I am Taylor Bowlden, vice president of the American Highway Users Alliance. The Highway Users represents a broad cross-section of businesses and individuals who depend on safe and efficient highways to transport their families, customers, employees, and products. During the development of TEA21, we administered a coalition, called Keep America Moving, that lobbied in support of the business community's agenda. We worked closely with many members of the Environment and Public Works Committee during the long months of negotiations on that complicated and often controversial legislation.
Though we didn't get everything we sought in TEA21, we believe the nation will be well served by the important transportation improvements that the law makes possible. In particular, we believe the budgetary firewall, created under TEA21 to ensure that federal highway taxes are used for their intended purposes, is a landmark change in federal policy that marks TEA21 as the most important highway legislation since Congress approved construction of the Interstate System in 1956. Left intact, the budgetary firewall, or funding guarantee, as I'll refer to it here, will channel motorists' taxes into road and bridge improvements that will save lives and build a stronger economy for years to come. We commend the members of this committee who worked hard to hammer out a deal on the firewall that could survive opposition from some quarters in Congress and at OMB.
Today, I want to discuss five general areas of concern regarding the implementation of TEA21: the funding guarantee, so-called "smart growth" initiatives and the Vice President's "Livability Agenda," safety considerations in transportation planning, environmental streamlining, and Interstate tolls. There are, of course, other important implementation issues, but these five are our top priorities because they affect the number of road improvements that can be financed annually, the extent to which traffic congestion and safety problems can be alleviated, and the speed with which those projects can be completed.
Funding Guarantee
For the first time since the Highway Trust Fund was created, TEA21 provides a statutory link between highway funding and the taxes paid by motorists for highway improvements. The budgetary firewall is not, strictly speaking, a guarantee that federal spending on highways will equal receipts from motor fuel taxes and other highway user fees. Appropriators could reduce highway funding below the "guaranteed" amount (although TEA21 eliminates most incentives to do so), or a future Congress could simply rewrite the firewall provisions. To date, however, the firewall seems to be working as intended: guaranteeing that highway taxes are invested each year in highway and other transportation improvements rather than being used to finance other federal programs.
To ordinary taxpayers, the funding guarantee means the federal government is going to spend your highway taxes as it promised when the taxes were imposed. We applaud the Congress for writing this basic principle of taxpayer fairness into law. We look forward to working with members of this committee to protect the firewall provisions against encroachment by those who prefer the old scheme of borrowing highway taxes to finance other elements of the federal budget.
Since the TEA21 funding guarantee may become an issue at some point in this year's appropriations cycle, let me make two additional points about it.
First, the money is needed. Every state has a long backlog of unmet road and bridge improvements. Nationwide, 26.5 percent of major roads are in poor or mediocre condition; 31 percent of bridges should be repaired or replaced; and 31 percent of urban freeways are regularly congested. That's why the nation's governors last year gave such strong support to the highway funding guarantees being developed in TEA21. It's also why governors attending the National Governors' Association winter meeting two months ago held a press conference urging Congress to fulfill the funding commitments made in TEA21.
Second, motorists are still paying more taxes than they're getting back in highway funds. A recent report of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) makes it clear that even if TEA21's funding guarantee remains intact and fully implemented, tax deposits to the highway account of the Highway Trust Fund will exceed outlays every year. As a result, although Congress agreed to write down the highway account's cash balance to $8 billion in 1998 and eliminate future interest payments from the general fund, the JCT report indicates that the account's cash balance will balloon to $28.8 billion by the end of TEA21 and a projected $31.8 billion over 10 years. [A chart from the JCT report is attached as an addendum to my written statement.]
In summary, the funding guarantee of TEA21 is a matter of honesty with the taxpayers; it provides a significant increase of needed funding for road and bridge improvements; and it still under-funds the highway program relative to the highway taxes paid by motorists. We urge the subcommittee to defend its handiwork and protect the funding guarantee against encroachment by other committees or the White House.
Livability Agenda
That leads me to our next priority for TEA21 implementation: the Clinton/Gore "Livability Agenda". When the Vice President announced this initiative on January 11, it was widely praised on Capitol Hill and in the media. He proposed approximately $1.5 billion in new federal spending on public transit, the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program, and so-called "smart growth" initiatives aimed at controlling land development. It wasn't until the President's budget was transmitted in February, however, that we learned the money was proposed to come out of each state's share of federal highway funds.
We were delighted that Chairman Chafee immediately wrote to Secretary Slater expressing the chairman's "great reservations about the President's proposal." Specifically, Senator Chafee noted that paying for the Livability Agenda by deducting a portion of each state's federal highway funds would reopen the issue of funding formulas and upset the programmatic balance in TEA21 between, for example, bridges, transit, and interstate maintenance.
Senator Byrd, a leader in last year's fight to increase funding for highways, made much the same point, perhaps in even clearer terms, at last month's Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on the President's budget. Senator Byrd rejected the proposed diversion of highway construction funds to non-highway uses and told Secretary Slater, "that as far as I am concerned, the highway funding guarantee is not open to negotiation."
Opposition from leaders of the Senate authorizing and appropriations committees should pretty well settle the issue of using highway funds to finance the Livability Agenda. We urge the subcommittee to join with Chairman Chafee in opposing the administration's funding proposal.
Apart from the particular financing scheme, however, there remain important policy concerns associated with the Livability Agenda and similar "smart growth" proposals being debated in state capitals. Smart growth initiatives adopted by states or the federal government could dramatically impact the permissible use of TEA21 funds and local officials' ability to address suburban growth, traffic congestion, and related air quality issues.
At the outset, let me say that our members support the stated objectives of the Livability Agenda: more open space, reduced traffic congestion, a higher quality of life, and more livable communities. Few, we suspect, are advocating public policies intentionally designed to produce more traffic congestion or a lower quality of life. It's a question of the appropriate means to achieve a common objective.
A common theme for Vice President Gore and many smart growth advocates seems to be that public infrastructure investments highways, water and sewer lines, schools, etc. have facilitated or, perhaps, induced growth in suburban communities, traffic congestion, and air quality or other environmental problems. If we cut off those expansion-oriented investments, the argument goes, and direct public funds toward transportation alternatives and other infrastructure investments in already developed areas, we can encourage better private choices in terms of where people live or work and how they travel.
Unfortunately for those advocates, a growing body of evidence suggests that this approach will neither inhibit suburban expansion nor improve the related problems of traffic congestion and air quality. The evidence, in fact, suggests that the ongoing migration of jobs and people to the suburbs has little to do with the transportation facilities available in an area and that most transportation options are unsuited to our increasingly decentralized pattern of living.
For instance, a recent University of California study found that most people choose where to live based on a desire to get away from the central city, for access to the outdoors, and for improved safety and public schools. And in a recent public opinion poll in Wisconsin, people listed as their top priorities in deciding where to live: quality public education, a house they could afford, good jobs and low traffic congestion. Secondary priorities were open spaces and low-density housing. The availability of public transit was a low priority.
So, as Americans become more prosperous, they look for a house they can afford with more living space, quality public education for their children, and a safer neighborhood. In both housing and commercial developments, Americans are looking for more space, and government policies aimed at squeezing them back together are unlikely to produce what ordinary citizens would call a higher quality of life.
In addition, the evidence is strong that public investments in alternatives to highway travel are unlikely to relieve traffic congestion or improve air quality. Between 1980 and 1990, the only mode of commuting that realized an increase in the percentage of workers was "driving alone". During that time period, there were 19 million net additional workers but 22 million more people driving to work alone. Essentially, that means every new member of the work force chose to drive alone, plus three million workers switched from some other mode of travel to driving by themselves.
Why? Is it because Americans hate biking, walking, or mass transit? No. It's simply because those alternatives often don't work for them. The majority of new single-occupant-drivers in the last decade were working women. Most of them run family errands on the way to or from work, and driving their own car is the only workable solution. A March 3, 1999 article on the front page of the Washington Post entitled, "Women Taking The Long Way Home," made exactly this point from the perspective of a working mother living here in a Washington suburb.
For that reason, it is highly unlikely that traffic congestion problems will be solved by diverting funds away from road improvements and into transportation alternatives instead. In many fast-growing regions, additional highway capacity is desperately needed and the only effective way to address the transportation demands of busy suburban commuters.
The Washington, D.C. metropolitan area offers a good illustration of this point. Over the last two decades, Washington has built an excellent rail transit system and invested heavily in the construction of high-occupancy-vehicle (HOV) lanes. As a result, we have the nation's third highest percentage (13.4%) of commuters who use transit and easily the highest percentage (16%) of commuters who carpool. Yet, according to the Texas Transportation Institute's annual report on traffic congestion, Washington now has the second worst congestion in the country. And a 1997 transportation study conducted by the Greater Washington Board of Trade concludes that the problem lies in an insufficient metropolitan road network. "Washington has the most commuters per household traveling on one of the smallest highway networks [in the country]," according to the Board of Trade.
Again, we all want less traffic congestion, cleaner air, and more livable communities. Good public policy, however, should take into account observable patterns in housing and commercial development as well as demographic and technological changes that make further decentralization seem likely. In many cases, traffic flow improvements and additional highway capacity will be the only effective means to address the transportation demands in fast-growing areas. In most cases, TEA21 makes these solutions possible. State and local officials should be left to decide what kind of solutions make sense in their areas.
Safety In Transportation Planning
TEA21 specifies seven factors that state and metropolitan officials must consider in developing transportation plans, and for the first time, safety is explicitly included among the planning factors. On February 10, 1999, after an extensive public outreach and comment period, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) issued a paper seeking further public comment on options for implementing TEA21's cross-cutting planning and environmental provisions. Unfortunately, the 23-page "options paper" does not include a single reference to methods by which FHWA intends to highlight safety as a factor in the development of transportation plans.
Secretary Slater has referred to safety as the "north star" guiding the Department of Transportation's work and policy agenda. We think safety should indeed guide the work of all transportation decision makers: federal, state, and local. For that reason, and given TEA21's new elevation of safety as a factor in the development of transportation plans, we believe FHWA should issue new planning guidance that clearly makes safety a top priority.
Unfortunately, safety has been, and remains, a major problem in highway travel. Poor road conditions and obsolete road designs contribute to nearly a third of all fatal crashes in the U.S. Each year, an average of 12,000 people die in collisions with roadside hazards such as trees, utility poles, and embankments, and another 3,500 die in rollover crashes, many of which might be prevented with safety improvements such as wider shoulders or a more gradual side slope. Unlike other areas of highway safety driver behavior and vehicle design where significant gains have been made, the percentages of fatalities related to roadside hazards has actually risen over the past two decades.
Fortunately, this trend can be reversed with well designed and maintained roads. We believe that is the principal reason Congress added safety to the transportation planning factors, and we encourage the subcommittee to tell FHWA officials that safety should clearly be a top-priority item in any guidance issued on TEA21's new planning requirements.
Environmental Streamlining
Section 1309 of TEA21, entitled Environmental Streamlining, establishes a coordinated environmental review process that, like other elements of TEA21, is intended to expedite the delivery of transportation projects while still meeting federal environmental requirements. The Secretary of Transportation is directed to establish a process with other federal agencies by which all federal environmental reviews can be performed concurrently, rather than sequentially. And the law anticipates development of a dispute resolution process for cases in which a project-related environmental issue is not resolved in a timely fashion.
We applaud Congress for taking this important step to eliminate unnecessary and unwarranted delays in the development of major transportation projects. The streamlining proposed in section 1309 cannot be accomplished, however, without USDOT's active support, working with myriad other federal agencies. The February 10 FHWA "options paper," to which I referred previously, indicates that some discussions have occurred between FHWA officials and representatives of other federal agencies involved in the environmental review process. Our understanding, however, is that no memorandum of understanding has been reached to date with any of the other federal agencies.
We understand the difficulty of this task, particularly as it involves numerous federal agencies. Our hope is that the Transportation & Infrastructure Subcommittee will offer FHWA any support that may be needed to encourage other relevant federal agencies to cooperate in reaching timely and workable agreements to implement the Environmental Streamlining provisions fully. It does not seem unreasonable to expect such agreements to be obtained in writing by the end of this fiscal year, two years into TEA21.
Interstate Tolls
Last but not least on our agenda is a provision we lost in TEA21. Section 1216(b) of the legislation establishes the "Interstate System Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Pilot Program," authorizing up to three states to place tolls on existing, toll-free Interstate routes in order to finance reconstruction of the route. We strongly opposed the provision when it was debated in Congress, and since its enactment, we have worked with in-state highway user groups to ensure that public officials are aware of the strong public opposition to Interstate tolls that exists in every state. To date, no state has submitted an application to participate in the pilot program, and FHWA recently extended indefinitely its original March 31, 1999 deadline for applications to be received.
I raise the issue in this hearing not because there is a problem with implementation of the program: FHWA issued clear implementation guidance in its solicitation notice published in the Federal Register on February 10. Instead, I wanted to take this opportunity to reiterate The Highway Users' opposition, and what we believe to be strong public opposition, to tolls on existing, toll-free Interstates. Our hope is that if Congress considers legislation making changes to TEA21, this subcommittee, taking into account the fact that no state has applied to participate in the Interstate tolling program, will simply repeal it.
We understand that these hearings are not necessarily a prelude to any TEA21 mid-course corrections bill, but in case the opportunity for new legislation arises, we wanted to draw your attention again to the highway user community's opposition to Interstate tolls.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting The Highway Users to testify at your first hearing on TEA21 implementation. I will be happy to answer any questions that you or members of the subcommittee may have.