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34–775 PDF 2007

SURFACE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM:

CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE

(110–3)

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JANUARY 24, 2007

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

(

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

BOB FILNER, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD, 

California 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

NICK LAMPSON, Texas 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

(II)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS, TRANSIT AND PIPELINES 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD, 

California 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A ARCURI, New York 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

BOB FILNER, California 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota 

(Ex Officio) 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

(Ex Officio) 

(III)

(V)

CONTENTS Page 

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... vi

TESTIMONY 

Bronzini, Michael S., George Mason University, Dewberry Chair Professor, 

Fairfax, Virginia ................................................................................................... 43

Heminger, Steve, Executive Director, Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Oakland, California ..................................................................................... 34

Lomax, Timothy J., Texas Transportation Institute, Program Manager, Mobility Analysis, College Station, Texas ................................................................... 43

Pisarski, Alan, Private Consultant, Falls Church, Virginia ................................ 43

Schenendorf, Jack, Counsel, Covington & Burling LLP, Washington, D.C. ....... 34

Schwieterman, Joseph P., Professor, DePaul University, Director, Chaddick 

Institute for Metropolitan Development, Chicago, Illinois ............................... 43

Shane, Hon. Jeffrey N., U.S. Department of Transportation, Under Secretary 

for Policy, Washington, D.C., accompanied by Richard Capka, Administrator, Federal Highway Administration ........................................................... 9

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Altmire, Hon. Jason, of Pennsylvania .................................................................... 61

Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., of Maryland ............................................................... 91

Lipinski, Hon. Dan, of Illinois ................................................................................ 107

Matsui, Hon. Doris O., of California ...................................................................... 118

Mitchell, Harry E., of Arizona ................................................................................ 120

Rahall, Hon. Nick J., II, of West Virginia ............................................................. 136

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Bronzini, Michael S ................................................................................................. 62

Heminger, Steve ...................................................................................................... 97

Lomax, Timothy J. ................................................................................................... 111

Pisarski, Alan ........................................................................................................... 123

Schenendorf, Jack .................................................................................................... 137

Schwieterman, Joseph P ......................................................................................... 148

Shane, Hon. Jeffrey N ............................................................................................. 152

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Bronzini, Michael S., George Mason University, Dewberry Chair Professor, 

Fairfax, Virginia, report, Transportation Information Assests and Impacts: 

An Assessment of Needs, J.L. Schofer, T. Lomax, T. Palmerlee, and J. 

Zmud, Transportation Research Circular E-C109, Transportation Research 

Board, Data and Information Systems Section, December 2006 ..................... 69

Shane, Hon. Jeffrey N., U.S. Department of Transportation, Under Secretary 

for Policy, Washington, D.C., Older Drivers Driving Older Cars: A Snapshot 

analysis of the National Household Travel Survey 2001 .................................. 18

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34775.003
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34775.004
(1)

SURFACE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM: 

CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE 

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT, COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION

AND INFRASTRUCTURE, WASHINGTON, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:03 a.m., in room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Peter A. DeFazio 

[Chairman of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. The hearing of the Subcommittee on Highways and 

Transit will come to order. 

This hearing is on the surface transportation system challenges 

of the future. A couple of preliminaries. 

Just to make a point, which I think is in the grand tradition of 

this committee, I am convening the committee with a gavel which 

was given to me by Speaker Hastert after the completion of the 

SAFETEA-LU on the floor. It was autographed by Speaker Hastert 

and I brought it to make a point that transportation and transportation infrastructure are not partisan issues. They have not been. 

They should not be. They benefit all of the American people and 

the economy; and I certainly intend to continue in that tradition. 

Beyond that, we are also adopting the Don Young rule—some 

will recall it—and I do not know that Don ever did it, but he often 

threatened to confiscate cell phones that rang during the hearing 

and take them to the men’s room where they would disappear. So 

if everyone would please put their BlackBerrys, cell phones and 

others on vibrate, that would be helpful for the decorum of the 

committee. 

Then, beyond that, we are going to have a few brief opening 

statements. I actually did have one here, and I do not know where 

it has disappeared to, but I did it yesterday. 

OK. I certainly want to thank my ranking member—oh—and the 

full committee ranking member, Mr. Mica. Jimmy Duncan and I 

have worked together in Water Resources and Aviation before that, 

so this is not new. I just normally sit to his left, which is probably 

where I more belong, but I am sitting in the Chair, and we changed 

sides, so it did not work out quite that way. But he will be a great 

leader for the Republican side, and I look forward to working with 

him and, certainly, the full committee ranking member, John Mica. 

He and I worked together on aviation issues, particularly in the 

post 9/11 environment, and I have always enjoyed a good rapport 

and relationship with John. 

I am pleased to preside over this first hearing today—20 years 

in Congress, and I finally get to wield the gavel—but I should put 

2

it in perspective. I had breakfast with a former colleague, Les 

AuCoin from Oregon, who was on Appropriations. He pointed out 

that if he was still here after 32 years, he still would not have a 

subcommittee gavel on Appropriations. So, you know, you need to 

keep it all in perspective. 

I expect the subcommittee to be very active in the next 2 years. 

We are going to do oversight on the implementation of SAFETEALU, and then we are going to begin the work to build the foundations of the next reauthorization. SAFETEA-LU, in my opinion, 

was essentially the last transportation bill of the last century, very 

traditional ways of financing, a pretty traditional approach toward 

what we were funding. 

The next bill will be very different. At this point, we do not know 

exactly how it will all be constructed, but it will be something that 

needs to look toward the future in terms of the system and what 

it will support and what we will construct, and we are going to 

have to look at new ways to pay for those needs. 

This past summer, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the 

Federal Aid Highway Act; and, you know, that was the foundation 

for this interstate system and the transportation infrastructure 

today. It is now time to look toward those next 50 years. 

I am particularly looking forward today to hearing from the witnesses who are members of the National Surface Transportation 

Policy and Revenue Study Commission, which we created in 

SAFETEA-LU. We created the Commission in the hopes that we 

would get that kind of analysis, that they would look both at our 

needs and potential ways of increasing revenues to fund it; and we 

are looking forward to hearing from them. We will also hear from 

some administration witnesses. 

Thanks for everyone’s attendance here today; and, with that, I 

will turn to my ranking member, Mr. Duncan. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, but I want to go 

first to our ranking member of the full committee, my friend, John 

Mica, for his statement. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. 

I do not have a formal statement prepared today, fortunately, but 

I want to, first of all, congratulate my friend and colleague, Mr. 

DeFazio, on the assumption on the chairmanship of this subcommittee. He is a hard worker, a hard charger. He referred to 

some of the work that was done in post-9/11. The country owes him 

a great debt of gratitude for his untiring efforts to make certain 

that in aviation and transportation that we are safe and secure. So 

he is a delight to work with. We share one thing in common. We 

both sometimes have a little temper tantrums, but everybody takes 

us in stride, fortunately, Peter, but————

Mr. DEFAZIO. I think it is the Italian heritage. 

Mr. MICA. I think it is. It is something. You know, maybe it is 

in the pasta genes or something. But we do get a little excited, and 

people all take us in stride. 

But I look forward to working with you. Today, I am glad you 

are kicking off today’s business with looking at the long term; and 

that is part of our responsibility, is setting that long-term policy. 

I was thinking we are a bit, though, addicted to surface transportation in the traditional sense in this country; and one of the things 

3

is, even though it may go beyond the scope of the Commission and 

some of the highway subcommittee responsibilities, looking at getting us into the era of mass transit, we are woefully inadequate as 

far as keeping up with the rest of the world and moving people in 

a cost-effective manner. Maybe some of our urban areas are better, 

but we have got to look at that. 

I will give you just one quick example in closing. 

We are going to build about 20 miles of interstate through metropolitan Orlando. It is not even in my district. It is going to give us 

two lanes more in each direction which have a maximum capacity 

of 4,000 cars per hour. Most of the cars have one person in the car. 

The cost is $2.2 billion, and I can build an entire commuter rail 

system that will handle 12,000 to 15,000 people per hour for about 

$600 million, a fraction of the cost. We need to be looking at other 

ways to move people. 

Of course, with surface, we have our challenges, and financing 

these great costs is not part of today’s discussion but will eventually be part of it, and I look forward to hearing from Mr. Shane 

and the other witnesses you have assembled. I look forward to 

working with you on the challenges that we face in surface transportation, moving people cost-efficiently around our country, and I 

am pleased to yield back. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for that. 

Yes, I call that the sort of least-cost transportation planning approach, Mr. Mica; and it is something that—we have really got to 

begin to break down some of these stovepipes. I mean, that is an 

excellent example. 

Mrs. Tauscher, I believe, has an opening statement. 

Mrs. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and congratulations 

on your assumption of the chairmanship. 

I want to thank you again for allowing me to make a brief statement. 

Certainly, as you have outlined and as our witnesses will outline, 

our Nation’s transportation infrastructure needs are not unknown. 

It is true that the last highway bill put a significant down payment 

on addressing these needs. However, we cannot avoid the fact that 

infrastructure is aging, our economy is changing, and highway and 

transit systems built 50 years ago are being used in ways never before contemplated. 

Addressing this challenge will certainly require some ingenuity 

on our part and on the parts of the Department of Transportation, 

the Policy and Revenue Study Commission, the State DOTs, and 

certainly the local MPOs. It is with that in mind that I would like 

to especially welcome to today’s hearing Mr. Steve Heminger. Steve 

will join us today on the second panel. 

As many of you already know, Steve serves as the Executive Director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in Northern 

California’s Bay Area, where I am from. He also serves on the National Service Transportation Policy Revenue Study Commission 

and as an appointee of Speaker Pelosi. Steve’s experience in the 

Bay Area will certainly provide the Commission and this committee 

with important insights as to how to aggressively and smartly 

manage, as he does with his MPO, the leveraging of Federal, State 

and local funding sources to address issues of congestion capacity 

4

and development in one of our Nation’s most transportation-dependent regions. I am looking forward to Steve’s testimony today, 

and I appreciate his taking time to come before the subcommittee. 

Again, Mr. Chairman, I thank you and congratulate you for assuming this great job. I yield back. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentlelady. I thank her for being so 

succinct. 

Mr. Duncan. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman; and, 

first of all, let me also congratulate you on assuming your first 

chairmanship. 

As you mentioned, I had the privilege of chairing the Aviation 

Subcommittee for 6 years and then the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee for 6 years. You have worked with me 

throughout that time, part of the time as ranking member on the 

Water Resources Subcommittee; and it was always a privilege and 

pleasure to work with you. You and I have already met, and I have 

expressed my hope and desire that we have a very active subcommittee for this next 2 years, and I believe we will. 

I served in the minority my first 6 years in the Congress, and 

certainly, my preference is to be in the majority, but your side 

treated me very fairly during those first 6 years. There was rapid 

turnover of chairmanships in that time period, and I served under 

three full committee chairmen in those first 6 years, but this committee, as you previously mentioned, has a history of bipartisanship, and I hope that and believe that we will continue that during 

this Congress. 

I am pleased to begin our subcommittee’s work with this first 

hearing, and I am glad that we are aiming high and tackling such 

an important subject. In the 110th Congress, the Transportation 

and Infrastructure Committee will begin to lay the groundwork for 

the reauthorization of the Federal Highway, Transit and Highway 

Safety Programs, all of those that we have had in place and those 

that were last authorized in the 2005 SAFETEA-LU legislation. 

It is critically important that we understand the needs of the Nation’s surface transportation systems before we begin to write legislation and finding national programs to support that system. Over 

the last 50 years, transportation in this country has radically 

changed, and those changes have not appeared in a vacuum. 

Changes in the national surface transportation system have been 

driven, in part, by the goals and policies put in place by Federal, 

State and local governments. 

In addition, market forces in our ever-changing economy have 

played an important role in the development of our surface transportation system. As we try to determine what the national surface 

transportation system will look like over the next 25 or 50 years, 

it is clear that the system must respond to the needs of the U.S. 

economy and a society that continues to rapidly grow and change. 

One problem with the national surface transportation system, a 

major problem, that we must address is congestion. Congestion is 

choking our economy and degrading our quality of life. Congestion 

costs motorists more than $60 billion a year by the most conservative estimate, and the most conservative estimates in wasted time 

5

and fuel costs the average person in this country approximately 

$800 a year by the lowest estimates. 

Part of the congestion crisis has been caused by the fact that infrastructure investment has not kept pace with the needs of the 

transportation system. For example, the total number of highway 

miles grew by only 2 percent between 1980 and 2000. Yet, during 

those same years, the number of passenger car miles driven increased by 50 percent, and truck miles increased by 95 percent. 

The expected population and freight traffic growth over the next 

few decades will make what is already a terrible problem much 

worse. 

We have to tackle the congestion problem with real solutions. As 

one of our witnesses will say in his testimony later this morning, 

transportation projects are not about faster travel; they are about 

supporting an economy that competes in the global marketplace, 

supports families, encourages innovation, and creates options that 

allow citizens to improve their lives. That is what this hearing this 

morning is about, and that is what the work of this subcommittee 

is about. 

Another national trend for which we must be prepared is the 

graying of America. As our population grows in size, the average 

age of our citizens is also increasing. In 50 years, the percentage 

of the population over 65 will almost double, and that is an important thing that we need to take into consideration. 

I look forward to hearing from all of our distinguished witnesses 

this morning, and I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for his statement. 

Mrs. Napolitano. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Mr. Chair; and I am very, very 

happy to be on this committee, very honored. After 8 years, I have 

made it. 

I represent the 38th District of California, which is a major surface transit area and has major problems, specifically dealing with 

one of the major freeways, the Santa Ana freeway, the I–5, which 

is a major transportation corridor from Mexico to Canada, and it 

is very heavily congested in Los Angeles County. However, in my 

area, there is an 18-mile bottleneck of three lanes coming in from 

six lanes from the Orange County area into my district. You can 

get on that freeway any time of the day, and you are sitting in traffic. It is used by 25,000 trucks a day—that is not counting cars, 

just trucks—on a three-lane highway. 

The joint powers authority have been working to expand it. Ninety-nine percent of that funding is coming from State, local and regional; and it concerns me that there is very little Federal support 

or funding to be able to work on this traffic congestion issue in one 

of the biggest areas of California. 

I would like to, as we move along, try to figure out how the Federal Highway Administration and the Department of Transportation can provide support for these major regional congestion relief projects. Also, California just passed a $20 billion transportation bond package, and I would like to be able to ask the Department of Transportation how they plan to supplement that initiative 

with Federal support to address some of the major issues of transportation in California. 

6

I have also discussed with you separately the grade separations. 

The Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors, next to each other, handle over 50 percent of the world’s goods through train transportation. They come up through Long Beach up into Los Angeles, and 

then they take an eastern route through my whole district. There 

are 38 miles, roughly, 40 some odd, of the rail corridor, serving 1.9 

million residents in 30 cities; and it distributes $314 billion in annual trade through 54 total grade crossings along what is called 

the Alameda Corridor East. 

The Authority of ACE plans to do 20 grade crossings. Two have 

been completed, eight more are funded, and ten are proposed. That 

is not enough, ladies and gentlemen, because most of the transportation problems that we have in my area are caused by traffic accidents at the rail crossings. 

We need to look and see how they prioritize, how they can help 

or how we can work with the railroads; and I am already working 

with the Subcommittee Chairwoman, Corrine Brown, over the 

issue of the rail traffic increase in that area, which is going to go 

10-fold in the next 20 years, they tell me. 

So that is a major issue for me, and I am glad to be here, and 

I thank you for the ability to be able to address this committee. I 

yield back. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentlelady, and I would now recognize 

Henry Brown. 

Mr. BROWN. I thank you, Mr. Chairman; and I also would like 

to extend my congratulations to you and to Ranking Member Duncan. I look forward to your leadership as we proceed for the next 

2 years. I appreciate your holding this hearing this morning, and 

I thank the panelists for their thoughtfulness and informative testimony. 

I understand that this hearing is focused on taking the long 

view, perhaps 50 years, into the future, where our surface transportation will be and what steps we will need to take to get it 

there, but I want to take the opportunity early on to discuss the 

present. 

Just last week, every member of this subcommittee sent a strong 

message about the challenges facing our current transportation 

system. We wrote Mr. Obey and Mr. Lewis about the funding levels 

we passed into law as part of the Highway Bill. As we begin the 

discussion about the challenges facing us in the future, I am hopeful that the major challenges of the day will not be far from the 

minds of the folks assembled here today. 

My district depends upon transportation. Tourism is the number 

one economic generator in the 1st District of South Carolina; and 

the work of our ports, moving goods in and out of the State, is not 

far behind. To continue to be strong economically in my district, 

just like the entire Nation, we must figure out better, faster, more 

efficient ways to move people and products. 

Indeed, the population challenge is facing our Nation, especially 

the 1st District. It is steadily putting us in a situation where we 

must make these transportation improvements simply to stay on a 

level playing field. It already is becoming more difficult. 

Myrtle Beach, in my district, has been one of the top tourist destinations on the East Coast for decades, with over 14 million visiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:59 Aug 09, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34775.TXT HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
7

tors coming each year. In recent years, it has evolved into one of 

the fastest-growing areas on the coast. 

Highway projects that were designed to meet a certain level of 

demand are hitting their capacity level years in advance. The basic 

two- and four-lane highways are insufficient to meet the needs of 

the community. With the help of this committee, South Carolina is 

making great strides towards the construction of Interstate 73, the 

first interstate access to this growing Grand Strand. This is one example of capacity crunch I see in my district, but more and more 

individuals and organizations at the national level are recognizing 

it. 

The Federal Highway Administration estimated freight bottle- necks on our Nation’s highways has cost upward of $8 billion a 

year. While the rail carriers are making historic improvements in 

their infrastructures, studies continue to show they still face challenges meeting the needs out there to ensure efficient goods movement. 

As South Carolina has met the future so quickly, the State and 

the counties on the coast have been innovative in regards to developing innovative ways to meet the financing needs of future highway projects. 

We developed the State Infrastructure Bank. In our State, local 

transportation taxes have all been instrumental in helping South 

Carolina achieve many of its major transportation goals we have 

three such counties in my district; two have a 1-cent sales tax 

which is dedicated to transportation and one has a half-cent sales 

tax. In addition to there being a new interstate for South Carolina, 

there will also be the first project of South Carolina to take advantage of a private-public partnership. 

That said, the future of our transportation system must be one 

where there is a commitment from all parties—local, State and 

Federal Governments, planners, users, and industry. Only then can 

the future of our transportation system be assured. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this important hearing, and 

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. Arcuri. 

Mr. ARCURI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I am extremely pleased to serve on this subcommittee under your 

leadership and in the company of my distinguished colleagues on 

both sides of the aisle. 

There are serious challenges facing our communities with regard 

to economic development, and it is necessary that we address these 

challenges by assessing some of the root causes. The state of our 

Nation’s roadways and transportation infrastructure is deplorable 

in some regions, and it manifests itself quite often in some of the 

most economically depressed areas of the country. Why is that so? 

Because time and again throughout our Nation’s history we have 

seen that the key to economic growth is the ability to transport 

goods and services in a quick and efficient manner. 

The logic is simple. The creation of high-quality transportation 

networks in areas with struggling local economies will spur increased opportunities for private investment and economic development. 

8

I have firsthand knowledge of what some of these budding economies are like. There are many cities in my Upstate New York district that have been plagued by lack of substantial funding to repair aging roadways, in turn, continue to lack economic growth. 

Even though there are areas of the country that may exert greater 

demands on the system as a whole, it is of the utmost importance 

to not let that need overshadow the need for additional investment 

in other areas. 

I look forward to hearing testimony from the witnesses here 

today, and I thank you. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. I thank him for his brevity. 

Dr. Boustany. 

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be very brief. 

I am very pleased to be on the subcommittee and to join you in this 

very important work. 

We have critical needs in Louisiana, and I look forward to working with you as we go into the future. Specifically, I–49 South is 

a project that we have been working on for a number of years, and 

this is something that needs to be completed because it is a critical 

hurricane evacuation route. I mean, this is absolutely critical for 

our State for safety and also for commerce; and we also have some 

ongoing needs with Interstate 10, which is a very frequently used 

commercial route. There are some major areas that are in dire 

need of repair, and so I hope and look forward to working with you 

as we go forward on these issues. 

Thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

Anyone else on the Democratic side? 

OK. We have one more on the Republican side, and that would 

be Ms. Fallin from Oklahoma. 

Ms. FALLIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Duncan. 

It is a great pleasure as a new freshman to be on this committee. 

I know it is a great honor, and there are so many members on this 

committee who have a wealth of knowledge and experience. I am 

looking forward to learning from them. 

I represent the 5th District of Oklahoma, and I have had over 

the past 16 years the opportunity to work in the legislature and 

also as Lieutenant Governor of our State with two different governors and with the legislature on various highway issues. Of 

course, highways are very important to our State. 

In my district, in the 5th District, we are in the process right 

now of realigning I–40. I know that this committee has allocated 

money in the past to that particular project, which is very important to me and our citizens, and, of course, our highways in general 

and their condition. I have to say, in some cases, Oklahoma does 

not rank too well in the condition of our highways and of our 

bridges, but I hope on this committee I will be able to hear from 

the experts, listen to the testimony and work with the various 

members to improve our highway structure in our State and, of 

course, across America. We have I–35 and I–40, which we consider 

to be the crossroads of America, coming right through my district. 

I will look forward to hearing the testimony today and working 

with you. Thank you so much for the opportunity to serve with you. 

9

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentlelady. Welcome. 

Now we move to the panel. 

The first witness would be—well, I guess you are the witness, accompanied by—so the witness will be the Honorable Jeffrey Shane, 

Under Secretary for Policy, accompanied by Richard Capka, Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration. 

Mr. Shane, we have your testimony. I am sure most members 

have read it and have digested it, and we would be happy to have 

you summarize and make the most cogent points you can. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JEFFREY N. SHANE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, UNDER SECRETARY FOR 

POLICY, WASHINGTON, D.C.; ACCOMPANIED BY RICHARD 

CAPKA, ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION 

Mr. SHANE. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. 

It is a delight to be here, and may I just add my voice on behalf 

of Secretary Peters and everybody else at the Department in congratulating you on this chairmanship. You have come to the head 

of this very important subcommittee in perhaps one of the most important periods in its history as we look forward to, as you rightfully said, a very different approach to surface transportation as we 

move into the 21st century. 

I am delighted to be accompanied by our extraordinarily capable 

Federal Highway Administrator, Rick Capka, my friend and my 

colleague. He is not just a potted plant, and I would encourage 

members to address questions to him as the need arises. He is here 

to address your needs. 

You have asked us, Mr. Chairman, to look ahead 50 years to examine what kind of economy we will have and what kind of surface 

transportation we are going to need to serve that economy. We 

have been analyzing that for a while. I would not call that analysis 

complete, but I think enough of the work has been done for us to 

at least see the broad outlines of the task that lies before us, and 

we can talk about that this morning. 

Over the next 50 years, we expect the U.S. population to rise by 

60 percent and GDP to quadruple. We expect both freight and passenger transportation to increase by 2 1/2 times over the next 50 

years. There are going to be changes in our requirements for transportation. The U.S. manufacturing base is shifting to a high-value, 

high-tech product kind of economy that will require an expedited 

transportation system that relies increasingly on overnight truck 

and air freight. 

Globalization will continue, of course; and we will rely increasingly on our key ports of entry like Los Angeles and Long Beach. 

Landside connections to those ports linked to an efficient domestic 

intermodal rail and truck freight transportation system will be essential to keeping the costs of those commodities in check and, 

thus, essential to the very health of our national economy. 

On the passenger side, as Ranking Member Duncan explained, 

an aging population will increasingly challenge our transportation 

system. The percentage of the population over 65 will almost double so that the percentage of VMT—that is ′′vehicle miles 

traveled′′—by older people will grow appreciably. We know that 

10

drivers in their late 70’s have triple the fatality rate of drivers of 

the ages of 30 to 65. That is a statistic that we know. We will 

therefore see a serious safety challenge, and a demand for urban 

transit will increase to almost twice the current level by 2050. 

Our dynamic economy results in uneven economic growth in different regions. Almost two-thirds of all VMT growth will take place 

in only six States so that, even if we keep up with the transportation demand in general, it will be difficult to keep up with the 

demand we experience in these high-growth States where demand 

is growing most rapidly. 

How will we address these transportation requirements? Again, 

as Ranking Member Duncan pointed out, we have seen the growth 

and demand increase far more rapidly than we have seen the 

growth in lanes built and capacity actually added. So we can expect 

that, similarly, although traffic levels will more than double between now and 2050, it is likely that lane miles will increase by 

only 10 percent. So it is simply a given that raw transportation capacity is not going to keep up with transportation demand. 

Congestion already imposes heavy costs on our economy. The 

DOT estimates that the total costs of highway congestion are about 

$170 billion a year. I know that the conventional wisdom is it is 

somewhere north of $60 billion, but we think that understates the 

real cost to productivity and a whole host of other factors so that 

we look at a much larger number. Moreover, the costs of congestion 

have been growing at more than double the growth rate of the 

economy at large so that, by 2050, they could be over $6 trillion, 

more than 14 percent of GDP, if we do not take effective action 

now. 

Let me explain what we mean by ′′effective action′′. 

First, we need to find ways to use our existing transportation 

system more efficiently. The best approach is a multifaceted, comprehensive approach that takes advantage of a multiplicity of strategies. In planning the Secretary’s groundbreaking Congestion Initiative, for example, we have emphasized four complimentary strategies: congestion pricing, expanded transit capacity, greater use of 

Intelligent Transportation Systems technology, and far more widespread use of telecommuting. All of that is amplified in the prepared remarks that I have presented. 

So it is clear we can make considerable progress in addressing 

congestion even without building new lane miles, but, at the same 

time, we know that we cannot handle 2–1/2 times the increase in 

demand without more capacity. A big challenge for us is going to 

see how we get that capacity built, what tools we find, what financing mechanisms we develop in order to address the actual need for 

more infrastructure construction as we move forward; and we look 

forward to working with this subcommittee and starting this process now. The current authorization does not run out, as we know, 

until the end of 2009, but, by all accounts, we are going to have 

to start working now if we are going to be prepared to meet the 

real needs that we see not just in 2050 but the needs by that time. 

Thank you very much, again, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity 

to appear here today; and we look forward to the questions the 

members may have. 

11

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank you. Thank you for your testimony—your 

prepared testimony and the discussion we had yesterday on these 

important issues. 

I will first recognize myself for questions and then move on to 

other members of the panel. 

You know, on the congestion pricing, obviously, depending on 

how it is applied and where it is applied, there is more or less controversy surrounding it. I would just ask you about an interesting 

conundrum which applies here locally. If you move toward congestion pricing—on the highways here, you know, they have the commuter lanes and they have other ways of dealing with that, but 

Metro has also moved to congestion pricing. This becomes—you are 

sending all of these great price signals, but the price signals in the 

end just say you need more. The mass transit is overcapacity at 

rush hour, as is the rest. 

What sort of solutions—and I suspect that, in many areas of the 

country, you would find the same thing. I mean, when we built our 

rail system in Portland, we have so far exceeded the projections for 

usage, it is not yet as crowded as Metro, but, as the city grows, we 

are headed in that direction. 

At some point, I think the question becomes, we have got all of 

the price signals here in the world. We are using congestion pricing. Employees do not have flexibility, and if their employers do not 

change their shifts or their commute times, then what? 

Mr. SHANE. Well, we know we need congestion pricing to shave 

those peaks. It is a tried and true technique. It has been used 

across the transportation system for many years, so it is really—

it is nothing new. I agree with you. It is not going to be sufficient. 

We are using congestion pricing now in many areas on our highways, and we are also using it in public transportation as a way 

of encouraging the spreading of the burden. But, as I indicated, we 

do have to have a suite of strategies if congestion pricing alone cannot be sufficient; if, in fact, employers are not helping to address 

the issue by staggering work hours. There needs to be, I think, a 

real dialogue within the country about the importance of doing 

that. 

With technology coming on, the nature of the workplace itself is 

changing; and I think, as we look forward to the kind of transportation system we are going to have, we need to take into account 

the nature of that changing workplace and how we can encourage, 

perhaps, more of those changes such that we do not have everybody 

coming to work at the same time every day, taking with them 

4,000 or 5,000 pounds of steel and trying to find some place to put 

it. 

This is a long-standing issue for the country, and no one strategy 

is going to be sufficient. Congestion pricing, I would say, is absolutely necessary today, but nobody is suggesting, Mr. Chairman, 

that it is sufficient. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. Now the growth that you point to, the twothirds of VMT growth, is going to be, as we understand, over the 

next 25 years in six States, so the problems of the growth is not 

equitably distributed, so I guess I have a two-part question to that. 

If those areas begin to resolve those problems more on their own, 

whether through various other funding mechanisms or public-priVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:59 Aug 09, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34775.TXT HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
12

vate, whatever, how do we maintain the integration and the integrity of the national system in light of those pressing local needs? 

Or, in the alternative, how do we fairly address that disproportionate need in selected regions in a nationally financed system? 

Mr. SHANE. Well, we have all lived with a donor-donee issue 

through the national system for a long time, and there is no doubt 

that the country is going to need to address that in any system 

that we develop going forward, but it is important, I think, to recognize again the changing nature of the challenge. 

Back in the ’50’s when we were beginning to talk about having 

an interstate system, the challenge to the country was what I 

would characterize as ′′connectivity′′. We wanted to draw the country together and to make it an efficient national economy for the 

first time. The interstate system was an extraordinary achievement, and it had to be funded at the national level and driven by 

the national government in the way we did. It is one of the great 

accomplishments in public works and humankind. I think none of 

us challenges that. 

Today, it is not connectivity in that way that is our challenge. 

Today, our challenge is congestion. It is a challenge that is experienced far more at the local and State and even regional levels. It 

is not just about the movement of people; it is about the movement 

of goods. We are beginning to see the movers of those goods—the 

shippers, the companies that drive our economy and really make 

the world turn on its axis today—coming in to talk to us for the 

first time in my experience in the Department of Transportation—

talk to us about the efficiency of the transportation system. 

The efficiency of the transportation system is identified as a fundamental contributor to our economic health. That is an equation 

that many of us in the transportation sector have understood for 

a long time. I have never seen it understood so well in the business 

community at large as it is today. So we do have to recalibrate, I 

think, in the way we address some of these issues; and perhaps, 

in looking at national solutions, ′′one size fits all′′ is not going to 

be necessarily an ingredient in the system of the future. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. 

My time has expired. I recognize gentleman from Florida, the full 

committee ranking member. 

Mr. MICA. I will not take too much time. 

Mr. Shane, you know, I think one of the problems lately, at least 

since I have been in Congress, is we suffer sort of from peanutbrain thinking in terms of transportation priorities. We do not really have a strategic national transportation plan, do we? 

Mr. SHANE. Well, I like to think that we do. I do not know that 

we have————

Mr. MICA. Do you have a copy of it? 

Mr. SHANE. The last big transportation plan that the Department 

produced—and I do have a copy of it—was produced in 1991, and 

an awful lot of what we said in 1991 actually applies today. We 

have not spent a lot of time writing a big plan————

Mr. MICA. So, basically, our policy, too, has been like we cut off 

the interstate. When did we really stop expanding the interstate? 

Staff? Mr. Oberstar, do you know? When did we stop really expanding the interstate, Dr. Oberstar, Chairman? 

13

Mr. OBERSTAR. Actually, the last 100 miles of construction was 

under way in 1990 and completed in about 1991–1992. 

Mr. MICA. But again, you know, you have got to go back to 

Dwight David Eisenhower. He sent Richard Nixon to Lake George 

in the summer of 1953 to propose an interstate system. At that 

time, I think he got back and checked—the Federal budget was 

about $78 billion. He proposed a half a trillion dollar system, and 

this was a national plan. 

Basically, our interstate is at a standstill. I mean, if you drive 

up 95 and I guess up I–5 in California and on some of these other 

interstates, it is a parking lot. We have not gone beyond—we do 

not have a strategic plan. 

Now I see Mr. Schenendorf, and we have got others here. At 

least we do have a policy in place to create a commission to come 

up with a surface transportation policy, but we need a plan, and 

we need a plan with vision for the future, a strategic transportation plan. 

I have been very disappointed in my own administration. Nobody 

has a vision or a plan for the future to deal with surface transportation. We have cast in stone, in place, our interstate system. Oh, 

my God, if you talk about alternatives, we are knuckle-draggers in 

the Dark Ages compared to Europe and other places. We passed 

ISTEA Intermodal, but, really, that was to stop us from passing in 

Congress a nonconnecting or a nonintermodal system, but we have 

no big system plan. So I am hoping that our commission and the 

administration and others can put together a strategic national 

plan. These States, God bless them. California just passed $20 billion, 

but this is going to take concerted national effort with a national 

plan to develop—and again, we are drowning in congestion. Anywhere you go, we are drowning in congestion, but we do not have 

a plan to deal with that, whether it is I–95, I–5, the interstates, 

rail. 

Rail is just beyond belief. We should be moving. We are moving 

26 million people on Amtrak for the entire country. Two lanes, 

north/south high-speed lanes, built by the private sector in England, now carry 34 million people on the high-speed system. They 

are trying to get from 120 to 160 miles an hour on average. So we 

have no plan. 

Don’t you think it is time—final question—that we develop a new 

plan or update our 1991 plan? 

Mr. SHANE. Well, I do not want to pretend I am against having 

a strategic plan. I guess what I would point out————

Mr. MICA. You are against it? 

Mr. SHANE. I said I do not want to give you the impression I am 

against it. I think we have one in the Congestion Initiative, and 

that is why I referred to having a suite of different strategies. 

No, there is not any argument about the fact that we are going 

to have to do something very big and very different going forward. 

The Chairman has said that. The Commission is working on that, 

and we are all looking forward to the results of that, so this is not 

really an argument between us about that. 

I just do not want the record to reflect an absence of any attention to the problem of congestion. The Secretary of Transportation 

14

is putting the entire Department behind a major, multifaceted initiative to address congestion in all of its forms, not just on the surface but in the air and in every other mode, and what we are looking for is some attention to that. 

We, obviously, in the executive branch must work within the authorizations and the appropriations that we have from Congress, 

but, within that framework, I believe that we are trying to take the 

ball forward and are doing some interesting things, and we look 

forward to spending more time with the subcommittee, talking 

about those things. 

Mr. Mica. Thank you. 

I yield back, and I look forward to working on ′′the′′ plan. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, I thank the gentleman from Florida. 

Again, I think that is why we have the Commission here today, 

and we will get to them on the next panel. That, in part, was the 

charge in SAFETEA-LU. It was for them to take a look at that big 

picture and the next generation, so to speak, of transportation in 

this country. 

With that, I recognize the gentleman, the full committee chairman, Mr. Oberstar. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to congratulate you on your first hearing as Chair of the 

Surface Subcommittee. Goodness knows, you have prepared yourself for many years for this position. And the gavel, the gavel which 

was distributed after the passage of the conference report on 

SAFETEA-LU, I keep that on my desk in the office as a reminder. 

I know that, under your leadership, we are going to do good work 

and good policy inquiry and lay the basis for our continuing work 

on the extension of safety in whatever form or whatever name it 

will have. It will have a very simple name when we do the reauthorization, I assure you. 

When I started here 44 years ago as clerk of the Subcommittee 

on Rivers and Harbors, it was called the ′′Highway Bill′′. It passed 

the House on voice vote. No one asked for recorded votes. Now we 

have recorded votes on the least little hangnail amendment that 

comes to the House floor or in committee. 

In those days, there was great consensus. This was, you know, 

the rebuilding of America. This was the great post World War II 

legacy of Eisenhower and the World War II generation of Americans. 

Mr. Mica asked a question about the completion of the interstate. 

In 1944, when Roosevelt could see the end of the war coming, he 

asked Congress for an appropriation of about $50,000 to study post 

World War II transportation needs. That study recommended an 

interconnected system of highways, divided, access controlled highways, for America, 44,000 miles. But in the rush to rebuild America and to reintegrate the 16 million returning veterans after World 

War II, the first priority was to pass the GI Bill. Others were to 

civilianize the wartime economy. 

There was a huge buildup of savings, the highest savings rate we 

have had in the history of this country, all pent-up demand to put 

America back to work and to reeducate or complete the education 

of our veterans, to build the housing. But by 1952–1953, our highways were congested, people were buying cars in greater numbers 

15

than ever before, fatalities were rising. The prediction was, if we 

did not do something about it, we would be killing 100,000 people 

a year on America’s highways; and we needed a new highway system. 

The 1944 study was resurrected. General Eisenhower—President 

Eisenhower, to his great credit, commissioned General Clay to head 

that commission and make a recommendation; and they updated 

the study and proposed the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. You could pass anything in those days in the 

name of defense. Just add it to education, the National Defense 

Education Act, the National System of Interstate and Defense 

Highways, and a whole host of other things. So it was launched 

with a goal of 42,500 miles at a cost of $22.5 billion. 

It has taken 46,000 miles and $114 billion in Federal funds on 

the 90/10 basis with States contributing the balance, but now we 

are in the post interstate era, and as Secretary Shane said, our 

challenge is not just connectivity—we have that. We have the 

connectivity—our challenge is to maintain the mobility of this system. 

I just came from a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. 

Every one of them is fired up about reducing congestion, improving 

mobility, improving the connectivity of America’s cities; and I 

quoted Lewis Mumford, who was, in my mind, a philosopher of 

urban America, who said, ′′The city is the crossroads of civilization. 

The city is the place where the great issues of society are joined. 

The city is the great intermodalist.′′ And you, Mr. Shane, are our 

intermodalist at the Department. 

As Chairman DeFazio said, this set of hearings is the start on 

our responsibility to assure that the policies that we have now in 

place and those that will follow on will maintain America’s mobility, improve that mobility, improve our productivity, continue to 

lower the cost of logistics, which is the cost of moving people and 

goods. 

In 1987, logistics consumed 17 percent of our gross domestic 

product, but because of the work that this committee has done in 

our ports, our waterways, our inland navigation system, our airways, our Coast Guard system, and our highways and our bridges 

and our transit systems, the cost of logistics was down to 9 percent. 

That is an $800 billion gain in an $11 trillion economy. 

Our challenge and the Commission’s challenge is to keep that 

cost going down, mobility going up and keep America the most productive economy and the most mobile society in the world. 

Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the chairman for his observations. 

I do not think, Mr. Shane, it is fairly directive. I think there is 

room for agreement. I will not ask for a response. 

I will turn now to the Republican side and recognize Mr. Duncan. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

You know, when we talk about completion of the interstate highway system, one of the key things about this subcommittee is that 

the interstate system has never been completed. We always will 

need to expand and improve what we have, and that is one of the 

main things this subcommittee is about. 

16

For instance, you know, I mentioned in this subcommittee before 

that I remember when the first interstates were put into Knoxville 

in the mid–1960’s. They were two lanes, and for several years we 

did not have any delays or traffic jams. That was primarily because, when I was growing up, most families had one car. Some 

families had two cars, but almost no families had more than two 

cars. Now you have the mother, the father and both the teenagers 

who have cars. Sometimes they have a fifth vehicle. There are just 

so many more vehicles on the roads today. 

So our interstate system in Knoxville went to three lanes and 

just massive traffic jams, and now we have just added five lanes 

or we have added two more lanes so we are five lanes now, and 

we really have seen great improvement from that. But, like Ms. 

Fallin, I–40 comes through Knoxville, and I–75 runs down through 

Knoxville and then we have a third interstate that comes just outside of Knoxville, I–81 and we have over 9 million visitors to the 

Smokies and millions more coming through to and from Florida 

and other places, and so the traffic—sometimes I have faced worse 

traffic in Knoxville than I have here in Washington, and many of 

these other members have seen that. Sometimes our traffic problems far exceed the population of some of the areas. 

I have got just two quick questions, and I will get them both out 

of the way at the same time, Mr. Shane. 

First of all, I would like to know—you have got the Secretary’s 

Congestion Initiative, and you have also got another program 

called the Corridors of the Future. Can you tell me what specific 

plans or programs have come out of those two initiatives and have 

they been accepted well by the State Departments of Transportation? 

And then a totally unrelated question. You mentioned that the 

number of deaths of drivers over 65 has tripled in recent years, but 

just yesterday, in the Washington Post, there were some statistics 

from NHTSA showing that the 16- to 20-aged drivers had 1,330 

crashes per 10,000 drivers and those over 74 had the safest record 

of any age group. They had 250 crashes per 10,000. 

So is there some misunderstanding? Is there some discrimination 

going on against older drivers, who, by those statistics, are the 

safest drivers that we have? 

Mr. SHANE. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. 

Let me address the Congestion Initiative and Corridors for the 

Future first. 

The Congestion Initiative, as we have outlined, actually involves 

six separate strategies, one of which is the Corridors of the Future 

Program. So it is a subset, if you would like, of the Congestion Initiative overall. 

In addition to the Corridors of the Future thing, we do have a 

program for relieving urban congestion through the creation of 

urban partnerships of which we are reaching out to communities 

all around the country to develop. There is tremendous interest in 

that. We do want to unleash to a greater extent private sector resources that we know are available for infrastructure now. We are 

promoting technology as another tool to be used against the 

scourge of congestion. We want to address major freight bottlenecks. We are also accelerating our focus on aviation capacity. That 

17

is, perhaps, a little far afield from the subject matter that we are 

discussing this morning. 

On the Corridors of the Future Program, what we have done is 

we have asked for applications from communities or States or regions who wish to be considered as part of a Corridors of the Future Program through a notice; and the Federal Registry has received, as I recall, 38 responses to that. We are now going through 

a second-phase screening through which we will whittle down the 

number to a number that we can actually accommodate with the 

resources that are available. 

The idea, really, is to address problems like those which Congresswoman Napolitano was speaking about. We just have a huge 

challenge in trying to move goods into the country, to move people 

through major corridors. It is not strictly a local problem any 

longer. We have to see the transportation challenge in all of its dimensions, and the Corridors of the Future Program is designed to 

tackle these issues in what we think is a fresh and more appropriate way. It is a toe in the water of a different approach, and we 

are hoping that we will learn from it and that that experience will 

inform the reauthorization process as it goes forward. 

On the statistics regarding elderly drivers, I do not know what 

I can say to you about the difference in the statistics that you have 

and the ones that I have. What I was talking about was the rate 

of fatalities, that is to say, fatalities per 100,000 or 100 million passenger miles. Our statistics show us that the drivers that are above 

a certain age—it looks like 85 plus, according to a chart which Rick 

Capka has just put before me. The number is 12 driver fatalities 

per million vehicle miles traveled in the age 85 and above category. 

Well, we will put this chart in the record. 

[The information follows:]

18


34775.005
19


34775.006
20


34775.007
21

Mr. SHANE. It is a small fraction of that, and it drops off very 

dramatically as you move to younger age groups, even groups that 

are in their 70’s and early 80’s. So we will try to validate those 

statutes. 

Our information is that it is just a fact of life that, for whatever 

reason, elderly drivers have a greater fatality record. I am not talking about the number of crashes, mishaps. You have a greater fatality record; and, therefore, as the population ages, it is reasonable 

to think that we are going to have to address that in a more direct 

way than we have. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Would the gentleman yield? Would the ranking 

member yield? 

Mr. Shane, those numbers are right, but recent information—

that is, just within the last month from the Centers for Disease 

Control—shows that a higher number of fatalities among older persons—that is 80 and above—is because of the frailty, not because 

they were at fault as drivers but because of the frailty of the person of an advanced age, and you ought to look at those statistics. 

You also ought to review the two-volume study on the older driver 

done by the Center for Transportation, a study by the University 

of Minnesota, which has some interesting data. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. I thank the gentleman. Thanks for that clarification. 

Mrs. Tauscher, do you have questions? 

Mrs. TAUSCHER. I do, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. 

Under Secretary Shane and Administrator Capka, thank you for 

being here. 

My area, the Bay Area, is not only a beautiful place to live, but 

we have, obviously, fabulous congestion problems that are wellnoted, and I am a big fan of Intelligent Transportation Systems, 

ITS. I actually think that the name should be ′′I4TS′′ because it not 

only has to be intelligent, but it has to be intermodal, it has to be 

invested, and it has to be instinctively put into people’s frame of 

reference. People have to know that it costs a lot of money to invest 

in these things. 

As the chairman so wisely stated, logistics for transportation 

funds have come down dramatically because we have infused—I do 

not want to call the highway systems dumb but, basically, brick 

and mortar systems with the capacity to have these intelligent systems that tell people, ′′Do not go on that highway, take this one, 

this is what time the bus is coming to get to the BART station,′′

things that really enable people to make wise decisions so that they 

are good consumers of transportation, move themselves faster, 

which is even better. 

And obviously, it has a big leap in providing our abilities to move 

goods in an efficient, cost-effective way. But these systems are expensive, and they do not necessarily penetrate the average driver 

as something that is aiding their development to move faster and 

so there is a conundrum that local MPOs, and I think the country 

and DOT has in really putting it forward, and my question really 

is, do you think that there is something that we can do, the administration and the Congress, to provide incentives to transportation 

agencies to implement ITF technologies? And is there more a robust separate pot of funds that we can be using to kind of incent 

22

folks, which is the fourth, incent, incent folks to begin to embrace 

these technologies and take booklet forms that are a little older 

and a little dumber and really and move them up the food chain 

intellectually so that you can then have people get the best bang 

out of their buck and the most use out of them. 

Mr. SHANE. Thank you, Congresswoman Tauscher. It is a great 

question. We have invested billions of dollars in ITS research at 

the Federal level, and I suspect there is a lot of other money that 

has gone into it as well, and I won’t pretend that I am not disappointed at the rate which we have deployed the results of that 

research. It is one of the things that we feel we have really got to 

focus our attention on. Congress, a couple of years ago, in response 

to Secretary Mineta’s request created research and innovative technology within the Department of Transportation. I think that is a 

profound change for the Department of Transportation and will be 

reflected in the profound change in the way DOT attacks some of 

these issues in the future. The ITS program has been housed in the 

Federal highway administration, and it moved along subject to governance by ITS management council. I sat on that. Rick sits on 

that. Again, we weren’t seeing the deployment. We weren’t seeing 

really results being exploited for the benefit of the public. Secretary 

Peters has just moved the ITS program into RITA, the Research 

and Innovative Technology Administration, where it will be the 

focus of a culture that is about applying technology solutions to the 

problems that we experience. 

As part of the congestion initiative that we talked about, we are 

citing ITS in particular. We have found some ICT earmarked 

money that wasn’t obligated, and we have applied $25 million of 

that money. I hope we won’t get into trouble for using 

unearmarked funds but 25————

Mr. DEFAZIO. The appropriators will know. 

Mr. SHANE. To, particularly to ITF. More than that, it is not a 

glib answer. I guess we are in violent agreement about the importance of applying ITS solutions to these problems. We can increase 

the flow of traffic in so many areas so effectively to things just like 

managing the traffic lights, things like that. Managing the flow of 

emergency traffic when necessary. These are being tried out within 

the country. I have seen them. It is just astonishing the results you 

get from a relatively minor investment without having to build an 

enormous new infrastructure, and why it is not more ubiquitous is 

something that continues to baffle all of us, and we would love to 

work with the subcommittee in making that happen. 

Mrs. TAUSCHER. I think the integrated piece of this is a good 

news story that is not really out there. I think people have to be 

incented to do it, and I think that perhaps a robust pot of money 

directed towards this kind of investment is really what we need to 

do. I look forward to working with you. 

Thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentlewoman. 

Mr. Coble. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you. I was at a Judiciary meeting. I missed 

a good part of your opening statement so it is good to have you 

here. One of the issues that plagued me is vehicular congestion. I 

think vehicular congestion, it negatively impacts productivity. It reVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:59 Aug 09, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34775.TXT HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
23

sults in excessive consumption of gasoline, and I think the best 

way to combat it is sound highway construction, the use of carpooling, public transportation, rail and bus. I gave a dedicatory 

speech back home when our new depot was dedicated, Mr. Chairman, and I had 275 people there. I urged them, if they did not need 

their automobiles in their daily work, to carpool, use public transportation. After that meeting adjourned, one man came to me said, 

′′I never thought about it before. I am going to start using public 

transportation.′′ so I had one convert out of 275. Billy Graham does 

a lot better than that. But at least I think we are—we Americans 

are addicted to the use of our automobiles whether we need it or 

not. So I would like to hear from you about that issue, Mr. Shane. 

And also and perhaps you might consolidate these. What is the future of the interstate system, and what is the future for financing 

the transportation system? 

Mr. SHANE. Thank you, Congressman Coble. 

On the question of transit, I think Congress made a very important change in our transit program as part of SAFETEA-LU in allocating the highway transit—highway trust fund moneys that are 

allocated to the trust found account to specific activities within the 

Federal Transit Administration and using General Fund moneys 

for other specific activities. So we don’t have sort of the crossing 

of the line that we did that ended up spending down the available 

funds faster than they were available. We also have more money 

available now as a result of SAFETEA-LU than we did before. 

Such that worries that we had about highway trust funds, highway 

accounts don’t necessarily spill over into our concerns about the 

transit account. 

We think the transit account is likely to be solved longer than 

the highway account. What we really need to do is find ways of 

providing incentives to people to use transit more effectively. The 

use of congestion pricing on highways, which we think about as a 

means of calibrating demand on the highway, actually is a way of 

providing an incentive to use transit. Those people who wish not 

to pay a congestion charge might be directed to transit as a way 

of avoiding it. As the chairman pointed out, of course, we also use 

congestion pricing in transit. So perhaps if there is no escape, if 

you are living in a congested area, that is just the cost of living in 

an area where you can be as productive as you can in our major 

cities. The fact is, though, the congestion pricing on highways is a 

way of moving people to transit in greater numbers. You have to 

provide those facilities, naturally, or else there would be nothing to 

move to. 

The larger question about how we fund transportation going forward is of course a big question before the government right now. 

It is what we are looking forward to working with this subcommittee, working with the commission as it reaches its conclusions. There is no doubt that traditional models for financing our 

transportation system, literally our surface transportation system, 

are not sustainable for the future. We know that. We have used 

taxes as a way of financing our system. When you use taxes as a 

way of financing the system, it is a given that you are going to 

have political difficulty expanding that sort of financing. It doesn’t 

have to be about philosophy. It is just a difficult thing for people 

24

to embrace. So we are going to have to find different ways of financing the system. 

The private sector has enormous pools of capital available. There 

is controversy about that. We have other kinds of user fees that we 

might begin to develop. Technology gives us tools that we never 

had before in terms of calibrating the use and charging people for 

what they actually do with the system. All of those issues are going 

to be before this subcommittee and before the administration as we 

move into the next authorizing process, and it is time to do that. 

It is going to be a very interesting conversation. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Shane. I think my time is about to 

expire. I yield back. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Ms. Napolitano. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One of the things 

that I am listening to, and I totally agree with Congressman Mica, 

on the focus of the areas where we need to be ensuring that we do 

not have gridlock whether it is New York, Los Angeles, Washington, for the movement of goods and people. Back in the time 

when Los Angeles had the Olympics, the State Department of 

Transportation and others came to the business I happened to be 

working for, Ford Motor Company, and they agreed to do nighttime 

delivery of trucks. That worked so effectively that to this day Ford 

still is doing it. 

Now, that is one of the many solutions, if I could put it that way, 

to be able to get some of the trucks off the road, and of course, I 

live in an area where there are over 11 million people. So it isn’t 

just the transportation grid, the congestion. It is the pollution and 

the effect on the people that live around the cities where most of 

the traffic is congested. When you sit on a freeway or you sit in 

the rail yards or when you sit on the ports, all that emission gets 

blown into the cities, and it causes a lot of other side costs to the 

people in terms of health. So that to me would be one of the other 

things. 

I haven’t heard anybody begin to talk about other than just appealing to the many factors to the people who utilize a lot of the 

services in those big areas. And in Los Angeles, as you know, we 

don’t have mass transit. You have it in major cities but nothing in 

L.A. That moves the masses. MTA went in and started on the bus 

system. Well, buses also get gridlocked, and it can only carry so 

many passengers. 

So it is somewhere along the line, I think, not only do we need 

to come to you and require some of your planning, include the possibility of future mass transit in those areas where it is key to be 

able to handle the future growth, which will come, and of course 

in The Alameda Quarter, the fact that it is going to grow exponentially by the year 2020, I understand, where there will be a train 

every 6 minutes going through my district causing another backup 

of people waiting for those trains to go by, and you have emissions 

that affect the people’s health in those areas. 

And then, of course, one of the other things that I haven’t heard 

is how you are going to begin to look at utilizing media to inform 

and educate the public to get out of the cars and use mass transit 

or how it affects their children’s health or the seniors’ health or 

how we can save time, money, health and all of the other stuff 

25

about how the effect on the general public is. And I can understand 

some of the smart technology systems that are being talked about, 

but I can tell you, in my area, MAGLA would be out of their reach. 

You will not have people going and utilizing those systems. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Any response. 

Mr. SHANE. I didn’t hear a question mark. 

I think, again, I don’t disagree with anything you have said, Congresswoman. I do think we have to—first of all, about the environment. Your area is vital to the economy of the Nation as a whole, 

and I think people in southern California specifically around the 

port complexes are paying a huge price for the contribution that 

they are making to the national economy because of the volume of 

trade that moves through that complex. It is true of other ports as 

well, but nobody is experiencing anything like what they are experiencing in that region. I have seen stunning presentations just on 

the epidemiology of that area. And it is something that—and California on the one hand is on the cutting edge of moving trade but, 

on the other hand, is on the cutting edge of trying to address these 

issues. So very strange regulations have been established at the 

State level and local level for ensuring that ships are not idling 

their diesel engines while waiting for berth at one of the ports. 

That they use equipment that is environmentally friendly. 

I worry about the truck movements through the area. We have 

actually shaved the peak through the peer pass process, that is to 

say again, congestion pricing at the ports of L.A. And Long Beach, 

which have the effect of using those port facilities 24 hours a day. 

That is a great thing in terms of using assets more efficiently. Not 

such a great thing if you happen to be living in a neighborhood 

that those trucks are going through. 

So there are really two sides of this very important coin, and I 

don’t think we get to make any progress in addressing gridlock or 

bottlenecks or throughputs if we can’t address the environmental 

and health issues that arise at the same time. Those have got to 

be forefront really and squarely in front of our attention. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you. 

Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentlelady. 

Mr. Brown. 

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Shane, I appreciate this dialogue. I guess we have some concerns and also some questions about what the next step is going 

to be. I know the chairman of the full committee mentioned about 

how, in 1954, when he mentioned when he put together the interstate plan, and we stopped it back in 1991 in my district. I was 

particularly concerned about, you know, the corridors in this study 

that you are actually dealing with the cities now, who is going to 

be included in that? I don’t know what criteria you are using in 

this, but I listen to my good friends from California and their concern about the traffic generated by the ports. And you know that, 

as we speak, the Panama Canal is in the process of expanding. So 

that is going to cause, I guess, a lot of the traffic that goes through 

the west coast will be going through the canal and coming to the 

east coast. 

26

I represent two ports in South Carolina, so they are going to be 

impacted. And I mentioned in my opening statement, we have got 

14 million tourists coming through Myrtle Beach without an interstate connection. We do have I–73 that is part of ending that problem. I would certainly hope that that would be one of those charter 

legs that you are all talking about dealing with. So if you could 

kind of give me a little bit of update of exactly how you propose 

to, I guess, benchmark this new study. 

Mr. SHANE. I do not know. I was checking with Administrator 

Capka as to whether or not, if we actually received the application 

for the Corridors of the Future program from the ports. We don’t 

know the answer to that. What I would like to do is perhaps get 

that for the record. The criteria that we apply have been laid out 

in Federal register notice, and we can supply that for the record, 

too, but more importantly, we will be delighted to come back and 

see you, Congressman, and talk about those things and specifically 

in greater detail than we have here. 

Mr. BROWN. I certainly would like to be updated on the progress 

of that study. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. Cohen. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was also, like Mr. 

Coble, at the Judiciary meeting. I know Mr. Oberstar talked to you 

about the safety challenges that you mentioned in your speech. We 

will face safety. I know for younger folks we have graduated drivers licenses and the death rates of young folks—do you have any 

proposals on reducing the fatalities in the aging populations or perhaps a study that you suggest we look into? 

Mr. SHANE. I suspect that NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic 

Administration, has done those studies. I do have—I do not have 

that information at my fingertips. I would like to provide that after 

the fact. 

Mr. COHEN. I suspect that will be difficult, but testing for folks 

over age, is that a factor, do you think? 

Mr. SHANE. I know that, at the State level, there are a lot of programs that do ratchet up the criteria that are applied to the population as it ages, and let me just say that when I talk about this 

issue, it is not in any way to cast an aspersion on the aging population. I am not suggesting that they are not more careful. I suspect they are probably better drivers, all things considered. I was 

talking about the fatality rate. They simply, as statistics and 

Chairman Oberstar has indicated, there is just a higher fatality 

rate among that group of people simply because they are as old as 

they are. That is the nature of the problem. So we do have to address it, and I don’t have any very glib answers for how we address 

it right here this morning. What I was simply pointing out in my 

testimony as we address these problems in the future, that is going 

to be a new dimension for us. The number of aged drivers will be 

much higher. 

Mr. COHEN. More mature drivers. 

Have you all done these studies on speed limits on interstates? 

And at one time, I think when we were all 55 or 60 and we got 

to 70, and it didn’t really seem to affect the fatality rate. Is the 75 

all right? 

27

Mr. SHANE. I think the geometrics of the interstates are designed 

to particular speeds, and I will defer to Administrator Capka in 

terms of what those engineering metrics are. The 55-mile-an-hour 

limit was not a safety initiative. It was under President Carter, as 

I recall. And we didn’t notice any—I don’t think we saw a dramatic 

change in the safety statistics once we changed to the rated speeds. 

Mr. CAPKA. I also can add a little bit to that. Certainly the effect 

of speed on crashes and fatalities is known. 

I can’t answer specifically how the rates adjust as we incrementally move from 55 to 65 to 75. What we have seen over the past 

year, I mean, just looking at some of the fatalities statistics is that 

there are two areas where the fatalities have been increasing to the 

point where our national rate as well as the total number of fatalities increased last year. Motorcycles and pedestrian incidents have 

pushed the numbers up. So it is a rather complicated issue to read 

through all of the statistics. Certainly as the vehicles become safer 

and we have additional improvements on the infrastructure, there 

will be some adjustments in what we see in terms of crashes and 

speed. But I think no one would argue that as the speed increases, 

the potential for fatalities and crashes and aggressive driving also 

increase. 

Mr. COHEN. Well, we increased our speed limit in Tennessee to 

70. We didn’t have any increase in fatalities. The problem is either 

the slower drivers, the mix of drivers, some going 60 and some people wanting to get to 70 and then getting to what people want to 

do was 70, you have less fatalities. So sometimes you have to have 

law follow your human engineering, and you end up with a better 

result. 

Mr. CAPKA. You are correct. When you have a remarkable difference in the driving speeds on the same highway, you are going 

to get that differential effect, and we have seen the crashes in that 

kind of situation. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you. I yield the balance of my seconds, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Mr. Poe. 

Mr. POE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I represent southeast Texas where Hurricane Rita hit last year. 

It was the largest evacuation in U.S. history with 2 million people 

disbursed. Most of them have found their way back to southeast 

Texas, but most of them have come back. Most of them. One of the 

things I want to talk to you about, the NAFTA superhighway that 

goes from Laredo and Canada through the middle of the country 

taking Highway 35 through this side of it, 10 lanes, 12 lanes, however many it is. And what is the administration’s position on the 

NAFTA super highway? Then I have a follow-up question. 

Mr. SHANE. I keep hearing about the NAFTA superhighway, 

Congressman, but I have never had a meeting about it. I have 

never had anybody discuss it with me. I am not even sure it exists. 

I don’t even know what is referred to as the NAFTA superhighway. 

Mr. POE. Are you familiar with the trans-Texas corridor where 

the Spanish are going to build a toll road? Texas is not going to 

stop them against Oklahoma, and it is supposed to keep going 

north. Is that part of the NAFTA superhighway, or is this a different project completely? 

28

Mr. SHANE. The trans-Texas highway is a project that we are interested in. It is one of the cutting-edge projects that we have seen 

around the country. We are looking at that as part of the highway 

system. It is not driven, as far as I am aware, not at the Federal 

level by any reference, to NAFTA. We do intend to try to integrate 

North America to the greatest extent. The President has talked 

about it. We have NAFTA. It is a North American Free Trade 

Agreement. We expect real economic benefits to flow from that. 

There is no question there is going to have to be a transportation 

component to that. But that is not to subject that we have this 

grand plan for a highway that is going to traverse the United 

States for that purpose. 

Mr. POE. Is there any plan, then, under the NAFTA concept to 

have some type of road for NAFTA and KAFTA or whatever? I 

mean, you said you haven’t had any needs. Is there any plan at all? 

Mr. SHANE. I am not aware of any plan to establish a highway 

or a highway system expressly in connection with cross-border 

trade. No, sir. 

Mr. POE. I am sure you have heard of this NAFTA highway? 

Mr. SHANE. I have heard the term. 

Mr. POE. Is it just a myth, or is it something that conspiracy 

theorists are throwing around, or do you know? 

Mr. SHANE. My own experience is it is an urban legend. 

Mr. POE. That is all I have. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Just to follow up. There are some substantial plans 

for a major transportation route which would happen to go to Mexico which would come up through Texas. I understand Indiana’s 

thinking of building a segment now, which I guess would be near 

the northern terminus of it. It may not be called the NAFTA Highway, but the transportation route is being planned by the States 

who seem to be somehow coordinating these efforts. I just—Mr. 

Poe, I thought you raised an interesting point, and I don’t think it 

is exactly an urban myth, but it may be an issue of semantics or 

independent of who is organizing it. 

Mr. CAPKA. I think you are referring to I–69, which is an interstate highway regionally coordinated and state-to-state coordinated, and we are certainly very interested in how that is being 

worked. And it is run from Texas and up through States through 

Indiana and eventually link up, of course, in Michigan. And it is 

designed to move traffic in that corridor more respectively. 

It wasn’t designed specifically to support NAFTA. And so maybe 

there is some semantics with respect to that. But there is a coordinated effort on I–99. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. The point, on Mexico on one end, so I think that 

gives some substance to where Mr. Poe was raising the question. 

And I understand there is also a lot which would be beyond the jurisdiction of your department, but we have heard from Homeland 

Security how Customs might or might not be conducted on vehicles 

traveling that route and where they might be conducted. I think it 

is a bit more than an urban myth. There is some reality here, but 

there is a question of the actual coordination intent. 

Sorry to interrupt. 

With that, Mr. Higgins. 

Mr. HIGGINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

29

I represent an area in western New York which includes the City 

of Buffalo, and Buffalo is an old industrial area, and I think there 

are some unique surface transportation needs in the northeast because a lot of the problems relative to economic development to 

places like Buffalo experience is because of old, aging infrastructure. And that poses a unique challenge to the Federal and State 

governments because often times you have to dismantle before you 

can rebuild, and the role of the Federal Government is very clear 

here. It goes back to Lincoln, who talked about modern infrastructure in terms of land improvements. He believed that building 

bridges and constructing railroads were fundamental to the obligation of the Federal Government. Not as a portion, not as earmarks, 

but as sound investments in promoting and creating the conditions 

that make older urban areas like Buffalo attractive places for private sector investment. 

Buffalo a hundred years ago was the eighth largest economy in 

the entire Nation, among the strongest and most diverse economies 

in the entire world. We were a major port of midshipment. Today 

it is measured by population loss and job loss. Buffalo is the weakest economy in the entire State of New York and among the weakest economies in the entire Nation. Fundamental to revitalizing 

these economies, you can’t do it unless you address the elemental 

issue of transportation infrastructure. And I want to emphasize 

that in standing up for my community but also as a member of this 

committee, the chairman of the Transportation Committee, chairman Oberstar, was in Buffalo. He understood fundamentally the 

importance of this, and I would like to hear from you relative to 

it as well. 

Thank you. 

Mr. SHANE. Thank you, Congressman. 

We agree with you. Nobody is, believe me, suggesting that the 

government does not have a very important role to play in the provision of basic transportation infrastructure. That is a fundamental 

implement of our policy, and that will continue well through the 

next authorization and beyond. 

You are correct in citing the very special issues that exist where 

infrastructure is in fact aging or more mature, I should say. And 

we have to—we have to ensure as we move into our next authorization that if we have not—if we have not embraced the very special 

nature of that problem in the programs that we have, if we need 

some legislative fix that will provide the incentives to address 

aging infrastructure more directly, that we include that in the legislation. We would be very pleased to work with the subcommittee 

and work with you personally on ideas that you may have for improving the programs that we have. It is undoubtedly a special 

need that isn’t separately addressed, as far as I am aware. 

I don’t know, Rick, if you would know of any specific provisions. 

Mr. CAPKA. I have no specific provisions. We work through, of 

course, the New York State DOT, and of course, they are responsible for executing their highway program, and we certainly provide a good number of Federal dollars and along those lines. But 

they prioritize the work when and where it needs to be done, and 

we work with them on that. 

30

But I would certainly be more than happy to come by and meet 

with you individually and discuss the issues there that you have 

in your district. 

Mr. HIGGINS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Ms. Miller. 

Mrs. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me just tell you 

how delighted I am to be a member of your subcommittee here and 

certainly to join the full committee with our ranking member or, 

excuse me, Chairman Oberstar, and I know you are somewhat familiar with my district as we have talked many times in the port 

hearing area with your family members that have lived there. In 

my district that I represent, we have some interesting dynamics 

with aging infrastructure. It actually is the genesis of I–95 as well 

as I–69 which was mentioned by my colleague, Mr. Poe, and our 

chairman also about the NAFTA corridor or superhighway, I think 

is how he characterized it. It is something we talk about as well. 

It has its genesis in my district in Michigan right at the foot of the 

Blue Water Bridge, which is the second busiest commercial artery 

in the northern tier of our Nation as well, all tied in with the fee 

and rail tunnel. So it is an unbelievable economic impetus for the 

Nation, and we do look at that as it is completes its way sort of 

transcontinental there being a superhighway for NAFTA as well. 

And as we talk about some of the aging infrastructure, and I 

know we have had quite a few questions on this, but I wanted to 

mention this as well about our elderly drivers. Because in your testimony, you were mentioning that population over 65 expected to 

double in the next 50 years. That is really a huge part of our customer base as far as our highways and transit systems. In a previous life, before I got this job, I was a Michigan Secretary of State, 

and in Michigan, the Secretary does all of the motor vehicle administrative kind of things. We were responsible for the licensing of 

the drivers. I was director for the Michigan State drivers association. We did a lot with the younger drivers, graduated drivers licensing system; and like every State, we labored about whether or 

not we should have mandatory retesting for elderly drivers. But I 

do think, as a Nation, we need to take a look at some of the real 

things we can integrate all the time to help our elderly drivers. I 

am talking about the paint on the road, the lane—what am I trying 

to say—lane markings. And as well as even the traffic signs that 

need to be bigger. I hate to admit it. I am now wearing these bifocals. We can’t see as well. We can’t see at night. 

Taking away an elderly drivers license, it is such a critical part 

of their independence, and they will sometimes think they need to 

get a drivers license to get a photo ID, when they could have a 

State ID card and use that as well. I think, whatever we are doing, 

if we can think about how we could transport our elderly in a way 

that would not make them think that they are giving up their independence but get them off the road in many ways. That has got to 

be a critical part in our thinking as we go forward because they 

are a huge part of our customer base. It is so important. 

I think this committee has every opportunity to have a huge impact on that thinking and educating our population as well about 

how we assist our elderly drivers to go on with their lives without 

31

being on the highway all the time. I don’t know if you have any 

more comments on the elderly drivers. 

Mr. SHANE. Well, that puts it so much more articulately, the 

point I was trying to make about the challenge that our system 

takes as elderly drivers increase over the years. I am a card-carrying member of AARP myself, and I worry about my ability to 

drive on the highways. Like most other Members, I have no intention of retiring. 

It is a very important part of the challenge that this subcommittee is going to face as we authorize these, perhaps, in the 

future. We want to maintain everybody’s independence and want 

to maintain everybody’s dignity, and we want to maintain safety, 

particularly for those individuals who are of that age, and our systems have to accommodate what will be a very substantial portion 

of our population going forward. So it is a very interesting challenge, and I have no doubt that we will find innovative ways of addressing it. 

Mrs. MILLER. Mr. Chairman, when you talk about aged infrastructure, I just want to let you know the very first mile of concrete 

highway was laid in Detroit, Michigan, on Woodward Avenue between Six and Seven Mile Road. So we really do have aging infrastructure. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Is it a historically designated place? 

Mrs. MILLER. It is. And every summer, we have the dream cruise 

which is the most fantastic—we have all of these antique automobiles. They come from all over the world, and they want to drive 

on that first mile of concrete highway. So it is a very big thing for 

us. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Mrs. Drake. 

Mrs. DRAKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would also like to 

join Mrs. Miller in saying I am delighted to be on the subcommittee. I am the first member from Virginia for a number of 

years to serve on House Transportation, and I think everyone 

knows, the big issue in Virginia is transportation, but I represent 

the southeast corner of the State where we have the largest naval 

base, the Port of Virginia, the tourist destination of Virginia Beach, 

and we talk all the time about our huge needs for hurricane evacuation routes. So I am very happy to serve on the subcommittee. 

What I was thinking about as we first began the meeting is, how 

do we manage transportation, and how do we put all of these 

pieces together? So to hear Mr. Mica talk about a strategic plan I 

thought was very important. But in a lot of your answers, you have 

talked about things like traffic lights and things that we can do 

that aren’t quite as expensive. I would like to ask you if there is 

a way for you to look at more flexibility with our States. In the 

southeast corner of Virginia, we have HOV lanes. They don’t work. 

Northern Virginia, they work very well, and, in fact, Virginia has 

even stopped the license plates to allow the hybrids on the HOV 

lane. We have an absolute problem. So if there is some way if you 

could look at that and allow States the flexibility within their State 

to manage their transportation and say, in this region, it just 

doesn’t work at all. We are at our least amount of time, 2 hours 

morning, 2 hours afternoon, but we have a huge parking lot of cars 

and six cars on the HOV. It is very difficult. 

32

The other thing I would like to bring to your attention, and I am 

going to say it exactly the way my brother said this to me when 

I was a new Member of Congress in 2005. He said, ′′I would like 

for the first bill that you put in,′′ and I didn’t do this, he said, ′′would be a bill to say, you cannot have a highway sign if it isn’t 

true.′′ and you know we haven’t talked about that. You talked 

about traffic lights and markings, lines. You talked a lot about seniors. But you can go right out here on 395 where they mark to 

come into the Capitol and the sign says ′′U.S. Senate right lane,′′ ′′U.S. House extreme far left lane.′′ So you have got people that 

don’t know—I tell everyone, get in this lane. Do not move. Do not 

follow signs. 

So somewhere along the way, we need to have your people reporting back or us telling you that that doesn’t work. In my region, 

I was a realtor. I would have out-of-town buyers call me on my cell 

phone to say, ′′I am on 64, this is what the sign says. What do I 

do?′′ So, you know, we can’t continue to do that type of signage that 

puts people in the wrong direction. 

So my first question is about, if you would consider some sort of 

more flexibility with the States; some sort of pilot project maybe 

using southeast Virginia as an example. And I was also curious 

about, you mentioned early partnerships, to know what that 

means. Because I don’t know this. That is kind of a more regional 

approach. But in 2005, for the last highway bill, I really didn’t see 

a regional approach from our State as to what we were asking the 

Federal Government for, and I thought that was a mistake. 

Mr. SHANE. Well, Congresswoman, the first thing I guess to say 

about the program is, the center of gravity is with each State government. The Federal Government is in effect a conduit for funds 

that are collected for the most part through the gas tax. And the 

Federal Highway Administration gives out a large part of that 

money through a formula grant, and some money, of course, we 

know, is specifically designated for a particular project, but it is the 

State in just about every case that is making the fundamental decisions for the distribution of that money within the State. So we 

place—basically rely upon the State Highway Department, the 

State Transportation Department, to indicate to the Federal Government what exactly it plans to use money for, and that is simply 

essentially policed by the Federal Government as the check is written. 

If there is a particular way in which Federal rules or Federal law 

is denying flexibility that you believe the State should enjoy, we 

would want to know that. 

Mrs. DRAKE. On the HOV, we are told we have to reimburse the 

Federal Government if we open them up full time. We would like 

to be able to open them up. My friends, they serve within the Virginia legislature. Maybe we can talk more about that. I wanted you 

to look at that and think about that for other States as well or 

maybe the other States need to bring it to you that this is what 

is holding us up. But that is what we have always been told. 

Mr. CAPKA. Mrs. Drake, we have had that problem in other 

areas. We have unused capacity in the HOV lanes. And just to give 

you an idea of what other States have been doing to try to take 

advantage of that unused capacity: In Denver, just a few months 

33

ago, they opened up a hot lane program along with the HOV that 

is a high occupancy, told that would allow single drivers, individual 

drivers, if they pay a toll, to use the available capacity on the HOV 

lanes. Of course, the requirement and the use of those hot lanes 

is that the toll traffic will not consume the capacity to the appointment where it becomes less than freefalling. 

There are available plans like that that we can help you with 

right now. 

As far as just doing away with the HOV lanes, we would have 

to sit down and go through some of that. 

Mrs. DRAKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I think that is a very interesting question because 

we wanted to utilize capacity that we have, so that merits continued discussion, I believe. 

I am going to Ms. Hirono. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. A question without comment or response at this 

point. When is the Federal Highway Administration going to issue 

a standard on retroflectivity so that we can have a dependable 

standard? There are technologies available in retroflective material 

that are a hundred times more luminescent than what exists today. 

I don’t want a comment right now because that will be too long. 

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Ms. Hirono. 

Ms. HIRONO. Thank you. It has been said that the minute a road 

or highway is built or expanded, it is obsolete because there is immediate congestion. So it is kind of a vicious cycle. I realize that 

we have a major responsibility to keep our infrastructure going and 

to help our communities with the congestion problems. But as we 

look to the future, you know, for the next 50 years, are there some 

directions that communities should be going into States and districts regarding moving people from point A to point B that does 

not require us to continue to build more and more highways? 

Mr. SHANE. We encourage public transportation. We have a Federal Transit Administration that has a part of money that is part 

of the Highway Trust Fund. There is also money in the General 

Trust Fund for Transit. And public transportation is something 

that every mass transit organization should be thinking about as 

a strategy for addressing the problem, recognizing that the communities are constructed in different ways, and it is easy to do transportation in some than in others. But what we hope is that there 

will be a comprehensive planning process embraced at the local 

level which thinks those issues through. All of us, I think, are 

aware that the Federal programs have, in many cases in the past, 

distorted the amount of flexibility that is available at the local 

level. And one of the big challenges, I think, as we go forward is 

to try to remove those distortions to have a Federal transportation 

program that allows communities, whether locally or regionally or 

at the State level, to embrace those solutions that make the most 

sense. Without reference to that will be—would be great if we could 

do it, but there is no money for that. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentlemen, and the committee will 

stand in recess for—well, we will return immediately after the second vote. There are two votes, so hopefully by noon. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Please excuse the delay. 

34

TESTIMONY OF JACK SCHENENDORF, COUNSEL, COVINGTON 

& BURLING LLP, WASHINGTON, D.C.; AND STEVE HEMINGER, 

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION 

COMMISSION, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Mr. Schenendorf, welcome. And I would be pleased 

to receive your testimony. 

Mr. SHENENDORF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a great honor, 

indeed, to be here today to testify before the committee on which 

I served as a staff member for so many years. I am Jack 

Shenendorf with the law firm of Covington and Burling. I practice 

in government affairs and transportation. 

Before joining the firm, I served on staff of this committee for 

over 25 years, and in between leaving the committee and going 

down to Covington, I was head of the policy transition for the 

Bush-Cheney transition team. 

I am testifying here today in my capacity as the vice chair of the 

National Transportation Commission. And the commission is made 

up of 12 members. The Secretary of Transportation is the chair, 

three other members appointed by the Executive Branch, four 

members appointed by the House, four members appointed by the 

Senate, and I was appointed by Speaker Hastert. 

The Congress, in putting together the commission, recognized 

that a perfect storm was gathering. And it starts with and really 

the elephant in the room, in many cases, of the huge maintenance 

needs facing the country on just maintaining our existing interstate 

and our existing Federal aid systems and highway systems. And 

most of the numbers, the ′′needs′′ numbers that you see in maintenance, do not include the enormous cost of replacements that we 

are facing for replacing segments of the interstate. You can see it 

in this area, $2.4 billion to replace the Woodrow Wilson Bridge that 

originally cost $14 million; almost $800 million to replace the 

Springfield interchange that cost $10 million when it was first 

built. So it—there is a huge cost there. 

Secondly, the huge investment needs that are going to be needed 

to increase capacity on the system to provide for efficiently using 

the system to maximize the through-put of what we have today and 

then adding capacity. 

And the third piece of this is the funding sources have not been 

able to keep up with this. Congress recognized this and established 

the commission, and nothing that we have heard so far in the commission would indicate that this perfect storm is not coming, if not 

already here. 

I was asked to talk today about what the commission is doing, 

challenges facing the commission and to say a few words about the 

second commission that is being set up. 

The commission’s work—the commission’s charge is we have a 

needs—we are looking at the entire picture. We are looking at 

needs. We are looking at the roles of government, the Federal role, 

what State and local roles should be private sector and also looking 

at the financing options in order to meet the investment needs. 

We are also looking at this from a short-term, a medium-term 

and a long-term perspective. So we are looking at all of the different time frames involved. And we are also looking across modes. 

We are looking at highways. We are looking at transit, intercity 

35

freight rail, intercity passenger rail, bus transportation, intermodal 

facilities. We are looking across the entire range of transportation. 

You directed us to come back with a conceptual plan with alternative approaches, including specific recommendations regarding 

Federal policies and legislative changes and including recommendations for alternative revenue sources to support the trust 

fund. 

The commission is proceeding on a time schedule where we 

would have our work completed by December 31st, 2007. You had 

included a provision in the technical bill that would basically adjust the deadline from July 1st to December 31st, but we thank you 

for also telling us that even if that doesn’t pass, that we have until 

December 31st to get the job done right. 

As part of our work, we are doing public outreach. Dallas, Portland, New York, Memphis, are hearings we have already had. We 

are going to be going to Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, possibly 

Minnesota, and we are also going to have a hearing here in Washington on March 19th, and I have actually already talked to the 

committee staff about possibly using this room for the hearing we 

are going to have in Washington, DC. 

The policy backbone of the commission’s work are technical analyses that are under way. You can see from this list that we have 

a huge number of papers in development across a wide range of 

subjects. Those papers are currently being prepared. Some have already been delivered and are in pretty good shape from consultants 

and from the DOT staff. Others have been prepared and are now 

being revised or sent back for more, and then there is another 

whole view of them that we have yet to receive the initial drafts. 

And it covers a whole range from current status to baseline needs 

and to the financing alternatives. 

The commission’s work also includes a blue ribbon panel consisting of 74 members. The first meeting is going to be in February. 

They are going to provide peer review, and they are going to do selective projects that the commissioners give them. 

The challenges facing the commission. We got off to a slow start. 

We were 6 months late because of the executive branch appointments being late. And then we have had three successive chairpersons, Secretary Mineta, Deputy Secretary Cino and now Secretary Peters. So that has kind of slowed things down, but we are 

now up and running under the good leadership of Secretary Peters. 

The resources: We had $2.8 million. We have asked for an additional $2 million, which you were kind enough to include in the 

technical bill which we really do need to make sure we get all of 

these studies and all of the scenario analysis work that we are 

going to do to make sure we have sufficient resources to do those 

properly. 

The biggest challenge has been finding the vision, what you were 

talking about. What should this system look like 50 years from now 

from a national perspective and trying to define that. It is multimobile. It is not going to be as simple as a map of the interstate 

and how one defines that and what that is. Almost every witness 

says we need a bold vision, and we are asking everybody well, what 

is your idea of what that bold vision should be? And so we are 

working on that. 

36

Another challenge is going to be to diverse views that the commissioners bring. We have got 12 good hardworking commissioners 

that come at this from different viewpoints. We are going to have 

a very, very healthy debate, and if we are able to reach consensus, 

it is going to be a product that is worth your attention because of 

the different views that people have had coming into this. 

With respect to the second commission, that is something that 

was set up in the Ways and Means and finance title. It has a much 

more narrow mandate than hours, and that it is only looking at the 

financing piece. It is not looking at the levels of government. There 

was no actual money put in for it. And so that is another factor. 

We did discuss this at the last commission meeting. I think there 

was a consensus among the commissioners that the existence of 

that second commission does not in any way detract from what we 

are supposed to do. We still need to meet the requirements of the 

statute, and, secondly, the funding that is made available the resources from DOT are made available for the Section 1909 commission. It cannot and should not be used directly or indirectly for this 

other commission, that it needs to find its own source of revenues. 

Thank you. I look forward to questions. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I want to apologize. 

Ranking Member Duncan, he was going to come back before this 

15-minute vote, and I said there is another vote because we are in 

the middle of a procedural tussle here, and I think that he perhaps 

misunderstood the communication because I don’t want to keep all 

of the witnesses here for—this could go on until this evening some 

time. So that is why I am trying to squeeze this in now. It is no 

disrespect on the part of the ranking member. He is trying to get 

back, and we are probably going to have another vote soon. 

So Mr. Heminger. 

Mr. HEMINGER. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and good afternoon. 

I do appreciate Mrs. Taucher’s introduction. So I can dispense 

with that for me and get right to the meat of my presentation. 

Jack, I think, has laid out for you a good sense of our process. 

I would like to identify for you, and in my testimony, I do have five 

key issues that we have focused on to date, and I would—they are 

responsive to the issue that you and Mr. Mica raised about a national vision, a national strategic plan, if you will, that we currently lack for our transportation system. 

And I have put this presentation together under the theory that 

a picture is worth a thousand words. So on page 4 of my testimony, 

I show the picture about traffic congestion which is two maps of 

the U.S. The first is from 1982 where in only one city in America 

did the average commuter spend more than 40 hours annually in 

congestion. That is now, as of 2003, more than two dozen communities. It is a very significant problem, a real sap on our economic 

strength and mobility in those areas. 

Mr. Shane earlier gave you sort of at the top end of the tree one 

of the potential solutions, which is congestion pricing. At the lower 

branches, there are things, very low cost operational strategies that 

we believe we ought to be considering with much vigor because half 

of the congestion is related to incidents and accidents. It is not recurring. It is not related to capacity, and we have barely scratched 

the surface in terms of deploying those solutions. 

37

The next page, on page 5, my second page picture, I don’t think ′′tsunami′′ is too strong a word to describe what is happening to our 

ports in terms of international trade. And these forecasts from U.S. 

DOT out to 2020, not to 2050 but at least out to 2020, show very 

sizable increases throughout the United States at these ports. This 

is especially true where I live on the west coast because a lot of 

what we buy these days is made in Asia and makes its way to the 

United States throughout the country through the port of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The very significant increase you see there, 

Mr. Chairman, is really not going to occur, in my view, unless we 

make significant infrastructure improvements at that port. That 

kind of increase with their current capacity and with the current 

community concerns that Mrs. Napolitano has mentioned is simply 

not sustainable. This is an area, in my view, that clearly qualifies 

as one of national interests because of interstate commerce, international trade, as of yet national leadership is lacking. And it is 

a main focus of our commission activity. 

The third picture I have for you on page 6 has to do with safety, 

and I am certainly not going to reengage the debate about older 

versus younger drivers. The fact is there are too many drivers of 

any age being killed on our highway system today. What this chart 

shows, it is the latest release of information for NHTSA is that we 

basically made no progress in reducing fatalities over the last 20 

years. In my reading on this, I came up with one really startling 

comparison. Since the advent of the automobile, 3 million Americans have died on our highways, which is five times the number 

of U.S. war deaths in the history of the Nation. 

If we don’t have some better progress on this problem in our 

work, in your work, in re-authorization, I think we really will have 

failed ourselves and the rest of the country. 

The fourth picture is a bit of an oddball, I will admit, and this 

is one that the commission has not spent as much time on. It is 

on page 7, and it comes with a lot of names, whether it is national 

energy security or energy independence or energy efficiency, and I 

think it is fair to say that the transportation community, generally 

speaking, regards this issue more or less as a threat, you know, 

that if fuel efficiency gets better, our revenue source goes down, 

and that is how we ought to look at the question. And I think that 

is not looking at the question correctly. I think we need to look at 

it also as an opportunity for our sector for our community to contribute to a national goal. The chart I show you shows some of the 

increasing trends around the world, and in my State, California, although our standards are now under challenge in Federal court by 

the automakers to improve fuel efficiency, you can see where the 

U.S. ranks compared to the rest of the world, which is at the bottom. 

But the fact is, there are different ways to skin this cat. As you 

know, the vehicle fleet in Europe is much more fuel-efficient and 

that has in large part to do with very high fuel taxes, and fuel 

taxes, as you well know, raise revenue which is one of the things 

we are desperately lacking in our transportation system. So I do 

hope that we will, and that you will, examine this question in the 

context of our transportation system, not just in isolation as an energy strategy. 

38

The last one I will touch on briefly is clearly the revenue question itself. I have included two pictures in my presentation. The 

next to last has to do with the problem that you are very familiar 

with which is the short-term issue of the Highway Trust Fund entering into negative balances. I won’t spend much time on that because you are well aware of it. 

The last picture in my presentation to me is even more worrisome because it shows the very large gap that exists by this account from a U.S. Chamber of Commerce study a couple of years 

ago on the order of $50 billion to $100 billion per year in the cost 

to maintain and improve our transportation system. 

As Jack indicated, our work plan calls for a thoroughgoing review of this question, and I think one of the things where we will 

really add value is an objective assessment of where we think the 

Nation ought to move forward in a national strategy and what the 

needs that will accompany that strategy might be, and then working our way to the revenue question about how we might raise the 

money to do so. 

One worrisome footnote I will leave you on this last picture is 

that these numbers are probably, in all likelihood, understated. 

What you have seen recently, what we have all seen around the 

country in construction costs, has been a substantial escalation 

over the last few years because of materials, especially steel and 

concrete. China is using a lot of those, just as we are, and we will 

be factoring that and other issues into the estimates that we provide you. 

In conclusion, you have clearly given us a tall task, but I know 

both Jack and I love a challenge, and that is what you have given 

us, and we look forward to providing you our report later in the 

year and to consulting with you frequently in between times. 

Thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

I am going to withhold questions at the moment. The way we are 

going to do this is, if Ranking Member Duncan shows up, he is recognized for questions. I will run and vote and then come back, and 

hopefully that way we will sort of overlap here and maximize your 

time, because I really bemoan the fact that we invite witnesses, 

and you are sitting around for hours because of something we are 

doing of no particular consequence in terms of procedural votes. 

So, if you could just sort of not go from the room because—do you 

think he is going to come back on this vote, or is he going to—it 

was a 15? 

OK. So he was on his way back, and then he went back to vote, 

so he is now on his way back again—we are giving him his exercise—and when he comes in, he is immediately recognized to ask 

questions. And then I will come back and ask a round after he 

does, and then we will move on to the next panel. If any member 

of the committee shows up in the interim, they are recognized to 

ask questions. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

I just saw Ranking Member Duncan on his way back to vote, so 

if I talk slowly, perhaps I will just be finishing at about the time 

39

he can turn around and come back. I have a few questions that occurred to me. 

As sort of a general question to either or to both of you, do you 

perceive any barriers or problems in achieving the rather ambitious—I mean, other than the very difficult nature of the subject 

matter which we have put before you in terms of wanting you to 

look into the future, analyze future transportation needs, and then 

also come up with innovative and a different range of options to 

fund them, other than the difficulty of the charge, are there any 

barriers? Mr. Schenendorf discussed the extension of the timeline, 

which is certainly going to happen in the technical corrections; the 

additional funding, which I do not believe will be a problem even 

in these new tighter times, because that would be trust-funded, so 

we should not run into the ′′pay as you go′′ problem. 

Are there any barriers that you care to enlighten us on here that 

we could deal with? I am just giving you a chance if there is anything that you did not————

Mr. SCHENENDORF. No. As long as we are able to basically look 

at the full mandate of what we were asked to do, I do not think 

there are any problems as long as—I mean, it is a big task, and 

it is going to take the resources and the vision, but as long as we 

are able to look at all of the options from raising the gas tax, new 

fuel taxes to congestion pricing—everything is on the table—then 

I do not see any problem. And if we are looking into defining the 

vision and saying which of these financing sources can get us there, 

then I do not see any problem. And right now, everybody has said 

that everything is on the table, so I have not sensed among the 

Commissioners that anybody is trying to constrain this in any fashion. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. And there would be, as I would understand it, no 

review authority beyond the Commission. That is, if you come up 

with a range of financing options, those do not have to go through 

the Office of Management and Budget? I mean, you are an independent Commission with technical assistance and that from DOT, 

but if the Commission—you are not aware of any————

Mr. SCHENENDORF. No, I am not aware of that. 

In fact, I think when that question came up we were told it does 

not have to go through OMB. We are an independent entity. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So you are looking at everything from the traditional raising of the gas tax, to innovative ways of assessing the 

cost of the system and putting them on users, to public-private 

partnerships? All of that is on the table? 

Mr. SCHENENDORF. Yes, sir, that is my understanding of how we 

will be operating. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Great. 

Mr. Heminger, do you want to add to that? 

Mr. HEMINGER. I agree with Jack’s response, but would add one 

thing. 

I think one of our barriers is to aim too low. You know, I think 

Mr. Mica mentioned it earlier about bean counting and all the rest 

of it. You know, we are all used to the system that we are in, and 

I think our greatest challenge is to think beyond that system and 

to think big, and that will involve, obviously, political challenges 

when you think that big. We are going to leave them largely to you 

40

because you are the elected body, but we are going to give you our 

best advice across the range of the issues that we have got before 

us. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. Now, internally, have you determined how the 

report will ultimately be written; i.e., are you only going to put in 

items which reach consensus? Are you going to have majority vote? 

Are you going to have a minority report on certain issues? 

Have you worked through those procedures yet? 

Mr. SCHENENDORF. We have not worked through those procedures yet. I think everybody there is hoping that we can reach a 

consensus. That would be the ideal thing. I think that would be a 

report that would be most helpful, but you know, I think all of 

those options are open if it gets to that, but we have not had any 

discussions. I think everybody is working hard to be able to reach 

a consensus. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. Well, I would hope, if there are items that certain individuals on the Commission feel very important that cannot 

achieve consensus but would be instructive or informative to this 

committee and to the Congress, that they would be in either dissenting views or in appendix or annex or something along those 

lines. 

I was involved in formulating a commission on the causes and 

the magnitude of the trade deficit, and they had hoped to do things 

by consensus and ultimately could not, so their major findings were 

done by consensus, but then there were essentially two sets of dissenting views or additional views, should I say, included, which 

were very, very instructive and informative. So we do not want to 

forego that knowledge because you cannot reach consensus, and I 

think most of my colleagues would agree on that. 

Now, I am curious about the second Commission. I mean, one of 

your charges is to look at financing and the full range of options. 

So I guess my question to you would be: Do you see that there is 

duplication with that Commission? Do you feel in any way it might 

dilute your efforts or inhibit your efforts? 

Any thoughts on that? 

Mr. SCHENENDORF. No. Well, again, aside from the point of deferring to Congress—I mean, Congress did put the two Commissions 

in, so they are there. 

I would say it does seem duplicative of the financing portion that 

we do, and I guess I have a personal concern as to what the perception of that is, you know, why people—you know, does it make 

sense having two. And then, you know, at the end of the day, if 

the recommendations are different, then, you know, what does that 

do? And then also from a resource perspective, since that Commission does not have any dedicated resources, is it going to somehow 

at some point dilute our effort even though we are trying to make 

sure that it does not? 

So I do have those concerns, but really I think it is a question 

for Congress to decide and to decide whether or not to make any 

adjustments. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, I actually intend to have a conversation with 

my colleagues on the committee and others who are involved on 

other committees of jurisdiction for the second Commission in the 

hope that we could assure the members of the Ways and Means 

41

and Finance Committees of the House and Senate that their concerns will be fully addressed by the existing Commission, in fact, 

better addressed by the existing Commission, if there is not a duplicative effort or any diversion of resources, and I am hopeful—

of course, we have to deal with the Senate on that issue, too, but 

I am hopeful that they may be agreeable to that as part of the 

technical corrections. 

I am certainly going to raise that issue because, you know, one 

Member who insisted on this is no longer in Congress, and, you 

know, we do have a new majority in the Senate where one of the 

originators does still sit, but I would hope we could convince him 

and others that you can give them the tools or the items for discussion that they need. 

I mean, I feel—and contradict me if you think I am wrong—but 

given the limited resources available and the fact that you need 

more resources, that this potentially could divert some staff time 

and/or resources from your vital work and difficult work. 

Mr. HEMINGER. Mr. Chairman, I do agree with that, and I think 

there is another point, and you just referred to it. 

We have had many discussions at our Commission about the fact 

that we need first to proceed to a national vision and the needs to 

carry out that vision, and then, second, to address the revenue 

questions. And I personally do not think it does a lot of good to address the revenue question separately from the needs and the vision because very often the revenue mechanism you select could 

work for or against some of the vision and needs that you are trying to carry out. Some of them are preeminently local, like tolls, 

where the tolls generated in the United States right now are kept 

right where they are generated. Unless you want to put in place 

a national tolling apparatus, you really do not have a revenue 

source that matches up with the national program, just as an example. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Just one last question. I appreciate the fact that 

you have been here so long. 

You did, Mr. Heminger, mention that there are a lot of low-cost 

things out there we have not done yet, and in particular when you 

talked about half of the delays being due, actually, not to capacity 

issues, but to incidents and accidents. Could you address how we 

would creatively address that in a low-cost way? 

Mr. HEMINGER. Well, you know, one of them Mrs. Tauscher mentioned at the outset of her question, and that is we have got a 

hodgepodge system out there in terms of the information we collect 

from the road, and that means we do not have as much for the 

planners and the builders, and we do not have as much for the 

travelers, most importantly. 

If we had a dedicated fund source which would be a one-off, essentially, to get that system instrumented especially in the major 

metropolitan areas, that would be a huge advance at a very costeffective investment. 

The second thing, some of this we have been doing a long time 

in some areas and not in other areas. A lot of this is accidents. If 

you get the accident off of the road faster, the traffic flows faster. 

We have got 70 tow trucks in my region in the Bay Area doing that 

very thing, but not every region has it. To some extent, Mr. ChairVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:59 Aug 09, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00051 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34775.TXT HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
42

man, it involves, I think, a culture change in the profession. The 

profession is an engineering profession, and, you know, when you 

are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Well, they tend to 

try to solve problems by building something, but these are problems, especially in these incident areas, that you do not need to 

build something, or at least what you build is antenna wire and the 

rest—it is not asphalt and pavement—and I think incentives and 

encouragement from the Federal level, from Congress, as well as 

some direct assistance to get some of these critical elements put in 

place could go a long way. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Not to be insensitive here, in the case of a fatal 

vehicular accident, obviously, we need to both take care of anybody 

who is injured, and we have to document the incident, but in your 

region, does that—in my State, it becomes a crime scene, and then 

it involves the State police, who will often block off the highway for 

hours. They have no concern over the flow of traffic. That is not 

their job. Their job is to investigate. 

I mean, how does California handle those sorts of things? 

Mr. HEMINGER. Probably just as poorly. I have heard, though, of 

some States that have come to agreement with public safety officials whereby the sort of crime scene, as you described it, can be 

relocated to the side of the road as best as possible so that the traffic can flow again. You know, no one, as you suggest, wants to be 

insensitive to what has occurred, but at the same time, I do not 

think you are doing anything—you are really compounding the injury that has occurred by causing needless backup in the traffic 

down the road. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right. The backup often has accidents at the far 

end of the line because the traffic suddenly stops on the interstate, 

and then you have another incident back here, hopefully not a fatal 

one, but another one and another one. 

Mr. HEMINGER. And this is something we do not do as readily as 

we should, working across jurisdictional boundaries. It is not just 

a transportation issue. It is not just a public safety issue. It is both. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. Thank you. Let me just consult with counsel. 

I was just trying to be sensitive to the—I am sorry again. What 

we are going to do is I am going to go over and vote, and that 

should give us, at least by the time I get back—I am just guessing—but probably as much as a half an hour, who knows, to get 

into the next panel. But if you could, just stay, if your schedules 

permit, in case Mr. Duncan arrives back until we convene the next 

panel, and if he has some questions. I would appreciate it. 

Thank you. I appreciate it. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Gentlemen, Mr. Duncan is recognized for questions. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I will be very, 

very brief since we have got another panel that we need to get to. 

And I did not get to hear the testimony, but I will say this. 

I have certainly had the privilege of working with Mr. 

Schenendorf over the years, and everybody who ever did that has 

always had a lot of respect for Jack, so—you know, one thing I was 

trying to remember, though, Jack—you know, we had this big delay 

in the highway bill this past year. Maybe my memory is just not 

43

really good, but I do not remember having anywhere close to that 

long of a delay on the original TEA–21 legislation. 

What was it? Do you recall if there was much of a delay on that 

legislation? 

Mr. SCHENENDORF. That legislation was supposed to be completed in the first year of the session. It was supposed to have been 

completed by October 1st, and it actually went over into the spring 

of the following year. 

Mr. DUNCAN. So it was not nearly as much as this time. 

Mr. SCHENENDORF. Right. 

Mr. DUNCAN. So, October. Around here that is not bad, October 

to the spring. Hopefully we can beat that this time, but thank you 

very much for being here and for all that you do, both of you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I want to thank both of you. I want to thank you 

for your service on the Commission. We look forward to your product. We will do the best we can to accommodate your budget, your 

timelines, and then I will also be in discussions with Mr. Duncan 

and with our full committee Chairman and Ranking Member, seeing if they share the view that we might be able to get the product 

that finance folks need out of your report and your committee and 

not have to have a duplicative committee, and hopefully that will 

expedite things. 

So thanks again. Thanks for your thoughtful testimony. I appreciate it. 

We now call the next panel to the table: Mr. Pisarski, Professor 

Schwieterman, Dr. Bronzini, and Dr. Lomax. 

Gentlemen, thank you for your time. Thank you for your indulgence. I regret the fact that this has gone on much longer than we 

had anticipated, and hopefully none of you were unduly inconvenienced, but I appreciate it. 

I have read your testimony, and I appreciate any summary that 

you want to give at this time within the 5-minute limit. In addition 

to that, if something has come up earlier that you would like to respond to or to contradict or agree with, you can also do that in 

those 5 minutes, and then we will have a round of questions, and 

I guess we will just start in the order on the list here. 

So the first would be Mr. Pisarski. 

TESTIMONY OF ALAN PISARSKI, PRIVATE CONSULTANT, 

FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA; JOSEPH P. SCHWIETERMAN, 

PROFESSOR, DePAUL UNIVERSITY, DIRECTOR, CHADDICK 

INSTITUTE FOR METROPOLITAN DEVELOPMENT, CHICAGO, 

ILLINOIS; MICHAEL S. BRONZINI, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY, DEWBERRY CHAIR PROFESSOR, FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA; 

AND TIMOTHY J. LOMAX, TEXAS TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE, PROGRAM MANAGER, MOBILITY ANALYSIS, COLLEGE 

STATION, TEXAS 

Mr. PISARSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking Member. I am Alan Pisarski, and it is a great pleasure for me to appear 

before this committee once again to discuss with you the substantial challenges the Nation faces in transportation. 

I was struck by the discussion earlier this morning, particularly 

with Chairman Oberstar, remembering the history of the interVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:59 Aug 09, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00053 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34775.TXT HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
44

state. I Chair the Committee on Transportation History at the 

Transportation Research Board, and have spent a lot of time over 

the last 2 years studying that history, and the Chairman, by the 

way, has it right. It was a 20-year effort, sir, and I think this is 

useful to this body. It began with a sense of vision in the 1930’s 

with President Roosevelt and was followed by a plan in the 1940’s 

and then was followed by a financing plan in the 1950’s. 

So I think it is very appropriate to recognize the necessity for vision, but also to recognize that this is a long-term effort. If you look 

back and see the successes they had, and we measure ourselves 

against that, we are deficient, and we really need to rediscover the 

vision and the power of that vision that they were able to accomplish. 

In my paper there is a page-long summary statement, of where 

I think some of the key problems are going to be. I will not go 

through all of those here with you today. In fact, I want to just pick 

out three of those to emphasize. 

I really do feel that the Nation will be facing what I think is perhaps the most dramatic changes in its demography since the great 

immigration waves of 100 years ago. I just completed a book for the 

National Academy of Sciences called Commuting in America III, 

and I do want you to know that AASHTO is distributing copies of 

it to each of the Members, that you will be receiving next week. 

What I talk about there is the fact that we are going into a new 

phase of commuting where, in fact, the issue may be too few workers rather than too many. 

The issue is going to be how do we replace the baby boomers? 

We are going to need to keep the older workers employed. We are 

going to need to get more women involved in the workplace. We are 

going to need to get minorities more involved. Rural populations 

are going to have to connect better to urban jobs markets. The 

great issue is going to be using transportation to sustain the workforce. 

The second area of great concern is going to be the expanding of 

metro areas. I expect 15 metro areas over 5 million, probably half 

the population of the country in those massive areas of 100-miles 

across by 2020. The dominant pattern is going to be suburb-to-suburb commuting, kind of a ′′doughnut metro′′, people flowing out to 

the suburbs from the center cities and people flowing into those 

suburbs from other metro areas and from rural areas. 

Finally, I suggest to you there is an affluent, time-focused society 

that we are going to be seeing. If I were going to pick a vision for 

the society, it would be ′′Think of a transportation system that will 

serve people whose value of time is $50 an hour and a freight system that has triple the value of today’s average value of goods.′′ I 

will just simply point out here that transportation is going to be 

critical in responding to each of those areas. 

This display is a map of the Nation’s counties that are exporting 

more than 25 percent of their workers to other counties every 

day—-the red counties. As you can see, everything east of the 

upper Great Plains—has become a phenomenon in just the last 15 

or 20 years. We are talking about half of the new workers are now 

leaving their home counties to work in adjacent counties and, in 

45

fact, crossing over into other metropolitan areas. So it has really 

become a critical pattern, I think, for the future. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Is that in your book? 

Mr. PISARSKI. Yes, sir. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. That was in your testimony. 

Mr. PISARSKI. Yes, Mr. Chairman, and there is a discussion of 

how that trend and pattern are moving. 

The attributes of my vision are the seven listed, but I will simply 

point out that the first has been discussed this morning. There are 

immense things we can do in operational terms that do not need 

massive investment and that we need to do first I think the public 

expects us to do them first before we start talking about massive 

investments and capacity. 

At the same time, and the last point I am making here, is that 

we do have a tremendous backlog of congestion-related infrastructure, physical-condition-related and capacity-related issues. I think 

once we get past that backlog, we have a future that, in fact, we 

can readily address. 

I cannot go into all of the elements that I have proposed in my 

paper, the national system’s elements. I will just point out a couple 

here. 

The first is an expanded and enhanced Interstate. I am working 

on a project on the future of the interstate, at the National Academy, and we have addressed some of those questions. 

The second two I will point out is that I think we are at the 

stage where we are going to have to recognize in the future that 

we have to separate cars and trucks. I am suggesting here the idea 

of a national parkway system and the idea of a national truck 

freight system. On the nationally pervasive units that we are talking about—I will not pursue all of them here—two points that I 

will make are a lot of it comes down to the need for beltways serving the circumferential pattern that I have just identified. 

The final point I want to make is that our data systems are pathetic. The Department of Transportation has not done well in that 

area, and I think it is something that really needs congressional 

cognizance and concern. I believe we need a performance-based system for the future, and we cannot do performance measurement 

without the data, and the Department has not provided it. 

But my very long-term view is I see a very positive future, much 

more operable problems with the resources to address it. We simply 

need to recognize the central role of mobility in our society, and we 

must be willing to act to focus those resources. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

Professor Schwieterman. 

Mr. SCHWIETERMAN. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the 

Ranking Member, for a chance to be here. 

My remarks are really shaped by my 24 years of experience in 

transportation. I spent nearly a decade at a major private transportation company, more recently as a professor. I have written several books. My most recent book looks at the effect of changes to 

rail service in smaller towns and cities, and I would really like to 

start— and I have been very pleased with what I heard this morning, which is that, in the next bill, the interdependency between 

46

highway and rail and waterway is going to be at center stage. And 

we have really missed opportunities in the past to have a lot of lip 

service to intermodalism. We have had some good progress, but not 

as much as those of us who celebrated the first IT had hoped. And 

so I think we are learning, and I think the next bill may be the 

window of opportunity to really push that onto a new level. 

My second proposition really relates to this new bill and changes 

we make. We need to leverage private capital, and that needs to 

be at center stage, and, you know, this could take many forms. I 

think toll highways are the most prominent thing, but there are 

intermodal, joint partnerships, public-private partnerships for transit facilities, freight railroad systems, and so forth. 

So I want to commend the architects of SAFETEA-LU, and many 

of them are on the committee here, for really pushing us toward 

that, and there are some things that I am really pleased to see are 

working. 

There are loans for local short-line and regional railroads. There 

are tax credits for major railroads. That is exciting stuff. We have 

more grade-crossing money. That is facilitating major freight corridors to become more efficient. We also have the projects of national significance, the CREATE Program in Chicago, to unclog our 

freight yards. Similar projects around the country, I think, are giving focus to this idea of private-public partnerships, and we also 

have the $15 billion of allowances for private activity bonds for 

State governments. We heard some talk here about Texas’ plan 

this morning, one of the first States to actually receive approval for 

these private activity bonds, and this is big stuff, and it really has 

the potential to bring an infusion of capital to the table. 

So, as we look at the problems of the Highway Trust Fund, and 

we have heard a lot about that this morning, I think the real temptation here is to avoid the quick fix, to avoid the expedient approach to just look at highway user fees, and to step back and say 

this is an opportunity, really, to think outside the box a bit. And 

I would like to share, just very briefly, two bits of research I have 

done at DePaul University. 

The first is we looked at the changing reach of the rail system 

and how policies that have been very punitive of the railroads have 

affected the access of a lot of towns to rail service, and we found 

there are 2,500 towns in the United States with populations of 

more than 3,000 people who no longer have any sort of rail service, 

freight or passenger. 

We also found a few metropolitan areas now with more than 

100,000 people who have not a single mile of active railway track, 

and we have found that, you know, it is a combination of things. 

It is highway user fees, cross-subsidies to heavy trucks. It is outdated Federal labor law in some cases. It is also punitive property 

taxes. Big money for railroad property taxes has never really been 

addressed in any sort of Federal way, and a lot of cities are struggling to bring the rail service back and to make it more relevant 

in the freight picture. And there are at least two dozen cities we 

found that have been successful in restoring our rail links, and 

some in the districts of committee members here, and I will not go 

through the list, but I can tell you SAFETEA-LU has been pretty 

much at the back seat of all of that; that there are a lot of countyVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:59 Aug 09, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00056 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34775.TXT HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
47

wide efforts to shore up intermodal use and so forth, and 

SAFETEA-LU, unfortunately, has been pretty much background 

music as opposed to being there to really facilitate some of this. 

Two days ago at the TRB conference, I gave a presentation looking at all of the proposed high-speed railway corridors around the 

country that have gotten government backing, and there are 15,000 

miles proposed of various stages of planning, but it became clear 

that the States are really looking to the private railroads to form 

partnerships to try to move some of these things forward. They understand that this cannot be done with a simple Federal allocation, 

it needs to be done in partnership with the private sector. And 

there are 21 freight railroads that are affected by routes that are 

being proposed, 2,000 miles of transit agency track. Several thousand miles of interstate highway has been slated. There is no illusion that these high-speed systems are going to arrive any time 

soon, but it shows that, at the State level, there is real interest in 

working with private carriers to develop partnerships, to make capacity improvements that can push us into the next level. 

So, in closing, I just offer three recommendations. First, the 

States are still looking for more flexibility. SAFETEA-LU gave 

them considerably more flexibility, but they need more. To manage 

the highway-rail interplay, they need much more freedom to think 

outside the box with their spending. Kansas, Virginia, Georgia, and 

Iowa are just four States that are at the forefront of that. 

Secondly, I think more incentives for private investments. These 

private activity bonds should be the foundation for a much larger 

package. Funding and expedited processes for private tollways, 

truckways, investment credits for railroads really should be at center stage. 

So I bring much good news from the American heartland. I 

mean, we have got—the Chicago Skyway has been turned over to 

a lease and so is now on safe financial footing because of the private capital we have enlisted. An Indiana toll road is being leased. 

The Detroit railroads are investing in a huge way in facilities to 

unclog the freight system. I am not sure we will be cooperating 

with Indiana quite so much on Super Bowl Sunday, but I can tell 

you that there is a lot of synergy going on there. 

So, as we move the new transportation bill, avoiding the quick 

fix and seizing this private capital is really where I see a great opportunity. 

Thank you for the time to express my views. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. Thank you, Professor. 

Dr. Bronzini. 

Mr. BRONZINI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

It is a pleasure to be here today, and especially to be talking in 

front of Mr. Duncan, who, for many years, was my Representative 

in Congress when I lived in Knoxville. So it is nice to see you 

again. It is a pleasure to be here. 

You have heard a lot about the challenges facing the system, the 

congestion, so I am not going to go over that ground again, and I 

did not in my testimony, but rather, I want to highlight what I believe are some important principles and issues that need to remain 

in the forefront or not get lost as we do with some of the details 

in the long discussion about funding that will certainly ensue. 

48

I think there are some basic principles that we need to remain 

cognizant of, and I touch on four of these in my testimony, and I 

will just mention three of them and elaborate on the fourth one. 

First, it is basic to our system that it is a partnership. It is being 

developed as a partnership between the Federal Government, the 

State government and local government, and this works well. It 

has served us well over many years and many decades, so whatever we do in the future, we need to maintain that partnership as 

a central focus of how the program progresses. And it is not just 

a funding thing, it is a real partnership. There is more than money 

behind this. 

Second, the system is really a system. Even though the Interstate Highway System is largely completed and, of course, will 

need to be expanded in the future, we cannot lose sight of the fact 

that there is a system. Where there is a system, we need to focus 

on how the system works. It does not work well if each piece is off 

doing its own thing. There has to be some kind of a central organizing principle behind it to guide what we do and how we find the 

balance between local, State and national needs. So the system aspect is really paramount. 

Third, this may not be the best place to bring this up, but I think 

earmarks have become a problem, and I suspect there are as many 

views on that as there are people in the Congress, but I think it 

may have gone over the tipping point this last time around, and 

I think the level of earmarking is such that it is starting to raise 

many questions around the country and threatens to have the public lose faith in the credibility of the program. 

Now, I also mention in my remarks some of the reasons why earmarks exist besides the critical ones, so a system to try to control 

the earmarks—and I would commend Congress that has actually 

started down this path, and I hope it bears some fruit, but that 

system has to also take care of the root causes of why earmarks 

exist in the first place. If we just treat the symptom and do not 

treat the root causes, we may not be able to stave off the bad side 

of earmarks in the future. 

With the rest of my remarks, I want to focus on the issue that 

Mr. Pisarski raised on information requirements. It is pretty fundamental to most enterprises that good system decision-making has 

to be founded upon good performance measures and good information and the data to support that, and this is certainly true in 

transportation. The Transportation Research Board last month, in 

fact, published a very short, concise document. It is Research Circular E-C109, which, in a few pages, lays out very well why we 

need data, and it has a lot of good, concrete examples of how good 

data helps us to make good decisions in transportation. 

So I would like to add this to the record, if I could, to make sure 

you get that. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Without objection. 

Mr. BRONZINI. OK. And right now, as has already been mentioned, the Transport Research Board is having its 86th annual 

meeting across town at Woodley Park. There was a session on Monday focused on information needs and trying to understand what 

those needs are in a variety of agencies, public and private, and 

49

just a few things that were mentioned there, I think, are relevant 

to what we are doing here. 

The CEO of a State department of transportation, quite large, 

said that we have the problem of frailty of decision-making based 

on weak data systems. Data collection and management are costeffective. They are not cost drivers. 

From a division manager for another large State DOT, assisted 

monitoring and evaluation is the base upon which system development is built. Cutting data programs limits decision-making. 

Then from a private sector entity, which I think is maybe even 

more telling, there was a representative of a large technology company, which they are not in the transport business, but they use 

transportation, and this is a $65 billion company in annual revenue, and he said their company relies heavily on performance 

metrics as the basic way that they manage the enterprise. And 

they spend 1 percent of their revenue on performance metrics, and 

of that, they spend 10 percent of that just on research, just on how 

to make their performance metrics better. 

I think that standard is much higher than what we see happening in our own transport system where the output of good data 

is even more important. So the need to measure how the system 

works and to put in place the mechanisms to make that happen, 

I think, should be a major concern of the future program development. 

Thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. Thank you, Dr. Bronzini. 

Dr. Lomax. 

Dr. LOMAX. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Distinguished Member. I appreciate the opportunity to be here to talk 

about the future of transportation. 

Our country’s system already faces a number of challenges, and 

those will undoubtedly grow and evolve, but I am optimistic that 

our society can overcome them. Please let me know if I can answer 

any questions today or in the future. 

We have studied urban congestion issues for more than two decades, and I think I am safe in saying that congestion is going to 

get worse, especially in the metropolitan regions. Moving millions 

of new travelers and freight, that Alan pointed to, to their destinations, and doing that quickly and safely, will mean adapting to 

some new realities, new technologies and even new travelers. 

Consider that the current grade-school and college students will 

be the decisionmakers of 2040 and 2050. Their experiences, for example, with instant access to information will mean a much different set of expectations than you or I grew up with. 

Most of the challenges we face can benefit from a combination of 

two approaches. Technology or infrastructure is one, and information or policies is another. I think this is a type of niche marketing. 

There is not any one big program or technology that is going to 

solve the problem. There will be many different solutions, and 

those solutions are going to be different in different areas. Larger 

urban areas may have different solutions than smaller ones, suburbs different than urban areas, and regions of the same size and 

with generally the same character may choose to make decisions 

50

just because that is what their citizens want to do. I think that is 

the reality, and I think that is good. 

Our Urban Mobility Report has consistently promoted a broad 

set of strategies to solve congestion problems. These require efforts 

from many groups, not just the agencies, but the business community, and the public needs to be involved as well. Just broadly, 

those solutions have been talked about. But I sort of characterize 

one of them as do the small, simple things. Time traffic signals. We 

do not do that as well as we can. We do not clear the traffic collisions, or vehicle breakdowns as fast as we can, and there are ways 

to do vital road maintenance functions more rapidly with less congestion and less time. These are very simple improvements, and 

they are very cost-effective. 

We also need to do more. A solution set of strategies must also 

emphasize adding highways, public transportation service, bike 

lanes, ferries, sidewalks, everything to our system because we are 

going to need that to address the growing populations. 

Then information, enforcement and education can play key roles 

in the solutions. Reliable information, enforcement of traffic laws 

that improve safety, and education programs all provide elements 

of improvement and increase the trust between the operators and 

the public. 

There are also substantial benefits to these improvements that 

should not be ignored. Connecting effective strategies to those citizens’ concerns using reliable information should be a key component of any transportation improvement program. Transportation 

projects, after all, are not ultimately about faster travel. They are 

about supporting an economy that competes in a global market, 

supports families and encourages innovation, and creates options 

that allow citizens to improve their lives. 

To wrap up, I have a few suggestions on how to translate the future situation I have outlined and the challenges we face into tangible advice for members of the subcommittee. 

With respect to number one, recognize that some problems are 

regional and interregional, but many of the operating and governance structures are not. How do we make these match or work better? 

Congress, I think, must recognize that the current system of decision-making is based on States or metropolitan regions. They examine within their own boundaries for solutions to current or future transportation problems. The current Federal program reinforces this natural inclination to stop solutions at the border, thus 

resulting in a patchwork of solutions to large interregional problems. We already recognize regional and, in some cases, national 

consequences flowing from these, and I had an example in my testimony. We should make the solutions match these problems more 

closely. 

Number two, people will react to incentives like price or time 

savings, but we rarely provide them opportunities to do so. We 

have heard about incentives here today. At the same time, States 

and regions have the responsibility to maximize the efficiency of 

the transportation infrastructure. These two facts can work together to recapture the unused existing capacity through tools that 

spread demand over longer periods of time. Concentrated travel deVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:59 Aug 09, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34775.TXT HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
51

mands are the single worst congestion problem in big cities. Transit, congestion pricing, carpooling, telecommuting, and many other 

tools address that concentrated travel demand. I think we should 

be coordinating those much better. 

Number three, no one is really paid for eliminating congestion. 

Why is that? It is clear that more aggressive congestion reduction 

approaches exist, combining technology, information, policies, regulatory changes, private sector partners, public sector agencies. Each 

element doing what it can do best without regard for jurisdictional 

boundaries or turf issues can be successful. The Federal program 

could reinforce these aggressive approaches with support for innovation and coordinate the development of monitoring, reporting and 

performance standards. 

Number four, building on what Mike and Alan have said, datadriven and results-oriented approaches to problems have proven 

their effectiveness in many fields of government. We should expand 

those in transportation, and this refers to analytical processes, 

monitoring data, communication strategies. The report for both improving the operation and for improving the ability of the technical 

folks to communicate with the public, the cycle of planning, testing, 

deployment, and evaluation of innovative strategies may turn over 

much more rapidly, not unlike the private sector freight shippers 

now. Congressional support for data collection and analytical improvements will be returned in the form of better service, improved 

communication with the public and more reliable operations. 

Thank you very much for allowing me to provide some ideas. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Dr. Lomax. 

I will lead off with a few questions. 

I mentioned to Under Secretary Shane, but also, I think it is implied in some of the testimony we have just heard, that we have 

pretty much a stovepipe system. Remember, we talked about intermodalism, but that is sort of at interstice, I mean, where you are 

off-loading ships or—you know, we do not really integrate the system in a way where we can get to the point of doing what I call 

′′least cost transportation planning.′′ What is most efficient? What 

is most effective? How are we going to move the things more quickly, more fuel efficiently and with less expense to shippers or for individuals? 

I guess I am interested in any ideas any of you have about how 

we would approach that. You know, there are a lot of problems. 

Where does the share come from if you start getting into these 

kinds of partnerships? How would we thoughtfully begin to break 

down some of those barriers and, as I think one person said, give 

more flexibility to the States in these issues? How do we do that 

while we are still meeting the concerns over here of the maintenance of existing infrastructure, underfunded? Then, you know, we 

have these other competing modes that could complement that. 

Does anybody have any ideas? 

Yes. Go ahead, Doctor. 

Mr. PISARSKI. Yes, Mr. Chairman. 

I have thought a lot about the notion of efficiency and productivity, and I think the thing we have to be guarded about is not 

to get too excited about the notion of the productivity and the efficiency of the system. We need to focus on the efficiency of people 

52

and on the efficiency of the goods that are in movement, and sometimes the people efficiency is more important than the system efficiency. 

The efficiency of the guy delivering pizza to your house would be 

much greater if everybody in the neighborhood asked for the pizza 

at exactly the same time, but the fact is he does a lot of work so 

that people can be more efficient, and I think that is something 

that we really need to put into place and recognize. 

It is not the system. We want the system to respond efficiently, 

certainly, but it is the efficiency of the public, and that is why I 

raise this point of the value of time of a society where people’s 

value of time is $50 an hour. The pressures, the willingness to pay 

a lot of money to save time is, I think, going to be critical in the 

future, and people’s responsiveness to that will be very important. 

So we have to focus on their efficiency more than simply on, quote/

unquote, the efficiency of the system. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I think it is an excellent, very interesting point. 

Just one thing that occurred to me when you were testifying earlier, and you were talking about—and I agree with basically the 

value of time and how it can become more and more valuable in 

very busy lives, but there is another side to that. 

In an aging society there may be a new group of people who do 

not have those time pressures who are a very large cohort. This is 

one of my arguments why we maintain a national Amtrak system, 

because I think you might find people choosing that option over 

hectic air travel. 

Mr. PISARSKI. One of the things that I talk about in my paper 

is the growth in people with discretionary time and discretionary 

income, and the boomers, the first of them, are going to hit 65 in 

2010. You could very well see for the next 25 years a boom in leisure travel, recreational travel and tourism. I do do a lot of work 

on the tourism side on the international scene, and there is no 

question that we are going to be seeing very dramatic increases in 

those opportunities, and I mention this national parkway system 

and, in fact, part of that thinking, and the interaction between air 

travel and ground travel particularly will be significant. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Anyone else? 

Yes, go ahead. OK. Go ahead, Dr. Bronzini. 

Mr. BRONZINI. Yes. Back on the intermodal system question, 

there are just two observations I would like to make. One is that—

one reason we have all of the stovepipes is because to execute a 

project in a particular mode, it takes some concentrated efforts, 

and historically we have had different committees who were the 

authorizing committees, or who had some jurisdiction over those 

projects, who had a relic from the past to some extent, and we keep 

it around because it works until you get projects built. 

Now, to make it intermodal, of course, and to make it work better as an interconnective system, there are two things we can do. 

One is to pay some attention to the interconnection points and to 

make sure that we have as much of a contingency for that as we 

do for the pieces themselves, and the other is to try to remove any 

legislative barriers to cross-modal thinking and cross-modal 

projects. 

53

Mr. DEFAZIO. In my home State of Oregon, the Governor is 

partnering with Union Pacific to build more sidings to make the 

freight more efficient in the hope of keeping the increase in truck 

traffic on I–5, which has become problematic in terms of capacity, 

down. 

So, are they thinking along the lines of those sorts of things as 

those kinds of partnerships? 

Mr. BRONZINI. That is a great example, and also, it brings to 

mind the fact that we have sort of ignored the private sector for 

most of the day, and they are certainly an important player. And 

so finding ways—and some parts of the private sector work with 

government better than others, so it is trying to find ways to—so 

the railroads historically have not been big fans of working with 

government, so this is something new for them as well. So finding 

those examples and showing that they can work and removing the 

impediments to those kinds of projects, I think, would be a great 

idea. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. 

Dr. Schwieterman, do you have a comment? 

Mr. SCHWIETERMAN. I will add to that. 

When the Alameda Corridor was approved, people thought this 

was the beginning of a golden age of private-public partnerships, 

and I think, for Federal leadership, there was a window, and there 

is a window now for Federal leadership to really push that mile all 

around the country—of course, in Chicago, with CREATE, that is 

the whole dynamic—and I think the freight railroads are coming 

around. 

I think there is a great deal of reluctance to working with the 

Federal Government historically because strings are going to be attached, and we are going to be viewed as a public utility, but I 

think the game is changing now as they have really hit a roadblock 

with capacity that they can be brought to the table, and the Cascade Corridor you mentioned is a good example of that, where 

there, I think, is sort of a shared destiny view that is a bit of a 

breakthrough that we did not see 5 years ago. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right. OK, go ahead. 

Dr. LOMAX. I might suggest that you think about this in a problem-solution mode inasmuch as the solutions in Portland came 

from a problem, and then a group of folks, agencies, private sector 

getting together, that might be the same notion for addressing 

some of the stovepipe issue. 

It may be that you need some sort of incentive program here 

where you require three governors to get together, or five metropolitan regions to get together to talk about a problem that goes 

through all of their areas which might not be solved by a particular 

highway or a particular State or a particular solution, but it may 

be that in requiring some broader set of regions to get together 

that not only do you reinforce this notion of a national system and 

regional interconnectedness, but you also address some of the 

stovepipe issues as well. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Requiring or incenting might be a little gentler 

way to get there. 

Dr. LOMAX. I think that was where I was going. 

54

Mr. PISARSKI. Dr. Lomax and I have worked in a couple of States 

together, and one of the things that we have done that could go 

very much to your question, we recommended, in Georgia and 

Texas particularly, the notion of reduction of hours of delay per 

million dollars invested as the metric for metropolitan areas to look 

at. How many hours of delay you have saved with the money you 

have spent. And what we have suggested is that that solution be 

open to anyone, whatever proposal they might have, whether it is 

a highway or a transit proposal; but that is the metric you would 

base your planning on. 

It seems to me that kind of performance metric, kind of opens 

the door, at least in some sense. In Georgia the State has restructured their planning process around that kind of thinking. 

Dr. LOMAX. And you could add the other elements in—your lease 

cost planning idea, air quality, safety and other elements to talk 

about the productivity of that improvement. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

Mr. Duncan. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Pisarski, you have sort of an optimistic statement about your 

belief that the money is going to be there to finance the improvements; and we, a lot of times, don’t hear that. We have a lot of concerns about decreasing revenues from the gas tax and so forth. But 

you also, on your last line just before your optimistic statement 

about the economy being good enough to pay for everything that we 

need to do, you have the words ′′more operable problems.′′

Do you think that—do you mean that we are going to have more 

of the same types of problems that we have had over the last few 

years, or do you mean that we are going to see newer, different 

kinds of problems in the future, and if so—in other words, just 

elaborate a little bit on that. 

Mr. PISARSKI. Thank you, sir. It is an excellent question. 

By ′′more operable problems,′′ my point was simply that if you go 

back and you look in the 1950’s when they were addressing America’s transportation issues, I would call the interstate system Phase 

I. They addressed the needs of the next 150 million people that 

were being added to the 150 million that were already here. 

Phase II, today, we need to be thinking about the next 150 million that will be needed. But adding that number today is going to 

be really a whole lot easier to deal with than it was for that society 

back in 1956. They were growing at twice the rate as today. Their 

resources were far more limited than ours. And our technological 

resources are clearly superior. 

The very big forecasts that they made of popultion and travel 

growth was growing, which scared everybody, were wrong—low, 

dramatically wrong, low. The system produced much more than 

they had planned. And I think in the future we have a capacity to 

address the problems in a somewhat more straightforward way 

than I think they were able to. 

The problems are going to be more of the same in some respects, 

but I think bigger. The focus of the metro areas is going to be circumferential; 46 percent of the commuting flows today is suburb to 

suburb. Two-thirds of the growth is suburb to suburb. What you 

55

are seeing now are dramatic flows, live in one suburb and work in 

another suburb of another metropolitan area. 

One of the great descriptions somebody said, I think Fredericksburg south of here is a great example: Work in one metropolitan 

area, shop in another metropolitan area, and don’t live in either 

one. And I think that is—in effect, where I think we are going to 

be going. 

So we are going to have to recognize that in getting people involved in the workforce and reaching out to them in the transportation system is going to be critical. We are not going to have the 

labor force that we—I guess I would say, in summary, that commuting in America, if you look at the baby boom, we might have 

thought of it as, isn’t it wonderful that we had the jobs that provided the jobs to those baby boomers when we could have been 

talking about unemployment instead of congestion. 

Mr. DUNCAN. It was a very interesting slide you had about the 

28 percent of workers who are crossing county lines and that it is 

more so among the younger workers because the younger people 

are having to move further out. That is something that we really—

that is important that we take that into consideration in everything that we do. 

Mr. PISARSKI. One positive point that hasn’t been mentioned 

here: As people reach over 55, they tend to work at home; they 

tend to walk to work, they tend to shift away from their past driving habits. Also, because of the lack of skilled workers, I think you 

are going to see dramatic amounts of flexibility on the part of employers. 

You are going to be seeing, Well, when can you work? Yes, Tuesdays and Thursdays. 

You want to come at 10 o’clock? That is fine. 

We are going to see a lot more flexibility out of employers simply 

because they can’t get at those skilled workers. That will be one 

of the positive forces that we will see. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Let me move to some of the others. 

Professor Schwieterman, I was pleased that your testimony was 

about all of the various intermodal activities; I think the staff and 

members of this committee were among the first ones to really recognize that and promote and advocate the need for intermodal systems or that type of thinking; and, in fact, Mr. Schenendorf was 

on the forefront of that. 

But you said we need to leverage more private capital. How do 

you think is the best way we can do that? You mentioned toll 

roads, but they are extremely unpopular where they don’t exist 

today. You mentioned private activity bonds; and, you know, I like 

that, private activity bonds, but they are very, very little in use so 

far. How do we go about that? 

Mr. SCHWIETERMAN. To the extent to which we are now embracing the idea, the congestion pricing needs to enter the mix, and the 

highway system opens up a lot of doors thinking creatively about 

point partnerships, private ways to use toll financing for major improvements that can support private- public investments in highways. And I don’t completely agree with your proposition that toll 

roads will remain extremely unpopular once the public adequately 

56

sees that the other option is the status quo, which is endless traffic 

congestion. 

In Illinois, we are looking at the privatization of the tollway system. The tri-State tollway has been getting discussion. Controversial, yes, but it is a tidal wave of private capital that we are prepared to tap. 

I think the freight railroads—this year alone, CSX has doubled 

their capital with a little inducement from the Federal Government 

to help really make mainline corridors equivalent to interstate 

highways for intercity freight. I think we could see a massive increase in freight investment by the railroads if the government provides a platform to ensure that they are going to do their part to 

help eliminate some of the bottlenecks as well. 

Mr. DUNCAN. You know what has happened over the last many 

years? We at the Federal, State, and local levels, we have taken so 

much land off of the tax rolls and that—and we have done that at 

the same time that the schools and all of the—every department 

and agency of the government at all levels is demanding more and 

more money. So we have raised the sales taxes about as high as 

the public will stand for, and income taxes, too, and so now all of 

the States are going heavily into gambling—you know, the lotteries 

and so forth, but that is going to hit its limit at some point. 

But I will tell you that in my area, we have never had any toll 

roads. I can tell you that would be one of the most unpopular 

things I could ever advocate. I will just tell you, I wouldn’t want 

to do it. 

Dr. Bronzini, what years did you live in Knoxville? 

Mr. BRONZINI. I lived there between 1978 to 1986 and 1990 to 

1999. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Why did you move and when are you moving back? 

Mr. BRONZINI. In 3–1/2 years. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, I will tell you Fortune Magazine about 7 

years ago said the Knoxville metropolitan area had become the 

most popular place to move to in the whole country, based on the 

number moving in in relation to the most fewest moving out. And 

it said that Las Vegas and a lot of other places had a lot more people moving in, but they had large numbers leaving; and we had 

large numbers moving in and nobody leaving, hardly. But we will 

be glad to have you back sometime. 

I also noticed that you got your Ph.D. At Penn State. If you move 

back, you might not want to mention that too often especially after 

the bowl game. 

Mr. BRONZINI. It happened twice, too. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Let me ask you this: You mentioned how important 

the research dollars are, and you say that we are not doing enough 

at the Federal level. And most of us would agree on that, that we 

are—they are doing very little at the State levels and zero at the 

local levels. 

Do you think that might be because at the local level, you know, 

they are not worried about things too far in the future or too much 

research? We don’t see the potholes in Peoria as we sit here, but 

the local government, people, and their citizens drive over those 

potholes every day and they want something done right then. 

57

Mr. BRONZINI. That is a large part of it. I think as you go from 

the local to the Federal level, you see an increasing ability to focus 

on the longer-term solutions. The States have some ability to do 

this. 

The locals, particularly in transportation where their responsibility tends to be pretty focused, they have a hard time getting beyond today’s needs given the limited access to revenue in many 

cases. In many cases, they are spending this off of sales taxes or 

local income taxes depending on where they are. So they have a 

hard time looking to the long term for the program where they 

often are the recipient of grants and are providing matching funds 

for longer-term things. 

The States have some more ability to do this, and they do have 

a partnership with the Federal Government on research activities. 

But I think, for the most part, most States tend to underinvest. I 

believe they underinvest on research on transportation, and they 

look to the Federal Government to take care of the research aspect 

of the program. 

Research money has gone down over time and even research 

money has been earmarked. So it makes it hard to have a coherent 

research programs. So as long as—the natural order of things, the 

Federal Government, because of the leadership role, is able to take 

the longer-term view. 

Mr. DUNCAN. You sound a little bit like President Bush last 

night talking about earmarks. 

Let me ask you this: Was it you who said that our system is not 

really a system? Somebody said that. Or was that one of the—you 

said that? I just was————

Mr. BRONZINI. I think that might have been you, Alan. I said it 

is a system. 

Mr. DUNCAN. All right. 

Well, Dr. Lomax, you talked about incentives, and that is something that I think—that is a direction I would like to head in. And, 

actually, Mr. Pisarski got into the note I made of that. 

I was going to ask you about the possibility of this doubling of 

the population over 65 and how much opportunity you see there for 

people who may have more flexibility, you know, in their drive 

times and not have to drive necessarily in the peak, most congested 

times. 

Do you see a lot of opportunity in that direction, or do you think 

we should start charging people in some way to drive in the more 

congested time period? What do you see in that regard? 

Dr. LOMAX. I think I agree with almost everything in there, one 

way or another. There is certainly a role for incentives. I think 

when—your question about the older workers, I think they are 

maybe only one of the groups that has an incentive or has a way 

to adjust their travel time. 

Alan talked about the notion of very experienced workers being 

very desirable. I think when you see tight labor markets, you see 

employers that are more willing to pay—pay higher salaries—or 

adjust to some sort of flexible work schedule. 

An extreme example would be Roger Clemens with the Houston 

Astros; show up on the day he pitches and take the rest of the time 

off. I don’t think I would have access to that schedule. 

58

But the notion of being able to create a flexible work environment that works for both the commuter and the employer, when 

you see what has happened around the country with businesses 

who have tried this, they find their bottom-line benefits. Their 

workers are more productive, they get to work on time, they have 

less stress, there is less turnover. So they have less money going 

into workforce development. 

So there is a whole range of bottom-line benefits to the employers. It is not that we are asking them to do public good just for its 

own sake. They see a real bottom-line effect. 

And then I think when you talk about charging, I think there is 

a role for that if there is a service component that goes along with 

it. I think people have been shown to be willing to pay more to 

drive on some of these high occupancy toll lanes in return for the 

ability to drive the speed limit to get to where they want to go. 

The typical research outcomes of these are that not everybody 

does this every day. They do this when they have a value of time 

that exceeds the toll that they are going to pay. So if they are late 

to get to the airport or a meeting or their son’s or daughter’s sporting event or cultural event, they are willing to pay that. Other 

days, when getting home 10 minutes early means you have to start 

mowing the yard 10 minutes earlier, you are willing to sit in traffic 

20 minutes longer. 

We haven’t created that many options for people. You can sit in 

traffic or not go in many places. Those are your two options. And 

I think there are a whole lot more options that we can explore. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I can’t resist the temptation to tell you that I spent 

five and a half seasons as batboy for the Knoxville Smokies baseball team, and my freshman year at the University of Tennessee, 

I was the public address announcer. So I love baseball analogies or 

examples. The only thing I really can’t relate to is, back when I 

traveled with the baseball team, we got $22 a week in meal money; 

and now somebody like Roger Clemens probably makes $22,000 a 

minute, which I think is totally out of whack. 

At any rate, thank you very much. All of your testimonies and 

answers have been very, very good and very informative, and I appreciate your being here very much. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for those questions. 

Two last questions that hopefully can be answered quickly. I 

think three of you, perhaps all of you, referred to how pathetic the 

data is out there. I guess the question is, what can we do about 

that? And if you can briefly answer that. 

Mr. PISARSKI. In the SAFETEA LU legislation, the Department 

was requested to conduct a study of national transportation date 

needs and, so far, hasn’t done so. The money has not been forthcoming to make that happen, and I think obviously one of the 

things that somebody has to be asked is, what happened to that. 

A study was done by my data section at TRB where we volunteered 

to do it because there was no money forthcoming. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

Mr. PISARSKI. That is step one. The department needs to identify 

the requirements here, and they can be laid out very readily. It is 

going to take some money, but compared to the cost of ignorance, 

it is very inexpensive. 

59

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. We will follow up on that. 

Does anybody else want to quickly add to that? 

Dr. Lomax. 

Dr. LOMAX. I will very quickly say, the important notion is outlines of data as an asset. It is not that we are suggesting that data 

get collected for its own sake; it is that we have got to improve decisions. In order to do that, it takes time. It is takes effort. It takes 

somebody paying attention to it, but it also takes somebody going 

back to the data folks and helping them understand they are creating information for policies and operations. 

And so connecting up the data folks with the people who use it 

I think is a real key in the good data programs that we have seen. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. Thank you. 

Mr. BRONZINI. I would like to add, this is a near-term issue. 

Some data sets we have had for a long time are disappearing because of the funding slowdown. So we should either decide that 

that data is needed and therefore we better save it, or if it is meeting a need, such as one example is large vehicles, vehicle uses, the 

only data that we have, if we would need data use vehicles, we 

should pose quickly what is going to take its place. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Then just this last one, which I was going to forgo, 

but I am easily provoked. 

Professor Schwieterman was waxing about the Indiana and the 

Chicago model and that—I guess I want to get something out again 

for a quick response, because I don’t want to belabor this, and this 

is the subject of a next hearing. 

On private-public partnerships you mentioned the toll road in Illinois. I guess I think we need to—and I will put out for comment, 

enter very cautiously into privatization agreements because they 

are not really public-private. 

When you cede control for 75 years, you sign noncompete agreements and a whole host of other things, and you don’t, unlike the 

State of Virginia, have the right of recapture, private sharing or 

anything else. What you are dealing with is existing infrastructure 

which is low risk, no risk; and you get a certain amount of money 

up front versus a green field, new construction partnerships as part 

of the funding for massive projects, those sorts of things, or even 

what we envisioned in SAFETEA-LU, which is, if you had capacity, 

you could do tolling and that—and get private investment recapture. 

I just wonder, I don’t know that Professor Schwieterman would 

share my concerns. I just note with the State of Indiana, 

Macquarie puts up 10 percent, great, they put up 10 percent. The 

State of Indiana could have put up 10 percent in G.O. bonds and 

then got partners and had revenue flow from year 25, when the 

whole thing is totally paid for and profit is already gained, to year 

75 which it will now forgo. It has foreclosed that option. 

And I am also concerned about the noncompete agreements. 

There are two ways to meet your congestion standards: you can 

enhance capacity, or you can charge them enough to drive them off 

the route. I think those are problematic to enter into with private 

entities. 

Mr. PISARSKI. I would agree. I wrote a paper on the Indiana and 

the Chicago arrangements, and my first question was, what mayor 

60

50 years from now is going to look back in Chicago and say what 

a great move that was. I can see it coming in New Jersey; I can 

see it coming in Pennsylvania. And at least in Indiana, the notion 

is, you are going to increase the total transportation assets in the 

State; and the greatest concern on my part is the diversion of that 

money into other areas—basically paying your operating cost with 

a capital loan. 

Mr. SCHWIETERMAN. All of those trappings are well stated, and 

you look at British Rail privatization, all of the problems we had 

there. 

But I think moving aggressively to understand how we can make 

that mechanism work, my fear is while the proceeds won’t go towards transportation infrastructure, it will go towards pensions. 

And that is, I think, where the new transportation bill can show 

real leadership to sort of lay out how it can set the ground rules 

of these things. We can tap into that global capital, get some things 

done while protecting the need for major transportation investment 

from the hungry hands of other government agencies. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Anybody else? 

OK, great. 

Well, again, thank you. I really appreciate it. Great testimony. 

Thank you for your work in the field. Thank you for your patience. 

Sorry that it took so long. 

The committee is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:35 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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