| Obama calls for transport investment, reform |
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President Barack Obama in a Labor Day speech in Milwaukee outlined an ambitious six-year agenda for investing in transportation infrastructure as a way to help create construction jobs and lay the foundation for long-term economic growth. He called for rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads, laying or repairing 4,000 miles of rail lines; restoring 150 miles of runways; funding the Next Generation Air Traffic Control System, which will allow more planes to fly in congested airspace while improving safety; investing more in high-speed rail; creating an infrastructure bank to help seed private investment; and consolidating more than 100 different transportation programs into a few that are managed according to performance-based outcomes. President Obama said the plan would be fully paid for over time without going into specifics. A significant portion of the new investments -- $50 billion -- would be front-loaded in the first year, according to a White House fact sheet. Spending and programs would be coordinated to achieve safety, environmental, economic competitiveness and livable community goals. Rail improvements would be targeted at transit, high-speed rail and Amtrak, the fact sheet explained. “So we want to change the way Washington spends your tax dollars. We want to reform a haphazard, patchwork way of doing business. We want to focus on less wasteful approaches than we’ve got right now. We want competition and innovation that gives us the best bang for the buck,” Obama said. The president’s remarks signal the administration is finally prepared to present its own proposals for the surface transportation and Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bills after initially focusing on last year’s stimulus bill and other issues. Both pieces of legislation are stalled in one or both houses of Congress, with federal highway, transit and aviation programs operating under multiple extensions of previous spending plans. The multiyear surface transportation bill technically expired Sept. 30, 2009 and the highway trust that supports state aid and programs is insolvent. Ray LaHood, Obama’s transportation secretary, last year pushed Congress to postpone a comprehensive bill to guide surface transport spending until March 2011. Business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged Obama soon after he took office to invest more in infrastructure because of its potential to stimulate the economy and provide needed capacity to handle increased passenger and freight volumes when the economy returns to health. A federal commission on surface transportation and several independent public policy organizations during the past two years have recommended replacing more than 100 current transportation programs with six to 10 programs to simplify project implementation and prioritize use of tax dollars. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar, who last year championed a $500 billion, six-year surface transportation plan, endorsed the president’s goals and said they were consistent with those of the committee. “We welcome President Obama’s call for renewed and thoughtful transportation investment. The president’s announcement provides the opportunity to put Americans back to work while beginning the process of fundamentally reforming the way the federal government invests in transportation,” said Emil Frankel, director of Transportation Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, in a statement. “We hope that these new resources can be used to develop strategic, mode-neutral transportation plans and programs that optimize performance across the entire system.” The Bipartisan Policy Center in June 2009 released a report recommending ways to transition to a more performance-based transportation policy instead of one that spreads grants based on equity or political factors. Ranking Republican John Mica of Florida criticized Obama for proposing another tax-and-spend plan. “I don't know what planet these people have been living on for the last 18 months. They hijacked the $862 billion so-called stimulus, leaving less than 7 percent in the bill for infrastructure, and they failed to ensure that even this small percentage of funds would be spent expeditiously. Then the administration undermined their Democrat House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman and killed any chance for a six-year transportation reauthorization bill. “While proposing to spend more on infrastructure in another stimulus effort may sound like the administration is doing something about jobs, in fact only 32 percent of the infrastructure funding approved 18 months ago in the first stimulus has been spent. Projects continue to be bogged down by bureaucracy and red tape. Moving some of the tens of billions of infrastructure dollars that continue to sit idle should be an administration priority to get people working and stalled major projects moving forward,” he said. “Infrastructure funds need to be invested more quickly. States need more flexibility in how they are allowed to spend money, and there must be more transparency in the process when the federal government is spending taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars -- something on which the Obama administration has failed miserably,” Mica said. Source: Amercian Shipper, September 09, 2010 |
