing it. Meters in cars which could be
automatically read would be another way of doing it.
There is no question that there are technologies around,
and it is something that we are not experimenting with in the
United States alone. I know The Netherlands is actually
thinking about--and I just learned this last week--a national
program for metering vehicle use and charging for that use by
the kilometer, rather than a fuel tax.
The fuel tax, as my colleague said eloquently, is a way of
penalizing ourselves. If we increase the fuel tax, we are, in
effect, penalizing ourselves for having achieved fuel economy
objectives that we all share and that we are trying to make
tougher and tougher over time. There is a real conflict in the
effort to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and our reliance
on those very same fuels as a source of funding for our
transportation infrastructure, and that is what we are trying
to de-link.
Mr. Brown. How do you plan to fund the Corridors of the
Future?
Mr. Shane. Out of existing Highway Administration funding.
Rick, you can be more specific than I on specifically where
that money is coming from.
Mr. Capka. We do have some discretionary dollars that have
been made available to us this year. In our 2008 budget
submission we have asked for $175 million to be reprogrammed
from ISTEA era, 10 year old projects that have been inactive
with unobligated balances, that would also be made available to
support these programs.
Mr. Brown. Very good. Thank you very much.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Lipinski?
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for your testimony here today. In Chicago land,
where my district lies, is one of the most congested regions in
the Country, and my constituents and millions of others in
Northeastern Illinois deal with this everyday. Now, much has
been done to provide resources to State and local governments,
but I think that we definitely need to do more. First and
foremost, we need to continue to enhance investments in surface
transportation capacity expansion projects.
One of the most important in the Chicago region is CREATE,
the rail modernization program, which would do a tremendous
amount to help move freight in and out and through Chicago;
help with the commuter rail, Amtrak lines; but also help to
clear up congestion on roads by building underpasses,
overpasses, you know, grades separations.
So I think there is no question that we need to continue to
do more and provide more funding for projects like this, but in
the short term ITS can make a real difference in fighting
congestion through operational improvements and demand
management. We really have the technology available--it is
growing more and more everyday--to help people to get traffic
information, make it easier, try to make the commutes easier
for them. This is another area, though, where I think that we
can do more for State and local governments.
Last year I met with former Secretary Mineta, and we talked
about congestion in Chicago land and about the Congestion
Initiative. We had a very productive discussion at that time.
Today I just want to ask you in specific terms, with
particular emphasis on any ITS applications, how can the
Initiative help reduce congestion in the Chicago area.
Mr. Shane. Thanks very much, Congressman. Let me just,
first of all, say that at the Department of Transportation we
think CREATE is one of the most important projects that the
Country needs to focus on. It is not just of significance to
Chicago, as you know, but given Chicago's role in the national
freight movement system, CREATE has a tremendous amount of
potential benefit to the Country at large. So we look forward
to seeing further progress on CREATE.
To your specific question about ITS, we are, through the
Urban Partnership Agreements component of our Congestion
Initiative, trying to encourage further deployment of ITS
solutions, intelligent transportation system solutions, that
really deploy technology for the benefit of reducing congestion
in ways that are probably the most cost-effectively means we
have of reducing the load on our existing transportation
assets.
This is, again, without quarreling with the need to
continue to expand capacity. That is, of course, the central
point of our transportation programs. Nevertheless, we know
that it takes time to do that and, therefore, the efficiencies
that can be gained by the use of intelligent technologies--and
they are available and on the shelf today, as we all know; what
they need is greater ubiquity--the use of those technologies
have huge potential for helping to address some of the problems
that we have both in our urban and rural areas.
Administrator Simpson would like to supplement that.
Mr. Simpson. Congressman, I have been out to Chicago a
couple of times, meeting with Frank Kruesi, who I believe is no
longer with the CTA, and also met with Senator Durbin, and
Chicago is a great city, and the whole area, in terms of their
ridership. Chicago area is actually number two in the Country
for transit ridership; you are at about 12 percent. New York is
25 and Chicago is number two.
But you are also number three in the Country for
congestion. So there is obviously a need to make some change,
so I would encourage you to work with the local folks to take a
look at what is happening in New York, because maybe if that
passes, to try to implement some sort of a model like New York.
But with respect to the rail mod money, it has been doing a
really good job for the Chicago Transit Authority. They are
upgrading their signalization, their tracks. It is a very old
system, as we know, but it seems like they are doing a great
job and they are trying to get, I know, a great amount of
needs, and they are looking at alternative sources for transit
funding. The New York model today will spin off hundreds of
millions of dollars that can go to transit projects, so I think
that the folks in Chicago, if they take a look at what may be
happening in New York, but what certainly has happened in
London, it might help alleviate some of the extra pressure.
Mr. Capka. Sir, also from kind of a low tech, but high tech
with respect to ITS, is providing decision-quality information
to drivers; when you should get out on the road or where there
is congestion, when to avoid. The 511 system is a dial-up
system that links a driver up with the latest traffic
information, where you can determine where there are
construction problems, an incident that has occurred, or just
the regular congestion that allows the driver to make some
smart decisions before going out on the road. Something like
that can do an awful lot to address congestion problems,
particularly in Illinois.
Mr. Lipinski. Well, I thank you for your responses, and I
want to also follow up and agree with Mr. Simpson that transit
is very critical, and with the great needs right now that we
face in Chicago, but certainly in other places around the
Country, I think that is another place where we need to have a
greater Federal commitment, because it does a great job of
reducing congestion. Cutting down pollution is to support
transit.
Thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you.
Representative Reichert.
Mr. Reichert. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have just one quick
question, and if it has been asked already, I will get it over
the telephone later, so I apologize. I was reading through the
testimony and noticed that you want to establish a competitive
process for designing up to five multi-State Corridors of the
Future. Has that process been started and have the five
corridors been identified, or where are we in that process?
Mr. Shane. Thanks, Congressman. Yes, we actually did talk
about that earlier. We are well into the process. We received
38 proposals back in February. We are winnowing those down to a
list of 5, which will be announced in the middle of the summer
sometime.
Mr. Reichert. Do you happen to know if the Seattle area is
one of the 38 that has applied?
Mr. Shane. I-5, Administrator Capka tells me, was certainly
one of the corridors that was proposed, yes, indeed.
Mr. Reichert. Okay, thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you. I want to apologize for being late.
Sometimes there are imperatives that relate to one's district,
and we had a meeting with our former colleague, Mr. Portman,
and OMB to discuss an issue of extraordinary concern to my
district, so I was unavoidably detained.
I would like to go to Mr. Shane's testimony. I guess maybe
I live in a little different world or hear from different
folks, but when I read today a growing course of economists,
academics, transportation planners arguing that fundamental
mis-pricing of highway travel must be addressed to tackle the
congestion problem in a sustainable way, and prior to that you
say there are there basic mechanisms available: one, rationing;
two, formally allocating access rights to use the network at
various times, as is done in the rail and aviation sectors; or
three, using prices, as we do with most other goods and
services.
I guess the question for Secretary Shane, which I posed to
Mr. Duvall, when he came and waxed eloquent about the
congestion problems, all things we are having, is what about
investment? There is no discussion, except in the context of
the private-public partnerships, about investment.
You might recall the President's own Department of
Transportation, during the consideration of SAFETEA-LU, said we
needed $375 billion to basically keep up. That was their
estimate when we started the discussion. This Committee wanted
to work toward that number, and that just couldn't happen
between Congress and the White House. The President started at
250; we ended up around 280.
But it seems to me, if we are going to say there are ways
to address this, number four might be significantly enhanced
investment at the Federal, State, local, and, yes, even the
private level. But we are talking about rationing and using
prices and the growing chorus of mis-pricing of highway travel.
That is not what I hear from people. They say when are you
going to improve the off-ramp; when are you going to add
another lane; when are you going to give me an alternative.
They are not saying, gee, it is mis-priced. Granted, I come
from the West Coast, and we are not as enamored of tolling as
perhaps some people are here on the East Coast.
So that is sort of the first question. Does investment play
a role here? Does the Administration have a position on
investment? Are you looking at 2009, when the Trust Fund might
be depleted, and do you have any solutions for how we might
fund the existing program in that year?
Then the second question would be sort of on the whole
theory of pricing people off the highways. You use the example
of a doctor and someone going shopping. But what if the doctor
was going shopping? Might the doctor, because of his high
discretionary income, decide, well, he is not on the way to an
emergency at the hospital, so it is not time sensitive in that
way, but he is going to use the HOT lane because he can afford
to?
I mean, I think the thing that is being overlooked here is
people don't choose when they go to work. People don't
necessarily have tremendous discretion over where they live. I
would use Portland, Oregon as an example. The Metro Council
there is enamored of some of these ideas and being pushed by
DOT, until I disabused them of the notion. Middle income, lower
income people can't afford to live in the city; that is a fact.
So they have to live further out. We don't happen to provide
alternatives that go across the city for them to get to work.
Well, I guess they are just out of luck, or maybe they have got
to find a new job, or they are going to pay an extortionate
amount to get to work that they can't afford on their salary.
It seems to me that we are skipping over a whole lot of
issues here, and I wish you would address those, Mr. Shane, the
first being investment and the second being the inequities and
the problems that are potentially created when people don't
have a viable mass transit option and they just happen to work
one place and live another, or it is a single mom who has got
to get their kid to school and get to work and pick the kid up
after school and there is no transit option available for that
and she can't afford 20 bucks to use the HOT lane.
Mr. Shane. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me just say,
in response to the first part of the question, that we are
talking about shades of emphasis here. There is no intention on
the part of the Department of Transportation to de-emphasize
investment.
Mr. DeFazio. Well, we just never hear any talk about it. I
mean, Mr. Duvall was here; he didn't mention it. It seems to me
if you say there are three ways to deal with congestion and
none of them mention enhanced investment----
Mr. Shane. Well, we do talk about enhanced investment. That
was the public-private partnerships part of the Congestion
Initiative. There is not any quarrel with----
Mr. DeFazio. That, again, would be a fraction compared to--
if you have heard all the testimony from the experts, they say
maybe it is a 5 percent solution, public-private partnerships.
Mr. Duvall was here. So let's say it is even a 7 percent
solution. What about the other 93 percent, which requires
State, Federal, and local investment? We need to address those
issues and I see a very unbalanced presentation.
Mr. Shane. What we are emphasizing is what is different in
our proposals today. There is not any quarreling with the
existing program, and I expect that that program will continue
in some form going forward. We did have, I think, a productive
discussion with Congressman Cummings about whether or not an
increased gas tax is necessarily a formula for future success
and tying our infrastructure finance to fuel that we are trying
to reduce the consumption of. There is a fundamental conflict
in our policies in that regard and we have to address that
conflict.
But it is not to gain, say, the notion that more investment
is necessary. We happen to think that there are hundreds of
billions of dollars--that is what people tell us--available in
the private sector, money that is available for transportation
infrastructure and that we should tap. We should do it
intelligently.
I have seen the correspondence from the Committee. I don't
have any quarrel with many of the points that were made in that
correspondence. We do have to calibrate the use of these tools,
but these tools are, nevertheless, available to us as a means
of enhancing the amount of investment that we put into our
infrastructure. And they are not just ideas that are brewing
here.
I mentioned in my testimony that I was overseas last week.
I learned that these are tools that are being embraced, in
fact, far more readily in other countries than they are here.
We just wonder why it is that we are having so much difficulty
marching in the same direction when it seems to be producing so
many successes in other countries.
So I don't want to mislead the Committee. Investment will
continue to be a core objective of all of our programs. We
intend to work with the Committee, and this Subcommittee in
particular, on trying to find intelligent ways of doing that.
What we are trying to do, however, recognizing the extent to
which demand has outstripped our capacity to invest through
traditional means--and that is to say at the Federal level--is
find additional solutions; the use of technology, the use of
pricing strategies, things that are producing real dividends
and addressing congestion in lots of parts of this Country and
other countries which, if we could make more ubiquitous, would
produce enormous dividends in terms of the quality of life and
the productivity of our economy.
Regarding the whole question of inequity, we are mindful of
that and it has certainly been a source of a lot of discussion.
What we do find, however, is that wherever pricing strategies
have been implemented and then a referendum is taken after the
fact or a survey is taken after the fact, we find that the
reaction of the populations to those pricing strategies does
not seem to be a function of income levels.
By and large, these strategies have been broadly embraced
by the people that have been subjected to them. In Stockholm,
for example, they put a pricing scheme in place in order to
calibrate the use of transportation assets for getting to and
from the downtown area. They did it on a temporary basis
because they wanted to see what the reaction would be. They had
a referendum; the referendum was a broad acceptance of the
idea, so that by mid-summer they are going to put it in place
on a permanent basis. They have all levels of income, of
course, in the population of Stockholm.
There is not any effort here to ignore the issues that are
raised by lower income elements of our population. If in fact
that is a problem for our transportation system, for getting
people to and from their jobs, particularly where they have no
discretion, we should address that straight up. It may mean
that we need to find ways of assisting lower income folks in
using a transportation system more efficiently if in fact the
use of that transportation system more efficiently requires a
pricing strategy. We shouldn't be chasing the lowest common
denominator because of a problem that we have with some income
strata in our society. We should address those problems in ways
that respond to those problems, but not sacrifice the
efficiency of our transportation system because of them.
Mr. DeFazio. So the example is Stockholm, where they have a
massive investment in public transit in a region called Europe,
where they are much less dependent upon automobiles and have
totally different land use and development patterns, and
suddenly we are going to apply things that work for the people
of Stockholm to the United States and think that they are going
to work and they will be popular.
You know, maybe I just have too much of a western, U.S.
view of the world, but I really don't see that. And what I find
is, again, a single-minded push here toward private-public
partnerships--if I could, since you raised the issue of not
having a problem with what the Committee has stated, because
have tried to fairly state the potential benefits, small as
they are, of private-public partnerships and the potential
pitfalls, huge as they are, of private-public partnerships,
especially when you are talking about monetizing existing
assets and giving monopoly authority to an entity for up to 100
years to price an asset which is irreplaceable and which you
can't compete with in many cases.
I would note that the last time I think either you were
here or Mr. Duvall was here, we heard that quite soon we would
have a little more balanced presentation on the DOT website
other than the so-called model legislation, which really points
people at the pitfalls and the wrong approach, and it still
isn't posted yet. We heard that was imminent.
I do note that you could find space to post some articles
critical of the Chairman and myself, yet you didn't post a
number of articles that are critical of PPPs. It just seems
like one-sided advocacy here, like we are making transportation
policy out of the Heritage Foundation, and that is not going to
be acceptable to a majority of the people either in the
Congress or the United States of America.
Mr. Shane. There is no question that there is a controversy
about all of this. What I see happening across this Country
and, frankly, around the world is an increasing recognition
that the reliance on government funding for transportation
assets is something that we are approaching the end of; it is
simply not going to be possible to----
Mr. DeFazio. Well, excuse me, but we are only approaching
the end of this because this Administration said no taxes, no
user fees, no bonding, no more money; and we had to drag them
kicking and screaming to a marginal number. That is why. We are
talking about will. It is just like Mitch Daniels saying, gee,
there was no will to raise the tolls, until he entered a
monopoly agreement; then suddenly he had the will to raise the
tolls and now they have absolute discretion to raise the tolls
and no one can touch them, it is in a contract.
So you are saying there is no money out there, but somehow
we can extract money from people through private contract
agreements, which include a profit motive, but we can't just
get a cost-based--which is without a profit motive--investment
by the Federal Government. It goes to will at some point. I
know the will isn't downtown. Whether the will is uptown here,
at the Congress, we will see in two years.
But you can't say there isn't a capability of raising more
funds in the United States of America to invest in transit and
roads, and I look at, and a number of people have mentioned,
Washington State. Washington State just raised the gas tax.
They are talking about now raising title fees. My State raised
title and other fees. People are willing to accept dedicated
taxes when they see a real benefit, the benefits to their
transportation and their movement and the economy.
This White House and Administration has been totally
unwilling to discuss that, but you are obsessed over here with
the hundreds of billions of dollars of private money floating
around out there. It might not be quite as much as you think if
you read the most recent articles in The Wall Street Journal
about Macquarie's books, which is starting to look at lot like
Enron's.
Mr. Shane. Well, Macquarie is one of a great many
investment banks that are beginning to look at this new vehicle
for investment.
I predict that no future administration is going to come
out very differently on the issue of public financing of
transportation. We know that the entitlement programs are
simply overwhelming our budget. That will continue to be the
case for a long time. There simply has got to be discipline on
the use of government funds, and that is going to be a fact of
life for every future administration, not just this one.
When in fact there are so many alternative ways of funding
transportation assets which produce a calibration of the use of
those assets that actually makes them more productive, it is
difficult to understand why there is so much controversy about
it.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay, thanks. We will just have to disagree.
As usual, you are in your diplomatic mode here. You know, the
calibration of use means we price modest and middle income and
low income people off the roads, which are taking up public
space, where they have no alternative. I look at this road they
are going to build out here. I don't think Members of Congress
are going to be able to afford the road at 20 bucks a pop, let
alone modest working people So let's go to transit for a
moment, and then I will turn to Mr. Duncan.
The question for Mr. Simpson, since we are talking about
transit does get a minimal little nod here as part of this
solution at the end, but it seems to be totally oriented toward
bus rapid transit, utilizing private, for-profit HOT lanes. Is
that the only vision or are we going to make some progress on
new starts, small starts? Are we going to incorporate the
mandated economic development and land use statutorily mandated
criteria?
Because I notice that you have now included non-statutory
criteria, which happen to support this privatization congestion
management program, and saying, well, if you adopt those, we
will give you more points, but if you did the economic
development or you did the land use that is required by
statute, we can't figure out how to rate that, so we will rate
you up for what we want to do, which isn't authorized by law,
but we won't rate you for the things required by law. Could you
answer that?
Mr. Simpson. Could you redirect the question? I am not sure
of the question.
Mr. DeFazio. Well, the question is when are we going to see
the formulas modified to actually incorporate the statutory
requirements of economic development and land use, and how is
it that you can suddenly add a criteria that isn't statutorily
authorized, which is to support this particular program----
Mr. Simpson. Right. You are talking about the Congestion
Initiative?
Mr. DeFazio.--but you can't get to the economic development
and land use. Why is that?
Mr. Simpson. Well, let's take the congestion piece first
that we are adding to it. That is a sub-component of mobility
and it is clear throughout SAFETEA-LU, at least on the transit
side, that one of the things we are trying to do is free up
congestion.
With respect to economic development and land use, we had a
stand-alone hearing--I don't know, was it a month ago?--and I
promised that the rule would be out by the end of the money,
and I apologize in advance that it is not out yet. But after
our long hearing we went back and had very robust conversation
at the Department, and we are looking for ways to quantify
economic development. We are going to be asking the stakeholder
community and we do, in our project justification, we do look
at land use and we do look at economic development.
But Mr. Chairman, I have to tell you it is very hard--I
have been talking to economists myself; I have been dragging
the folks at DOT. It is very difficult at times to define the
difference between economic development and land use. And when
you are looking at a national program, if we don't build a
transit project, but we build a school instead, but we still
have construction, you know, separate all that out. It is
really a challenging----
Mr. DeFazio. Right. But we did have an economist sit right
there who sketched out ideas for a model, and he did talk about
Transportation System User Benefit and Summit Software as a
really bad box that is being applied to everything that really
distorts the whole system.
Mr. Simpson. Mr. Chairman, I spoke to him--I think that was
David Lewis. Was it David Lewis?
Mr. DeFazio. I----
Mr. Simpson. Okay. Anyway, I spoke to the economist, and he
has been to my facility, to the FTA, and he is welcomed back to
talk about it further. But even with this cost-effectiveness
issue that we talked about before, if a transit project is
going to deliver good benefits, there has to be a mobility
component to it. So, in a convoluted way, this cost-
effectiveness is measuring economic development.
We want to get where the Congress wants us to be, but it is
a huge challenge, and I promise you we are working towards
that.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay, thank you.
Mr. Duncan.
Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have already
asked the questions that I wanted to ask, but I will say that,
Secretary Shane, you are exactly right on the runaway
entitlements in future years. In fact, Dan McFeatters, who is a
columnist for the Scripps Howard newspaper chain, wrote a
couple years ago and said that we are headed for a financial
tsunami shortly after the baby boomers start retiring in large
numbers in 2008, and that is going to cut into every department
and agency in the entire Government.
But what I wanted to get at in this in just a few comments,
I mentioned in my opening statement and then in my questions
that I think the Congestion Initiative and the urban
partnership are good things, and I pointed out that the
congestion is not just confined to our older, what we
traditionally think of as our larger cities, but also many of
the newer, faster growing cities.
I think that is all fine, but I also mentioned my hometown
of Knoxville, which, if you looked at a population book, you
would see, I don't know, it might show 185,000 or something in
that vicinity, and you might think, well, the problems there
couldn't be that great. But what you have, as I said, you can't
tell when you go from the city to the county.
Knox County has about 410,000. Then you have got the really
fast growth in the counties that touch on Knox County. So you
have got close to a million and a half, I think, now in the
SMSA. Then you have got between 9 million and 10 million coming
to the Smokies, and most of those get off the interstate there
at Knoxville. Interstate 75 is the heaviest traveled north-
south interstate in the whole Country, so that is many millions
there going to Florida, going to Atlanta, other places.
You have got Interstate 40, one of the main east-west
routes, running right through Knoxville. Then you have the
heaviest traveled truck route on Interstate 81 coming to within
37 miles of Knoxville. In addition to that, we live within
about 600 miles of over two-thirds of the population.
What I am getting at is this. There are some places like
Knoxville--I have said in here before in other hearings I
generally or many times face much more traffic in Knoxville
than I do here. So there are some places whose traffic problems
far exceed their populations. And I hope you take that into
consideration, because it is just mega-millions there in a
place like Knoxville that you wouldn't expect, and it affects
all three of your departments and agencies. So I just hope you
keep that in mind and take a close look at some of those
places.
Thank you very much for being with us, and I appreciate
your very informative answers to these questions.
Mr. DeFazio. Mr. Hayes.
Mr. Hayes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you for being here. I apologize for being
late to the hearing, but there was an occurrence that I read
about on Saturday and talked to Mr. DeFazio about. As it
relates to congestion, do you all remember the situation in
California where the tanker exploded? Did you read the outcome
on Saturday of what happened there?
The project, if I understand correctly, was scheduled for
50 days. There was a $200,000 bonus for every day that that
deadline was beat. Congestion obviously was huge. The
contractor, using American steel, Mr. Chairman, and the
ingenuity of the marketplace, completed that project in 17
days. So the incentive was the bonus for early completion, as
opposed to punitive liquidated damages.
I don't know as much as I should, but the results are
stunning and very, very positive. What lessons have we learned
from that and are there some things here that we can apply to
future projects to take advantage again of American expertise,
ingenuity, steel, and incentive for performance? Any comments
on that would be appreciated. That was a really uplifting
article.
Mr. Capka. Sir, we are just as excited about the innovation
and creativity that was demonstrated by California Department
of Transportation in the private sector there in Oakland. Some
of the features that were key to that success, first of all,
was everybody was focused on a goal that needed to be
accomplished, the public-private sector, everybody there was
focused on making sure it got done. Secondly, California
Department of Transportation used a contracting technique that
just unleashed the creativity and the innovation of the private
sector. You hit the bonus, $5 million. The winning bid on that
project was $800,000.
Mr. Hayes. Exactly.
Mr. Capka. Because a contractor knew, I can make that
bonus, and he set up an arrangement with the steel supplier to
have those beams ready to go. California Department of
Transportation was calculating that it would take another 30
days, at least, to have the steel onsite, so their expectations
were another month to six weeks longer. The contractor saw that
incentive, probably shared a little bit of that incentive with
the steel fabricator to ensure that the materials showed up
onsite, and they had a winning combination. That is the kind of
example we are trying to export to other parts of the Country
when we see how valuable that is.
Mr. Hayes. And I think they saved $1 million. The next
lowest bid was 6.8, as I recall. But the more I think about it,
it kind of reminds you a little bit of the runway project down
in Atlanta that was completed.
But this, again, Mr. Chairman and Members, is where we need
to be headed as we work to deal with congestion. So get that
word out there.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. DeFazio. Mr. Baird, quickly.
Mr. Baird. Yes. I would just point out, Mr. Capka, we have
spoken before about Buy America. Mr. Hayes cares deeply about
this, as do I. He was only able to get that steel because he
had a steel fabricator stateside. If he had been dependent on a
foreign fabricator who said we don't want to provide it to you,
they would have been out of luck. So we need to keep those
steel fabricators domestic.
Mr. Capka. Sir, that was a great example of solid teamwork
there, I agree with you 100 percent.
Mr. DeFazio. Well, and I certainly would emphasize what Mr.
Baird did. Critical infrastructure materials need to be
domestically produced on not just basic materials but, in my
mind, obviously, hopefully more sophisticated things like
streetcars, which we are trying to pioneer.
I would just, in closing, reflect that we have a dedicated
funding source. We know that there are some problems with that,
but the highway program and transit program, with the exception
of the potential shortfall in 2009, has been funded out of
dedicated revenues; it is not like other programs which are
funded from general funds. The question is can we find an
enhanced revenue stream that will be dedicated to those
purposes, yes or no. If there is absolutely no way to find one,
sure, then we are going to have to cast a broad net for other
alternatives.
But we have discussed a few of the problems that could come
with private-public partnerships and congestion pricing and
some of the inequities and other issues that are raised by
that, but beyond that you have got to remember many of these
assumptions that have gone into Macquarie's perspectives, they
have said they are not going to make the money on increased
efficiency on the Indiana Turnpike; they are going to make it
on toll increases, plain and simple.
So you are going to extract the money from people one way
or another, and you can extract it from them and include a
profit component, or you can do it at cost and serve the
general public, or you can have some combination thereof, and I
am just saying there is no one-sided answer to this problem. It
is a huge problem. The costs of congestion are massive; the
waste of fuel is horrible; the loss of time weighs on many
people's lives and it hurts business and our competitiveness
internationally, and we have got to approach this in a way that
doesn't just offer a simplistic and diversionary answer, but a
comprehensive approach.
I thank you all for your time. We are going to now have two
votes, and as soon as the votes are concluded we will have the
next panel. With that, the Committee is in recess.
Mr. Baker. Mr. Chairman, could I ask him one more question
as we are walking out the door?
Mr. DeFazio. Yes, go right ahead.
Mr. Baker. I was just think about the coordination in that
California Department of Transportation project. As we look,
everybody here, in their district, has probably a bypass or a
highway project that has been kind of slow. If you all could
help us to help you coordinate some of the different agencies
that are required to line up and sign up before the Monroe
Highway 74 bypass can be completed, I think that would be a
very positive exercise, because the sheriff and Congressman
Baird and Mr. DeFazio and others, everybody has a Highway 74
bypass project. If we could apply the technology and skills
that we discussed, that would be really good.
Mr. Baird. We have just got to get some tanker trucks to
burn up in our own districts, and we will be on our way.
[Laughter.]
Mr. DeFazio. Now, Mr. Baird, don't.
Just one other. I don't want to leave that we are totally
at odds here. I do agree that we can attribute 50 percent of
the congestion to other than capacity constraints, and I note
that you say more attention needs to be paid there. I would
like to know what initiatives the Administration is undertaking
in those areas.
I think we ought to have some sort of clearinghouse. I
mean, it seems to me there is a lot of jurisdictions out there
that are doing some interesting and innovative things that
other jurisdictions might not know about, and if we provided a
service of sort of a clearinghouse at the Federal level for
everybody to bring in or contribute their non-congestion ideas
and make them readily available through a website or something
like that, I think it could be very helpful.
Mr. Capka. Sir, I will just comment on that very briefly.
We do have a program that kind of sits right on target with
what you have described, and it is the Highways for Life
program. It certainly started out as a program focusing on how
to reduce the exposure time of work zones; how can you get in,
get out, stay out, and we have been setting up a website that
gives these examples of excellence to others to consider so we
make them the routine. And it is not just the construction
techniques, it is the contracting techniques that we discussed
earlier; it is the communications, it is the ITS aspects that
goes along with it.
So we are very much in line with you on sharing the good
work, the good news, the innovation that is evidenced across
the Country.
Mr. DeFazio. Great. Well, thank you very much. Again, thank
you for your testimony.
[Recess.]
TESTIMONY OF TIMOTHY J. LOMAX, RESEARCH ENGINEER, TEXAS
TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE, MOBILITY ANALYSIS PROGRAM, COLLEGE
STATION, TEXAS; PEGGY CATLIN, COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF
TRANSPORTATION, DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR; CRAIG STONE, DEPUTY
ADMINISTRATOR, WASHINGTON STATE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION,
URBAN CORRIDORS
Mr. Lomax. Thank you very much. I will try to use your time
resource wisely.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to discuss the
future transportation issues and some of the solutions to the
problems. I want to make sure you understand from the outset
that I haven't really changed any of my views from the last
time I appeared before this Subcommittee. I think we have
enormous challenges. I think there are some solutions and I
think that congestion is only one of the challenges that we
face.
I also think that Congress can play a very important role
in helping Americans get to their schools, their jobs, their
health facilities, shops, as well as moving toward a desirable
quality of life. I appreciate the chance to appear before you
today and I welcome any questions you might have.
I want to summarize my written remarks with a few
observations. Number one, I think congestion problems are going
to challenge the major metropolitan areas as well as the small
urban areas and rural areas for many years to come. Travel
delays and unpredictable times for people and freight will
always be a problem. Certainly smaller cities are also seeing a
problem from that as well.
I also think it is important to note that some of these
solutions don't just address one issue, but safety and
congestion, for example, are very integrated, congestion and
air quality are very integrated. Solutions that work on one
problem also provide benefits on other problems. I think if we
think of these as related problems we come very much closer to
comprehensive solutions and comprehensive improvements in
quality of life and economic productivity.
I think we should think about the problems, opportunities
and solutions in terms of niche marketing. There isn't a
problem or a solution, a problem or a solution, some problems
have very clear technology or infrastructure fixes, some can
only be solved with better information and some will be best
addressed by different policies, programs and financial or
institutional arrangements. Some problems require big solutions
and big price tags, but other problems require only small
change in operations or design.
Problems that agencies have found over the years create a
lot of benefits for relatively little cost. Perhaps even more
importantly, it is these simple ideas, obvious solutions to the
public, that make a difference, that build the trust to support
the bigger improvement programs. The transparent, data-driven
analytical approach typically yields a variety of solutions
with a range of cost, substantial benefits and good public
involvement is a key to enacting these programs.
The projects, programs and policies that each region uses
to solve the problems will be different. As you have identified
in the past, Portland has a different take on the solutions and
the problems than some other places. I think that is a
reflection of the diversity that we have in our Country, and I
think that is good. I think the strategies are going to be
different, depending on where you are within a metropolitan
area as well. The same strategies that work downtown are not
going to be the same ones that work at the port or out in the
suburbs.
The range of solutions obviously includes strategies to get
more productivity out of this current system. I think they also
require programs designed to provide travelers with a choice of
travel modes, departure times, pricing and electronic options
for trips, tele-commuting, for example, as well as projects to
increase person movement and freight movement capacity. In our
growing urban areas, we are going to need more capacity.
It is also clear that solutions need to be pursued in a
comprehensive way that involves the public. In all the fast-
growing areas, there is not enough funding to keep congestion
levels where they are, much less make improvements. Judging
from successful approaches in the past, however, comprehensive
strategies that combine investments in things as well as people
work very well. The solutions, therefore, I think are broadly
defined and integrated in a related combination of operating
and maintaining what you have to the best of the ability,
providing information and options to travelers, home buyers,
businesses and other interested groups so that they make
choices to avoid long travel times, whether that is day to day
or year to year.
Expanding the system where bottlenecks or growth make other
options inadequate to meet the goals that the community has
set, these are goals the community has set. Monitor the effect
of the programs, policies and projects to make operational and
design improvements and to provide an accountable and
transparent reporting to the taxpayers. So operate it as good
as you can, identify options, identify information, identify
ways for people to make trips, so that they have the option of
changing their trips, and then expansion. Those three things,
broadly defined, I think represent a good set of policies and
programs.
The final element, monitoring the programs, not only has a
feedback effect of making the projects better as you go, but
they also have the effect of building the public trust. The
interrelationship of these factors has been clearly
demonstrated. In California and Washington, only two examples
have recently received significant funding increases, based on
a combination of doing a good job with what they have,
providing a clear plan for additional spending, that attacks
the problems, and committing to a communication effort that
both informs the public about the effects of the programs and
is used internally to refine the next set of project designs
and operating strategies. The varying amount of extra time
travelers and freight shippers have to allow this reliability
factor is also important. Improving that can reduce traveler
frustration and taxpayer trust.
Finally, let me say, I think we know what works. We know
the projects, programs, policies that work, we know that there
are some institutional reactions that need to take place.
Public support and funding are vital to making this work. As my
son's baseball coach says, folks, this is really simple, it
ain't rocket surgery. He is sort of analogy-challenged in the
Yogi Berra sense.
But really, transportation is a service. We need to treat
travelers and shippers as consumers of that service. Our
ability to fund transportation needs rests on our ability to
get the most out of what we have and communicate the costs and
benefits of those options. Institutional structures, as I said,
are organized around policies and programs that deliver
reliable service and which prioritize spending around
principles and along the lines of getting the most bang for the
buck are vitally important.
Thank you for allowing me time to express my ideas.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you, Doctor.
I now turn to Ms. Catlin.
Mr. Catlin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Committee. It is my distinct privilege and honor to be here
before you today to tell a little story about a low-cost, easy-
to-implement congestion management tool that we in Colorado
have utilized just to manage our infrastructure better. We are
one of the fastest growing States, and a western State as well,
and we are pretty proud of our ability to implement this
project.
Actually, the Colorado Department of Transportation
received a value pricing pilot grant in the late 1990s in order
to implement such a tool. We did a study that identified I-25
from the central business district of Denver up to U.S. 36,
about a seven mile stretch, as that HOV lane in the Denver
Metro area that would best be suited for a conversion to an HOT
lane that our general assembly mandated in legislation in 1999.
As we planned the project, we embarked upon a public
process, a number of focus groups, public opinion, surveys, and
processes, meeting with stakeholders, etc., in order to best
convert this project and to meet the public's needs. As you can
see on the map, this project, as envisioned, as from the
central business district of Denver, north about seven miles to
U.S. 36. It is reversible, it is barrier-separated, two-lane
facility, and, quite frankly, at the time it was greatly under-
utilized. The goal was to really optimize this section of road
by allowing solo drivers the ability to pay a toll and buy
access to this existing facility.
Next, please.
There are many stakeholders involved. They are listed here;
I won't identify them. But we very, very carefully crafted
interagency agreements in order to protect the public's
interest.
Next.
This is a picture of the facility. You can see that it is
barrier-separated, and the general purpose lanes. It is between
the general purpose lanes of I-25.
Next, please.
How does it operate? Basically, as I mentioned, solo
drivers and HOV lanes can utilize either lane except as the
point of toll collection; and there is only one point of toll
collection, about the midpoint of the seven mile facility. And
at that point, but only at that point, solo drivers must be in
the dedicated express lane in order to pay an electronic toll.
HOV lanes must be in the dedicated HOV lane and signs--it is
pretty clear where they need to be as they maneuver through the
lanes.
Next, please.
It is all open roll tolling; it is electronic toll
collection only. We were very, very fortunate to have some
existing public highway authorities in the Denver Metro area
with over 15 years of experience, and we capitalized on their
experience and lessons learned. It is electronic toll
collection only. Because they had over 400,000 toll tags or
transponders in existence, we were able to capture some
existing market share, and we contracted with them to do back
office operations and provide all the services in terms of
electronic toll collection and violation processing. In so
doing, we minimized any need for additional staff, any
additional government, any additional FTE and kept our overhead
costs pretty low.
Next, please.
It really is the way we manage traffic congestion, we have
a hierarchy of use. The primary use is transit; the second
priority of use is carpoolers; and the third priority of use is
solo drivers. And we manage the influx of solo drivers by
managing the price of the toll that the users pay.
Next, please.
This is the initial toll rate structure. You will notice
that in the peak period there is a toll rate that is paid of
$3.25. We negotiated with our transit agency, our partners, and
we agreed that if someone were to pay a toll, they would pay no
less than the express fare for an express bus service for the
same trip. We wanted transit to be very competitive, and we
didn't want people to choose to pay a toll over the possibility
of using transit.
Next, please.
But we also had to ensure that transit and HOV had no
degradation of service, so we put together very, very strong
metrics to ensure that there would be no degradation of that
transit service. By doing that, we measure each and every bus
trip into and out of the downtown area. There are about 6500
buses per month that make a trip on that facility. We measure
the travel time as they enter and the travel time as they exit,
and if they drop below a trip that would be maintained at the
posted speed limit, then we measure that. I am pleased to
report that other than incidents such as snowstorms, we are
operating at over a 99 percent success rate in the bus trips
that are there.
Next, please.
We also developed a comprehensive incident management plan
that encompasses not only our express toll lanes and our HOT
lanes, but also the general purpose lanes on I-25, and we
worked with incident responders, has a courtesy patrol and
everything, and there are protocols that were established, so
it is very effective. We also wanted to make it very onerous
for cheaters, so we have a pretty high, pretty steep fine if
you are caught violating in the HOV lane.
Next, please.
Some unique challenges. The challenges were very unique in
implementing this, but it did require a very concerted public
process: reaching out to stakeholders and a promise that we
would measure performance and find out what the actual usage
was.
Next, please.
Many of you mentioned that it would provide a predictable
choice. It is flexible. Drivers can use any lane; they can opt
for transit, HOV, or they can choose to pay a toll. It is
environmentally responsible and it is sustainable.
Next, please.
Performance. We have exceeded our expectations. We are very
pleased to say that not only have toll paying customers
increased, but HOV performance has increased as well, and it is
somewhat of a byproduct of our advertising in advance. People
said, wow, I didn't even know that there was an HOV lane that I
could use for free. And it is optimizing the use of the real
estate in that about 16 percent of the person trips on I-25
that are taken daily are taking those lanes and they are
operating at full highway speeds without congestion. They are
sometimes enjoying as much as a 10 to 20 minute travel time
savings, as opposed to those in the peak hour who are sitting
in congestion.
Next, please.
And also, although it is not the primary purpose, it has
certainly been a benefit that we have seen a much greater
influx of revenues than we had predicted. It is not supposed to
be a money maker, but what we did, we availed the transit
agency of their obligation for maintenance on those lanes. They
had previously spent about $350,000 a year in snow plowing and
sweeping.
Through the collection of tolls, we are now able to cover
all those expenses, and they, in turn, have an additional
$350,000 to use for transit service elsewhere, or to enhance
their service. Furthermore, the State had the obligation of
about $700,000 in maintenance that they had to bear for pothole
patching, sign replacement, striping; and we are now, through
the collection of user fees, able to offset those costs. And
because we are so under-funded in our maintenance activities in
Colorado, we are able to use those elsewhere in the system as
well.
We exceeded our first year revenue and our first year
traffic by about two and a half times, and we just celebrated
our first anniversary of opening on June 2nd, and we call it
the little project that could. It is not a huge--and I also
want to say that it is about an $8 million investment, and that
included the first two years of operating. We are going to be
able to recover that, pay back that loan, as well as cover all
of our operations and maintenance expenses.
Thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you.
Mr. Stone.
Mr. Stone. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure
to be here and testify before your Committee. I am Craig Stone
with the Washington State Department of Transportation, where I
am a Deputy Administrator for our Urban Corridors Office. What
this is is an office in the Seattle area dealing with the seven
most congested or most controversial corridors that we have
there.
I provided to you written testimony, to you and your staff,
as well as what we call a folio of low-cost/high-benefit
congestion relief for better highway management that our
secretary, Doug McDonald, has put forward and has spoken to.
If I could, I would just like to talk to a few points.
Clearly, what you have heard today, our challenge is great
and it is a major issue. In Seattle, the polls constantly say
congestion traffic is the number one issue for them. With that,
we are trying a balanced approach. We actually have a major
investment program going on that you have heard about in
Washington State with our nickel and nine and a half cent gas
tax. We also have a major transit component going on transit,
and this November we hope to have another ballot measure. So
clearly there are major investments happening.
I am here today to also say that we need to make sure that
we are getting the most productivity out of those investments,
and doing that is how we will operate and manage our system
that we have, both where we are making improvements and where
there are needs.
You have also heard today about congestion happens. About
half of it is reoccurring congestion; half of it is non-
reoccurring. If I could just speak quickly to the reoccurring
congestion. People think of delay, but, importantly, we
actually lose half of our capacity of productivity during
congestion. We have Interstate 405, which is one of our
beltways, and instead of moving 2,000 vehicles an hour through
that, we will only move 1,000 when we need it most. So how do
you get the most productivity is really my focus here.
We also need to think about the customer as getting
information to them and reliability, because sometimes, an hour
trip could be there, where other days it could be a 20 minute
trip. Clearly, that is important.
Low-cost/high-benefit congestion relief comes through
better management. We are using tried and true examples. Things
have been done other ways, but for 30 years we have had rent
metering in place. We have about 150 rent meters, over 150
miles of what we call data collection. Obviously, traffic
signalization, synchronization is very important. You get a 40
to 1 benefit out of that investment that you make in doing
that. Those are really good things.
Non-recurrent delay: incident response teams. We actually
have 40 incident response trucks that then travel our
facilities to then respond to incidents because one minute of
congestion can give you ten minutes of delay. So there is a
huge return on that, and we work closely with the State patrol
and emergency responders, and even put incentives for our tow
truck operators to clear the incidents quickly.
Construction work zone management I have spoken to earlier.
We are doing more and more of early planning, including putting
early what we call ITS out before the project, transit before
the project, and not making it the last thing that we construct
during a project.
And then traveler information, I think now with the web-
based systems, portable devices, is extremely important and
giving them accurate information so they can make good choices
on their mode, where they are going to do their route, their
travel time, and including one time all of our websites had 14
million hits in one day just from that. So you can see the
usage of that.
Moving on, we are using the tried and true examples in
Washington State and other places in the Nation, and Federal
highways has been a big supporter of ITS, and we appreciate
that. I have also participated with some States--Virginia,
Texas, Minnesota--as well as Federal Highway staff to go to
Europe. We heard a little bit about Europe here.
But we want to add on, we are right now studying how can we
add some of the management systems that they have there, which
are speed control, lane harmonization, kind of the end of your
congestion warnings, possibly even opening up shoulders to only
during your peak hours; and with that we are seeing potentially
great return on safety, and then safety then means return on
congestion and congestion relief. So, with that, we are looking
for flexibility from the Federal Highway Administration and
flexibility in our funding that we might be able to test some
of those applications.
My last point comes a lot to the previous session you had
also, but for our future, even with the major investments we
are making in the Central Puget Sound area and across the State
of Washington, we think we need bold solutions, and part of
that comes to the open road tolling that you just heard about.
We are opening up, on July 15th, our Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and
that will include about 70 percent of the users will be using
these good-to-go tags. They are the size of a credit card, put
in your windshield, and then your account will be credited for
that, and that is clearly for payment and payment back of the
bonding for that particular project.
That same good-to-go tag will be used for what we are
having as our pilot, our State Route 167 HOT lane, which will
be a nine mile pilot where we are taking an HOV lane and
converting it over, and we are going to test with our public,
our users. But, again, one customer focus, one device so they
can use our system.
Value pricing is important also to our future, and from the
standpoint, as I understand today, that our State Route 520
project was part of the short list of the UPA, and in that we
are looking at the opportunity to not only look at how we might
be able to bond the project and be able to make tolls for a
bridge replacement, but how would we vary the tolls to maximize
the throughput at the same time. So we are looking at two
initiatives at the same point at that place.
Clearly, with these systems, choices is very important. The
choices of the route, the mode, time of day; will I take
transit today, will I go in my single car, will I go in my HOV.
We hear about the soccer moms. There are great examples in San
Diego of what they observed, and that is why we want to do our
pilot for four years, and we will test it, we will assess it,
and then we will be able to look at our performance through
that.
In closing, the Federal support for enhancing ITS systems,
along with this European active traffic management flexibility
for the States to look at value pricing I think is important.
Having a balanced approach where we are making infrastructure
improvements, we are looking at how they will operate not only
of year opening, but 20 years out; how they then tie in with
bus rapid transit, telecommuting, all lead to the best
practices, the best productivity from our systems operation and
management.
Thank you for the time to be here and look forward to any
questions you might have.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you. Thank you all for your testimony
and for sharing your ideas. I assume that you all were here
during the first panel, and it seems what Colorado is doing is
a very different model. You had an under-utilized asset and you
priced it to bring on new users to actually more optimally
utilize it, which is sort of the opposite about what most of
the rest of the discussion with the first panel, particularly
Mr. Shane, was about, which is we are going to keep pricing the
asset until we drive enough people off it that it works more
efficiently.
I don't know what exactly the question is, but I think you
were probably in a fairly unique position. There probably
aren't too many urban areas or urbanizing areas or heavily
utilized areas where they actually have that kind of capacity
that they could try--they want to induce more people onto it by
having them pay to get a privilege. Are you aware of anybody
else who has had this opportunity? It is almost the inverse of
what we are talking about
No?
Dr. Lomax?
Mr. Lomax. I believe Miami is pursuing a similar option
with some of their HOV lanes. Again, HOV lanes that are under-
utilized are a perfect analogy here. I think the key is that
Colorado DOT was able to get with their partners and make sure
the public understood what the benefit here is.
It is not that we are allowing a whole bunch of people into
the lane and it is going to become congested, and you folks who
are doing sort of the societally right thing by riding a bus or
car pool are going to get penalized; it is we have got a whole
bunch of extra capacity here, we can handle a lot more people,
and let's take advantage of that. We don't have many under-
utilized resources; let's see if we can get this one to carry
more people, but at the same time not degrade the service.
Mr. DeFazio. Right. Do you anticipate a point at which,
with the growth, where you might bump up against the capacity
of that? And then would you, at that point, consider variable
pricing in order to deter people?
Ms. Catlin. Actually, we delayed implementing a dynamic
pricing strategy until people got accustomed to it, but, yes,
we would implement a dynamic pricing strategy that would ensure
that people that were using the lanes, whether it be transit
car pools or solo drivers, would have an unrestricted trip, an
uncongested trip. So we will be raising the price if enough
solo drivers come in to start creating delays for the buses or
something.
Mr. DeFazio. But right now you have equity, basically,
between the people that are using the bus rapid transit or the
buses that are utilizing these lanes and the single occupant
vehicle, is that correct?
Ms. Catlin. That is correct. Right now, the single occupant
vehicle actually pays 25 cents more than a transit trip in the
same route. The transit route would stay the same. If they
decide to raise their bus fares, then we would accordingly
raise the peak hour trip for single occupant vehicles. But if
it becomes congested, then we are required to work with our
transit partners to figure out a pricing strategy that would
work. But we are going to be implementing dynamic pricing in
the next couple of years. But we still, when there is no
congestion in the adjoining lanes, we drop the fare to 50
cents.
Mr. DeFazio. For any of the panelists, just given some of
the concerns, societally, how is it--in your case, you have an
equivalent option. I can choose to pay 25 cents more, drive my
single occupant vehicle; I can take the bus rapid transit. But
that is, again, a fairly unique, almost direct match. Whereas,
in many cases, for someone to piece together a trip from a
suburban area perhaps through an urban area to another area
where they have to work, we don't provide those sorts of
transit options. Then when you start pricing, how do we deal
with that issue, Dr. Lomax? I mean, are we creating some--
basically, what is the message to that person, change your job
or move?
Mr. Lomax. Well, I think that is what we have been telling
them for 50 years.
Mr. DeFazio. Right.
Mr. Lomax. We got mortgage deduction on your income tax and
all kinds of policies that sort of make it easy for people to
buy a house out in the suburbs. People had moved to the
suburbs; the shops and the jobs had moved there as well, and
how we have got this suburb-to-suburb commute that is much more
difficult to handle with sort of the traditional
infrastructure-based transportation systems. I think that is
why you need a whole range of strategies targeted at what the
problems are. California's big investment program is oriented
around corridors to try to get high volume, high demand
corridors to work really well; spot improvements, fixing the
bottlenecks; adding transit where that makes sense.
But again, you have to recognize that transit isn't going
to work everywhere. Those low-density suburbs are very
difficult to serve with transit, so having either a much less
intensive form of transit, combined with some flexible work
hours and telecommuting possibilities and ride share, sort of
day-to-day trip making ideas and making the system operate
better; getting the signals coordinated, those kinds of things.
They are all strategies that work; we just have to figure out
where they are best suited.
Mr. DeFazio. Yes, Ms. Catlin.
Ms. Catlin. As we look at maybe expanding our system a
little bit further, we are looking to expand it in concert with
transit, and on some of the highly congested corridors where we
are looking at adding capacity with a managed lane option, we
are working in concert with our transit provider. Right now,
they are not necessarily providing bus service between suburb-
to-suburb because their buses are sitting in congested traffic.
If we were to provide a priced option for solo drivers, they
would consider increasing their transit service along that
corridor.
So every time we look into this or plan for this, we are
trying to do it in concert with buses, and we already have a
policy that we struck with our transit agency that buses would
always go free. So we have tried to use this as a model if we
go forward on any other corridors.
Mr. DeFazio. Is this a public transit agency?
Ms. Catlin. Yes, public transit agencies.
Mr. DeFazio. We have been really focused on individual
users, and I guess the other side of this we haven't talked
much about today is freight mobility, as congestion relates to
that, and I am not sure, again, that the Administration's
advocacy for congestion pricing is going to be particularly
applicable or help us really resolve the sort of bottleneck
problems and things we have with freight movement, and I am
interested in any ideas any of you have on dealing with our
freight mobility problem.
Yes, Mr. Stone.
Mr. Stone. If I could, one of the observations we had
overseas with Germany, they would open up their shoulders
during these peak hours and actually the freight was one of the
highest uses of those outside shoulders. And as we look at one
of our corridors, that is one thing we are looking at and will
be testing, is if you can open that up, you actually get about
25 percent increase in capacity for that period when you need
it. It may be able to address some of those peaks and keep the
freight moving.
So, again, a test area, something on the future. Obviously,
in Atlanta, with a truck on the toll lanes--and that has been a
test, trying to consider what that would be, but obviously I am
not the person to speak to specifics of that.
Mr. DeFazio. Just on using the shoulders, I mean, the
question becomes you are going to have to have some awfully
well stationed and quick removal of breakdowns, or you are
going to have some big problems or accidents, potentially
Mr. Stone. And that is what my message would be. Systems
operations and management is everything comes together;
incident response, early detection, responding to that, being
able to lower the speeds in advance of a congested area so you
don't have rear-end accidents that then create secondary
accidents. You can do a lot if you really use the technology
that we have. Our generations are growing up with technology,
and that is part of the future, to put that in place. And then
with that, then we look at other smaller strategies that can
fit into it.
Mr. Lomax. I would think that what Craig is talking about
in terms of the best incident management program is to keep the
incidents from happening, so to the extent you can keep people
from running into each other at the back of a queue or
sideswipe collisions or entrance ramp traffic flows, the ramp
metering really has a huge beneficial effect at just sort of
spacing out the cars that get to the freeway, so you are
preventing collisions.
But then very rapid response that is provided in many
States to incidents when they happen. Houston has a program
where tow trucks are contracted to operate on the freeways and
are responsible for a six minute response time. When they get
there, they pick up the car and they haul it away. They don't
worry about doing minor engine repair on the side of the
freeway; they get it out of the way. It has led to more than a
10 percent reduction in collisions just on the freeway.
But to your issue of the freight mobility, I think the
truck only toll lanes idea is a good one. Again, it is not a
ubiquitous kind of program, but if you focus toll lanes on
ports or intermodal terminals or big truck volume flows, I
think the trucking companies are going to find out that they
are going to save these large amounts that Administrator
Simpson was talking about in terms of their productivity. There
is an enormous benefit there for them.
So I think that is a part of it, but I think also, as your
business community in Portland has found, that the port is a
vital component of travel and you are not going to put
containers onto light rail trains. You have got to do something
about roads that serve the port area, or the economic engine
begins to die away.
Mr. DeFazio. Well, that is a point I would like to find a
way to deal with in the next reauthorization, is sort of what I
call a least cost approach to transportation investment, and we
would heavily weigh factors like congestion, fuel consumption.
Right now we are talking a lot about carbon footprints, all
those sorts of things.
But we have a rail system that is at capacity in the West,
for the most part, privately operated. We have public highways
that are at capacity, and the question becomes does it make
more sense to build another lane mile on I-5 or would it make
more sense maybe for some sort of public-private, truly public-
private partnership to enhance the railroad to double tracks so
we can get some of those containers and freight off the
highway. Any innovative thinking or ideas you have in that area
would be welcome.
You don't have to respond now, but if you think about it
and get back, because right now we have got sort of the chimney
approach. Okay, this isn't the rail Subcommittee, as you
noticed, so they are off doing different things, and we are not
really--I mean, if we want to be truly fuel efficient and
perhaps cost-efficient, it looks to me like there has got to be
a lot more utilization of rail for movement of freight.
Mr. Lomax. I think Mr. Stone talked about the flexibility
as an option. I think that is really what many States in Metro
regions are looking for, and even long distance regions like
the Administration has heard from in their corridor plan. They
are looking for ways to be able to move money and move decision
making sort of out into the open and be able to invest in
projects that make sense sort of no matter what stovepipe or
what institutional arrangements have existed in the past. So
anything that you all can do I think would be greatly
appreciated and would unleash some of that creative power.
Mr. DeFazio. I would like to get there, so if anybody else
has any thoughts about that, I would appreciate them.
I don't have any other questions and I see no other Members
present. Unless any of you feel there is something you would
like to comment on that has gone on during today or something
else you would enlighten the Committee with? If not, then I
would again thank you for your time and your testimony, and
this Committee is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:30 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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