Considering Freight Transportation...

Emil Frankel, Director of Transportation Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center posted a blog entry on the National Journal’s Expert Transportation blog.

The topic of the blog discussion was the debate about the role of truck transportation in moving freight. Secretary Ray LaHood was recently accused of wanting to take trucks off the road. This week’s blog question asked specifically, “what is in trucking’s future?”

Check out Emil’s entry and other responses here. Emil makes the point that the debate should not be about preferring one mode over another, but rather achieving a balanced intermodal freight transportation system where investment of limited resources lead to the most cost-effective solutions.

High Speed Rail

In New York, State Senator Malcolm Smith is pushing for a high speed rail between Albany and New York City. He argues that a high speed rail project would create jobs, improve the environment, and “bring the state together.” But what sort of planning and project evaluation did this project undergo? Would high speed rail foster economic growth over other modes? What are going to be the sources of revenue? What goals does high speed rail help attain other than “bringing the state together?”

These are the types of questions that the NTPP believes should be contemplated and answered in the planning stage. Rather than simply working towards constructing a high speed line, NTPP proposes that metropolitan regions should analyze what transportation projects would help them attain distinct goals like increased economic capacity, metropolitan accessibility, and national connectivity. So while the idea of high speed rail in New York sounds great, would the huge sums of money necessary to build and maintain that line be better spent on infrastructure improvements or driver education programs?

Susan Demas Op-Ed Article

On June 3, the Mackinac Policy Conference forum was held in Detroit and featured seven gubernatorial candidates. Transportation issues, specifically the gas tax and the Detroit-Windsor bridge (DRIC), took center stage at the forum and were debated by the candidates. In an op-ed this week by Susan Demas of the Michigan Information & Research Service, Ms. Demas argues that all seven of the candidates demonstrated a clear lack of understanding of Michigan’s transportation systems and were unwilling to raise the gas tax for maintenance revenues.

This lack of understanding on behalf of the gubernatorial candidates is a major impediment to achieve NTPP’s vision of a national transportation policy that is performance driven and achieves certain goals like stimulating economic growth, making transportation safer, and providing access to jobs, labor, and other activities. Therefore, until state leaders grasp the ideas espoused by NTPP that a transportation policy goes far beyond getting people from “A” to “B”, we will again be stuck with an inefficient and wasteful federal transportation policy.

Emil Frankel in the Financial Times

Emil Frankel, Director of Transportation Policy for the National Transportation Policy Project, was recently quoted in a Financial Times article “US deals with the politics of recovery”. In the article, Mr. Frankel argues that a greater emphasis should be placed on how federal funds “perform” as evidenced by how well the funds generate economic activity.

This emphasis on performance is at the core of NTPP’s vision for federal transportation policy reform. Implementing federal transportation policy that aims to foster economic growth, among other national goals, will ensure wasteful or unnecessary projects are replaced with investments that encourage long-term, sustainable economic growth across the nation.

What Do You Think of USDOT’s Draft Strategic Plan?

Emil Frankel, Director of Transportation Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center posted his latest blog entry on the National Journal’s Expert Transportation blog.

The topic of the blog discussion was the recently released U.S. Department of Transportation Draft Strategic Plan, Transportation for a New Generation.

Blog expert respondents were asked, “What Do You Think of DOT’s Draft Strategic Plan?” Check out Emil’s entry and other responses here.

National Transportation Policy Project Advances Call for Federal Surface Transportation Policy Reform

The National Transportation Policy Project (NTPP) held its fourth public forum in conjunction with New York University’s Rudin Center in New York City on January 25th. This forum, similar to three previous forums in Seattle, Detroit, and Minneapolis, convened some of the region’s highest ranked transportation leaders as well as some of the nation’s policy thought leaders. The forum served to present a regional dialogue among representatives from the three states in the region: New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Stakeholders from around the region convened along with an audience of nearly 200 attendees to discuss the future of federal surface transportation policy and funding. Using the recommendations and framework put forth by the NTPP report, Performance Driven: A New Vision for U.S. Transportation Policy as a guide for the discussion about the challenges and opportunities that lie in front of our nation, speakers and attendees were consistent in their call for needed reform in transportation policy and their belief that the NTPP report could serve as a model in this regard.

Former Congressman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), one of four co-chairmen of the National Transportation Policy Project hosted the forum event at the New York University Kimmel Center. A few of the featured speakers included: U.S. Congressman Jerrold Nadler, highest ranking Northeastern member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee; Gregory G. Nadeau, Deputy Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA); Connecticut Transportation Commissioner Joseph Marie; New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan; and Elliot Sander, Chief Executive of Global Transportation for AECOM.

The existing federal surface transportation law in this country (SAFETEA-LU) expired at the end of September 2009 and has since that time been operating under a series of short-term extensions with the most recent to expire at the end of February 2010. This means there is now an important, timely opportunity for reform. Unfortunately, it remains to be seen whether there is the political momentum and resolve to pull off the reform necessary to improve investments and economic conditions in this country. As was highlighted by the New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan during the NTPP forum, the transportation sector is in a long queue of national issues needing to be addressed. Christopher Boylan, Deputy Executive Director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), echoed Commissioner Sadik-Khan’s concerns, but cited the NTPP report as one of the more balanced and realistic approaches to the transportation policy and funding problems facing our nation. Gregory G. Nadeau, Deputy Administrator of FHWA congratulated the BPC and NTPP members on their contribution to the transportation policy debate during this historic, transformative time in transportation. These are critical times for our nation, our economy, and our transportation system.

Commissioner Sadik-Khan highlighted connections between many of the themes and recommendations put forth by NTPP and those contained in Chairman Oberstar’s Surface Transportation Authorization Act: safety, reduction of metropolitan and freight congestion, increased transportation choice, and reducing greenhouse gases. This overlap is promising in the sense that it indicates there is some Congressional muscle behind these ideas, but it is still unclear how those ideas will ultimately manifest themselves in moving legislation. Some of the best and brightest in the country are coming to consensus that the NTPP strategy is the type of approach we need to move forward, providing states and metropolitan regions maximum flexibility to spend federal transportation dollars in a way that advances agreed upon national goals.

The NTPP makes clear in its report the connections between addressing our nation’s transportation challenges and our economic competitiveness. Robert Yaro, President of the Regional Plan Association, articulated this connection during the NYC NTPP forum when he said that the United States needs to be carefully watching and considering Asian and European countries that are making major transportation and infrastructure investments. Many countries have reformed their governance systems to move ahead with similar recommendations to those included in the NTPP report. Yaro argued that if we really care about the future of this country, sustaining our standard of living, sustaining our place in the world, we have an obligation to move ahead with increased investment in the transportation system.

Convincing the American people that restructured and increased investment in transportation and infrastructure is fundamental to the success of the country is a major challenge, but is a major part of what needs to happen next. The NTPP forums, now having been held in four major metropolitan regions around the country, are helping lead this educational, advocacy charge. If the reforms outlined by NTPP are implemented, as Mr. Yaro noted, it would begin the process of convincing the American people that every nickel of federal investment is going to be accounted for and well spent.

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Transportation Policy Project is one of many groups calling for new competitive programs with broad investment goals to be established through which federal transportation resources could be allocated. The New Starts program, administered by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), is essentially the only discretionary transportation program that offers a history of this type of programmatic design and implementation. At the New York City NTPP forum the Project released a research paper written by Donald J. Emerson and Jeffrey D. Ensor, consultants with Parsons Brinckerhoff, New Starts: Lessons Learned for Discretionary Federal Transportation Funding Programs. This research paper analyzed the New Starts program to identify lessons learned and to highlight components that might be relevant for newly established competitive programs. The intention of this research commissioned by NTPP was not to learn how to improve the New Starts program, but rather how to take lessons learned through analysis of the programmatic features of this program to be able to develop discretionary federal funding programs that are merit based, avoid earmarks, and can obtain Congressional support.

Check out full video coverage of the New York City NTPP forum or visit the National Transportation Policy Project to learn more about our ongoing work on federal transportation policy reform.

NTPP’s Call for Federal Surface Transportation Policy Reform Continues in Minneapolis

We held our third public forum in Minneapolis on November 23rd at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute. With an engaged audience of over 150 attendees, we discussed our blueprint for surface transportation policy reform Performance Driven: A New Vision for U.S. Transportation Policy. The forum, featured as part of the Martin Olav Sabo Lecture Series, held in partnership with the University of Minnesota's Center for Transportation Studies and the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, attracted prominent local and state transportation policymakers, academics, business leaders and other key transportation stakeholders, as well as the interested public. Speakers grappled with both challenges and opportunities of implementing the recommendations of our report in a region like the Twin Cities. Sponsorship for the event was provided in part by The McKnight Foundation.

Overall a resounding sense of urgency flavored conversations through the event. There was consensus among forum speakers and audience participants that now is the time for reform. Policy and revenue discussions, necessary for strengthening the next authorization bill, have the potential of going on for months, if not years. It was made clear by speakers during the event that the American people and our national economy cannot afford to wait. Now is the time to act on authorizing a national transportation bill that, among other things, puts mechanisms in place that prioritize program funding and project spending in line with well-defined national goals.

Panelists who spoke at the event generally agreed that real reform has to come from Washington. States and localities are exhausted and operating under severe budget constraints, leaving less time and energy for innovation. As the NTPP report argues, this situation is likely a result of historically misguided policies and funding mechanisms. By offering increased flexibility and rewarding innovation federal funding could help invigorate local transportation planning and investment. Some attendees remained skeptical of these conclusions, stating that program design and data collection methods left up to individual jurisdictions leaves room for wasted time, inferior methods, and error, and that a top down approach might in fact be superior. This highlights the foundations of the proposed NTPP framework, that states and localities have grown accustomed to doing things a certain way, as dictated by the federal government. The U.S. transportation system would be more functional, efficient, and cost controlled if states and local jurisdictions were rewarded for demonstrating performance of each dollar invested.

The event also marked the release of an NTPP research paper, Performance Metrics for the Evaluation of Transportation Programs authored by Richard Mudge, Vice President, Delcan Corporation and Keith Jasper, Senior Associate, Delcan Corporation. This paper highlights the fact that transportation investments have a profound ability to stimulate national productivity and economic growth, and though increased investment is necessary to maintain national transportation infrastructure in this country, it is essential that any future investment be made wiser and held accountable for demonstrating beneficial results.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, NTPP member, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office and Senior Policy Advisor to John McCain’s presidential campaign gave a keynote speech during lunch of this event. Dr. Holtz-Eakin talked about how understanding near term economic events and likely future economic outcomes, such as the housing finance crisis that occurred in this country and the larger financial market crisis triggering the most severe economic downturn experienced in the United States since the 1930s, are critically important for thinking about our nation’s transportation policy.

Other featured speakers during the Minneapolis event included:
• Former U.S. Congressman and NTPP Co-Chair Martin Sabo;
• Minnesota State Senator and Chair of the National Conference of State Legislatures' Transportation Committee D. Scott Dibble;
• Minnesota State Representative Mary Liz Holberg;
• Peter Bell, Chair of the Metropolitan Council;
• Peter McLaughlin, Commissioner of Hennepin County;
• Tom Sorel, Commissioner of Minnesota Department of Transportation;
• Mike Erlandson, Vice President - Government Affairs of SUPERVALU, INC. and NTPP member;
• Charlie Zelle, President of Jefferson Lines;
• Laurie McGinnis, Acting Director of University of Minnesota's Center for Transportation Studies;
• Humphrey Institute Dean J. Brian Atwood; and
• Lee Munnich, Director of the State and Local Policy Program at the Humphrey Institute.


A full video recording of the event can be viewed here.

A number of news pieces ran in the days following the forum:

Retooling transportation policy,
Fleet Owner by Sean Kilcarr

Oberstar waiting for green light as U conference urges reform of nation's obsolete transportation system,
MinnPost.com by Steve Berg

U of M forum takes aim at transportation funding issues,
Minnesota Public Radio by Dan Olson

The next NTPP forum will take place in New York City on Monday, January 25th at the Kimmel Center at New York University (NYU).