IMPROVING AND REFORMING OUR NATION’S 

SURFACE TRANSPORTATION PROGRAMS: 

OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA, FIELD HEARING 

WITH ADDITIONAL SUBMISSIONS FROM A JOINT 

SENATE AND HOUSE FIELD HEARING AND 

NINE LISTENING SESSIONS 

(112–9) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

FEBRUARY 24, 2011 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 

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IMPROVING AND REFORMING OUR NATION’S SURFACE TRANSPORTATION 

PROGRAMS: OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA, FIELD HEARING WITH ADDITIONAL 

SUBMISSIONS FROM A JOINT SENATE AND HOUSE FIELD HEARING AND 

NINE LISTENING SESSIONS 

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65–737 PDF 2011

IMPROVING AND REFORMING OUR NATION’S 

SURFACE TRANSPORTATION PROGRAMS: 

OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA, FIELD HEARING 

WITH ADDITIONAL SUBMISSIONS FROM A JOINT 

SENATE AND HOUSE FIELD HEARING AND 

NINE LISTENING SESSIONS 

(112–9) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

FEBRUARY 24, 2011 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 

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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida, Chairman 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

TOM REED, New York 

ANDY HARRIS, Maryland 

ERIC A. ‘‘RICK’’ CRAWFORD, Arkansas 

JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington 

FRANK C. GUINTA, New Hampshire 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

LOU BARLETTA, Pennsylvania 

CHIP CRAVAACK, Minnesota 

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas 

LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana 

BILLY LONG, Missouri 

BOB GIBBS, Ohio 

PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania 

RICHARD L. HANNA, New York 

STEPHEN LEE FINCHER, Tennessee 

JEFFREY M. LANDRY, Louisiana 

STEVE SOUTHERLAND II, Florida 

JEFF DENHAM, California 

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma 

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 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

LAURA RICHARDSON, California 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

(II) 

(III) 

CONTENTS Page 

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... viii 

TESTIMONY 

Duit, James A., President, Duit Construction Company, Inc. ............................. 12 

Fallin, Hon. Mary, Governor, State of Oklahoma ................................................. 5 

Hietpas, Jerry, President, Action Safety Supply Company .................................. 12 

Lemon, Larry, Chairman, Haskell Lemon Construction Company ..................... 12 

McCaleb, Neal A., President, Transportation Revenues Used Strictly for 

Transportation (TRUST), Indian Reservation Roads (IRR) in Non-Reservation States ............................................................................................................. 12 

Ridley, Hon. Gary, Secretary of Transportation, State of Oklahoma .................. 12 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Duit, James A. ......................................................................................................... 32 

Fallin, Hon. Mary .................................................................................................... 45 

Hietpas, Jerry .......................................................................................................... 50 

Lemon, Larry ........................................................................................................... 53 

McCaleb, Neal A. ..................................................................................................... 58 

Ridley, Hon. Gary .................................................................................................... 61 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Anoatubby, Hon. Bill, Governor, The Chickasaw Nation, testimony for the 

record .................................................................................................................... 76 

Geary, B.A., resident of Tulsa, OK, testimony for the record .............................. 78 

Kessler, Edwin, resident of Norman, OK, testimony for the record .................... 81 

Oklahoma Bicycling Coalition: 

Cash, Mary Ann, LAB LCI #1327, Cooper’s Bicycle Center, written statement ................................................................................................................... 97 

Mussett, Dr. Kevin, Legislative Chairman and Past President, written 

statement .......................................................................................................... 101 

Wathne, Leif G., P.E., Vice President—Highways and Federal Affairs, American Concrete Pavement Association, testimony for the record ....................... 105 

Wilburn, Linda, mother of truck crash victim, testimony for the record ............ 110 

Page

IV 

TESTIMONY FOR THE RECORD FROM JOINT FIELD HEARING, SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS AND 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

LOS ANGELES, CA, AND NATIONAL LISTENING SESSIONS 

During February and March 2011, the Committee on Transportation and 

Infrastructure held a national series of field hearings and listening sessions 

to gather information from State and local officials and stakeholders on 

pending major surface transportation legislation. Testimony from the joint 

Senate and House field hearing held in Los Angeles, CA, as well as testimony from the listening sessions, which did not have a record, is included 

in this hearing. 

Los Angeles, CA, Joint Field Hearing, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and House Committee on Transportation 

and Infrastructure, Improving and Reforming Our Nation’s Surface 

Transportation Programs to Support Job Creation and the Economy, February 23, 2011: 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Czyzyk, Joseph A., Chairman of the Board, Los Angeles Area Chamber of 

Commerce, and CEO, Mercury Air Group, Inc. ................................................. 114 

Heminger, Steve, Executive Director, Metropolitan Transportation Commission, San Francisco Bay Area ............................................................................. 116 

Hunter, Robbie, Council Representative, Los Angeles/Orange County Building 

Trades Council ...................................................................................................... 121 

Kempton, Will, Chief Executive Officer, Orange County Transportation Authority ................................................................................................................... 123 

Knabe, Hon. Don, Chairman, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority .................................................................................................... 133 

Mayer, Anne, Executive Director, Riverside County Transportation Commission ........................................................................................................................ 137 

McKim, Cindy, Director, California Department of Transportation ................... 141 

Phillips, Kathryn, Director, California Transportation and Air Initiative, Environmental Defense Fund .................................................................................. 146 

Villaraigosa, Hon. Antonio R., Mayor, city of Los Angeles .................................. 155 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Blackwell, Angela Glover, Founder and CEO, PolicyLink; Henderson, Wade, 

President and CEO, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human 

Rights; Porchas, Francisca, Lead Organizer, Labor/Community Strategy 

Center and Bus Riders Union; Saenz, Thomas A., President and General 

Counsel, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund 

(MALDEF); Walton, Gloria, Executive Director, Strategic Concepts in Organizing & Policy Education (S.C.O.P.E.); Wang, Karin, Vice President of 

Programs and Communications, Asian Pacific American Legal Center, a 

member of Asian American Center for Advancing Justice; statement for 

the record .............................................................................................................. 160 

Indianapolis, IN, Listening Session, February 19, 2011, Testimony for 

the Record: 

Altman, Christine, President, Central Indiana Regional Transportation Authority, Hamilton County Commissioner ........................................................... 168 

Hoosier Heartland Industrial Corridor, Inc. ......................................................... 170 

Irwin, Kim, Executive Director, Health by Design ............................................... 173 

Kahl, Charles V., President, Indiana Construction Association .......................... 174 

Kitchin, Vicki, Executive Director, Build Indiana Council .................................. 176 

Lochmueller, Keith, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, 

Bernardin, Lochmueller & Associates, Inc. ........................................................ 178 

O’Loughlin, Michael and Susan, residents of Indianapolis, IN ........................... 189 

Pfisterer, Marilyn, Councillor, District 14, city of Indianapolis and Marion 

County ................................................................................................................... 191 

Stephens, Jeff, Executive Director, Consider Biking ............................................ 192 

Terry, Michael A., President and CEO, Indianapolis Public Transportation 

Corporation (IndyGo) ........................................................................................... 199 

Page

V 

Dupage, IL, Listening Session, February 20, 2011, Testimony for the 

Record: 

Barsotti, Ed, Executive Director, League of Illinois Bicyclists ............................ 202 

Blankenhorn, Randall S., Executive Director, Chicago Metropolitan Agency 

for Planning .......................................................................................................... 203 

Brown, Kate, Truck Safety Coalition, mother of truck crash survivor ............... 208 

Campbell, Craig, Vice-President of Environment and Government Affairs, 

Lafarge Cement Division; Master, Debbie, Vice-President of Manufacturing, 

Lafarge Gypsum Division .................................................................................... 212 

Clifford, Alexander D., Executive Director/CEO, Metra ....................................... 214 

Commercial Vehicle Training Association, Inc. ..................................................... 217 

Cullerton, Thomas, Village President, Village of Villa Park ............................... 221 

Darch, Karen, President, Village of Barrington, IL and Co-Chair of TRAC ...... 223 

Darch, Karen, President, Village of Barrington, IL and Co-Chair of TRAC; 

Weisner, Hon. Tom, Mayor, city of Aurora, and Co-Chair of TRAC ................ 227 

Freemire, Hon. Mike, Commission Chair, Bi-State Regional Commission, and 

Mayor, city of Bettendorf; Welvaert, Hon. Don, Chair, Transportation Policy 

Committee, Bi-State Regional Commission, and Mayor, city of Moline .......... 235 

Greuling, John, President and CEO, Will County Center for Economic Development .................................................................................................................. 239 

Hannig, Gary, Secretary, Illinois Department of Transportation ....................... 241 

Klaas, Fran, Kendall County engineer .................................................................. 257 

Kliewer, Laura, Director, Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission ....... 258 

Michels, P. Sean, Village President, Village of Sugar Grove ............................... 260 

Midwest Bus Corporation in conjunction with David Hillock of Transit Associates ........................................................................................................................ 267 

Raff, Brian, Marketing Director, National Steel Bridge Alliance ........................ 268 

Schoedel, Carl, P.E., Director of Transportation/County Engineer, Kane County Division of Transportation .............................................................................. 271 

Skosey, Peter, Vice President, Metropolitan Planning Council ........................... 276 

United Transportation Union ................................................................................. 278 

Vancouver, WA, Listening Session, February 21, 2011, Testimony for 

the Record: 

Adams, Hon. Sam, Mayor, city of Portland ........................................................... 280 

Bricker, Scott, Director, Portland Office, America Walks .................................... 283 

Brokaw, Wayne, Executive Director, Inland Northwest Associated General 

Contractors of America ........................................................................................ 287 

Brown, Chandra, Vice President, Oregon Iron Works, Inc., and President, 

United Streetcar, LLC ......................................................................................... 289 

Dean, Robert, President, Dean Surveying, Inc. .................................................... 291 

Dolgonas, Richard J., resident of Roseburg, OR ................................................... 295 

Douglas County Global Warming Coalition .......................................................... 300 

Edgar, Paul, ‘‘Are There Better Options and Alternatives Than Replacing 

the I–5 Bridges?’’ .................................................................................................. 302 

Girard, Chris, President and CEO, Plaid Pantry Convenience Stores ................ 306 

Harvey, Stephen H., Director, Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Council of Governments ... 308 

Hubbard, David S., Vice President, Legislative Affairs, Portland Cement Association .................................................................................................................... 310

Hughes, Tom, Council President, Oregon Metro Council ..................................... 312 

Jackson, Jeffrey A., bicyclist and walker ............................................................... 315 

Kloos, Jeanette B., President, Friends of the Historic Columbia River Highway ........................................................................................................................ 316

Lavelle, Jenn, Field Associate, OSPIRG (Oregon State Public Interest Research Group) ....................................................................................................... 318 

Lee, Timothy, Lakeside Industries, Inc. ................................................................ 321 

Statement regarding North Spokane Corridor ...................................................... 325 

Parker, Terry, resident ............................................................................................ 327 

Spokane Regional Transportation Council ............................................................ 328 

Vine, Loren T., Member, All Aboard Washington and the National Association 

of Rail Passengers ................................................................................................ 331 

Wagner, Don, Washington Director for the Columbia River Crossing Project ... 335 

Winiecki, Tad, Higherway Transport Research .................................................... 337 

Page

VI 

Fresno, CA, Listening Session, February 22, 2011, Testimony for the 

Record: 

California League of Food Processors .................................................................... 344 

Cohen, Laura, Western Regional Director, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy ............ 346 

Fresno Works: 

Anderson, Susan B., Co-Chair, and Fresno County Supervisor; and Perea, 

Henry R., Co-Chair, and Fresno County Supervisor ..................................... 348 

Perea, Henry R., Co-Chair, and Fresno County Supervisor ............................. 349 

Hanson, Matt, President, Professional Engineers in California Government .... 352 

Jonesboro, AR, Listening Session, February 24, 2011, Testimony for 

the Record: 

Broadaway, Sally, President, Northeast Arkansas Bicycle Coalition ................. 358 

Caulk, Robert, Chairman, Fayetteville Natural Heritage Association ............... 360 

Evans, Steven R., Director, United Transportation Union .................................. 367 

Griffin, Robert, Independence County Judge ........................................................ 380 

Jonesboro Regional Chamber of Commerce: 

Cameron, Mike ..................................................................................................... 382 

Owens, Ben, Chairman, Transportation Committee ......................................... 433 

Laggan, Charles, Vice President and General Manager, Arkansas Midland 

Railroad Co., Inc., Prescott and Northwestern Railroad Co., Warren & 

Saline River Railroad Co., Railroad Distribution Services, Inc., Pinsly Railroad Companies .................................................................................................... 434 

Marzewski, Jane, resident of Jonesboro, AR ......................................................... 437 

Perrin, Hon. Harold, Mayor, city of Jonesboro ...................................................... 438 

Projects including pedestrian and bicycle facilities; landscaping and scenic 

beautification; rehabilitation and operation of historic transportation buildings, structures or facilities; scenic or historic highway programs including 

tourist and welcome centers, etc. ........................................................................ 447 

Woltjen, Duane W., resident of Fayetteville, AR .................................................. 464 

Cortland, NY, Listening Session, March 24, 2011, Testimony for the 

Record: 

Klemm, Bill and Cindy, small business owner operators and OOIDA members ........................................................................................................................ 468 

Morrison, Karen, P.E., Vice President, Transportation & Technical Services, 

Associated General Contractors of New York State, LLC ................................ 471 

Pizzola, Frances A., Access to Independence of Cortland County, Inc. ............... 472 

Reinemann, Teri, Finger Lakes Independence Center ......................................... 474 

Roberts, Larry, resident of Tompkins County ....................................................... 475 

Shumaker, Linda, President, Shumaker Consulting Engineering & Land Surveying, P.C., on behalf of American Council of Engineering Companies ........ 476 

Suits, Frank, Jr., President & CEO, Suit-Kote Corporation ................................ 480 

Transportation Advocacy Group (TAG) .................................................................. 482 

Rochester, NY, Listening Session, March 24, 2011, Testimony for the 

Record: 

Aesch, Mark, Chief Executive Officer, Rochester Genesee Regional Transportation Authority .................................................................................................... 488 

New York State Transportation Equity Alliance .................................................. 494 

Rice, Terrence J., P.E., Director, Monroe County Department of Transportation ..................................................................................................................... 496

Wright, William C., Ontario County Commissioner of Public Works; Vice 

President, New York State County Highway Superintendent Association; 

and Member, New York Chapter American Public Works Association ........... 497 

Philadelphia, PA, Listening Session, March 25, 2011, Testimony for 

the Record: 

Campbell Soup Company ........................................................................................ 502 

McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP Attorneys at Law .............................................. 504 

Meddin, Russell, Bike Share Philadelphia ............................................................ 506 

Page

VII 

Pennsylvania Transportation Center for Digital Technology Innovation & Deployment, a partnership of Carnegie Mellon University and the University 

of Pennsylvania .................................................................................................... 507 

Scranton, PA, Listening Session, March 25, 2011, Testimony for the 

Record: 

Pietrucha, Dr. Martin T., P.E., F.ASCE, F.ITE, Director, The Thomas D. 

Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, and Professor of Civil Engineering, Pennsylvania State University ............................................................. 510 

Williams, Keith, Community Organizer, Northeast Center for Independent 

Living .................................................................................................................... 511 

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(1) 

IMPROVING AND REFORMING OUR 

NATION’S SURFACE TRANSPORTATION 

PROGRAMS: OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA, 

FIELD HEARING WITH ADDITIONAL 

SUBMISSIONS FROM A JOINT SENATE 

AND HOUSE FIELD HEARING AND NINE 

LISTENING SESSIONS 

Thursday, February 24, 2011 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

WASHINGTON, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:00 a.m., in Union 

Rooms 1 and 2, Oklahoma City Community College, 7777 South 

May Avenue, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Hon. John L. Mica [chairman of the committee] presiding. 

Mr. MICA. Good morning. I’m Congressman John Mica. I chair 

the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and I’d 

like to call this meeting of the committee to order. 

This today is a field hearing and public input session regarding 

provisions that will be included in a new Federal transportation 

legislation and reauthorization. 

I’m delighted to be here today at the invitation of your Congressman, Mr. Lankford, the gentleman from Oklahoma, in his district. 

And also, let me explain, first of all, what we’re doing and then the 

order of business before the committee today. 

As you know, everyone here I think knows that Congress must 

adopt a long-term authorization, which sets forth all of the Federal 

policy, the projects and the financing formulas for all of the transportation, major transportation countries for the Nation, in legislation. 

The current legislation that we are working under expired, actually, in September of 2009, we’re on the sixth extension, Congress 

must extend the law in order to authorize the programs and even 

the existence of department—Federal Department of Transportation. 

We are going to, next week, when we return pass the seventh extension, and I hope that will be the last extension. That extension 

will go through the 30th of September of this year. I would rather 

have a shorter term extension, but because of the requirement, and 

the needs of the local and State government to have some definition as to what the Federal Government’s partnership, funding, arrangement and rules of the game, so to speak, will be in place, and 

2 

we have to do something for some definite period of time, rather 

than these short pickup kinds of extensions that have taken place 

today. So that will take us through the fiscal year, and it’s my hope 

that when we finish these hearings and field listening sessions, 

that we can return to Congress. 

Now, what you’re seeing here today is part of a national listening 

and hearing session. We started after votes last Saturday morning, 

which ended at 4:30 in the morning, flew to Columbus, Ohio, the 

State capital there, began these sessions. We’ve been in Indianapolis, we’ve been in Chicago, flew to Portland and Vancouver, Washington, Fresno, Los Angeles, here today, tonight we’ll be in 

Jonesboro, Arkansas, and then we’ll be up in Memphis, then I’m 

going back to Florida. We’ll have additional sessions in New York, 

Pennsylvania, probably two or three other locations. 

The hope is to have that hearing process, what you’re involved 

in here today, completed sometime in March, and then I’ve offered 

to host a pizza, diet Pepsi, I was going to say beer, and sit down 

with the members and look at all the input that we’ve received and 

try to start drafting and finalizing legislation that would be our— 

a six-year transportation bill. So, that’s the reason we’re here, 

that’s the order that we’ll follow. 

The committee took up this week that extension of the transportation bill, which will be considered by the house, tentatively the 

word I got yesterday afternoon is Wednesday afternoon, some of 

you are interested, because the current extension, the sixth extension, it expires on the 4th of March, along with a CR. And we’re 

not sure what’s going to happen with a continuing resolution, if 

you’ve watched some of that debate, but we have to make certain 

that transportation is not left behind. So that’s the reason we’re 

taking it in that order. 

Additionally, I’d just comment that the FAA reauthorization, 

which I helped to draft the last law in 2003 with Mr. Duncan and 

others that were there, that expired in 2007, we’ve done 17 extensions, and we’ve not had Federal policy law, authorization in place, 

only 17 extensions of the law. Next week, when we return, one of 

our first orders of business, after passing last week the House 

version of the FAA reauthorization, will be to try to get that on the 

floor as soon as possible. The Senate has passed their version, 

conferenced it, and the FAA, 17th extension runs out March 31st, 

and it’s my fervent prayer that we do not have an 18th extension, 

that we have a four-year bill in place. 

So that’s the reason we’re here, and let me say also that we 

wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have one of the leaders of this—the 

new generation of Members of Congress, who obtained—actually 

competed for a seat on the Transportation Infrastructure Committee, but we’re delighted to be here at his request. He follows in 

the footsteps of your Governor who was on the committee, and we 

are just delighted, again, to come across the country and listen to 

folks and their recommendations on what we need as far as positive improvements in the current Federal law relating to transportation policy. 

The order of business is I’ll yield first to Mr. Lankford, then I’ll 

yield to Mr. Duncan for opening statements, and then we’ll get to 

our panel of participants and witnesses today. 

3 

So with that, thank you, again, for hosting us. Let me recognize 

the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Lankford. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. It is a joy to be able to have the 

chairman here and to have the field hearing, to have a chance to 

listen to the ideas that are coming from Oklahoma, we have a lot 

of great ideas. I’m looking forward to sharing these ideas and other 

ideas that will be coming from individuals. 

Let me recognize a couple of people. I know the chairman will 

be recognizing the people on the panel itself, but Dr. Paul Secrest 

is the President of OCCC, and I wanted to get a chance to recognize him and say thank you. And Dr. Jerry Steward is also the Executive Vice President, thank you so much for doing this. I know 

Gina put in a lot of work, where is she? There you are, OK, put 

in a ton of work to be able to pull this together. Thank you for 

doing that. 

On my own staff, Brittnee Preston is here probably somewhere, 

and worked very hard from the D.C. side as well as here, and 

Mona Taylor and Holly Isch and all the rest of the staff that’s here 

in Oklahoma City for our Congressional office put in a lot of work 

on this. Thank you for doing that. 

This is the crossroads of America, as we who live here in central 

Oklahoma understand well, three major highways come right 

through the middle of us. And if there are products and goods and 

services just about anywhere in the southern part of the United 

States, they came through Oklahoma City at some point, whether 

that be by rail or whether that be by water, through the Port of 

Catoosa or whether that be by coming across on our highways. 

I’ll put out we’re also the pipeline crossroads of America. We 

have a lot going on. Today we’re talking about surface transportation specifically, but this is a major topic for us in Oklahoma. 

We’ve seen it both in the I–40 and what’s happening on the crosstown, we’ve seen it all across our major highways and our own 

bridges, we’ve gone through a long journey on this. 

Oklahoma City has seen quite a resurgence in the past fifteen 

years. And we’ve seen a revitalization of the city itself that we’re 

sitting in, as well as the state and what’s going on in so many 

ways. 

So I loved telling the story and getting a chance to say come and 

see what’s going on in Oklahoma City and the resurgence that we 

have experienced here, but also get a chance to come and hear the 

ideas. As we have talked about often, ideas don’t come just from 

Washington, D.C. They come from individuals who live and breathe 

these issues and these ideas and we’re looking forward to getting 

a chance to hear these issues and ideas today. 

For others that want to submit thoughts and suggestions, they 

are obviously welcome to be in the conversation. So, thank you for 

coming, for holding this field hearing here and looking forward to 

getting a chance to hear the testimony. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Lankford. And let me turn now to the 

chair of the Highway Subcommittee. We have six subcommittees 

under our full committee, and one of the leaders in transportation 

and also the chair of that important subcommittee, who will be 

helping craft this legislation, the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. 

Duncan. Mr. Duncan, you are recognized. 

4 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank 

you for allowing me to be part of this nationwide tour of these 

hearings and this listening session. This is my 23rd year on this 

committee, and I’ve served in that time, I was just sitting here 

thinking, under six other chairman, there’s never been another 

chairman who has gone as many places as you have in such a short 

time, and I think that’s great for the very reason that Congressman Lankford just said, that all the ideas, in fact, sometimes the 

worst ideas come from Washington and the best ideas come from 

the local folks right here. 

And I said driving over with your Governor a few minutes ago, 

I think the people of Oklahoma are just almost identical or exactly 

like the people in Tennessee where I’m from. I’m from the Knoxville area, which is a very fast growing part of our United States. 

But I had the privilege about three years ago of coming with Congressman Jerry Costello, a Democrat from Illinois, and Jimmie Fellow, one of our top staff members from the Transportation Committee at the request of then your Congresswoman, Mary Fallin, 

and now you’re Governor. 

And let me say, first of all, she was a very hard worker in the 

Congress and made a great impression on both Democrats and Republicans alike, and I am convinced that she will be an outstanding 

Governor for your state. And Congressman Lankford, in his short 

time in the Congress is getting off, I think, to a great start. We’re 

trying to come up with ideas for the highway bill. I’ve had the 

privilege of chairing the Aviation Subcommittee, we have a six-year 

limit on chairmanships on the Republican side, and, I chaired the 

Aviation Subcommittee for six years and chaired the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee for six years, and now 

have the privilege, thanks to Chairman Mica, chairing the Highway and Transit Subcommittee. 

We’ve been told in hearings in all of those subcommittees that 

it takes on average about three times as long to do an airport 

project, a water project, a highway project, and about three to four 

times as much cost to do those types of projects as it does in any 

other developed nation. We’ve got to change that, we’ve got to 

speed that up, because common sense would tell you, if we can 

even cut that project delivery time in half, that we could do two 

projects where we have been doing one. 

Chairman Mica sometimes gets embarrassed when I say this, but 

we need to get the environmental radicals under control, that’s the 

problem in this country, in my opinion. If we don’t do some more 

domestic energy production, yesterday USA Today on the front 

page said gas prices are going to go to $5 a gallon. That’s going to 

hurt a lot of people if that happens. So we need to do some things 

in this country. We need to not be afraid to let our free market, 

free enterprise system work, and we need to kind of get out of the 

way and let things—let things—let progress take place. 

And that’s why we’re here today, to get your ideas and suggestions, and I’m honored to be here with you. Thank you very much. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you, Gentlemen. And a little housekeeping and 

ask you now to consent that all of the witnesses’ testimony be included in the record today, and also for the listening sessions that 

5 

we had in Indianapolis, Chicago, Vancouver, Los Angeles was a 

joint House and Senate hearing, and for today’s hearing. 

Without objection, so ordered. 

Let me also say at this point, that—and Mr. Lankford will move 

that we keep the record from this hearing open for two weeks. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Yes, so moved. 

Mr. MICA. So moved without objection. Now, we could only have 

a limited number of panelists today. And everyone couldn’t participate on the panel, otherwise, we would never get done with our 

work. But what I do want to announce is that we will keep the 

record open with the past request by the gentleman from Oklahoma. We’ll keep the record open for a period of two weeks. 

So if you don’t get an opportunity to be heard, again, in a formal 

manner today, we invite you to submit, and I would prefer through 

your representative, you can also do that to any Member of the 

Committee, but we will attempt to include all of that information, 

and then we’ll use your suggestions as we consider it, again, completing the final bill in legislation. 

So, again, that’s an open invitation, some folks sometimes are reluctant, will try to stay a couple of minutes afterwards and heard 

from a few folks last night on ideas, but we want you to know you 

can have an important role and you can participate in this process. 

With that being said, we’ll move now to our panel of witnesses. 

We’re going to do a little bit different order today, because we’re 

honored to have the Governor with us, and she has another commitment and then I’m rejoining her on a trek across part of Oklahoma, anyway, to Tulsa after this hearing. But we are delighted to 

have our former colleague, Mr. Duncan and I, and your friend, Mr. 

Lankford, the very distinguished Governor. I can tell you having 

known the Governor in her former capacity, you couldn’t have a 

more dedicated public servant. No one who would be more aggressive on behalf of positive outcomes for the state and their former 

district. She’s just a tireless, energized individual, 24–7. 

I was just telling Mr. Lankford this morning, the problem is she 

also has my cell phone number. But we are, again, delighted to be 

here at Mr. Lankford’s request, but also the Governor’s request. 

But I will recognize her first, and we’re just delighted to have 

you, and thank you for your past friendship and now your leadership and also for your hospitality during our visit. Welcome, my 

former colleague and now Governor, and you’re recognized. 

TESTIMONY OF MARY FALLIN, GOVERNOR, STATE OF 

OKLAHOMA 

Governor FALLIN. Thank you, very much, Mr. Chairman, and let 

me just first of all say, welcome to Oklahoma, it’s great to have 

you, Mr. Chairman, here in our great state. It’s certainly good to 

see you, Subcommittee Chairman Duncan, and we appreciate your 

second visit to our state to see our infrastructure systems. And 

we’re very proud of Congressman Lankford and his new service to 

this committee, and he’s certainly going to do a great job and he’s 

off to a wonderful start, so we are thrilled to have you back in our 

great state for such an important hearing and to be able to meet 

with our local officials. 

6 

You have two cabinet secretaries here, our current Secretary of 

Transportation, our former Secretary of Transportation, and other 

people who are in the industry represented in this room. So we are 

thrilled to have you here for this testimony. 

I want to tell you I really appreciate you making the trip to 

Oklahoma, because as you told us last night at our lovely reception, 

you’ve been to many states on a very fast paced track during this 

time, listening to ideas from across the Nation on so many important issues, and I appreciate the time you’ve taken today to let us 

visit with you about our issues. 

I know you’re going to hear about the I–40 crosstown, you’re 

going to make a trip later today to see the Inner Dispersal loop in 

Tulsa, so, thank you for taking that time. And I know that we’re 

going to be able to make some good presentations here today with 

all of the people who are represented. 

Let me just, first of all, say, that I want to brag for a few moments about our Secretary of Transportation, Gary Ridley. As you 

might remember, Mr. Chairman, and our colleagues here, Secretary Ridley came to Washington many times on behalf of the 

transportation committee to testify on behalf of how important it 

is that we get our transportation plan passed in our Nation, and 

we certainly support your efforts in getting through all the extensions and just getting a permanent transportation bill passed out 

of Congress. 

It’s not only important for the state of Oklahoma, it’s important 

for our state budget, it’s important for our people who are in the 

road construction industry and bridge construction industry to have 

some certainty in knowing what the budget’s going to be and to 

knowing how much money will be available. 

So I want to brag upon our Secretary of Transportation Gary 

Ridley for being what we believed in our transportation committee, 

to be one of the first states in the Nation to have shovel ready 

projects when we had a bill a couple of years ago putting more 

money towards transportation and infrastructure. So, thank you, 

Secretary Ridley, for all of your great work. 

We are here to discuss the urgency of building our Nation’s 

transportation infrastructure, as well as the need for our state and 

the Federal Government to work together and effectively as partners in this process. Building our road and our bridges is essentially to the economic wellbeing of our state and our Nation, it represents an important investment in the future of our country. 

There was a bipartisan interest in ensuring that goods can be 

moved quickly and efficiently across state lines and throughout our 

country, and that we have safe roads and safe bridges with minimum congestion. Mr. Chairman was talking to me a little bit 

about our congestion in Oklahoma City last night. It’s because 

we’ve got a lot of good construction going on. We’re fixing those 

roads and bridges in our state. 

Mr. MICA. We ran into all of it. 

Governor FALLIN. He gave me a lecture on it last night, and I 

said, well, we’re repairing our roads and our bridges as we need to 

be. I know that Chairman Mica and the committee members are 

well-versed on the importance of maintaining and expanding our 

transportation infrastructure. I’d like to real briefly go over the ecoVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:03 Jul 22, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\112\FULLCO~1\2-24-1~1\65737.TXT JEAN
7 

nomic impact as Governor of our state that it has upon Oklahoma’s 

economy. 

According to the U.S. Census, there have been 2,630 transportation and warehousing establishments that exist in our state, and 

that employs over 64,000 Oklahomans or 3 percent of Oklahoma’s 

work force. The total quantity of freight that moves across our 

Interstate and our road systems, moving in and out through Oklahoma on all modes of transportation, totals more than 945 million 

tons with a value of $624 million—$624 billion, Congressman 

Lankford, in Oklahoma’s economy. 

And so transportation infrastructure-related issues are big business, it’s very important to Oklahoma’s economy in moving the 

goods and services in transportation. Over 115 million tons of goods 

are shipped from Oklahoma to states and countries beyond our 

state’s borders, and that number is actually expected to increase 

from 155 million tons—to another 155 million tons by 2035. So I 

appreciate your mention of our port, we have the most inland port 

in the Nation in our state, too. 

Oklahoma’s central location makes it very ideal for a location for 

warehousing and distribution of a diverse array of products and 

services and goods, and so improving our transportation infrastructure is a very important step in supporting our massive distribution networks, as well as our various industries that are in our 

state. 

Agriculture and livestock production, for example, account for a 

significant portion of Oklahoma’s exports, and we stand to benefit 

from improved rail services, and something Secretary Ridley and 

Congressman and I talk about a lot is the need to have efficient, 

effective rail systems in Oklahoma. 

Aerospace is certainly a growing industry in Oklahoma that requires not only good airports, but it requires reliable and expansive 

highway and airport networks to solidify our position as a state, as 

a national supplier, even in the military defense industry. 

So as you can see, transportation has a huge impact upon Oklahoma’s economy, on the jobs, on the goods and services that come 

through our Nation and, of course, across our state. 

So as a former Congresswoman on the transportation committee 

and now Governor, it is my great hope that the State of Oklahoma 

can continue to be a partner with U.S. Transportation Committee, 

certainly with Congress, and that we can both together seek ways 

to improve our Nation’s infrastructure and transportation system. 

The Director Ridley will tell us in a few moments that there is 

a backlog of transportation needs in Oklahoma and it’s large and 

it must have a consistent long-term Federal investment strategy 

for our state. And it is my hope that such a strategy will include 

flexible Federal spending, we’ve talked about that many times. We 

want to be free from Federal unfunded mandates or a rigid one size 

fits all policy for our state. Such mandates and regulations can be 

seen in a couple of examples I’d like to share with you. 

While a member of the transportation committee, one of the 

issues that we worked on on behalf of Oklahoma was private farm 

vehicles that come under increased scrutiny from local and state 

law enforcement in regards to Interstate commercial motor vehicle 

standards. And as you’re aware, the Federal law allows each state 

8 

to determine their own classification for commercial motor vehicles, 

for trucks with gross vehicle weight ratings of less than 26,000 

pounds while traveling within our Oklahoma borders. 

However, the Federal standards mandates of those trucks traveling across state lines with a gross vehicle rate rating of more 

than 10,000 pounds are considered to be commercial motor vehicles. 

So the discrepancy between these two standards forces our farmers with heavy pickup trucks who cross state lines to acquire additional licenses, creates a cumbersome burden upon our farmers and 

our ranchers who sell across state lines to support their households 

and their families. So farmers and ranchers in Oklahoma and 

across the country have been seriously inhibited by these regulations that were never intended, I think, to apply to them. 

You might remember I wrote a piece of legislation, along with 

Congressman Boren, to address this issue and to make changes on 

the Federal standards for the mandate for commercial motor vehicles, and I would certainly continue to urge Congress to pass similar legislation to help our rural farmers, not only in Oklahoma, but 

certainly, throughout our Nation. 

Another issue I’d like to visit with you about is the National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA, and it offers another illustration of 

burdensome Federal regulations under NEPA states are subject to 

extensive Federal regulations in order to make even the most basic 

improvements to infrastructures within transportation right-ofways. 

In order to repave an existing stretch of roads, states should not 

have to acquire a new right-of-way or undergo a full environmental 

review and be subject to such added expenses. These projects within existing corridors should be exempt from NEPA regulations so 

that progress may continue to be made without delay. 

Regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency, there’s 

another way that we have increasing concern. I’m proud to say that 

under the Clean Air Act, Oklahoma’s air quality has been in containment for over a decade and continues to improve, however, if 

the EPA continues to impose even more stringent air quality targets, after only three years of lowering our previous target levels, 

major areas in Oklahoma’s metro will risk nonattainment, which 

would effectively bring a halt to continued growth of Oklahoma’s 

economic development centers, and that will be unacceptable, especially a time when we are trying to recover from a recession. 

The final example I’d like to make is the undue Federal regulation that can be seen in Davis Bacon, and I know our contractors 

here will stand by me with this. The state is currently divided into 

four territories with approximately 22 job classifications. The current system has proven to be fair and effective for all parties involved. In fact, there were generally never problems with meeting 

Davis Bacon mandated wages because of the market driven wages 

in Oklahoma are frankly just higher. 

However, the U.S. Department of Labor has conducted an evaluation of Oklahoma’s wages and has now proposed dividing Oklahoma into 66 territories with 36 different job classifications. And 

this is problematic, because if a road happens to cross a county 

line, an employee could make a certain wage one day in one area, 

9 

he could cross that county line and make a different wage in a different area the next day. So Department of Labor has allowed 

other states that have found themselves in the same position to 

conduct their own labor studies in partnership with the contractors, Department of Transportation, Department of Labor, and this 

would allow state departments involved with—with contractors to 

work together to serve by payrolls in an appropriate manner, and 

it could be evaluated for a few years, we would ask to ensure that 

fairness. 

So I hope Oklahoma will be able to do the same, rather than fall, 

once again, under the same one size fits all Federal regulations. I 

know our director will talk to you about some of our infrastructure 

needs in other projects, so I’d like to conclude these comments now. 

You have a lot of great people here that are going to give some testimony, but once again, Chairman Mica, Committee Chairman 

Duncan, and certainly Congressman Lankford and your staff that 

are visiting here in Oklahoma, today, thank you for taking time to 

listen to the ideas that will be presented so we can continue to improve the infrastructure in our state. 

And I just want to let you know that we stand with you, ready 

to work with you in helping you pass not only a six-year transportation bill, but also to work on the FAA reauthorization. That’s important to our state. Thank you so much and welcome to Oklahoma. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you again, Governor, and thank you for being 

with us. And we’re going to take the Governor out of order for 

questions and then we’ll go to the remainder of those on the panel, 

because she does have some other commitments, and we’re just 

really pleased that you would even take the time today to join us 

with your busy commitment schedule. 

Let me yield first to Mr. Lankford to see if he has any questions 

for the witness. 

Mr. LANKFORD. I do. Thank you for being here. I know you have 

a busy schedule as well, and I know that you know what it’s like 

to be on both sides of this desk, so thanks for taking the time to 

be here. 

Can you spend a little more time talking about the flexible Federal mandates and how that would help Oklahoma and just to give 

Oklahoma, I guess, more permission, is what it sounds like you’re 

asking for to be able to make a decision locally, rather than somebody in Washington D.C. Making those decisions? 

Governor FALLIN. Absolutely, Congressman Lankford. You know, 

we believe that we know our needs in our state and our funding 

needs, our priorities as far as what’s the most important project 

that needs our attention, what would help in the transportation of 

goods and services across our state. We believe that we know 

where our bridge deficiencies are and where the money needs to be 

spent, and I’m proud to say Oklahoma’s lowered our bridge deficiency by 30 percent, I read in an article in the paper last week, 

so we’ve done a good job in having an eight-year plan in Oklahoma. 

We fund our plan based upon priorities, based upon needs, not 

based upon politics, which I think is very important. And we have 

a great team of people, a great Department of Transportation staff 

that is leading our state and working with our communities. And 

10 

so we’d like to have more flexibility in deciding what our priorities 

are and we would like to have more flexibility in even being able 

to be process those contracts in a more timely way. 

Congressman Duncan mentioned how time delays drive up costs. 

We had a bridge that you might remember that collapsed many 

years ago in Oklahoma, was very effective and efficient in bringing 

that bridge back up through some creative work with— 

incentivizing a faster pace in completing that bridge. 

And so we believe there are great solutions in our state, and we 

hope that we can have more flexibility to share those ideas. I know 

that Secretary Ridley and I’m sure Secretary McCaleb has testified 

many times about innovative solutions and how—allowing us just 

to be able to have that flexibility can make our dollars go far and 

be more efficient. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Perfect. By the way, I do look forward to picking 

up that same piece of legislation that’s unfinished on the commercial vehicle ratings for agricultural vehicles. It’s still sitting out 

there and our staff has been looking at it to see if we can finish 

the job on that, so thanks for getting it started and we hope to get 

it finished, that would be a tag team experience to get that thing 

done. 

Governor FALLIN. Thank you, Congressman. 

Mr. LANKFORD. I yield back. 

Mr. MICA. Mr. Duncan, you’re recognized. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I don’t know that I have 

any questions. I’ll just say that I agree with everything the Governor has said in her testimony, you know, there’s an important 

national role in these projects, because people in Ohio sometimes 

use the roads in Tennessee and vice versa, and people in New York 

sometimes use the airports in Texas and vice versa, and so you can 

go on and on. 

Interstate 40 runs right through Knoxville as well as here. So I 

appreciate that you’re telling us about this Department of Labor 

situation, and that’s ridiculous to do that, and—most of these 

delays are environmental delays, so I’m well aware with the NEPA 

situation. 

It’s our goal, Chairman Mica, and my goal, to get a six-year bill, 

and we’d like to do it this year, but at least hopefully do it in this 

Congress. And I believe we will, they tried to do it in the last Congress and didn’t come close for various reasons. 

But thank you very much, this work needs to be a partnership 

of Federal, state and local. And we don’t need the Federal people 

dictating everything, and the mandates you’re talking about, that’s 

a problem that’s been going on for years, and we need to work on 

that as well. But thank you very much for your testimony here this 

morning. 

Governor FALLIN. Thank you, Congressman. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. Just again, you said that two areas that 

do drive your costs up or delay—well, also the NEPA process that 

delays your project, any estimate as to what you could do, what 

kind of money you would save, both in a restructuring, realignment 

of the NEPA process? We’ve had some suggestions, too, for certain 

levels of exemption, and also consolidating some of the process for 

NEPA. 

11 

And then Davis-Bacon, maybe you have some more specific or 

when we get to Secretary Ridley, maybe he could tell us the exact 

difference in costs that the state incurs because of the current Federal regulations. 

Governor FALLIN. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, in committee, 

when I was there over the last couple of years, we debated DavisBacon and prevailing wage many, many times, and the added costs 

it can add upon our construction projects, and what we typically 

find is that the market force is driven, will actually set the wages 

within the market itself and a free enterprise, free competitive system itself, and as my testimony just said, we pay on the average 

more than what the prevailing wage might be just because of the 

market itself. 

And certainly, after we went through the stimulus funding and 

the different road projects that we had in our state, I think there 

was some pretty good work that was had out in our road contractors and bridge contractors, so, you know, we just believe that the 

market prices are the best way to set our pricing and we know, and 

I think Secretary Ridley can give some specifics on this, on costs 

to his department, but it does increase costs on our road projects, 

and we have a certain amount of money that we may let or plan 

for in our eight-year budget and then all of a sudden, the estimates 

may come in a lot higher than that, and that gives us less money 

to put towards our important projects of our state. So I know our 

secretary will be able to give you some more specifics on how it impacts his budget, in particular, but we hope that you’ll just consider 

that as you look for it in legislation. 

Mr. MICA. I want to thank you for coming out today and taking 

time out of your busy schedule to be with us. We look forward to 

being with you shortly in Tulsa. I might say, too, when I was driving in from the airport and I saw all the construction underway, 

I thought, and this is, again, knowing your Governor and working 

with her, and seeing her tenacity on different projects, I couldn’t 

help but think that some of that construction that was underway 

was her handiwork, as she never stopped in her efforts, again, to 

try to assist her entire state and the Nation with the projects moving forward. So I’m sure you had something to do with them. 

Some of the delays that probably will expedite people’s travel in 

the future, hopefully we can do more with you in the future, I know 

we will be able to. We appreciate you taking time to be with us 

today. 

Any other questions for the Governor? And we may have some 

that we’ll submit, along with additional questions in writing, to 

witnesses. So, at this time, I’ll just excuse the Governor, and let 

you—— 

Governor FALLIN. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Thank 

you, Congressmen. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. We’ll now turn to the panel and thank everyone again for coming out today. We’re very privileged to have 

the distinguished participants, and among them, an individual I’ve 

had the opportunity to work with in the past and highly respected 

among the leaders of transportation across the Nation, is your director, we call them the Head of Transportation for the State of 

12 

Oklahoma, Mr. Gary Ridley. We’re pleased to have you, you’re recognized. 

And let me say, I know all of you probably have formal written 

statements, and they will be included without objection into the 

record. What I’d like to do for the remainder of the time is have 

you informally give us your recommendations, your ideas of what 

specific things, I think maybe two or three things, one, two or three 

things that we could put in law that would make this process work 

better for you, bring projects in faster, lower the costs, financing 

will be a key, we need ideas on creative financing, leveraging and 

then speeding up the process, doing more with less, because, of 

course, we face an incredible financial crisis at the Federal level, 

as everyone knows. 

So with that, Mr. Ridley, you’re recognized and again, welcome. 

TESTIMONY OF GARY RIDLEY, SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION, STATE OF OKLAHOMA; NEAL A. McCALEB, PRESIDENT, TRANSPORTATION REVENUES USED STRICTLY FOR 

TRANSPORTATION (TRUST), INDIAN RESERVATION ROADS 

(IRR) IN NON–RESERVATION STATES; JAMES A. DUIT, PRESIDENT, DUIT CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, INC., EDMOND, 

OKLAHOMA; JERRY HIETPAS, PRESIDENT, ACTION SAFETY 

SUPPLY COMPANY; AND LARRY LEMON, CHAIRMAN, HASKELL LEMON CONSTRUCTION COMPANY 

Mr. RIDLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, Congressman Lankford. The Governor said it very well. If 

we’re going to look at specific things, and knowing full well that 

it will be difficult, if almost impossible, to increase the Federal 

budget when concerning surface transportation, that we have to 

look at things that will not only improve the process, expedite the 

process, but certainly take the bureaucracy out of the things that 

we do. 

I happen to be a long-term bureaucrat that really hates bureaucracy. If there’s a way that we can manage that system, we think 

that there are some things that could be done in the new highway 

bill. One of them was brought out, we think could be very significant that Governor Fallin mentioned, and that’s working within existing rights-of-way. As we have to rebuild our Interstate system 

across the country, not only in Oklahoma, but across the country, 

we have existing rights-of-way, and in order to rebuild our Interstate system, whether it’s rebuilding bridges that are currently 

within those existing rights-of-way or replace the roadway section 

because it has outlived its useful life, we ought to be able to do that 

without the double jeopardy of having to go back and reopen an environmental document. 

We shouldn’t have to go back through the 4–F process, the NEPA 

document, the Corps of Engineers, all of the whistles and bells that 

has to be done by our state and other states just to keep things 

in a state of good repair. Whenever we’re able to work on the—on 

the roadways within those existing rights-of-way, we ought to have 

the freedom to be able to do that, do it quickly and efficiently. 

The bridge that the Governor had made mention that we worked 

on that had been knocked down on Interstate 40 many years ago, 

and the lessons learned from that, we spent almost $30 million in 

13 

64 days, two hours and 40 minutes that the bridge was down. We 

ought to be able to take those lessons learned and put them to use 

on our routine, regular projects. There should be no reason why we 

can’t expedite the process and be able to do them quickly. 

We certainly have problems with the Davis-Bacon Act. The idea 

that the Department of Labor wants to make 66 separate categories, just thinking about that is a nightmare for the state and 

the cost that that will be able to administer and administer fairly, 

one would have to believe it would be many times over what the 

labor costs would be today. 

The idea of mandates, whether it is the enhancement project 

mandate that’s mandated in the statute, safe routes to schools, 

those all may be and probably are worthwhile activities, however, 

the states ought to be permissive to be able to spend funds on that. 

Where our Nation’s infrastructure is in so critical and disrepair, 

the idea of setting aside monies that would rehabilitate old buildings or provide trails, to unnecessarily pull money out of us being 

able to replace bridges. 

The idea that—that the ADA, the American Disabilities Act, that 

forces states to rebuild sidewalks, wheelchair ramps and put things 

in ADA compliance, when all we’re doing is simply trying to resurface a city street, is really somewhat ridiculous. 

If we’re going to rebuild the section, then certainly, we have to 

look at how we can improve the accessibility for people that need 

additional help for access, that certainly needs to be done. But 

states, counties, cities, should be able to have the ability to be able 

to do routine maintenance effort on their streets and on the highways without having to completely rebuild the sidewalks and the 

other portions of in compliance with the ADA Act. 

Mr. Chairman, I’ll be glad to answer any questions. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. What we’ll do is withhold all the questions 

until we’re finished, now we have another leader in transportation 

here in Oklahoma, Mr. McCaleb, and he’s president of a TRUST 

where he could probably tell us what that is, and we look forward 

to your testimony and you’re recognized. 

Mr. MCCALEB. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning to 

you and Members of the Committee. TRUST stands for Transportation Revenues Used Strictly for Transportation. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Could I ask you could you pull the microphone? 

Thank you. 

Mr. MCCALEB. TRUST stands for Transportation Revenues Used 

Strictly for Transportation and we are, as the name implies, a 

highway advocacy group, for the use of revenues raised from road 

users. I’m going to make a point this morning, and welcome to you 

to Oklahoma, also. Oklahoma, by the way, is a Choctaw word, 

which means land of the red man. And Oklahoma is unique in that 

we have 39 federally recognized tribes and that our state is the second most populous state in Native Americans in the United States. 

That is significant in my testimony because I want to talk about 

the Indian Reservation Roads program. The name sort of implies 

it’s restricted to reservation states, which Oklahoma is not. We 

have no surface reservations in Oklahoma, notwithstanding the 

large populations that I just mentioned. 

14 

So my remarks this morning will be threefold. One, the justification, the justifiable application of the program to nonreservation 

tribes, not only in Oklahoma, but across the United States. 

Secondly, the efficacy of the use of these funds to empower Indian tribes and local government officials in the development and 

improvement of roads serve not only Native Americans, but the 

population at large. 

And thirdly, the threat that we have to the current status of the 

application of these funds and the formulas that are applied by administrative fiat, and I’ll explain that a little bit later. 

My comments are going to focus on Oklahoma, my personal perspective through my service at ODOT and the U.S. Department of 

Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs. The IRR, and I’ll use the letters, 

instead of going through the words every time, program was intended to enhance the opportunities and safety of Native Americans throughout America, providing for their safety and also access 

to economic opportunities. Although the title indicates it’s for reservations, the law specifically says it’s for nonreservation tribal 

areas within the boundaries, the historic boundaries of those tribes, 

and specifically identifies Oklahoma in some of the past legislation. 

There are more Native Americans living off reservation in the 

United States than there are on reservations. So for this bill to 

serve its intent, it needs to be applied as intended. And pursuant 

to that objective, the provisions of SAFETEA–LU require that 

there would be established a mechanism to get tribal input to establish what the rules and regulations and formulas were to be in 

the allocations of these funds that were authorized and ultimately 

appropriated by Congress. 

That was establishing a group called negotiated rulemaking process, and it involved tribes from all over the Nation that were nominated that came together. They were to determine what these formulas, what these regulations and eligibility were. It took a long 

time, over four years to get the tribes together. 

But finally, they reached a consensus and developed a workable 

program for those allocations and eligibility requirements. That 

was accomplished in 2004, as published by the Department of Interior in the Federal Register, it became an adopted regulation. 

Unfortunately, since that has happened, there has been a movement by administrative forces within the Federal Highway Administration, Federal lands area, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to 

change those formulas and rules in direct conflict with the intent 

of Congress. 

The application, now, how effective have these funds been, in 

Oklahoma, they’ve been tremendously effective. One of our underfunded elements of government is the role of government in county 

roles in particular. We have 14,882 structurally deficient or obsolete, functionally obsolete bridges. We happen to be the second 

highest in the Nation for that dubious honor. 

We’re making progress on that, but it’s going to be eroded by the 

fact that if these rules are changed, notwithstanding Congressional 

intent, they are doing it under the presentation that it’s a clarification and not a rule change, but it operates to change the allocation 

of the formula. 

15 

My request is that the committee include language in the reauthorization bill to instruct all effective parties to respect the provisions of the negotiated rulemaking committee until it is changed by 

the appropriate mechanism representing all tribes. 

Thank you so much. I’ll answer questions at the appropriate 

time. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you, and we’ll get into some questions. Now 

we’ve got Mr. Jim Duit, President of Duit Construction. Welcome, 

sir, and you’re recognized. 

Mr. DUIT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and distinguished guests. 

I’m pleased to be here to report on, perhaps, three strategic ways 

that we can improve the surface transportation issue. The first one 

is a system that is already in place, and it’s been in place in the 

SAFETEA–LU and the TEA–21 program, and it is a collaborative 

effort for research and development on technological advancements 

in the highway paving industry. 

And I was fortunate enough in my career to work on several of 

these advancements, but the one that’s most important to our industry is a pavement research overlay system, where we put concrete pavement over the old system, the old pavement systems. 

And this is, again, developed collaboratively with many academia 

and Federal highway and whatever. 

It has been a tremendous—a tremendous value and an extremely 

high leverage asset. For example, on an Interstate highway system, 

by using this overlay system, we can save approximately $800,000 

a center line mile. And it’s very significant and it’s been used here 

in Oklahoma for many, many years, been very successful. 

So I ask that you, perhaps, keep the provisions of the—the research and development. That is only one small example, there are 

hundreds of them, all industries participated in it, and it has a 

great success story and a great leverage of the U.S. Taxpayers’ 

money. 

Streamlining project delivery systems. We need to look at, again, 

as you said, the must-haves versus the nice to have in our programs. One of the aspects that come to mind in our highway industry is the architectural designs that are beautiful and on our roadways and our retaining walls and on our bridges, but they come at 

a large cost to the taxpayer. Perhaps this isn’t the time that we 

continue that. I think we can develop and design these architectural designs to be applied at a later date when the economy might 

be better. 

I think that would be—it would work out just fine, but some of 

these designs have as much as a 20 percent cost to add these to 

the projects. And obviously it will help streamline, shorten the 

project duration. 

Partnering. One of the—in my career, one of the biggest things 

that I’ve noticed with DOT’s that have great success, I’ve been in 

this business 43 years, is the ability to partner with the DOT’s, and 

work out our problems. In some states, however, it’s not that easy. 

Oklahoma, for example, has had for years, under the direct leadership of Gary Ridley, a quality initiative task force. 

And it’s for all the divisions, it’s the bridge division, asphalt paving, concrete paving division, where we come together with all the 

stakeholders and we talk about the issues and design changes and 

16 

adding new technology, so we can talk about the pros and cons together, and we can come out with a decision that that leverages 

our taxpayers’ money, has been extremely successful, something 

that could be used in other states to leverage the taxpayers’ money. 

One issue under the new design processes where we’re entering 

into a computer aid design, it would be nice if we could get the engineering design files so we can take the geometric designs and put 

them directly onto our GPS equipment, and we can actually go out 

and build the roads probably a little more cost effectively. 

Utility relocation is also another issue that we have that costs 

time and money, and perhaps there can be a more efficient way of 

relocating it, utilities, or perhaps put those particular utility locations in the contract to help streamline the process. 

One other issue we need to look at in our highways, and our 

DOT’s are doing very well at looking forward, looking at life cycle 

costs of our pavements and bridges. One thing the Europeans do 

very well is they have a long-term look at their pavements and 

their bridges, instead of a 20- or 30-year design, they are looking 

at a 40- or 50-year design. 

And technology has shown us that we can actually start predicting these life cycle costs with some of the new technology that 

is available. We need to look at these on a—instead of a cradle to 

grave concept, maybe a cradle to cradle. In other words, what materials we put in our roadways and bridges now, make sure they 

are recyclable and reused in the future, and make sure whatever 

we put into those roadways can allow for the next generation to recycle. 

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my comments, thank you for the 

time. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you, we’ll get back for questions. Mr. Jerry 

Hietpas, welcome and you are recognized. You are President of Action Safety Supply Company. Thank you. 

Mr. HIETPAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, honored members of the 

panel. It is certainly an honor to be able to visit with you today, 

and, of course, a great responsibility as well. As I chatted with you 

and other members last night, I came to realize how very similar 

we are. The gentlemen that are seated to either side of me, when 

I go to visit their offices, one of the first things that you’ll note is 

the awards for quality of construction that are hanging on their 

wall. It’s some of the most prominent features. That’s what the industry is driven by is a desire to do quality work. 

I was visiting with a former chairman of the Oklahoma legislature that was talking about a funding bill that he had written over 

five years ago that is still as a matter of law today and it continues 

to fund Oklahoma’s roads. He was talking about that with a lot of 

pride in his voice, because it was something of a quality piece that 

he’s done. And after visiting with you and listening to the great 

pains that you’re going through in order to write a quality bill, I 

recognize that you, like us, are driven more about quality than 

about just getting another piece of work done and off the table so 

you can move on to something else. It—it’s really a privilege to be 

able to connect with you on that level, and to be able to be a part 

of the team that’s helping you write this legislation. 

17 

Some of the things that—by the time it gets to my level, we’re 

in the road construction and traffic control services business, and 

when it gets to my level, all the red tape has basically been cut, 

the rules and regulations are in place and all we have to do is comply. 

Do we know what kind of impact it has on us or what could happen if the process was streamlined? For 36 years, we’ve done it this 

way, we don’t have a clue how much better it can be. What we do 

know is that changing things like the wage rules and breaking it 

off into these smaller pieces would cost us one whole heck of a lot 

of money. We do know that programs with words like safe routes 

to schools sound absolutely wonderful on the outside, but I have 

been involved in some of these projects in part of the road construction work that we’ve done, and I’ve witnessed putting in—the cost 

to put in the measures in some of these towns where there isn’t 

two kids riding a bike or walking to school because of the logistics. 

But because of the fact that it was a Federal mandate project, one 

size fits all, the thing has to be in place. 

We have struggled with the disadvantaged business program and 

the process that the Department of Transportation has to go 

through in order to put that into the—into the—into the method. 

The ADA requirements that Secretary Ridley visited with a little 

bit about, and our Governor, that when we go through just to simply maintain a roadway, we have to now, if we spend too much 

money in maintaining, to do an asphalt overlay in a particular 

project, we have to go through and upgrade all of these intersections with wheelchair ramps, even though just immediately adjacent to that is a vacant field, there aren’t sidewalks in these little 

towns anywhere near. 

So it becomes a one size fits all solution, which is really easy to 

write on one end, but it costs so much money on the other end. So 

I encourage you just to continue to do what you can to make this 

more of a user friendly bill, rather than just a highway user bill. 

And on the last perspective, I know we don’t want to have to pay 

any more money or have any more things charged against us in 

order to fund our roads and our bridges. But we don’t have any 

kind of a problem if we choose to go see a movie, to pay the ticket 

and then walk inside the theater and enjoy the experience. That’s 

a user fee. 

What we need to do is seriously take a look at user fees being 

associated with the funding of our highway program, be it—right 

now it’s gasoline and diesel fuel taxes, but we’ve got a lot of vehicles coming up, the electric vehicles and those kinds of things that 

are going to be riding on the exact same roads and contributing to 

the exact same kind of congestion that you were visiting about earlier. We have to be able to find a way to get a reasonable user fee 

from those vehicles as well, so that they can enjoy the same benefits that we do. 

I thank you for your time today. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you for your testimony. And we’ll turn now to 

Mr. Larry Lemon, he’s Chairman of the Board of Haskell Lemon 

Construction. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. LEMON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Larry 

Lemon, I’m chairman of Haskell Lemon Construction Company. We 

18 

are a three generation, family-owned paving business and we’ve 

specialized in building roads and highways here in the state of 

Oklahoma for over 60 years. I really want to thank Chairman Mica 

and Congressman Duncan and Congressman Lankford for coming 

today and having these field hearings, thank you for being in our 

state. 

I also come before you today not only as a practitioner for highways and roads, but this past year, I had the honor to serve as 

chairman of the National Asphalt Pavement Association and we’re 

also members of the Associated General Contractors. The two main 

concerns I would like to raise the awareness of today is the unpredictability of funding that is making it extremely difficult for our 

State Transportation Department and our construction companies 

to prepare for this construction season, and also the diversion of 

monies from the Highway Trust Fund for nonhighway uses. 

With the Federal program currently operating under a series of 

short-term extensions, the government funding reductions in the 

maintenance and construction of highways has a very uncertain 

impact on both our state DOT and on our construction companies, 

and that is uncertainty for our employees. 

We support the priority Congress and the American people have 

identified in reducing the national debt and balancing our Federal 

budget. This also means aligning the spending of the Highway 

Trust Fund with the revenues going into the trust fund. I hope 

that you will draft a reauthorization bill based on our current revenues going in the trust fund, and as part of that legislative process, 

consider proposals to consolidate the trust fund programs. 

Our programs now are fractured into so many different programs, that, really, we don’t have enough money to fund the core 

issues of what the highway system is really needed. We need to reestablish this core purpose and fund only those activities related to 

our highways and bridges. When President Eisenhower proposed 

our great highway system, he proposed a user fee of three cents a 

gallon on gasoline and diesel for all the construction and maintenance. The user fee is a good concept and it’s worked well for our 

American citizens. Today the user fee is 18.3 cents on our gallon 

of gasoline, which really has not kept up with inflation, and the 

purchasing power of our Highway Trust Fund is substantially diminished. 

It’s interesting to note that in 1955 at the time of this new three 

cent user fee, the cost of a stamp was also three cents and now the 

cost of a stamp is 44 cents. What a difference our Highway Trust 

Fund would be in if it could have been given the same priority as 

our postage system. The vehicle user fee concept continues to be a 

very effective way to pay for our highway needs and keep them in 

the first-class condition. We suggest that this transportation bill 

have a comparable user fee for electric vehicles, for natural gas vehicles, hybrid, really any and all alternative fuel vehicles, because 

each vehicle needs to have a uniformed user fee and that will enhance our Highway Trust Fund and allow us to build more and 

better roads. 

With the Highway Trust Fund receiving a full user fee from each 

vehicle, we’ll build more roads and pay for them out of the trust 

fund. Mr. Chairman, we recognize the current condition of our inVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:03 Jul 22, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\112\FULLCO~1\2-24-1~1\65737.TXT JEAN
19 

frastructure, we absolutely must include all vehicles, maximize the 

effectiveness and priorities of the Highway Trust Fund. American 

needs to grow and modernize its highway system. Our Nation’s 

standard of living and our security depend on it. The construction 

industry of Oklahoma pledges to help you meet your metrics of 

doing more with less. 

Thank you very much. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you and thank all of our witnesses. And now 

we’ll turn to questions and I’ll turn to and recognize Mr. Lankford 

first. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. Thank you all for coming and preparing your statements. We have an extensive written statement 

you’ve also submitted on that and I appreciate that with a lot of 

other details on it. 

Gary Ridley, can you tell us a little bit more about what we 

learned from the Webbers Falls bridge incident and rebuilding that 

in 64 days? Give us a guideline here. That was redone in 64 days, 

take all the changes and exemptions that were given during that 

time period, what would a bridge like that typically mean as far 

as time to rebuild it? 

Mr. RIDLEY. Mr. Chairman, if you are looking at a bridge that’s 

some 526 foot long, an Interstate bridge, from the time that you 

would conceive that you would have to replace it until the time the 

actual construction was completed, given all the problems associated with the NEPA documents and everything that would go with 

that, assuming you would stay on existing right-of-ways, that 

bridge was done on a state existing right-of-way, and the bridge 

that would cost with detour, somewhere around $30 million, one 

would imagine that would be probably a three, maybe four-year 

process at best. 

Mr. LANKFORD. So we took a three-year process and did it in 64 

days. 

Mr. RIDLEY. Uh-huh. 

Mr. LANKFORD. What were the things that you would say these 

are lessons learned from that, here’s how we contracted all the 

time and the permissions and exemptions we were given to get it 

done, can you give us a couple of examples? 

Mr. RIDLEY. Congressman, government can do some good things 

if government gets out of the way and allows its private sector to 

do their business. We were allowed to turn loose the innovativeness 

of not only our staff, but also the private sector in order to rebuild 

that bridge. Things were done simultaneously, rather than going 

end to end. 

When the head of the Federal Highway Administration came 

here, Senator Inhofe as well, then Lieutenant Governor Fallin said, 

‘‘Build it, build it quickly’’, and just turned us loose and we did. 

Again, I think that the gentlemen at the far end of the table know 

how to do their job, certainly our staff knows how to do theirs, but 

we can do it quickly, again, if government can stay out of the way. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Those are things that can be documented and 

say, here are ideas, we’d very much like to have those ideas in 

writing, say, here are three or four things we’ve learned on that 

and we’d like to be able to present those on and continue moving, 

because obviously you lose money as you lose time on all of these, 

20 

if we can accelerate the process, then it saves us a lot of money 

as well. 

Obviously, people aren’t wading around barrels in construction, 

coming in from out of town to try to figure out where our construction lies, because we can get it done and get it turned around. 

We have something very unique in Oklahoma, we have an eightyear plan, that’s already been referenced as well. That is a great 

piece of legislation that was done in 2005. Talk to us a little bit 

about and catch the Chairman up some on this eight-year plan and 

how we function as a state and do our organization and planning. 

Mr. RIDLEY. Mr. Chairman, if I may, the eight-year plan is put 

together, and it’s financially constraint. I know the Congress is 

wrestling with how much money we will have toward the end of 

this fiscal year. Yet we estimate what our dollars will be for the 

next six, seven, eight years, both at the Federal level and at the 

state level. We take a very conservative approach on what those 

revenues will be. 

We also look at our critical needs, these are not politically motivated projects. We do not look at any political subdivision to make 

determinations as to what projects we will do. They are all totally 

based on critical need. 

My office, for two months out of the year, looks like a war room 

in that we look at all the data, it is data driven. The eight-year 

plan has forced us to sit down and work on those critical projects, 

we rely on good estimates, we reevaluate that once a year. We deliver on those projects. About 80, 85 percent of the projects are delivered in the year we say we’re going to do them in. Again, we 

take the political process out of there, therefore, it doesn’t change 

as members might change or whether in the House or Senate or 

even in the Governor’s office. 

Governor Fallin has been extremely supportive of that, and she 

has been associated with that for the last ten years and it has 

worked very well. Again, we are able to deliver on the things we 

say we’re going to do when we say we’re going to do them. 

Mr. LANKFORD. That’s terrific. Mr. Duit, I want to ask you a specific question on it as well. And that is, you and I have talked 

about before about things and you had mentioned to me offhand 

one day that we seem to try to save a few dollars now and it costs 

us a lot more later. Can you emphasize some of those things or give 

us specific examples you’ve experienced as a company. 

Mr. DUIT. Well, I can, and this happened again when money 

from the Federal Government was very scarce. It was about 20 

years ago and we were invited or we bid an eight-mile section of 

pavement in the Oklahoma area, and there was an alternate bid 

in that section, which allowed for some additional reinforcing steel 

to be placed in that concrete pavement. 

That alternate bid or add to that bid would have been approximately $500,000 for those eight miles of pavement. Fifteen years 

after the project was done—and it was elected not to do that, the 

alternate. 

And fifteen years after that was done, there was a contract let 

for $4.7 million to put steel back into that pavement, and retrofit 

that pavement. And my concern is, when money gets tight that we 

21 

have to get from point A to point B, some of these accessories are 

left out. 

Now, I will say, also, that in the last fifteen years we have not 

done any paving without that. There was technology at that time 

that suggested that might be—might be able to work, it didn’t. It 

not only happened in Oklahoma, it happened in every state of the 

union, it happened in Europe, it happened all over. So, again, when 

money’s tight, we need to make sure we spend it on the functional 

products. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Sure. Do either of you gentlemen have examples 

like that as far as decisions that are made and how the bidding 

process goes out in trying to save money now actually costs us a 

lot more later. 

Mr. LEMON. I think that building a pavement that will last for 

future generations is a wise value of our money, and both the asphalt and the concrete pavement industry has terms called perpetual pavement and permanent pavement. 

And if we will build the structure right one time, it’s a great benefit to the next generation of engineers and contractors and our 

citizens that the surface can be renewed in offpeak times into the 

future, and this is real value for the taxpayer. 

Mr. HIETPAS. I also have an example that ties on to that in a 

very small way. My company does the pavement markings and as 

you have driven some of the Interstates as you headed here, you 

saw the black and white stripes out on the Interstate system. 

These are indicative of a multi polymer pavement marking, 

which was tested in Oklahoma almost 11 years ago now, on a section of I–44 between I–40 and the 39th Street Expressway. Had 

one of the highest ADT’s of over 265,000 vehicles per day. And that 

pavement marking material was installed and remained in place 

and serviceable over those entire ten years. It was just very recently replaced. And, of course, now you see it all over the place. 

What the state has been forced to take a look at is do they spend 

a little bit more money and invest in a pavement marking that will 

last ten years under those kind of conditions or are they forced 

with replacing pavement markings that are missing or completely 

functionally obsolete because of the snow removal seasons and that 

kind of stuff. So they are torn between spending a little bit more 

money and getting a really durable product or stretching those dollars using a less durable product and covering all the places where 

the pavement markings are missing. So that’s one of the things 

they run into, and with the kind of—with the kind of money we 

could get, we could make those improvements one time and last for 

a long time. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Two more quick questions, if that’s OK. One is 

to both of the former lead people in transportation in our state and 

that is dealing with truck weights, there’s a lot of conversation now 

about truck weights and how to handle that, obviously they do a 

lot more damage to pavement as they travel. 

There’s some conversation about adding additional axle to increase the weight of the truck, that would reduce the number of 

trucks on the road, but increases the actual weight and distributes 

it on another axle. Just give me your perspective on that. 

22 

Mr. RIDLEY. If we’re talking about the truck weights on the 

Interstate system where we have an 80,000 pound GPW, the Interstate pavement, as well as the bridges, were designed for that 

80,000 pound load. As you know, the truck weights have increased 

over time. The axle loads that you have on a truck contribute to 

the detriment mainly on the pavement itself, pavements are designed based on axle loads. 

Bridges are designed, for the most part, for the weight of the vehicle itself. So the span bridges that—if you increase the truck 

weights on span bridges, I would imagine that that will decrease 

the life of those bridges, simply because of the life that’s in the 

steel, for sure, of the fatigue life that’s in the steel beams in how 

they were originally designed. I think that we need to be very cautious about increasing the truck weights on the Interstate in excess 

of where they are at today. 

I think that there needs to be a lot of good dialogue first before 

someone will pull the trigger on that. Certainly, it may reduce the 

number of trucks, but it also may increase the damage, certainly 

on our bridges. 

Mr. LANKFORD. OK. Thank you. 

Mr. MCCALEB. I agree with Secretary Ridley. I just make one 

further explanation. You know, if you increase the number of axles 

and keep the axle weights the same, theoretically, you’re not increasing the stress in the particular area, and you can do that with 

triples and long combination vehicles and a number of other ways. 

You cannot reduce the increased stress on bridge beams, as Secretary Ridley said, because that’s a function of the bending moment 

and the stress at the critical point in the middle of the span, no 

matter how many axles you put under that essential point loading 

will increase the stress repetition and the rate of stress repetition 

and will reduce the life of the bridge. 

Mr. LANKFORD. So is it better to have, say, one truck with additional axles or to do one truck that is actually doubled up, if they 

are carrying, you know, a double vehicle is going to carry more 

weight than a single with an additional axle, which one—I mean, 

it’s a guess, we’re going to have to look at it through engineering, 

but give me just your perspective on that. 

Mr. MCCALEB. On the pavement section, the longer vehicle, I 

think, is more desirable. On the bridges, I don’t think it makes a 

lot of difference. I’m an advocate of heavier loads, but you have to 

design for those heavier loads. You can’t just superimpose those 

heavier loads on a system that was designed—wasn’t designed for 

them. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Perspective the same on that, Mr. Ridley. 

Mr. RIDLEY. Yes, sir. 

Mr. LANKFORD. One last question on this. Mr. McCaleb, talk to 

us a little bit more, give you an additional moment on this, in dealing with the—all the different tribes and investing on what they 

do into Indian country in so many ways. Obviously that is not an 

Interstate, typically, but sometimes it’s access to an Interstate, a 

lot of us work with county leadership into Indian country areas. 

What impact does that have on the change and form that’s Oklahoma specific. 

23 

Mr. MCCALEB. Thank you, Congressman. It has a tremendous 

impact on what’s proposed. Most of the Indian Reservation Roads 

that are on the transportation inventory plan, TIP, are rural roads, 

because that’s where the majority of the population is, and that’s 

where the need is with the counties, because they are underfunded. 

A lot of counties earlier couldn’t utilize their dedicated off system 

bridge money because they didn’t have the 20 percent local match. 

The tribes came and provided that 20 percent local match with IRR 

funds, and that accrued to the safety and the benefit of population 

at large, as well as the Native Americans living in the area. That’s 

one example. 

And one of the things that this proposed for change or clarification, as they say, would do, would restrict the use of those funds 

and eligibility for county collector rolls, which is where the traffic 

is. 

Mr. LANKFORD. OK. Thank you very much. 

Mr. MICA. Very good questions. You helped two senior members 

have a sort of an enlightened side bar discussion on this weight 

issue, which you two shed some interesting points. Thank you so 

much. 

Mr. Duncan, I’ll recognize you. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll be very brief, 

and Congressman Lankford did ask a really key question about the 

increased truck weights, because I’ve had two groups come and 

visit me just in the last couple of weeks to their request of increases. And I think that’s going to be a really key question in our 

legislation, and it’s good to hear your testimony. In fact, I appreciate the testimony of all the witnesses, if I had to sum it up or 

summarize it, I would say it just boils down to common sense. 

We’ve had a very common sense panel here. 

But we talked about the fast bridge projects. It seems these 

groups that impose all of these highway projects won’t oppose these 

bridge collapses because they know that the public would just be 

outraged about that. But we had—just last week we had the administrator of the Federal Highway Administration testify that the 

average highway project now takes 13 years from conception to 

completion, and actually he’s fairly new on the job and there was 

a fairly recent study from his own agency, which said 15 years. 

And the example I used a lot of times when I chaired the aviation subcommittee, they told us at a hearing one time that the 

newest runway at the Atlanta Airport, which is several years old 

now, but it took 14 years from conception to completion, it took 

only 99 construction days, and they were so relieved to get all 

the—all the delays, practically, were environmental. 

And they finally were so relieved to get all of those approvals, 

they did 24 hour construction days and built it in 33 days. I mean, 

that’s amazing, what’s going on. But I appreciate, Secretary Ridley, 

your statement that you were—you’re a bureaucrat that’s frustrated by bureaucratic delays, and it is frustrating to a lot of the 

good people in Congress. 

We sometimes talk about incentives and penalties for private 

companies, and I think there is an important place for incentives— 

incentive payments when work is done quicker and so forth and 

penalties for delays. Maybe we should try to figure out some way 

24 

to incentivize and penalize these bureaucracies, especially the Federal bureaucracies when they delay a project for a long time. And 

maybe try to limit in some respects the groups that could file these 

lawsuits that tie things up, because that’s a problem, too. Sometimes these delays are tied up in the courts. 

I think, Mr. Duit, you made a good suggestion to delay some of 

these architectural frills and so forth, because that does make some 

sense. We all hope the economy is going to improve. 

And I appreciated the testimony about the electric vehicles, because if we’re going to have more and more and more of those, 

we’re going to have to find a way that they need to pay their share 

as well, too. 

I’m a very conservative Republican, but I also am an American 

first conservative, and I think we’ve got to stop these endless, I 

think, unnecessary foreign wars and stop spending hundreds of billions to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan and all these other countries 

and start rebuilding some things in this country. 

And anyway, but I do appreciate the work that you all are doing, 

and it’s a—it’s very, very important to this country. And not only 

is it important to us economically, but it saves lives. I mean, when 

we can take a two lane highway that is a death trap, I can give 

you a lot of examples, and turn it into a four lane, maybe with a 

center turn lane, you save lives. 

And when you delay these projects and make them 13 years 

when they could do them in three or four years, you’re really— 

you’re really killing people. I mean, you’re causing lives to be lost 

that shouldn’t be lost. And so I’m willing—I’m willing to do good 

things for the environment and I don’t want to pave over all the 

green areas, I don’t want to do that. But we need a good highway 

system in this country and we need to keep it in good repair as 

well. 

But I thank you for your testimony, you’ve been a very helpful 

panel. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. And let me just to direct a 

couple of questions here first to Mr. Ridley. You were talking about 

using existing rights-of-way, and I’ve been a strong advocate of 

that, in fact, ordered some studies to see what we can do when we 

built the Interstates years ago. We had the luxury of wide swaths 

of land, and we have some extra safety lanes and measures, and 

valuable access, sometimes right-of-way that can be utilized. 

One of the things—your statements was to not go back to further 

NEPA review when you made improvements. Now, one of the 

issues that you have, and your testimony made me think about 

this. I’m a strong advocate, too, of condensing or not going back to 

NEPA where you don’t have to. But if we take, say, some of that 

right-of-way and we actually increase the amount of traffic on that, 

that does have some environmental implications. 

When the original design of NEPA was done, and I don’t know 

this and maybe staff can help me, too, is the traffic count calculated for just the construction or for future construction, and utilization of additional capacity? Do you understand what I mean? 

And if we don’t, maybe we should require that so we’re not coming 

back and doing—reinventing the wheel the second time. Maybe you 

could enlighten us on that point. 

25 

Mr. RIDLEY. Mr. Chairman, you’re absolutely right. Today when 

we clear a corridor, because a process takes so long, we will clear 

that corridor, if we know that fifteen, twenty years from now, that 

we may have to add capacity over and above what we’re doing 

today, we would clear the corridor for a more multi-lane facility, 

even though we may not build it. 

Mr. MICA. So in your current plans and review and environmental, you are actually submitting a document and statement 

that would indicate a capacity beyond what you’re building for, is 

that current law or requirement. 

Let me ask counsel, Mr. Tymon. 

Again, the current law requires that they submit for approval 

under NEPA the absolute potential utilization of—— 

Mr. TYMON. There is a projection timeframe for the NEPA analysis. I don’t believe it exceeds twenty years, though. 

Mr. MICA. So that’s what you’re submitting and it’s being reviewed. 

Mr. RIDLEY. That’s correct, Mr. Chairman, an example might be, 

you have a narrow, two-lane road that you were speaking of earlier 

with no shoulders, poor horizontal, vertical sight distance, you 

know at some point in time you’re going to have to make that a 

multi-lane facility, but you would certainly like to make the improvements to that two lane now, put shoulders on it, improve 

sight distance, satisfy clear zone requirements so that an errant vehicle could gain recovery if they lost a vehicle. 

Mr. MICA. Well, let me give you a specific, like in central Florida, 

we had an inside safety lane and a barrier and then we had the 

outside safety lane, and then two traffic lanes and duplicated in 

both directions, and we convinced them to take the inside safety 

lane and convert it to a passenger lane, it increased our capacity 

by, what, 25, 30 percent, and with it, and it was very cost effective. 

So we increased our capacity, we eliminated that inside lane, 

which we found—and I also found driving in here that the inside 

lane doesn’t do much good, because there was an accident and it 

was all messed up anyways. But, again, I want to have—I want to 

see if we need to adjust the law to give you the right of using every 

inch of usable space, you know, you just can’t continue to pave over 

Florida and Oklahoma and every state. And we just came from 

California, and I asked one of the aids, I said, help me count the 

lanes, because we got to eight on one side and then there were 

some coming in from one side, so they had maybe 20 lanes going 

in. And they didn’t have an inch of safety right-of-way left in that. 

Well, the other thing, too, if you would review, please, the current law and how it might need to be modified to achieve what 

you’re talking about, because what we want to do is make certain 

that we—nobody wants to roll over the environment. We want to 

make certain that any negative impact is accounted for and considered. So that is one of my questions. 

The other question on NEPA, again, I think we seem to be going 

back to that process, is, you were able to condense some of the 

timeframe, and do some things concurrently, rather than consecutively. Now, if we made that sort of the law of the land for all 

projects, and specifically where could we—where do you think we 

could save some time? You’re very familiar with the process. 

26 

Mr. RIDLEY. Well, certainly, as we start the NEPA process on 

adding additional right-of-way, needing additional right-of-way, you 

could certainly do things at the same time, if allowed to by the 

Federal Highway Administration. But the real key is, I think, for 

the future, is that we are not going to be acquiring new rights-ofway in the future. I think the alignments that we have across the 

country, certainly, the ones in Oklahoma, will—for the most part, 

will stay in existing alignment, we’ll probably use the existing 

right-of-way in most cases, and I think if the focus of the new legislation would allow us to be able to rebuild that system without 

having to go through that NEPA process. 

And let me just give a short example. If we decide to go out and 

resurface, just resurface an Interstate section, we have to go 

through the complete NEPA process if we’re using complete Federal funds before we’ll get approval from Federal Highway just to 

resurface, which if we put new guardrail on bridges, you have to 

go through the NEPA process in order to be able to do that, which, 

certainly, we could all agree—— 

Mr. MICA. That there could be elimination of a whole host of activities that should not—that you would recommend not be subject 

to recasting. 

Mr. RIDLEY. Certainly, as you described a minute ago, when you 

increase capacity, you may have to look at some things, certainly 

by notice abatement or other things. But one good thing that we 

could all agree if you are not at your capacity, if you’re just keeping 

things in a state of good repair—— 

Mr. MICA. In the same footprint. 

Mr. RIDLEY. Exactly, sir. 

Mr. MICA. Now, this might be a little controversial, I hope I don’t 

get in too much trouble here, I did hear a lot of public private partnerships, most of those are raised on private firms coming in and 

operating either some of the toll roads that Mr. Daniels, Governor 

Daniels put the 150 miles of the state’s toll up for lease and received, I think, about $3.8 billion, which he’s reinvested into various projects. We heard about that in Indiana when we were there. 

I’d like to get your take on that. I’m pretty hardnosed on not tolling the existing capacity of the Interstate, and maybe I should ask 

these in reverse, this deals with right-of-way first, very hardnosed 

about that, because I think then you just end up with a series of 

toll roads and destroy the free Interstate that I had hoped that we 

would always have access to. 

But we do have existing right-of-way and sometimes we don’t 

have the money, the folks here were talking about the challenges 

we face there, and Mr. Duit was talking about saving money and 

recycling and things of that sort. What is your take on some sort 

of toll or fee in the additional right-of-way, and leaving the existing 

capacity free on the—on your Interstate? Sorry, Ridley, that I did 

that to you, but—— 

Mr. RIDLEY. Public-private partnerships come in a lot of forms. 

Oklahoma has some 600 miles of toll roads, which are a public private partnership, bond—people that buy the bonds are private entities or private individuals. 

Mr. MICA. But they are not—they haven’t been turned over to a 

lessee, that’s state operated, all of the—— 

27 

Mr. RIDLEY. That’s correct. But it is somewhat a quasi public, 

again, it comes in several different forms, from the private investors actually operating the toll facility and determining what the 

charges will be on those toll roads in order to get a return on their 

investment. So it can come in a lot of different forms in the public 

private partnerships. 

If I understand what you’re asking on additional capacity on existing Interstates where you add additional lanes, is there a possibility of having those lanes possibly tolled in order to pay for those 

lanes and that expansion. I think that that needs to be a tool in 

a toolbox of states. States ought to have the ability and the right 

to be able to do that, if necessary. Certainly, we’re going to have 

to deal with freight movements across this country. 

At some point in time, there needs to be a hard look at having 

freight corridors or freight lanes that would allow the free movement of the trucking industry, to be able to transverse the country 

and provide goods. 

Mr. MICA. So basically you’re not opposed and you wouldn’t oppose if we take some of the right-of-way, and, again, I’m pretty 

hardnosed on the existing capacity. But that’s your take on that. 

Now, let’s go to the second part of the question, which I had 

asked first was on the NEPA. Again, speeding up that timeline. 

Mr. RIDLEY. I think that, again, if you can put in legislation that 

would free the process up on existing right-of-way, you shouldn’t 

have to go through the same procedures on existing right-of-way 

that you do on new alignment and new right-of-way. It will force 

our engineers to develop plans that we use existing right-of-way. 

Mr. MICA. Now, but when you did the project that you described 

for Mr. Lankford, he asked you about how—you did things concurrently, rather than consecutively, which is—is not the normal procedure, and you’re saying we could make that the normal procedure. 

Mr. RIDLEY. That’s correct, sir, the Minnesota bridge class is another kind of—— 

Mr. MICA. I’ve often used that, yeah. 

Mr. RIDLEY. It—— 

Mr. MICA. 437 days, your example was even more dramatic, and 

I never mentioned the fire power of Senator Inhofe and he is actually the leader, the Republican leader of the committee of jurisdiction in the Senate, and I had extensive discussions, conversations 

with him already and already about my being here, and he has an 

aid here, I met. Where is his aid? Stand up and introduce yourself, 

what’s your name. 

Mr. HERRGOTT. Alex Herrgott, professional staff for Senator 

Inhofe. 

Mr. MICA. He agreed with me, I mean, I didn’t even have my foot 

on the ground. But Senator Inhofe is our go-to guy in the Senate 

and he will have a great deal of say, he’s already begun discussions 

trying—as I’m trying to work with Senator Boxer, who is the chair 

of that. He’s the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate on that 

issue. So he actually, I’m sure, was very helpful in that 34th or 

whatever the number of limited days process. And so we’re hoping, 

also, to gain, you know, his—his assistance. And I have to have it 

to move forward, period. 

28 

Anything else then that you want to raise before the committee? 

Mr. RIDLEY. I certainly think that we really appreciate what 

you’re trying to do and really streamlining the process and not just 

say it, but really do it. And I can’t tell you how much we appreciate 

the committee’s willingness to look at—looking at things a little bit 

differently than we have in the past. We’ve had this process in 

place since 1969, certainly, we ought to be able to do better. 

Mr. MICA. Mr. McCaleb, what about the idea of turning some of 

these—you used to head up the Turnpike Authority. What about 

turning some of these operations over to private entities for operation. 

Mr. MCCALEB. Well, I’m reluctant to do that because you lose 

control of the pricing. 

Mr. MICA. If you could put—I mean, you have to write a good 

contract, and you have to have some terms, if you could get a handle on that, would you be more likely. 

Mr. MCCALEB. Yes, structuring the agreement where price increases met certain criteria. 

Mr. MICA. There is a manner in which it could be done. What 

about just getting—well, I guess the states have the right to do 

that anyway, but in our jurisdiction it’s pretty much limited to the 

Interstate, which we had that discussion. I can’t—we can’t force 

and I wouldn’t force the states to do anything, but so many states 

come to me and ask me for millions and billions and a lot of 

them—you have 600 miles of Turnpike? 

Mr. MCCALEB. Over 600 miles. 

Mr. MICA. Just a suggestion on—I may not be invited back after 

a suggestion. 

Mr. MCCALEB. I would say, notwithstanding your reservations 

about putting tolling on existing Interstate, that the states might 

consider giving the states the authority to toll the Interstates in 

certain areas and that becomes kind of a—— 

Mr. MICA. Again, you have your opinion on the Turnpike and 

turning that over, I have my opinion on not tolling the existing capacity, which will prevail, by the way. 

Mr. MCCALEB. Yes, sir. 

Mr. MICA. But, again, it’s not ask what your Federal Government 

can do for you. Let’s all see what this states and other entities 

again. Thank you again. And, Mr. Duit, savings and you talked 

about recycling. Now, would you mandate some of your recommendations in law or how could we do some of the things you’re 

talking about, without, you know, that the heavy hand of the Federal Government. Incentivize? 

Mr. DUIT. It could be incentivize. 

Mr. MICA. Everybody wants the green, they like the green they 

have. The green, the—you can’t appreciate this, Mr. Lankford, 

agreeing to all of it, the tableware at the—in the cafeteria in the 

House office building, they green the whole thing, add a half a million dollars in cost and the spoons melt. It’s sort of a joke, the payoff was like in three generations out. But again, how do we do what 

you’re talking about. 

Mr. DUIT. Well, I had the opportunity twice to go to Europe with 

the Federal Highway on a scan tower in 1992 and again in 2006. 

And that was one of the things we really looked at over there. AusVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:03 Jul 22, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\112\FULLCO~1\2-24-1~1\65737.TXT JEAN
29 

tria, for example, mandates every Interstate highway that 100— 

100 percent of the product needs to be recycled somewhere back in 

that highway. Now, from a cost standpoint in areas where we’re 

close to natural aggregates, it’s not cost effective, but it’s becoming 

more and more cost effective as we’re developing more equipment, 

more machines to do this efficiently. 

So I guess the answer is, it would certainly be, if you could certainly encourage it, rather than take up the old highway and put 

it in some rancher’s field, certainly, it can be used back in the highway in some form. 

Mr. MICA. How much of yours is done, Ridley, in recycling in the 

state of Oklahoma. 

Mr. RIDLEY. Quite a bit, Mr. Chairman, we recycle quite a bit, 

not only of our asphalt pavements, but also our concrete pavements. Mr. Duit is working on a project on Interstate 40 over in 

the eastern part of the state where he’s recycling the concrete pavement. 

Mr. MICA. Mr. Lemon, you wanted to comment. 

Mr. LEMON. Mr. Chairman, I think you could help from the Federal standpoint to encourage the implementation of new technology 

to the construction industry and the private community is developing new products and new specifications, and if the FHWA and 

the state DOT’s were allowed to accept them more rapidly as proven technology, this gets cost savings and speeds up the construction 

with the new methods. 

Mr. MICA. Good suggestion. And we have several—we support a 

number of research projects and designates some transportation institutes, to some of their findings and all, it seems like they end 

up on the shelf or the technology, and new approaches are not 

readily adaptability or acceptable. 

Any other comments from any other panelist, anything you felt 

that we—that you would like to contribute as far as, again, specific 

recommendations you want to see in the law, out of the law, considered? Mr. Lemon? 

Mr. LEMON. I would like to just follow up on Congressman Duncan’s common sense for environmental rules. The construction industry supports the environment and we want to leave the place 

better for the next generation than we have it. And we’re not at 

odds, we can have both. We can build high production, high quality, award winning projects and we can manage the water and 

manage the air and manage the environment while we do it. I 

think the key word is common sense, and together we can move 

forward. 

Mr. MICA. I think that’s a very positive note. Let me see if Mr. 

Lankford, first, has any final questions. 

Mr. LANKFORD. I’d like to make a final comment, if I could. 

Mr. MICA. Well, we’ll save your final for the final word of the 

committee hearing. Mr. Duncan. 

Mr. DUNCAN. No, I will say this, Senator Inhofe is a former member of our committee in the House and he is really helpful. I was 

with him about three weeks ago in a small group and he’s really 

good on these. I don’t have any problems about private companies 

getting involved in these highways and so forth like in Indiana, but 

I do have this concern that we don’t want to let some Governor or 

30 

mayor get all of this big, huge money on the front end and then 

a company go under 15 or 20 or 25 years from now, and then the 

taxpayers are left holding the bag, so to speak. 

Mr. MICA. Good point. 

Mr. DUNCAN. So those precautions need to be built into whatever 

agreements are made. But that’s all I have. 

Mr. MICA. Excellent point. Well, let me just say before I yield to 

close to Mr. Lankford, we do appreciate your coming out today, 

your testimony. If you come up with any other ideas or as we proceed, you see we’re going down the wrong path, I’d sure like to 

know about it. 

We intend to move in an expedited fashion and finish these series of hearings and listening sessions across the country. And then 

at least from the House side, as I said, my intent is to try to get 

a bill, beginning drafting by the end of March and something on 

the floor in late April. I have to consult with the leadership before 

I get to put anything before the entire House, but we are willing 

to work at any point, and the best ideas, as Mr. Duncan said, usually come from outside Washington. 

And I think Mr. Lankford is refreshing in his—again, not being 

part of the—Mr. Duncan and I together have been there, what, almost, I don’t know, a good part of 40-some years, if you add it up, 

but the new ideas are what we need, new approaches, and then 

building a consensus and moving forward. 

And you’re fortunate to have a Governor, great partner and very 

knowledgeable and very aggressive, and Mr. Inhofe is perfectly 

placed, and now to have Mr. Lankford on the committee, you’ve got 

a triple hitter, and you’re in very good position to help us draft this 

legislation. So without—let me yield for any closing statements, 

Mr. Lankford. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. 

Mr. MICA. And thank you again for hosting us today. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. It’s an honor that everybody can get 

a chance to come and be able to hear what’s going on. I think 

you’ve heard the priorities and what we’re talking about and that 

is we don’t have additional dollars. It’s well known and well stated, 

and turn on the TV any particular day, there are not extra Federal 

dollars that are laying around. 

We’ve got to find ways to be more efficient with both the time 

that’s required on construction and the dollars. If there are places 

where the Federal structure, we’re making it more expensive and 

take longer, we need to correct those things and get that out of the 

way. 

I’d like to get more miles out of the dollars that we have, rather 

than continue to add additional Federal regulations, get fewer and 

fewer miles, and so we are dependent on more dollars that are not 

there. 

So hopefully some of the ideas that you have submitted today can 

help us get towards that, simple things to give more states more 

flexibility in changing words in the Federal law from ‘‘must’’ to 

‘‘may’’ to a state would make a dramatic difference, and saying to 

a state, if you choose to do this, that’s terrific, but you’re not required to do this, so you look at your bridges and see if they are 

falling apart first before you are required to be able to put a piece 

31 

of art on another bridge to make it more beautiful when this one 

is about to fall apart. 

So shifting some of those priorities, giving more state control to 

that would be a terrific asset, and hopefully, we’ll be able to integrate that as well. 

And I really am honored that you all took the time, it was a significant amount of time to be able to write up a written statement, 

give a chunk of your day here to be able to be a part of this. I think 

you exemplify very well the Oklahoma attitude, which is, we don’t 

complain about problems, we fix problems. So you all did not come 

with complaints, you came with solutions, and I appreciate that a 

great deal, and hopefully we can integrate these things into it and 

you represent our state extremely well. And honored, Gentlemen, 

with that yield back. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you, Gentlemen, and, again, thank everyone for 

participating. And as I did announce, we have a unanimous consent agreement to leave the record open for a period of two weeks, 

that’s fine with you, and that motion passed, and that will give you 

an opportunity to submit through your representative here today, 

and also Mr. Inhofe’s suggestions, recommendations, but to be part 

of this hearing again, we ask that you go through one of our committee members or Mr. Lankford. 

There being no further business before the House Committee on 

Transportation and Infrastructure, this committee meeting is adjourned. 

Thank you. 

[Whereupon, the committee was adjourned.] 

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Joint Field Hearing, Senate Committee on 

Environment and Public Works and 

House Committee on Transportation and 

Infrastructure, Los Angeles, CA, February 23, 2011, Testimony for the Record 

and Submissions for the Record 

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Indianapolis, IN, Listening Session, February 19, 2011, Testimony for the Record 

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(201) 

Dupage, IL, Listening Session, February 

20, 2011, Testimony for the Record 

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233 


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253 


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254 


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255 


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273 


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275 


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276 


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277 


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278 


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(279) 

Vancouver, WA, Listening Session, February 21, 2011, Testimony for the Record 

280 


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281 


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282 


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283 


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288 


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297 


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298 


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300 


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301 


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302 


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304 


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305 


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311 


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315 


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319 


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320 


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321 


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322 


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325 


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327 


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331 


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333 


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334 


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335 


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336 


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337 


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338 


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339 


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340 


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341 


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342 


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(343) 

Fresno, CA, Listening Session, February 

22, 2011, Testimony for the Record 

344 


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345 


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346 


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347 


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348 


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349 


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350 


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351 


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352 


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353 


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354 


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355 


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(357) 

Jonesboro, AR, Listening Session, February 24, 2011, Testimony for the Record 

358 


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359 


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360 


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361 


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362 


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363 


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364 


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365 


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366 


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367 


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368 


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369 


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370 


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371 


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372 


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373 


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374 


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375 


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376 


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377 


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379 


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380 


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381 


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382 


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383 


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384 


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385 


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386 


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387 


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388 


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389 


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390 


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391 


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392 


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393 


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394 


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395 


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396 


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397 


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398 


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399 


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400 


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401 


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402 


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403 


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404 


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405 


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406 


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407 


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408 


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409 


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410 


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411 


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412 


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413 


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414 


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415 


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416 


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417 


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418 


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419 


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420 


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421 


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422 


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423 


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424 


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425 


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426 


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427 


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428 


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429 


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430 


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431 


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432 


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433 


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434 


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435 


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436 


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437 


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438 


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439 


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440 


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441 


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442 


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443 


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444 


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445 


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446 


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447 


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448 


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449 


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450 


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451 


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452 


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453 


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454 


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455 


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456 


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457 


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458 


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459 


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460 


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461 


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462 


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463 


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464 


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465 


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(467) 

Cortland, NY, Listening Session, March 24, 

2011, Testimony for the Record 

468 


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469 


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470 


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471 


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472 


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473 


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474 


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475 


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476 


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477 


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478 


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479 


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480 


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481 


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482 


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483 


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484 


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485 


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(487) 

Rochester, NY, Listening Session, March 

24, 2011, Testimony for the Record 

488 


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489 


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490 


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491 


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492 


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493 


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494 


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495 


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496 


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497 


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498 


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499 


Insert offset folio 457 here 65737.457
(501) 

Philadelphia, PA, Listening Session, March 

25, 2011, Testimony for the Record 

502 


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503 


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504 


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505 


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506 


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507 


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508 


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(509) 

Scranton, PA, Listening Session, March 25, 

2011, Testimony for the Record 

510 


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511 


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512 

Æ 


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