Presidential transition team gets earful on tough transportation issues
Tim Lynch, senior vice president of the American Trucking Associations, said at the Union Station event that trucking companies recognize transportation spending as investment in their workplace.
The Trucker News Services
11/28/2008
WASHINGTON, D.C. – John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials, told reporters outside Union Station this week that President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress must understand the two-pronged importance of first enacting an economic stimulus bill that contains tens of billions of dollars in quick funding to get more highway and transit projects under construction and then finding new revenue sources to sustain that investment over the long term as part of the next six-year transportation authorization bill.
Horsley said AASHTO is updating a February survey of state transportation departments to identify highway and transit projects that are “ready to go” and could be undertaken rapidly if an economic stimulus bill were to pass. While the original survey focused on projects that could get underway in three months, the updated survey is focusing on a six-month window since the economic recession is now worse than many had feared earlier this year and Congress is now focusing on a longer-term window for the stimulus spending.
“We are in the midst of that survey update right now and 27 states have reported,” Horsley said. “They’ve identified $32 billion in value that could be ready to go.”
Once all states’ information is gathered, he added, the number will likely top $50 billion in transportation projects that could break ground within six months of a bill’s approval.
Congress and the new administration can’t solely focus on a stimulus bill next year, however. Horsley said getting approval by Sept. 30 of a new six-year funding authorization bill with robust spending levels is vital to ensuring the transportation sector can continue supporting the hundreds of thousands of new jobs the stimulus funds would support.
“No one wants to see jobs cut,” he said. “One priority is finding a short-term supplement to core funding. The other is how we sustain that investment over six years.”
Horsley and leaders of other transportation organizations met with Obama’s transition team for the U.S. Department of Transportation later Thursday.
Tim Lynch, senior vice president of the American Trucking Associations, said at the Union Station event that trucking companies recognize transportation spending as investment in their workplace. ATA is prepared to support calls for increased revenue to fund more projects. Its message to Obama and the new Congress is that increasing the existing 24.4-cent-per-gallon federal diesel tax is the most-effective way to go rather than creating new taxes based on vehicle miles traveled or a vehicle’s weight.
“Many of the alternative taxing schemes that have been discussed typically carry very large administrative and compliance costs,” Lynch said. If we are going to pay more, we want those dollars going to infrastructure, not to administrative costs.”
Dave Raymond, president and CEO of the American Council of Engineering Companies, told reporters at the Union Station event that the transportation sector could put a lot more people to work if only it had additional funding from Washington. Raymond pointed out that infrastructure investment is among the best ways to spend stimulus money because not only does it provide jobs immediately, it produces projects that will benefit the economic for generations to come.
“This country is headed for being a third-world country in transportation unless we do something quickly to change direction,” Raymond said. “If we want to compete globally in the 21st Century, we have to do a lot better. That means pumping a lot more resources into our transportation network.
“What we really need in this country is a transportation system that can sustain growth for a competitive economy.”