NTPP Event: How Fair is Road Pricing?

NTPP with Co-Hosts Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Congressman David Reichert (R-WA) hosted a policy briefing on the Hill to release our latest research paper How Fair is Road Pricing? Evaluating Equity in Transportation Pricing and Finance. The paper was written by Dr. Brian Taylor, Professor and Chair of the Urban Planning Department at UCLA. This report was initially commissioned prior to the release of NTPP’s 2009 Performance Driven report, in order to inform the recommendations for federal surface transportation policy reform put forth in that report.

Dr. Taylor’s research paper examines the equity implications of road pricing. It systematically considers the various ways that a road pricing system might raise equity concerns. Using case studies of how equity issues have been addressed in current applications of road pricing, the paper makes recommendations for how to address equity concerns in road pricing projects. Dr. Taylor points out through his research that equity is truly in the eye of the beholder.

In his opening remarks Congressman Blumenauer assured the audience that the debate highlighted by this NTPP report will be critical to developing the next authorization bill. He commended the BPC for bringing this crucial topic to the Hill. Congressman Reichert echoed a similar appreciation of BPC’s work in his remarks. Congressman Reichert stressed the importance of coming together in a bipartisan way to take a look at how to finance efforts to unclog transportation across the nation.

Dr. Martin Wachs, Director of Transportation, Space, and Technology at the RAND Corporation applauded Dr. Taylor on his research, and more specifically on his ability to explain the subtleties and the complexities associated with equity in road pricing. Dr. Wachs pointed out during his remarks that often in politically charged debates we tend to focus on the distributional aspects of the problem. We don’t often take into account, as we should, the efficiencies or effectiveness of a particular decision. Dr. Wachs noted that in most cases projects in fact proved to be much more equitable in practice than they were initially anticipated to be.

Anita Hairston, Senior Associate with PolicyLink lauded Dr. Taylor’s paper for putting the issues of equity out front. Ms. Hairston called for those involved in transportation investment decisions to use the framework presented in Dr. Taylor’s paper as a practical evaluation tool to truly understand the equity impacts of the various options for financing the transportation system.

Check out full video coverage of the event here.

Performance-Driven at the 2010 Oregon Transportation Summit

Joshua Schank kicked-off the 2010 Oregon Transportation Summit on September 10^th with an opening plenary address on transportation performance management. This conference brought together both academic and practicing transportation professionals to accelerate research into practice. Dr. Schank’s opening remarks helped bring the audience up-to-date on the ongoing transportation policy reform discussions taking shape in Washington, D.C. Reviewing the recommendations of NTPP's Performance Driven report Dr. Schank offered some insight into the possible implications, at the state, regional and local levels, of transportation policy reform.

Check out photos of the Summit here!

Commending the President’s Call for Transportation Reform

Our National Transportation Policy Project issued a statement in response to President Obama’s Infrastructure Plan announcement on Labor Day.

Check out our statement.

Paying for the Nation’s Transportation Infrastructure through Program Reform and User-Pay Mechanisms

When asked whether transportation funding is raised and spent in a way that reflects how we actually use the highway system Emil Frankel points out, in his latest National Journal blog entry, that the federal gasoline tax no longer provides a sustainable and adequate source of revenue for investment, nor does it serve as an adequate proxy for use.

Mr. Frankel points out that America's transportation system is currently under priced and over utilized. We need to consider certain costs and benefits that we don’t currently take into account when devising funding options. Improving user-pay funding mechanisms, accurately related to the full cost of providing transportation services and of maintaining and restoring the transportation infrastructure, is necessary.

Check out Emil’s full blog entry, as well as the entries and opinions of other leading transportation policy stakeholders, here.

FREIGHT Act of 2010

The topic for this week’s National Journal blog was whether the Focusing Resources, Economic Investment, and Guidance to Help Transportation (FREIGHT) Act of 2010 will enhance the nation’s freight system.

Emil Frankel, Director of Policy for the NTPP, argues in his latest entry that the problems facing freight transportation are dealt with most efficiently when a broad, programmatic approach to transportation investment is employed. Through this lens, the NTPP views the issues plaguing freight transportation (i.e. increasing congestion, unreliable delivery times) as problems that reach beyond the freight mode and need to instead be dealt with across modal and agency lines.

Mr. Frankel argues that the FREIGHT Act could be strengthened by including, along with goals for economic growth, NTPP’s goals of accountability toward increasing national connectivity and metropolitan accessibility of investments. These goals would make any freight investment benefit the national transportation system as a whole rather than a particular region or state. Furthermore, the FREIGHT Act should include a mode-neutral freight fee in order to further tie funding to investments, enabling performance benchmarks to be met.

Read Emil’s blog post here.

JayEtta Hecker WMATA Appointment

JayEtta Hecker, NTPP’s Director of Transportation Advocacy was recently appointed to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Governance Review Task Force. The task force is being convened to recommend improvements to WMATA’s governance structure. Along with other transportation experts, JayEtta will be serving on the task force with business leaders as well as former elected and appointed officials.

JayEtta’s appointment is featured in the Eno Foundation’s monthly newsletter, which can be found here. Ms. Hecker also serves as a member of the Eno Foundation Board of Advisors.

Transportation Equity

Joshua Schank, Director of Transportation Research for the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Transportation Policy Project (NTPP), was recently a member of a transportation equity panel on HITN’s show Destination Casa Blanca.

The panel, which included Deron Lovaas from the NRDC and Geoff Anderson, President and CEO of Smart Growth America, discussed how previous transportation investments have benefit the wealthier segments of the population while lower-income and minority communities have not reaped the rewards of transportation investments.

The NTPP advocates for transportation investments to be a “bottom-up” process. Instead of investing in particular projects and delivered mainly in the form of federal earmarks, federal investments should be held accountable to achieve distinct national goals, thereby creating a national transportation system that meets the needs of all citizens, regardless of whether they have access to a car.

Check out the highlights of the show here.