Introduction of H.R. ____,
the Transportation Equity Act: Legacy for Users
of Minnesota
In the House of Representatives
November 19, 2003
For most of the 20th Century, the primary focus of surface transportation policy was constructing a safe, efficient highway system, the Interstate and Defense Highway System, to connect our cities, farms, and defense bases. We invested more than $114 billion in constructing the 42,800-mile Interstate system and that investment has paid phenomenal returns in mobility, productivity, and economic growth. It is an unparalleled success: one percent of highway miles carry 24 percent of traffic. Today, the vision of that system is complete.
As the Interstate era came to a close, a new vision of transportation began to emerge – shifting from a focus on moving vehicles to providing transportation choices. The early framing of this vision was embodied in Congress’ passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) in 1991. The “highway bill” became more than that as we focused new efforts (and funding) on transit, congestion mitigation, intelligent transportation systems, and transportation alternatives such as pedestrian and bike paths. The landmark achievement of ISTEA was its vision for transportation policy: moving beyond where highways now lead us, to where it is people want to go and how we can give them choices to get there.
In 1998, Congress built upon ISTEA by ensuring that we would begin to make the necessary infrastructure investment to achieve this vision. With passage of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA 21), we authorized $218 billion for our highway, transit, and highway and motor carrier safety programs – the highest surface transportation funding levels in U.S. history and 44 percent more than ISTEA. However, we knew too well that increased “authorization levels” meant nothing if they did not become a reality. We unlocked the Highway Trust Fund and codified a principle: the highway user fees collected from the traveling public will be invested in our surface transportation infrastructure each and every year. That is the landmark achievement of TEA 21 and, over its life, we invested $214 billion in our Nation’s surface transportation infrastructure – $100 million more in that six-year period than in the 40 years of building the Interstate.
On the first anniversary of TEA 21, I joined our Committee Leadership (then-Chairman Shuster, Chairman Petri, and Subcommittee Ranking Member Rahall), then-Senator Chafee, Senator Voinovich, and Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater and said: “Although the legacy of the surface transportation system of the 21st Century is far off, we have begun the journey of writing that legacy here and now. ISTEA and TEA 21 have set the framework for the beginning of the new century. Nevertheless, we must continue to develop innovative solutions if we are to overcome our Nation’s many transportation problems.”
The journey of writing that legacy continues here today. The “Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users” bill builds upon the vision of ISTEA, maintains the guaranteed funding principle of TEA 21, and outlines its own landmark achievement: providing the investment levels necessary to maintain and begin to improve our Nation’s highway and transit infrastructure. The bill provides a 72 percent increase in funding over TEA 21. We increase investment in highway and highway and motor carrier safety programs from $177 billion under TEA 21 to $306 billion under this bill. Similarly, for transit, we almost double the investment over six years: growing from $36.2 billion guaranteed under TEA 21 to $69.2 billion under the introduced bill.
Although these funding levels are significant increases over current levels, it is important to note that they are not our numbers, they are the Department of Transportation’s own estimates of the Federal investment necessary to maintain and begin to improve our Nation’s surface transportation system. These funding levels recognize what the Texas Transportation Institute has repeatedly told us: congestion is beginning to cripple our largest cities, the primary engines of our Nation’s economic growth. In 75 large metropolitan areas alone, the cost of congestion is $69.5 billion – including 3.5 billion hours of delay and 5.7 billion gallons of excess fuel consumption. The average annual delay for every person in these cities has climbed to 26 hours. While these statistics are startling, the average American family does not need them recited – they are stuck in traffic on their way home from work, picking up the kids at daycare, or running the endless errands that seem a part of today’s society, and they lose what precious little time they have together.
More importantly, our Nation’s highways, bridges, and transit systems are not as safe as they need to be and the highway death toll is unacceptably high. Over the past 25 years, 1.2 million have died on our roads. Last year, 42,815 people died and 2.9 million more were injured on our highways. Highway fatalities remain the leading cause of death of our youth (people ages 4 to 33). In addition to the personal tragedy of each of these deaths and many of the injuries, the economic cost of these accidents is more than $230 billion per year.
Considering the congestion and highway safety impacts of insufficient investment in transportation alone, our economy is losing $300 billion per year because we are not investing the necessary resources to maintain and improve our Nation’s transportation systems. We cannot afford to continue to shortchange our Nation’s transportation systems. To effectively reduce congestion, to increase mobility, to truly improve highway safety, and to achieve continuing long-term increases in productivity and economic growth, we must invest in our Nation’s transportation future. And we must do it now. That is why we join together today to introduce this bill to authorize $375 billion over six years.
The bill increases the minimum guarantee rate of return from 90.5 percent in FY2003 to 95 percent in FY2009. The bill also provides significant increases for the core highway programs. The National Highway System increases from $27.4 billion under TEA 21 to $39 billion under this bill. In addition, after a portion of the minimum guarantee funds are distributed to the core highway programs, NHS funding increases to $49.3 billion over the next six years. Similarly, the Bridge program grows from $19.3 billion under TEA 21 to $34.3 billion with the redistributed minimum guarantee funds. Finally, the CMAQ program almost doubles – growing from $7.9 billion to $13.9 over the next six years.
Moreover, the bill provides similar increases for transit. Guaranteed transit funding increases 92 percent to $69.2 billion. The core transit formula programs increase to $34 billion and the transit capital program (new starts, rail modernization, and bus capital invesment) increases to almost $30 billion over the six years of the bill.
Beyond building upon the success of ISTEA and TEA 21, as I said at the TEA 21 anniversary, we must continue to develop innovative solutions if we are to overcome our Nation’s many transportation problems. Let me touch on a couple of new programs included in the bill that propose new and different way to address transportation issues.
As I have traveled the country over the last several years to review the condition of our Nation’s infrastructure, I have noted that, despite the significant funding increases of TEA 21, current levels of surface transportation investment are insufficient to fund critical high-cost transportation infrastructure facilities that address critical economic and transportation needs. These projects, whether it is Alameda Corridor East or Chicago’s CREATE, have national and regional benefits, including facilitating international trade, relieving congestion, and improving transportation safety by significantly improving freight and passenger movement in critical transportation bottlenecks. The bill creates a $17.6 billion Projects of National and Regional Significance program to enable the Secretary of Transportation to competitively select such projects of national significance (project cost of more than $500 million).
I also want to touch on a much smaller, but equally important, new program: Safe Routes to School. Several years ago, I began working with two communities, Marin County, California and Arlington, Massachusetts, to develop a program to enable and encourage children to walk or bike to school. These two pilot projects have been incredible successes. With this experience in hand, the bill creates a new $1.5 billion Safe Routes to School formula program to enable and encourage children to walk or bike to school; make bicycling and walking to school a safer and more appealing transportation alternative, thereby encouraging a healthy and active lifestyle from an early age; and to improve safety and reduce traffic, wasted fuel, and air pollution in school neighborhoods.
Finally, the Committee’s proposal will provide badly needed economic stimulus. The Federal Highway Administration reports that every $1 billion of federal funds invested in highway infrastructure creates 47,500 jobs and $6.2 billion in economic activity. When enacted, the Committee’s introduced bill will create and sustain up to 3.6 million family-wage construction jobs, including 1.7 million new jobs.
Moreover, a recent study found that the Committee’s bipartisan proposal to invest $375 billion in surface transportation over the next six years would add $290 billion more to the Nation’s Gross Domestic Product than the Administration’s proposal to invest only $247 billion. The Committee’s proposal would also lead to an additional $129 billion of household disposable income and an additional $98 billion in consumer spending – millions of new, good-paying jobs, billions of dollars of new consumer spending: now that’s the way to get the economy growing again!
I join with Chairman Young, Subcommittee Chairman Petri, Subcommittee Ranking Member Lipinski, and the Members of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, in introducing this bipartisan bill today. We will continue to work together on the journey of writing the legacy of our surface transportation future.