STATEMENT OF
THE HONORABLE CHRIS HART
COUNTY COMMISSIONER
HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, FLORIDA
ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF COUNTIES
Partners
for America’s Transportation Future
THE REAUTHORIZATION OF
THE TRANSPORTATION EQUITY ACT FOR THE 21ST
CENTURY
BEFORE THE
SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
JANUARY 24, 2002
WASHINGTON, DC
Good morning Mr.
Chairman and members of the committee, I am Commissioner Chris Hart, County
Commissioner of Hillsborough County, Florida.
Today I am representing the National Association of Counties (NACo)[1] where I serve as
Chairman of its Transportation Steering Committee. On behalf of NACo, I want to thank the committee for inviting me
to appear before you on the topic of TEA-21 reauthorization. I am delighted to share this panel with West
Virginia’s Governor Wise, Mayor Clavelle of Burlington, Vermont, and Mayor
Coles of Boise, Idaho. My county seat
is in Tampa, where I directly represent over 1 million citizens on the central
West Coast of Florida. It is an urban
center of seven counties with over 3.5 million people. It is also the economic engine of the Tampa
Bay region, in great measure because of our focus on improving the
transportation network, and our major international air and seaports that
connect us to the global economy. On a
lighter note Senators, if you haven’t had a call for the head coach position of
the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, rest assured you will----everyone else has!
NACo has a broad
interest in transportation policy. NACo
has been very active over the past 50 years in assisting Congress in developing
legislation that benefits our member counties, as well as our partners in the
cities and states. Much of our focus
has been on the highway program for the simple reason that counties own 44% of
the nation’s highway mileage and 45% of the nation’s bridges. With 3,066 counties in our vast nation,
NACo's membership is diverse. It’s in America’s thousand urban counties where
both economic and population growth is occurring. Metropolitan counties, or in urban centers like my home on Tampa
Bay, account for 84 percent of the gross domestic product, and have over 125
million people living in just 100 of the most populated counties. Strong
economic growth will occur only with a sound transportation system. Of course, the downside of that growth has
been increasing traffic congestion, which at times threatens our quality of
life and deprives citizens of their ability to move around in a safe and
efficient manner. Conversely, there are
two thousand rural counties with a dwindling tax base that must maintain and
improve their highway and bridge systems if they are just to remain competitive
in today’s economy and retain their current population.
TEA-21 and its
predecessor, ISTEA, have been very helpful to our members and to our nation as
a whole. There is little doubt in my
mind that these programs have contributed to the overall economic growth that
our nation experienced in the last decade.
ISTEA, in 1991, began a trend to increase the federal investment in the
highway program, and TEA-21 provided a 40 percent boost. The increase was needed and we have seen the
benefits. For example, last year the
State of Florida appropriated over $1 billion for a combination of improvements
to the local, state, and federal transportation system in the Tampa Bay
region. This was a direct result of
increased funding because of TEA-21.
The leadership of NACo supported the funding increase for transportation
in TEA-21, and fought hard to support the financing changes in TEA-21 that made
this level of spending possible. It
would be an economic disaster if Congress were to eliminate the firewall
established in TEA-21 or began to use the Highway Trust Fund to either finance
other programs or mask the deficit. Mr.
Chairman and members of the committee, the financing decisions made in 1998
were the right ones!
Let me also add
that I also believe that our highway infrastructure performed well on September
11 and in its aftermath. We should all
remember that the federal highway program was begun to ensure our nation’s
defense. While the tragic events of
last September were never anticipated, the security function of our highway and
bridge system worked. When NACo’s Homeland
Security Task Force met for the first time in October, it was Secretary of
Transportation Noman Mineta, along with Governor Tom Ridge, that the task force
wanted to hear from.
Aside from funding,
the key change in highway legislation over the last ten years has been the
creation of a flexible program that has relied on greater input from local
elected government officials. The
result has been better planning, better decision making on project selection,
and better projects. It is likely that
the federal government will continue to spend substantial federal resources
each year on highways and bridges, and that makes it essential that both local
and state government leaders sit together at the table when decisions are
made. The reauthorization of TEA-21
should continue and accelerate that partnership. ISTEA required cooperative decision making through the
metropolitan planning organization (MPO) process on how surface transportation
program funds, the most flexible category, were to be spent. TEA-21 continued that requirement; and that
legislation also called for cooperation and consultation between state and
local decision-makers in other federal highway programs. TEA-21 expanded this to rural areas and
statutorily called for a consultation process in each state for obtaining rural
local officials input in the statewide transportation plan. I must add that while some states have a
process and the Federal Highway Administration did issue guidance on this
change to its field offices, the US Department of Transportation has yet to issue
final regulations on rural planning requirements.
Last fall, I
established NACo’s TEA-21 Reauthorization Task Force under the able leadership
of my colleague Commissioner Glen Whitley from Tarrant County, Texas. Mr. Chairman, he and our staff have been
diligent in their efforts, have met several times with members throughout our
country, and are now in the process of finalizing NACo’s recommendations for
TEA-21 reauthorization. However, I am
confident that I can state without reservation that environmental streamlining
will be a top issue for our members.
Also, I want to be very clear that we will not be calling for the repeal
of any of our nation’s environmental protection laws. Rather, we will be recommending that the reauthorization include
provisions that ensure projects are completed in a timely and efficient manner,
and the delays in the current system that unnecessarily slow down projects are
eliminated! Simply put, Mr. Chairman
and committee members, we are asking for a concurrent process, rather than an
uncoordinated, sequential one. In the
broadest sense, this means that we need to get all the players in a project
involved at the outset. This means the
local elected officials, state DOTs and its other regulatory officials, all
federal agencies having a role to play, as well as the environmental community,
and most especially, the affected citizens.
No one should be ignored, and no federal agency should be allowed to
operate independently of the other participants. In my State of Florida, for instance, this effort is a work-in-progress,
but it will not be successful without collaboration from the federal
government.
Congestion will be
another key policy issue that Congress must address in the
reauthorization. Urban counties, their
citizens, tourists, and our commerce are strangling on congestion. Time, money, and productivity are all lost
when commerce, the American commuter and tourist are stuck in traffic. There is no one solution, except that we
must apply common sense to the challenge of congestion. Solutions must be found through very close
state-local cooperation. Congestion occurs on county highways, not just on the
state networks. We must remember that
we have a system of highways, and when one part of the system breaks down, the
others are affected too. Any new
legislation should provide for those highways and streets we have now, to
ensure they are properly maintained, so that they can move traffic safely. We must invest more money in highways to
guarantee that our current system is maximized. We know that as much as 50 per cent of congestion occurs due to
breakdowns and accidents on the roadways.
Therefore, we must be smart enough to establish simple, efficient
methods for getting these incidents resolved quickly. Here again, federal agencies and their resources can partner with
local and state government to save time, money, and lives. We need to have systems and procedures in
place that include all the various agencies involved in incident management;
from the highway departments, police, fire/rescue, to EMS and wrecker services,
all communicating with one another. We
can do better. Let me illustrate. How many times have you seen a breakdown or
accident in one lane of traffic, with emergency vehicles taking up the other
lane or lanes, and if we’re really lucky, perhaps we are able to pass after an
hour or so in morning and evening rush hour traffic. Systems and procedures for
incident management could go a long way toward relieving congestion. Another key to relieving congestion and
moving traffic is signalization. We
have all been on highways where the signals are coordinated and traffic
flows. We have also been on roads where
we are stopping at every red light.
Many local governments need additional resources to modernize traffic
signals. The good news is that
electronic signals, and now Intelligent Transportation Systems, or ITS as it’s
commonly called, are giving us an 8 to 1 return on our investment as compared
to other alternatives. By the way, what
we don’t need are automatic signs that say “congestion ahead” when we are
already caught in traffic, or where there are no alternative routes.
Now, Mr. Chairman,
I would finish my remarks by addressing a major concern we all share, rural
roads. Rural roads are in need of
substantial federal investment. Safety
is the primary reason. According to a
US General Accounting Office report in July 2001, rural local roads had the
highest rate of fatalities per vehicle mile traveled of all types of
roadways—over six times that of urban interstates. In 1999, over 25,000 fatalities occurred on rural roads across
the U.S.; and that figure was 2.5 times greater than the fatality rate from
accidents on urban highways in areas like Las Vegas, Miami, St. Louis, and
Cleveland. If Congress wants to reduce
auto fatalities, there is no better investment than on roads in rural counties.
Because rural roads are the most dangerous roads in America, and are the most
costly in human lives, NACo will be proposing a new program to address rural
road safety in the coming months. Rest
assured, Mr. Chairman, that we would work closely with your committee in
developing it.
Mr. Chairman, this
concludes my testimony. I thank you and
the committee for the opportunity to be here today, and would be pleased to
answer your questions.
[1]* NACo is the only national
organization representing county government in the United States. Through its membership, urban, suburban and
rural counties join together to build effective, responsive county government. The goals of the organization are to: improve county government; serve as the
national spokesman for county government; serve as a liaison between the
nation’s counties and other levels of government; achieve public understanding
of the role of counties in the federal system..