Today NRDC joins a broad swath of organizations united in opposition to the House transportation bill (HR. 7) to encourage our supporters to participate in a "national call-in day" to Congress. Please take a moment to call 1-877-573-7693 and urge your representative to vote NO on the bill. The bill is expected to come to the House floor for action next week, so please make your voice heard now.
When you dial the number, you'll hear a brief pre-recorded message about the bill. Then you'll punch in your zip code to be patched directly to the office of your member of Congress. It's that easy -- and it's that important!
You see, the House bill is without a doubt the worst transportation bill ever. Unlike the Senate, which has acted in a bi-partisan fashion on its own version of the federal surface transportation bill, the House of Representatives crafted a completely partisan piece of legislation chock-full of anti-environmental "poison pills" that will undermine transportation policy in this country. Most notably, the bill puts forward "smoke and mirrors" accounting gimmicks to fund transportation, which rely on speculative oil and gas royalty revenues tied to expanded drilling in protected areas off America's coastlines and also Alaska's Arctic National Willdlife Refuge. And it throws transit under the bus by breaking a 30-year bi-partisan deal that ensures dedicated funding for public transportation. Instead, the bill would restrict federal funding to highways. Just imagine how much worse traffic will be without transit?
In effect, Republican leadership in the House has hijacked the process to produce a truly terrible transportation bill. You can learn more about it by visiting NRDC's action page on our website. Meantime, please pick up the phone and call 1-877-573-7693. Tell Congress to kill the House transportation bill!
]]>The House transportation bill that emerged from various committees this week is getting hammered from all sides. And the media coverage is a testament to the political firestorm that has erupted. Here's a sample of some of this week's headlines:
Politico – LaHood: GOP highway bill 'the worst'
Roll Call – Club for Growth Comes Out Against Highway Bill
National Journal – Rough Road Ahead for House GOP Transportation Plan
The Hill – Environmental group to lawmakers: 'Don't drill and drive'
Roll Call – Transit Bill Could Be a Tough Sell
Politico – Opposition to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling takes right turn
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – New transportation bill drawing lots of hate
Streetsblog – House Transportation Bill Officially Drops, Lands With a Thud
Obviously, NRDC and our allies oppose the House transportation bill because it represents a reckless assault on the environment. Among other threats, it proposes to expand drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Widlife Refuge, permit construction of the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline, expedite highway projects at the expense of natural resources, and de-fund dedicated funding for mass transit. It's a transportation bill only Big Oil lobbyists could love.
Everyone else hates it. Indeed, more than 600 organizations that work on transportation policy have come out against the bill. That list includes the influential groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and two of the nation’s biggest road building groups—the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Fiscal watchdogs like Taxpayers for Common Sense oppose the bill, and so do conservative think tanks, including the Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Reason Foundation.
While the Senate took a bipartisan approach to federal transportation policy with its bill, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood lamented,“That’s not what happened in the House." A former Republican congressman, LaHood decried “the most partisan transportation bill that I have ever seen” and added that it's "the worst transportation bill during my 35 years of public service."
Some current Republican lawmakers are also up in arms over the House GOP's decision to abandon bi-partisanship. “This has to be a bill that everybody signs off on and actually puts people back to work," said Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH), as reported today by Politico. "It can’t be an ideological punching bag or else it’s dead.”
There you have it. Thanks to extreme partisanship, the House transportation bill is too bad not too fail. So let's turn this roads bill into road kill. Tell Congress to vote NO when the bill comes to the full House for a vote.
]]>Sometimes a party can get out of hand. Case in point: The Republican Party in the House of Representatives showed too little self-control by loading up a transportation bill with extreme proposals. The bill would gut environmental safeguards and raid transit funding to build more highways. In a boon to Big Oil, it would pave the way for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline -- and it would open all of our coasts and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling.
Today the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee is expected to pass its extremely partisan “American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act” (HR.7). Next up is a House floor vote later this month on what NRDC considers the worst transportation bill ever. If this legislation passes in another party-line vote, it will mark the death of bi-partisanship on an issue that traditionally has resulted from a spirit of collaboration and a shared commitment to the public interest.
"We stayed away from these controversies," Sen. Boxer (D-CA) said about the bill she co-sponsored with Sen. Inhofe (R-OK). Their bill passed unanimously out of committee and it's expected to pass the full Senate soon without any partisan rancor.
The House should have followed the Senate's lead by producing a bi-partisan transportation bill that could actually pass Congress, get signed by the president and become law. Instead, House GOP leaders are playing with fire by injecting misguided and destructive measures into the already-delayed transportation bill. We need a balanced transportation policy and a forward-looking, innovative energy policy. Beyond the other "poison pills" in the bill, taking the unprecedented step of connecting oil drilling to highway funding undermines both of these goals -- leaving us with a bill to nowhere.
The fact is, the policy process didn't have to be so politicized on transporation. The legislative product has never before been this polarizing. The excessive partisanship is now leading to paralysis on the nation's best opportunity for a jobs bill. What the hell happened?
“The key thing here is the Republican, after the tea party stuff, they really feel a need to show that they can still do big things and that they can rally around an investment of hundreds of billions of dollars. And in order to do that, they really needed it to be a big wet kiss for conservatives. And so this is their mark of what they think it should be,” Greg Cohen, president and CEO of the American Highway Users Alliance, told Politico.
If that is the case, then the Grand Oil Party's strategy backfired. Look no further than the fact that several prominent fiscal conservative groups are also sharply criticizing the House transportation bill. The influential list includes the Heritage Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Reason Foundation, and the Club for Growth. Clearly, the message to House Republicans is: Friends don't let friends drill and drive.
You can send a message too by going here to learn more and take action.
]]>"These bridges and roads are not like trees. They don't grow stronger with age." -- Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley
That's the very apt analogy made by the governor during a recent radio interview, explaining why he wants to raise the state's gas tax, which has been stagnent at 23.5 cents per gallon for nearly 19 years. Earlier this week Gov. O'Malley took a bold step in launching his effort to win legislative approval of his proposal to boost Maryland's 6% sales tax on every gallon of gas as a way to raise billions of dollars for road and transit projects.
As proposed, Gov. O'Mally's gas tax increase would be phased in annually over three years in increments of 2%, meaning that a gallon of gas that now costs $3.48 at the pump would increase 6 cents. The sales tax would rise or fall with gas prices, so if pump prices stay where they are right now the governor's proposal would add about 21 cents a gallon by 2015.
According to a story in the Washington Post, the governor explained his proposal by asking Marylanders to consider "what all of us are paying right now in terms of idling in traffic congestion, time away from family, time away from work," adding that "all of that is more expensive in the longer team than making this investment in transportation."
Not surprisingly, raising the gas tax is pretty unpopular. A new Washington Post opinion poll found that fewer than half support a 5 cent increase in Maryland's 23.5 cent per gallon tax. Opposition swells above 70% when people for an increase of 10 cents per gallon. Gov. O'Malley's plan goes even further than the 15 cent hike recommended by his own blue ribbon commission last year. It's no wonder then that he's likely to run into a political buzz-saw, not just from his Republican opponents in the State House but also from lawmakers in his own party.
But the governor has little choice. Currently, the state collects $738 million annually from its gas tax. But the infrastructure needs of the state exceed a billion dollars every year -- leaving Maryland in a huge hole when it comes to paying for basic repairs to the state's over-used highways and mass transit systems, let alone upgrading, improving and expanding the transportation network to meet the region's capacity challenges. You have to pay to play -- or in this case to drive or ride. So, Gov. O'Malley's gas tax increase would raise nearly $625 million more funding for infrastructure each year.
Quick pause to consider the common misconceptions about the gas tax. (See my blog for debunking):
So, Marylanders have to ask ourselves: If not now, when? If not here, where? If not this, what?
After all, states can no longer count on the federal government to pick up the transportation tab. The federal Highway Trust Fund, which funds much of the nation's transportation needs, is running on fumes and is about to go empty. The Congressional Budget Office expects the Fund to be face insolvency some time in fiscal year 2013 (which begins on Oct. 1, 2012). "Today, America is one big pothole, and we have lots of bridges that are cumbling," said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on Monday. "The Highway Trust Fund was a great source to build our interstate highway system, but it has been diminished."
Here's the reason: First, fixing and building roads and rails isn't cheap, and construction costs are soaring since so much of our infrastructure is old and in such bad shape. Also, the federal gas tax hasn't budged since 1993 from its current rate of 18.4 cents per gallon. Finally, cars and trucks are becoming more fuel-efficient. That adds up to a perfect storm to explain why the government is not collecting enough money at the gas pump to restore America's rapidly deteriorating 20th century transportation network and to create a new and improved system for the 21st century.
Bottom-line: Lots of other states find themselves facing an infrastructure budget crunch. Most are struggling to cover their costs with woefully inadequate gas taxes and associated user fees. Some are taking necessary steps to tackle their transportation problems head on.
As today's Washington Post editorial noted, transportation is at the top of the list of long neglected needs, making it the bane of Washington-area commuters. "At this point, Marylanders (like Virginians, who last saw a gas tax increase when Ronald Reagan was president) are not paying for the roads they're using."
For this reason, whether or not all of us realize it, we're fortunate here in Maryland that our governor is spending his current political capital to invest in our transportation future. Quite literally, for us it's a gas tax increase or bust.
]]>The Republican leadership has the temerity to call this horrible package a jobs bill, but it’s actually a measure that will make it impossible to pass a transportation bill – the one true jobs bill Congress could pass this year. Instead of going the bipartisan route taken by the Senate, House Republican leaders have larded up the bill with environmental protection rollbacks, extreme measures that mandate oil drilling just about everywhere, and a permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The American people need a transportation bill; this bill will prevent them from getting one. -- Frances Beinecke, NRDC President
I've heard of "my way or the highway" but this is ridiculous. In an unprecedented move, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is hell-bent on crashing the transportation bill by loading it up with controversial issues that will guarantee more political gridlock. This afternoon Boehner & Co. will unveil their so-called "American Infrastructure and Jobs Act," which is really just a backdoor way to push Big Oil's profits even higher.
Transportation legislation has long been a bi-partisan policy area, as evidenced by two polar opposite politicians co-sponsoring the Senate transportation bill: liberal Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), the chair of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, and conservative Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking Republican on the committee. The fact that these two members representing opposite ends of the political spectrum can work together these days on legislation of national importance proves that policy can transcend partisan politics.
Not so in the House of Representatives apparently. Speaker Boehner is pushing legislation -- to be added to the House transportation bill that Congress will take up next -- which proposes to cover a portion of infrastructure funding via royalty revenues from new drilling in protected areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. This "drill and drive" scheme is bad for the environment and makes absolutely no economic sense. In fact, conservative critics of this "bait-and-switch" funding proposal include the Competitive Enterprise Insitute, the Reason Foundation and the Heritage Foundation. As Heritage's CEO Michael Needham told Politico: “As more and more people get educated about this, there are members who are starting to raise eyebrows. That's one of the reasons this is moving so quickly.”
Certainly Sen. Inhofe's eyebrows are raised. He has repeatedly criticized Boehner's proposal for not adding up and for needlessly politicizing the process -- sharply reducing the prospects of passing a new federal surface transportation bill this year. The deadline for doing so is March 31, when the current bill expires. That would force a ninth temporary extenstion over the past three years.
[UPDATE: Today Sen. Inhofe opted to toe the party line by publicly backing away from his previous steadfast criticism of the GOP proposal to tie transportation funding to new drilling. “There is no denying that increased energy production could fund a portion of the bill,” he stated on his website. With a proposed funding level for the transportation bill set at $260 billion for the next five years, even the most generous estimates of the funding that might be derived at some future date from new drilling falls well short of infrastructure needs. In fact, an analysis of the drilling proposals by The Wilderness Society puts potential revenues at $262.5 million over five years -- or less than 1% of transportation funding needs outlined in the House bill. The fact remains that Sen. Inhofe prefers his own bi-partisan transportation bill, which is not hampered by the contentious elements of the House bill. NRDC also prefers the Senate bill as the only viable way toward enacting transportation legislation in Congress this year.]
Making matters worse, Speaker Boehner is also threatening to add another poison pill to the bill. On the weekend talk shows, he said Republican lawmakers will try to force the Obama administration to approve the Keystone XL pipeline by attaching it to the transportation bill. President Obama recently denied TransCanada's application for the tar sands pipeline. "If (Keystone) is not enacted before we take up the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act, it will be part of it," Boehner said on ABC's "This Week" news program.
NRDC has been leading the charge to stop the Keystone pipeline, which would cut through America's heartland to deliver heavy, highly acidic crude oil from Canada all the way to Texas for easy export to other countries. For all the reasons why Keystone is a dirty deal for us, go here.
Given the intense PR battle being wage over the pipeline, Speaker Boehner knows that using the House transportation bill as the policy vehicle to enact the GOP's fossil fuel-friendly agenda will provoke a backlash in the Senate. Best case scenario is two transportation bills -- one passed in the Senate, one in the House -- that cannot be reconciled in a conference committee. Such a stalemate will stymie passage of a new long-term transportation bill to fund much-needed infrastructure improvements, leaving our nation's roads, bridges, rails, runways and ports in disrepair and thousands of Americans out of work.
When will politicians realize that putting people back to work fixing America's crumbling infrastructure is job one -- not boosting Big Oil's profits?
Unfortunately, by tying transportation programs to controversial and dangerous efforts to require oil drilling in areas that have long been protected, and constructing a dirty oil pipeline, the House Republicans leadership is hijacking a must-pass bill in order to advance an extreme agenda. This is bad policy and bad politics --designed to fail. The result will be that no transportation bill will pass Congress this year, for which you can be sure that Republicans will try to pass the blame.
The American people need a transportation bill, not a bill to nowhere.
]]>On February 2, the ground hog will poke his head out of his hole and see the same old thing: Republicans in Congress pushing their “drill, baby, drill” agenda. That’s right -- only this time, the dirty energy-lovers will attempt to politicize the last bastion of bi-partisan policy: transportation.
Indeed, the federal surface transportation law has long been considered a relatively non-controversial legislative issue. Congress traditionally has put public interest before partisanship by enacting policy every few years that provides the billions of dollars needed to maintain and improve our nation’s roads, rails, bridges, and runways. Even in today’s extremely polarized political environment, Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Senate recently voted unanimously to pass a transportation bill out the Environment and Public Works Committee. But GOP leaders in the House of Representatives are hell-bent on hijacking the process.
[UPDATE: The Hill reports on NRDC's efforts to stop the GOP from drilling the transportation bill.]
With the current transportation law expiring on March 31, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is scheduled to mark up a multi-year highway/transit reauthorization this week. But Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) plans on making this bill so extreme that it has no chance of ever gaining bi-partisan support and becoming law. He intends to do this by adding to the bill a controversial measure to boost transportation funding by expanding oil and gas drilling in places where drilling is currently off-limits. So, yet again, House Republicans are going to hold a bill our country needs hostage to accomplish their oil above all agenda.
Don't Drill the Transportation Bill
Specifically, Rep. Boehner’s bill would allow drilling pristine areas off both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and redirect the anticipated royalty revenues to federal transportation. Given that Congress has yet to implement safety recommendations in the wake of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, this is simply a recipe for another devastating spill. Lastly, Rep. Boehner’s legislation would also open millions of acres in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming for dirty oil shale development. This is an especially pie-in-the-sky proposal, to pin one’s hopes to generate revenue for transportation spending on an industry that has wholly failed to establish its commercial viability despite over a century of unsuccessful efforts.
Interestingly, opposition to the GOP “drill and drive” scheme is not just coming from environmental advocates. From a purely economic standpoint, conservative groups like the Reason Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) are very concerned about the precedent that would be set if highway funding were delinked from the gas tax, not to mention the massive transfer of energy royalty revenues from the general fund. As CEI’s Marc Scribner blogged:
“The myopic Republican plan to partially fund transportation improvements through oil and gas lease revenues – breaking with the long-established ‘user pays’ principle – will almost certainly increase political manipulation of transportation investments in the future, thereby increasing waste, fraud and abuse. The U.S. cannot afford to go down this road.”
Scribner added in a subsequent OpEd for National Review:
“Congress is well known for going down roads to nowhere. In the case of the upcoming highway-bill reauthorization, that may be true in a more literal sense. On this occasion, it is Republican members who have come up with a misguided piece of highway robbery that breaches their own longstanding principles…America’s highways are far too important to be left to myopic political gimmickry.”
Some of the most ardent conservative politicians agree. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), ranking member on the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee and co-sponsor of the bi-partisan Senate transportation bill that passed last November, has repeatedly denounced Rep. Boehner’s gimmick. “There is no money in expanded energy production,” Inhofe told Politico last year. In other words, any new drilling revenues would be too little, too late to benefit the transportation budget. He reiterated this to Politico recently, explaining that “You can’t very well use revenues you don’t have.”
With no real support in the Senate on either side of the political aisle, it’s safe to say that Rep. Boehner’s dubious drilling bill is simply a poison pill that, if passed in the House as part of a transportation bill, would prevent the House and Senate from passing legislation critical to funding transportation. The last thing our transportation system needs these days is more gridlock.
America does desperately need to invest in our crumbling transportation infrastructure to meet the needs of the 21st century. Therefore, it is wrong for Rep. Boehner to pollute the legislative process by pushing 19th century energy solutions. From both an environmental and economic standpoint, he should stop trying to drill the House transportation bill.
For more reasons why Rep. Boehner’s proposal makes for poor environmental and economic policy, check out NRDC’s fact sheet on the issue.
]]>The local headlines have been blunt and brutal. "Miles short on transportation," read one a few days ago. "Empty promises" was today's title. Both of these blistering editorials by the Washington Post point out how little Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's transportation agenda would accomplish because of his reluctance to face the state's most urgent problem: its crippling shortfall of infrastructure funding. Without bold action, Virginia's crumbling network of roads, rails and bridges is likely to keep deteriorating as congestion mounts.
Some scathing excerpts from the first editorial on Jan. 22:
"The governor's inability, or willingness, to deliver major, ongoing new funding for transportation, despite the extravagant promises he made as a candidate, is a major failure, one that is likely to haunt Virginia for years."
...
"The governor has repeatedly acknowledged the scale of the state's problem. He knows that Virginia will soon have no money to spend on new construction, since all available funding will be siphoned off just to maintain infrastructure."
...
"At the heart of the problem are the anti-tax ideologues who dominate the Republican Party. The governor could have made an honest argument that indexing the gas tax -- which would simply enable the state to keep pace with costs, and stop decades of bleeding -- is not a tax increase. In the end, he opted out of the fight and punted on the state's most pressing challenge."
The editorial today spares no punches either for the governor who pledged "to get Virginia moving again." It concludes:
"Finding that revenue would have required bold strides, but Mr. McDonnel has offered baby steps. Measured against his own promises, his program is a bust. Perhaps a future executive in Richmond, Repubiclan or Democrat, will take his or her cues from the gutsiest governors in Michigan and Iowa."
The editorial is referring to Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (also a Republican like McDonnel) who is seeking a major tax increase -- $1.4 billion a year -- to cover the state's massive infrastructure needs, and fellow Republican governor in Iowa, Terry Branstad, who is leading the charge on legislation to boost his state's gas tax to fund transportation.
Look, I'm not trying to pick on Virginia's governor. Governors in every state are trying to figure how to deal with the infrastructure fiscal crunch. The transportation crisis all across the country is severe, if little understood by most Americans. Consider the sobering statistics:
Funding for transportation comes mostly from the federal government's tax on fuel purchases at the pump. That gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon -- a woefully low amount considering that rate was set in 1993 and over the years rising inflation and infrastructure construction costs have eaten away the revenue. And as our fleet of cars and trucks becomes more fuel efficient, less frequent fill-ups will mean less tax money collected.
Economists, policy experts and advocates all agree that raising the federal gas tax is a no-brainer. Perhaps it's a lack of brains (or more likely courage) that has prevented politicians in Washington, D.C. from taking that common-sense step despite widespread acknowledgement in both political parties that more transportation dollars are desperately needed. Even President Obama won't touch the gas tax, as noted by Politico:
Obama’s refusal to raise the gas tax, in spite of criticism from former House T&I Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), made it into a New Yorker profile of the commander in chief written by Ryan Lizza. "He also could be ruthless toward members of his party in Congress. When he was informed in a memo that Rep. Jim Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat, wanted to write a highway bill that included $115 billion more in spending than Obama had proposed, and which would be funded by a gas-tax increase, Obama wrote ‘No,’ and underlined it."
As I've said before, you really gotta learn to love the gas tax. But if our federal leaders fail to take appropriate action, then the states must tackle their infrastructure funding shortfall on their own. Raising their own gas taxes is one option to consider.
Recently, the smart folks over at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy issued a report called Building a Better Gas Tax. The study suggests that current state gas tax revenues are simply not high enough. In fact, after considering construction cost inflation, the average state’s gas tax is 6.8 cents lower today than the last time it was raised. If every state updated its gas tax rate to offset this decline, state revenues would be over $10 billion higher per year. Hence, the solution: Raise state gas taxes immediately to appropriate levels, index them to rising costs and inflation and offer tax credits to low-income families to avoid the regressive nature of gas taxes.
Now comes supplemental data compiled by ITEP in the form of straightforward charts analyzing the full history of 26 states' gas tax rates, adjusted for inflation. (The other 24 states apparently do not publish sufficient historical data for charts to be made.) Take a look at these state gas tax charts. There's lots of interesting and surprising information contained in them, but the underlying point is that every one of the states levies its tax at a rate that is quite low by historical standards. In most states the charts are projected forward to 2021 in order to show what will happen to the gas taxes if things continue on their current course. A number of states are on target to approach or surpass historic lows in just the next few years. These new charts provide an important long-term look at state gas taxes and provide a valuable way of analyzing the same inescapable problem.
The solution: gutsy governors willing to confront the infrastructure funding gap by raising the state gas tax.
When I was born, about four decades ago, roughly half of U.S. oil consumption was attributable to the transportation sector – sucking up 8 million barrels of oil per day. Today, transportation consumes 70% of our oil – guzzling more than 13 million barrels per day.
No question about it: our nation is addicted to oil. So much so that America accounts for more than one-fifth of the world’s daily oil consumption. This dependence on dirty energy poses a clear and present danger to our national security.
That point was made clear exactly one year ago, in a report released by the Energy Security Leadership Council, which showed the crucial interaction between U.S. transportation policy and energy security posed by our over-reliance on oil. Now comes another important new report from Securing America's Future Energy, a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing America's dependence on oil by educating policymakers and advocating for comprehensive energy reform. SAFE's report -- Congestion in America -- makes the case that our country's oil addiction threatens our national and economic security.
Specifically, SAFE's report focuses on the challenge of U.S. oil dependence and the dynamics of worsening road congestion in America’s cities. It also identifies a range of options available to policymakers to improve traveler mobility, and reduce wasted time and fuel. Essentially, the report shows how traffic results in wasteful oil consumption in cities of all sizes, and severely threatens the potential future oil-savings benefits associated with more efficient vehicles and alternative fuels.
Think about this: The average commute time in the U.S. is about 25 minutes each way, and here in Washington, D.C. the number is closer to 35 minutes. SAFE estimates that in 2030 what should be a 30-minute driving commute in D.C. will take 56 minutes.
According to SAFE, in 2010 drivers in U.S. urban areas were estimated to have wasted 1.9 billion gallons of fuel -- equivalent to approximately 4 entire days of highway petroleum consumption -- idling in traffic for 4.8 billion hours. (Over the past decade, that wasted time and fuel cost us almost $1 trillion!) By 2030, SAFE estimates that more than 3 billion gallons of fuel will be wasted in the U.S. each year by commuters.
In its report, SAFE recommends a number strategies to address the growing problem of traffic congestion. One key recommendation (that is a priority for NRDC) is greater federal investment to improve and expand public transit. After all, the more people who have the option to take a bus or a train to work, the fewer cars will crowd our congested highways.
The nation’s current federal surface transportation legislation—which funds more than $50 billion a year in highway and transit programs—expires on March 31. It remains to be seen whether Congress will authorize new, fully-funded, multi-year transportation legislation or instead be forced to extend the current law yet again. When our elected leaders finally do come together on transportation policy, it is crucial to our economic and energy security that they get serious and do something to ease congestion in America. More transit is just what the nation needs.
]]>A quick update on the state of gas taxes in certain states. I blogged previously about how legislators in Virginia, Maryland and Iowa are trying to confront the challenge of funding their transportation infrastructure needs in the face of fewer federal dollars.
[UPDATE: My blog triggered this Huffington Post story, which quotes me.]
In Iowa, a bi-partisan effort to bump up the state's 21 cents-per-gallon fuel fee looks likely to pass. The tax on gasoline and diesel fuel would increase by 4 cents in 2013 and again in 2014. Each penny increase in the tax would generate roughly $22 million. Kudos to Iowa's elected leaders for taking bold action to address the state's infrastructure fiscal crunch.
Meanwhile, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is expected to introduce his budget tomorrow, and everyone is waiting to see if he follows through on his pledge to boost the gas tax by up to 15 cents per gallon.
Across the river, in Virginia, Republicans are debating a measure to link the state’s gas tax to inflation — as is suggested by many experts and as is the case in several other states. Alas, Gov. Bob McDonnell strongly opposes any increase in the gas tax. Such philosophical opposition is misguided, especially since the state's gas tax has been dwarfed by inflation and rising construction costs. Indexing would, over time, provide Virginia with hundreds of millions of dollars more annually to pay for transportation upgrades. Without it, the state will continue to fall further into an abyss of its own making.
The Washington Post editorialized on the situation, putting it bluntly:
]]>The gas tax, Virginia’s main source of transportation funds, was last raised in 1987, to 17.5 cents per gallon. Since then, rising prices have decimated the revenue it yields, so that the state will soon have no cash — not a dime — for new roads, rails and bridges.
The governor has been frank about the urgency of the problem. But he also has been hamstrung by his ill-advised promise not to raise taxes.
As alternatives, he has accelerated borrowing in the near term and proposed diverting a modest but gradually increasing sum from schools, public safety and health to transportation. But even by 2020, that diversion would yield just $300 million a year in extra revenue for transportation. According to most estimates, the state needs a minimum of $1 billion more right now — not eight years from now.
Depending on how it was structured and on the rate of inflation, indexing, or switching to a straight percentage sales tax on gasoline, could produce an extra $150 million to $200 million a year by 2016 or 2017 and more in subsequent years. It would probably increase the tax on gasoline by 3 or 4 percent a year, meaning an extra dime or two to fill up the tank in the first year.
Some Republicans may howl, including those who handed Grover Norquist the final say over state finances by signing a pledge to oppose higher taxes. But as things stand, Virginians are not paying anything close to the cost of the roads they are using. Within a few years, all transportation funds will be drained off just to maintain the existing, badly inadequate network. And indexing isn’t a new tax; it would simply enable Virginia to avoid falling further behind.
Last month, Mr. McDonnell announced $10 million in fee increases — for lost vehicle titles, late registration renewals and temporary drivers licenses — to cover costs at the Department of Motor Vehicles. “All we’re doing is making ends meet by making the revenues come in equivalent to the cost of running the DMV,” he said, sensibly.
Building and operating the state’s transportation network is no different. By leaving the gas tax untouched for 25 years, Virginia has fallen critically behind in its ability to move people and remain competitive. That has to end — better late than never.
“Look, people get it. People understand that we have to invest in infrastructure if we want to remain economically competitive...You’ve got to send Congress a permission slip that it’s OK to raise money for infrastructure.”
That's what former Gov. Ed Rendell (D-Pa.) — and current Building America’s Future co-chairman — said at a recent forum on transportation in Jacksonville, Fla. The 'permission slip' comment was a veiled jab at politicians who refuse to accept that raising the federal gas tax is the least we could do to generated badly needed funds to repair and upgrade our nation's transportation infrastructure. As I have blogged before -- here and here --this definitely should happen but unfortunately it won't any time soon.
Due to inaction at the federal level, some states are taking steps to address their transportation budget shortfalls by moving to raise their own fees on fuel purchases. In Rendell's own Pennsylvania, for instance, legislators are defying the governor by pushing a bill to pay for infrastructure by having drivers pay more at the pump. Saying Pennsylvania's deteriorating roads and bridges deserve a higher priority than the governor has given them, Democratic State Rep. Mike Hanna put it bluntly: "If Gov. Corbett is choosing not to lead on this issue, then it is time for the Legislature to take action."
Rep. Hanna added that raising the state's 32.2 cents-per-gallon tax is an idea taken directly from Republican Gov. Corbett's advisory commission, which recently outlined a plan to generate about $2.5 billion in annually recurring revenue.
Republican State Sen. John Rafferty, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, echoed the need for additional revenue. "We need to address our infrastructure," he said. "That's what drives economic development ... transportation."
His Democratic counterpart on the Senate Transportation Committee, state Sen. John Wozniak, echoed those sentiments. "Transportation infrastructure is economically vital to the state," he said. "Our crumbling roads and bridges must be addressed to protect the safety of all motorists. Plus, transportation projects are a powerful tool to get people back to work."
Other states are also struggling with how to cover and keep up with burgeoning infrastructure costs. Officials in Virginia see it as a top priority to figure out a long-term fix to the state's transportation funding challenges but so far, no luck. Because of declining revenue from the 17.5 cents-per-gallon state tax -- caused by a combination of inflation and more fuel-efficient cars -- the state's transportation trust fund could be depleted within about five years. Some legislators there favor increasing the gas tax (which was set in the mid-1980s) or at least indexing it to inflation. However, just as in Congress, the vast majority of Virginia policymakers lack the political will to do what is necessary.
[UPDATE: Virginia Delegate Scott Surovell (D) just proposed raising the state's gas tax -- a move that hasn't been made in 26 years -- in an effort to raise revenues and plug the $1 billion plus budget shortfall. "Cars are getting more efficient, and we're not collecting as much gas taxes anymore. We need to look at those kinds of options," Surovell says. He admits there is not much confidence in the legislature making progress on the tax from, gas or otherwise.]
In Maryland it's the same story with possibly a different ending. Gov. O'Malley is calling on legislators to show courage by passing his proposed 15 cents-per-gallon gas tax increase. This issue is expected to dominate the upcoming legislative session.
And it looks like there is going to be a gas tax debate in Iowa this year too. Gov. Terry Brandstad's Transportation 2020 Citizen Advisory Commission recommended a gas tax hike. Now, several lawmakers are eyeing legislative action to enact a 10-cent per gallon phased-in increase as a way to raise revenue to address Iowa’s aging and deteriorating roads and bridges. The goal is to generate between $184 million to $320 million in new yearly revenue for critical transportation needs. According to the Department of Transportation, roughly $215 million is needed to address Iowa’s “critical” infrastructure needs and more than $1 billion would be needed to cover all the outstanding transportation projects. DOT officials project that each penny increase in the state fuel tax would bring in about $22 million in revenue.
Apparently there was support for a gas tax hike a few years ago, but legislators gave up when then-Gov. Chet Culver threatened to veto any increase. Gov. Branstad has not threatened a veto yet and, according to media speculation, lawmakers don’t expect the governor to push for the tax increase but if it lands on his desk he will sign it.
According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, in its new report Building a Better Gas Tax, state gas tax revenues are not high enough to avoid being eaten away by inflation. After considering construction cost inflation, the average state’s gas tax is 6.8 cents lower today than the last time it was raised. If every state updated its gas tax rate to offset this decline, state revenues would be over $10 billion higher per year. Hence, the solution: Raise state gas taxes immediately to appropriate levels, index them to rising costs and inflation and offer tax credits to low-income families to avoid the regressive nature of gas taxes.
With a little courage and a lot of common sense, elected leaders in all 50 states can make a dent in declining transportation revenues by accepting that in the absence of federal action raising state gas taxes is a tough but necessary step to address their infrastructure funding challenge.
]]>So I'm flipping through the new Rolling Stone issue when I come across this random quote from actor/comedian Joel McHale, who stars in NBC's "Community" and also hosts "The Soup" on E! Network: "It's so crazy that we can't fix our roads and bridges. A first-world country is defined by more than just really good restaurants."
Even Joel McHale gets it! Our transportation infrastructure, most of which was built more than 50 years ago, has reached the breaking point. If we want to make travel safer, ease congrestion and move goods faster -- and everyone seems to agree that we do -- then now is the time to invest in our country's transportation infrastructure. Make no mistake, it's going to take a massive infusion of money to fix our deteriorating roads and bridges, modernize our ports and airports, expand railways and public transit, and enhance sustainability in our communities.
With the transportation system we have is stretched beyond capacity at current population levels, how are we going to pay for the enhanced system that we need? In terms of federal funding, there's just not enough of it to get the job done. You see, the government relies mainly on revenues collected from the tax we all pay at the pump -- 18.4 cents per gallon. That rate hasn't been raised since 1993, so inflation has sharply reduced the buying power of the fuel fee. As I've said before, Congress really needs to raise the federal gas tax.
Because this hasn't happened, some states have raised their own rates response. But the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, in its new report Building a Better Gas Tax, suggests that state gas tax revenues are still not high enough to avoid being eaten away by inflation. The main finding is that after considering construction cost inflation, the average state’s gas tax is 6.8 cents lower today than the last time it was raised. If every state updated its gas tax rate to offset this decline, state revenues would be over $10 billion higher per year. Hence, the solution: Raise state gas taxes immediately to appropriate levels, index them to rising costs and inflation and offer tax credits to low-income families to avoid the regressive nature of gas taxes.
This first of its kind, 50-state report reveals that state governments are losing out on over $10 billion in transportation revenue every year, contributing to an estimated $130 billion drain on the economy resulting from higher vehicle repair costs and travel time delays. The report offers three policy recommendations for modernizing state gas taxes:
Kudos to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy for its tough but honest assessment of state gas taxes. Let's hope governors have more courage than the politicians in Washington to take the necessary steps to ensure a true 21st century transportation system for America.
]]>"If transit suddenly ceased operating in any large American city, commuting would become almost impossible. Rush-hour traffic is already horrendous, to the point where in places like Los Angeles and Washington...the rush hour itself has become rush many-hours, even "permanent rush hour." In urban areas, there isn't any place to put more higways...If all the people now on trains, subways, light rail lines and buses suddenly joined the rush-hour drive, getting to work might take as much time as the job itself."
-- "Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation"
Almost 15 years ago my wife and I made the smart decision to leap from being apartment renters to becoming home owners. That was good timing on our part, as Washington, DC area real-estate values went sky-high a short while later. We joke that we probably couldn't afford to buy our own house if we had to buy it now!
The second smartest decision we made was making access to Metrorail our first priority since at the time we both worked in the capital. Our suburban neighborhood is located on the Redline, a 20-minute straight shot into DC, and the station itself is just a few blocks from our house, which means I get to walk to work without having to pay for gas or parking. (As an added bonus, having a house located within half a mile of a Metro station boosts the property value.)
Yes indeed, my daily commute to work is made easy by the Metro. Sure, I pay for the privilege of riding the rails every day and sometimes have to deal with crowded trains and occasional maintenance delays. But there's no way I would ever trade that for a stressful drive through traffic-clogged streets, not to mention paying more for gas and parking.
But what if I didn't have the Metro? It sounds crazy but 35 years ago city planners considered building a freeway straight through the center of the capital instead of undertaking the monumental task of constructing such an expensive and expansive light rail system. So what would life be like today if the Metro never existed?
Well, it turns out that Metro officials have produced an eye-opening study to answer that question. Why? Well, mainly to make the case to local officials that investing in Metro is essential to DC's economy. After all, around here the news reports rarely highlight the benefits provided by the transit system and instead focus on complaints, such as the high costs associated with running the system and the challenges of expanding rail lines to meet service needs.
The Atlantic magazine published a story about the study, complete with terrific graphics illustrating the findings. The study modeled what the region would look like without transit. In one scenario transit was literally turned off. So this would be like waking up tomorrow and -- poof! -- the region's rail, buses and Metro aren't around anymore. What would people do? As The Atlantic explained:
People, it turns out, do something very interesting. They stop making long car trips because the traffic is so bad. In one hypothetical scenario, Antos took away the transit but kept the rest of the area’s road infrastructure the same. People were allowed to change their trip patterns – to chose different jobs or shopping centers – and most of them stopped crossing the region to get to those things.
"The congestion was forcing people to regress into a more local economy," Antos says. "We looked at that and realized we were watching the economy splinter. All of a sudden, we weren’t watching a regional economy function where workers could find jobs in the whole region."
People weren’t crossing county lines – or even rivers – to get anywhere.
In another scenario the modeling showed what it would be like around here without transit, but with all the new roads required to get people to where they need to go.
Just to keep congestion at present levels, the region would have to add more than a thousand lane miles of arterials and highways, at a cost of about $6 billion. This would be the rough equivalent of adding 15 more lanes to the already massive beltway that encircles the city.
Of course, all these drivers would also need somewhere to put their cars. Today, about 200,000 people a day ride some form of transit to the District’s downtown core. If all those people drove instead, the city would need the equivalent of 166 blocks of five-story parking garages.
In looking at the associated maps of these horrific hypothetical scenarios, it’s easy to see how the loss of transit would cripple the DC region -- which already ranks as the worst metropolitan area in the country in terms of congestion. Without Metro we would have more parking garages, worse traffic, fewer jobs, constrained commerce, and more pollution.
For this reason, I'm ticked off that the Congress is about to slash a pretax benefit for commuters that would directly affect Metro riders like me. As part of the budget deal being debated on Capitol Hill, the current commuter tax benefit for people who use transit would drop to $125/month come the new year (a 50% reduction from its current level of $230) -- while the parking benefit would inexplicably jump to $240/month. The pretax benefit for transit commuters was enacted in 2009 and will expire unless Congress acts by the end of the year. Otherwise, commuters like me will be forced to pay hundreds more dollars per year to ride Metro to and from work.
You might be saying to yourself, so what? But it's not just a pain in my pocket. I'll continue to ride Metro every day but many commuters might find the extra expense not worth it and decide to drive to work instead. That would mean less crowded train cars for me but more cars on the road during the daily commute. So, less pretax benefit for transit translates to even more traffic in the DC area. With transit ridership on the rise, it makes no sense to take away another incentive for people to travel on trains and buses instead of by car.
Fortunately, there are many members of Congress on both sides of the political aisle who recognize this problem and are urging their leadership to fix the year-end tax package so the transit pretax benefit won't be cut. NRDC is working hard to make sure Congress restores equity for drivers and riders alike. This is gridlock that can be avoided.
[UPDATE: Alas, the Senate’s recent vote to extend the payroll tax cut did not include a provision for keeping commuter tax benefits equal, so if you need more than $125 of your income each month deducted pre-tax to pay for your transit commute Congress is sending the wrong message that effective Jan. 1, 2012, you should start driving to work. This is too bad since transportation is the second largest household expense for many households, eating up an even larger proportional share of income for the poorest Americans. As the Transportation for America coalition put it: "The millions who depend on transit to get to work each day shouldn’t have to pay more, and certainly not for something that also saves us energy, reduces congestion and emissions, and uses less oil."]
]]>I've taken pains to poke holes in the reckless and frankly ridiculous House Republican legislative proposal to tie federal transportation funding to expanded oil and gas drilling. Here is my new fact sheet on the issue. But as I've pointed out before, it's not just environmental advocates who are up in arms over this Big Oil boondoggle. While we may be at odds with the Competitive Enterprise Institute on drilling, both NRDC and CEI find ourselves in lockstep on the GOP's illogical transportation funding scheme.
In a scathing OpEd published today by National Review, CEI's transportation policy analyst Marc Scribner writes:
"Congress is well known for going down roads to nowhere. In the case of the upcoming highway-bill reauthorization, that may be true in a more literal sense. On this occasion, it is Republican members who have come up with a misguided piece of highway robbery that breaches their own longstanding principles. House Republicans have proposed expanding domestic fossil-fuel extraction on federal lands and in offshore areas, and depositing much of the royalty revenue into the federal Highway Trust Fund."
Scribner goes on to slam the GOP's "short-sighted" plan for undermining the long-standing "user pays" principle of the Interstate Highway System. Because of the escalating costs of our country's transportation needs and declining revenues generated by the federal tax on gasoline purchases, economic experts warn that the Highway Trust Fund could be insolvent by 2013. The last time Congress raised the federal gas tax — currently set at 18.4 cents per gallon — was 1993 and since then inflation has reduced its buying power by 40 percent.
Scribner suggests a perfectly rational solution:
"A quick, temporary fix would be to raise federal fuel-tax rates, but this is a political non-starter in the current political and economic climate. If House Republicans are truly serious about improving our nation’s highway infrastructure without increasing federal tax rates on fuel, they could devolve more transportation funding responsibility to the states and support more tolling."
Some states have raised their own gas taxes in a desperate attempt to make up the funding shortfall. Even more have added tolls and increased fares, among other alternative steps to raise much-needed transportation revenues. But such efforts will ease their budget burden only marginally. Meanwhile, at the federal level, House Republicans have stepped in with their misguided plan to raise more money for transportation by diverting royalties from new drilling offshore and in pristine places like Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Unlike NRDC, CEI is not concerned about the potentially devastating environmental impacts of more drilling. Scribner takes aim over the fiscal malfeasance presented by the GOP's proposal:
"Instead, House Republicans appear ready to undermine one of the more fiscally conservative funding mechanisms in existence. A provision of the 1974 Budget Act requires that the Highway Trust Fund receive 90 percent of its revenue from users in order to maintain its exemptions from appropriations meddling. Assuming drilling royalty revenues are great enough to close the near-term funding gap, the House Republicans’ proposal would push the percentage of user-based Trust Fund revenue to well below 80 percent...Weakening this standard calls into question the purpose of having a federal trust fund in the first place...Rather than learning from our previous mistakes, we would be making them all over again."
Scribner implores Republicans to reconsider “drilling for roads” because "America’s highways are far too important to be left to myopic political gimmickry."
On that, CEI and NRDC can agree!
]]>Gridlock continues in Congress when it comes to reauthorizing a federal transportation law that fully funds the country's daunting infrastructure needs. At the earliest, nothing will happen on Capitol Hill to move transportation funding forward until the current bill expires on March 31,2012. Meantime (and regardless), the states are left to figure out how to fill their budget potholes to pay for fixing, maintaining and expanding their roads, bridges, railways, runways and public transit systems.
A few miles down the Beltway from me, in my native state, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonald is trying to figure out how to tackle that challenge. Yesterday the governor unveiled his plan to raise revenues for transportation, carving out money from year-end surpluses and boosting the state's sales tax in lieu of increasing its tax on gasoline purchases.
“Transportation and economic development and prosperity are inextricably linked,” McDonnell told attendees at his transportation summit in Norfolk. “Whether it’s the infrastructure needed to move people and goods, or certain transportation-related industries poised for major growth and job creation, we must continue to make progress in improving our transportation networks if Virginia is to remain economically competitive.”
The Washington Post offered faint praise to Gov. McDonald's proposed plan, lauding him for making "the connection between jobs and economic development, and improvements in the state’s severely underfunded roads, rails and bridges" and for "honestly acknowledg[ing] that the modest recent steps he has taken to increase funding, such as accelerating borrowing for major new road projects, are inadequate." But the editorial criticized the governor's "half-measures" which won't adequately address "the daunting magnitude of the problem." As the editorial explained:
"[T]he harsh truth is that in the best-case scenario it will only stop the current bleeding of construction funds that have been siphoned off by the state’s mounting maintenance needs. Virginia needs more. How much more is a matter of debate, but a middling estimate is something on the order of $1 billion annually in new revenue — now, not eight years from now."
The "sensible thing", the editorial concludes, would be to raise the state’s 17.5 cents-per-gallon fuel tax, which was last increased in 1986 and -- in addition to having been badly eroded by inflation -- is now among the nation’s lowest. (As I have previously stated, the same could be said for the federal gas tax, which hasn't gone up since 1993.)
Beyond the funding challenge, there is the question of how Virginia should invest its hard-to-find transportation dollars. Gov. McDonald, like a lot of elected officials, emphasizes the importance of highway expenditures. Certainly, for the sake of safety and commerce, existing roads and bridges warrant funding to keep them well-maintained. However, government spending traditionally has heavily favored highways at the expense of other modes of transportation that offer multiple benefits.
Kudos then to the Sierra Club for it's comprehensive new report: "21st Century Green Transportation, A Vision for Virginia." This excellent report calls out Gov. McDonald's "frantic road-building program" as the wrong way to invest in the state's transportation future. Rather than spending billions in borrowed money to build unneeded and destructive roadways that will fuel continued sprawl and worsen congestion for Virginia commuters, the Sierra Club lays out an alternative vision of "smarter, cleaner transportation and more livable communities for the Commonwealth."
The report highlights the benefits of Virginia’s intercity passenger rail service and of moving freight to rail and taking more trucks off of our highways. It also points out flaws in the governor’s priority paving projects, condemning the heavy reliance on road building as "right out of the last century when more and wider highways were seen as the solution to traffic problems." But the old way did not work, Sierra Club notes. It only led to more sprawl, and more congested roads and some of the worst traffic in the country.
Indeed, over the last 40 years, Virginia has lost more land to development than it did in the previous 400 years. This rapid growth has spurred sprawling development, which is why so many Virginians have to spend so much more of their time and money driving more miles on crowded highways. This is especially true in the Washington, DC metropolitan area (which includes northern Virginia) where commuter congestion is ranked the worst in the nation -- with drivers spending an annual average of 74 hours (almost two work weeks!) stuck in traffic.
"Virginia needs to focus more on moving people and goods, and less on moving more cars and more trucks,” says Roger Diedrich, Sierra Club’s Virginia Chapter Transportation ChairDiedrich. “We cannot simply drive our way out of congestion. We need to make smart investments in more public transit, and bicycle and pedestrian friendly communities."
]]>Some of the nation's leading experts and big thinkers on transportation recently gathered in Washington, D.C. to discuss the crisis presented by our nation's deteriorated infrastructure and the challenge of funding needed repairs and improvements. Everyone agreed that the situation is dire. Roughly one-third of our bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, nearly half of the lane-miles on our highways are in bad condition and almost half of Americans lack access to public transit.
To me, the most enlightening -- albeit depressing -- concerns raised had to do with the difficulties of mobilizing public support for more funding.
Notice that I did not say that the public doesn't understand the importance of a well-maintained, highly functioning transportation sytem. On the contrary, most people agree that the U.S. economy depends on ensuring a safe, efficient and modernized network of roads, bridges, runways, railways, and ports that can smoothly move people and goods where they need to go. They also accept the massive costs required for upkeep, as well as upgrades of our transportation infrastructure. But the users just don't want to pay.
Here's how the Washington Post summed up the situation, as outlined at the conference:
More than 80 transportation experts joined in the conclusion that the federal government needed to spend upward of $60 billion more a year just to maintain the current systems and at least $85 billion more annually on expansion to accommodate a population that has more than doubled since the interstate highway system was begun 60 years ago.
Already sobered by the reality that, at the very best, Congress might vote to keep funding at current levels — roughly $54 billion a year — the career transportation experts received another dose of bad news last week.
Americans don’t trust their leaders — notably Congress — to spend transportation tax dollars wisely and are deaf to appeals for additional spending.
So, despite the fact that there is bi-partisan consensus that our fledgling economy will only get worse unless Congress expends trillions of dollars to fix our nation's infrastructure, the political will to invest in transportation is lacking because most Americans don't trust their elected officials not to waste their tax dollars on pork-barrel projects and boondoggles.
Blame it on the notorious "Bridge to Nowhere", which epitomized the political penchant for using legislative "earmarks" to blow federal money on wasteful transportation projects for the sake of parochial interests. As a consequence, voters can't count on Congress to do the right thing with transportation funding.
In this time of constrained fiscal resources, it seems Congress has learned a lesson by vowing to ban earmarks and to spend wisely. This is especially true with transportation policy, perhaps the last bastion of bi-partisanship left on Capitol Hill these days. But earning the public's trust will take more time -- time that we unfortunately don't have when it comes to doing what needs to be done to tackle our country's transportation problems.
But we must continue to make the case that investing in transportation is a paramount concern and our elected leaders must make it happen. To that end, a bi-partisan coalition dedicated to smart infrastructure investment and reform advocacy has launched an education campaign to spark attention and spur action. Below is the TV ad that Building America's Future is currently airing in key states.
The ad makes a great point. Consider this analogy: When you buy a house, the cost burden does not end -- it is just beginning. Home ownership entails constant home improvement. The same is true with our roads, bridges, railways, etc. And beyond just keeping existing infrastructure in a state of good repair, there's a need to invest even more money to enhance and expand the system to meet the mobility needs of our growing population and its shifting priorities. That's why, for example, more money should be invested to ease our traffic burden by building more public transit, so people have the freedom to choose to drive less to get around.
On that note, Politico is conducting an interesting poll on what people believe should be the nation's top priorities for transportation policy. It shows that poll respondents favor fixing our current infrastructure and investing in expanding urban transit systems as opposed to spending money to build more roads. Check it out -- and vote.
As Congress turns to action on new transportation legislation next year, NRDC urges policymakers to pursue federal policy and spending that decreases our dependence on oil, creates jobs and promotes greater transportation choices that will improve mobility and access for all, while helping us breathe cleaner air and cut global warming pollution.
]]>