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TRANSPORTATION CHALLENGES OF 

METROPOLITAN AREAS 

(110–110) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

APRIL 9, 2008 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 

( 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia, Vice 

Chair 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

BOB FILNER, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

NICK LAMPSON, Texas 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

LAURA A. RICHARDSON, California 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio 

(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

BOB FILNER, California 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa, Vice Chair 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

LAURA A. RICHARDSON, California 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota 

(Ex Officio) 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

(Ex Officio) 

(III) 

(V) 

CONTENTS Page 

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

TESTIMONY 

Kirby, Ron, Transportation Director, Metropolitan Washington Council of 

Governments, Washington, D.C. ......................................................................... 3 

Molitoris, Jolene, Assistant Director, Ohio Department of Transportation ........ 3 

Puentes, Robert, Fellow, the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program ...................................................................................................................... 3 

Sims, Hon. Ron, King County Executive, Seattle, Washington ........................... 3 

Wiley, Michael R., General Manager/CEO, Sacramento Regional Transit District, Sacramento, California ............................................................................... 3 

Yaro, Robert D., President, Regional Plan Association, New York, New York .. 3 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Altmire, Hon. Jason, of Pennsylvania .................................................................... 45 

Mitchell, Hon. Harry E., of Arizona ....................................................................... 46 

Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota ................................................................. 47 

Tauscher, Hon. Ellen O., of California ................................................................... 51 

Young, Hon. Don, of Alaska .................................................................................... 54 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Kirby, Ronald F. ...................................................................................................... 56 

Molitoris, Jolene ....................................................................................................... 63 

Puentes, Robert ........................................................................................................ 66 

Sims, Ron ................................................................................................................. 80 

Wiley, Michael R. ..................................................................................................... 119 

Yaro, Robert D. ........................................................................................................ 126 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Sims, Hon. Ron, King County Executive, Seattle, Washington: 

Letter to Rep. DeFazio ......................................................................................... 87 

Letter to Rep. Richardson ................................................................................... 89 

‘‘King County Equity and Social Justice Initiative: Working Toward Fairness and Opportunity for All’’ ......................................................................... 92 

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(1) 

HEARING ON TRANSPORTATION 

CHALLENGES OF METROPOLITAN AREAS 

Wednesday, April 9, 2008 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in Room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Peter A. 

DeFazio [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. The Committee will come to order. Today is an important hearing. It is important, as we lead up to the reauthorization of the next surface transportation bill, that we begin to fully 

examine the major problems that are confronting our Nation and 

begin to hear from a range of people who can tell us how they have 

approached those problems, what has worked, and what hasn’t 

worked, and how, in rewriting the bill in 2009, we might be able 

to remove some impediments or create new ways to deal with these 

very vexing problems. 

Today, in particular, we are going to deal with the issue of congestion, which is something that is affecting our Nation as a whole, 

obviously, both in the movement of freight and goods and affecting 

businesses, particularly those dependent upon just-in-time delivery; 

and it is obviously the most obvious and most frustrating daily concern of tens of millions of Americans trying to get to work or trying 

to go about their daily lives. So we have an excellent panel today 

and I look forward to hearing the testimony. 

With that, I would turn to Mr. Duncan, the Ranking Member. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, Mr. Chairman, thank you. I am pleased that 

we are having another hearing in preparation for next year’s authorization of the National Highway Transit and Highway Safety 

programs, and today’s hearing is going to have sort of a broad 

theme transportation: Transportation Challenges of Metropolitan 

Areas. 

We need to be having this type of hearing for many reasons, but 

especially because of something I read just a few weeks ago, and 

that is that two-thirds of the counties in the U.S. are losing population. And that surprises people because a great, great majority of 

the people live in our metropolitan areas, and where the fast 

growth is in this Country is, to some extent, in urban counties, but 

it is especially fast in the counties that circle or touch the urban 

counties, and that has, I think, very important and serious ramifications for our transportation policies both now and in the future. 

2 

In today’s hearing, rather than looking at specific existing highway or transit programs and determining where they are functioning as effectively as possible, we are looking at the needs of a 

particular type of region, and in future hearings we will explore 

other general themes, such as freight access and goods movement, 

infrastructure preservation and modernization, mobility and 

connectivity of rural areas, and highway safety. 

My hometown of Knoxville is considered a metropolitan area. 

Knox County has a population of about 410,000 now, but the 

SMSA, which includes some of the counties that touch on Knox 

County, is now 1.1 million. Of course, there are many other areas 

that are far bigger, but what we deal with in our area is just millions and millions of passengers or vehicles coming through on the 

way to Florida or to come to the Great Smokey Mountains National 

Park or for other reasons. We have two interstates that meet in 

Knoxville and a third that comes within 37 miles, and we are within 600 miles of, I think it is three-fourths of the population of the 

U.S. so we have far more traffic than even those population figures 

would indicate. 

There are 452 urbanized areas in the United States that the 

Census Bureau says are urbanized, but they consider anything 

over 50,000 to be an urban area. And what we have to look at is 

does it makes sense to even talk about New York City in the same 

way as an area like Fond du Lac or certain other very small urban 

areas. And when we talk about the transportation challenges of 

metropolitan areas and discuss possible policies to address those 

challenges, where do we draw the line? The U.S. has 37 cities with 

populations more than one million, and I think everyone would 

consider these very big cities. They are then 113 cities that are between 200,000 and one million in population. 

The other thing we need to consider is this. Some groups want 

gas to go up even higher so people will drive less. Yet, that would 

put the final nail in the coffin of some of these small towns and 

rural areas if that happens, and that would force more people into 

these urban areas, creating more congestion. So I think if some of 

these groups that don’t want more urban sprawl and more congestion in these metropolitan areas, they are going to have to reconsider their opposition to more domestic energy production or, as I 

say, they are going to speed up the decline of some of these small 

towns and rural areas, and they are going to hurt a lot of low-income people in the process. 

I think the main thing, when we develop any new national transportation policies, we must retain the flexibility to address the very 

different kinds of needs that these very different sizes and types 

of metropolitan and even rural areas have. Larger metropolitan 

areas have access to policy and funding options that are not available to some of the smaller metropolitan areas. For example, congestion pricing is not really an option for Knoxville. And congestion 

not only in housing and overpopulation in some of these areas, but 

the most recent urban mobility report says that we are now losing 

$78 billion just in traffic congestion. 

So I am looking forward to this hearing. I am pleased that you 

would call it and I look forward to hearing from the witnesses. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

3 

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

I believe that Mr. Space has an opening statement. 

Mr. SPACE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank you, 

Mr. Chairman, and Ranking Member Duncan for holding this hearing today and specifically for inviting Jolene Molitoris from Ohio to 

testify. Jolene is the Assistant Director of the Ohio Department of 

Transportation. I think she has served in that capacity for about 

five and a half weeks now, but she is no stranger to this Committee. 

She was the former Federal Railroad Administrator under the 

Clinton Administration, and I believe the first woman to serve in 

that capacity. We are delighted to have her and her capacity in 

Ohio and we are delighted to have her here today. I am interested 

in hearing her testimony concerning the aging infrastructure in 

Ohio, as well as the increasing demands created by this Country’s 

chronic under-investment in its highway infrastructure. 

I am also interested in hearing about how we can better establish a Federal-State partnership so that we can meet those demands in Ohio as well as in every other State of the Country. And 

while I don’t have any metropolitan or urban areas even under the 

50,000 person criteria in my district, we do have a situation in 

Ohio’s 18th where a lot of our folks have to drive sometimes 50, 

60, 70, 80 miles a day into the urban areas just for work, sometimes to work at $8 or $10 an hour jobs, paying $3.22 a gallon for 

gas. So I am interested in hearing how we can better enhance 

those transportational options. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. 

Any other opening statements? I know, Dave, you want to introduce, but we will get to that point. 

Okay, with that, we will begin the testimony, first from the Fellow from the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings would be 

Mr. Puentes. 

TESTIMONY OF ROBERT PUENTES, FELLOW, THE BROOKINGS 

INSTITUTION METROPOLITAN POLICY PROGRAM; ROBERT 

D. YARO, PRESIDENT, REGIONAL PLAN ASSOCIATION, NEW 

YORK, NEW YORK; THE HONORABLE RON SIMS, KING COUNTY EXECUTIVE, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON; JOLENE 

MOLITORIS, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, OHIO DEPARTMENT OF 

TRANSPORTATION; MICHAEL R. WILEY, GENERAL MANAGER/ 

CEO, SACRAMENTO REGIONAL TRANSIT DISTRICT, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA; AND RON KIRBY, TRANSPORTATION 

DIRECTOR, METROPOLITAN WASHINGTON COUNCIL OF 

GOVERNMENTS, WASHINGTON, DC. 

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

Member Duncan, Members of the Committee. I am pleased to appear before you this morning and very much appreciate the invitation. 

The purpose of my testimony is to provide an overview of critical 

metropolitan transportation challenges. And in so doing, I would 

like to make the point that our metropolitan transportation challenges in many ways are our national transportation challenges. 

4 

Perhaps more than any other area of domestic policy, transportation is highly spatially concentrated and not distributed evenly 

across the American landscape. 

Metropolitan areas are where most Americans live, work, and 

produce the majority of the Nation’s economic output. The services 

and revenue they generate drive State economies and they are our 

front lines of competitiveness in the global economy. 

As a consequence, all roads and rail and air traffic literally lead 

to these metropolitan engines. The top 100 metros handle 75 percent of our Nation’s seaport tonnage, 79 percent of air cargo 

weight, 72 percent of air passengers, and 96 percent of rail travelers. 

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Duncan, the time is long past due for a national transportation vision that recognizes the metropolitan concentration of our economic life. But it requires an extreme 

makeover, with a fundamentally new approach to almost every aspect of national transportation policy: how we allocate funding, set 

priorities, apportion responsibilities, engage the private sector, 

price the system, connect transportation to other policies, and how 

we move from our current decision-making to empirically-grounded 

policy. 

Fortunately, the time is ripe for such systemic reform. From genuine concern about the condition and quality of our existing infrastructure, to difficulties and lack of choices in moving people and 

goods, to major national problems like climate change, foreign energy dependency, and strained household budgets, there is growing 

recognition that, if left unchecked, these challenges threaten not 

only the quality of life in our metropolitan areas, but also the competitiveness of our Nation. At the same time, these debates are taking place in a fiscally constrained environment that should be the 

motivating factor for real reform. 

Now, the problem is that the current slate of Federal policies and 

the lack of clear policy in specific areas actually appear to exacerbate the range of metropolitan transportation challenges. We feel 

there are three major policy flaws. 

First, for the vast majority of the program, the Federal Government is absent, when it should be present, such as in dealing with 

the basic movement of people and goods across States and between 

metropolitan areas and mega-regions. Today, the Nation has no 

overarching agenda or strategic plan for coping with the projected 

increases in freight movement or in how passengers would travel 

these longer distances. 

Second, as a program with its roots in the 1950s, the Federal 

Surface Transportation Program is woefully outdated. For one 

thing, the program is not attuned to the needs, problems, and challenges of metropolitan areas. Additionally, Federal Highway Trust 

Fund dollars continue to be distributed to its grantees based largely on consumption. More than half of the funds authorized in 

SAFETEA-LU are apportioned to States based on traditional factors: amount of roads, miles driven, fuel consumed, and gas tax 

paid. There is no reward for reducing consumption in any of these 

formulas; thus, investments to reduce VMT, fuel consumption, or 

lane miles is antithetical to how States receive funds. 

5 

The third major policy problem is that the program is under-performing and failing to maximize efficiencies. Without a vision, 

goals, purpose, or means for targeting, the U.S. approach to transportation has been to keep throwing money at the problems. While 

additional sources are certainly important, the Federal Transportation Program has almost no focus on outcomes, performance, or 

accountability. More fundamentally, analytical exercises are largely 

impossible due to the astonishing lack of data and information. Incredibly, it is easier for citizens to discern where private banks and 

thrifts lend than to determine where public transportation agencies 

spend. 

Mr. Chair and Mr. Duncan, I believe we need a systemic change 

in the way we think about, design, and implement transportation 

policies. This means the development of a three-pronged strategy 

to lead, empower, and maximize performance across the Nation 

and its metropolitan areas. 

First, the Federal Government should lead and develop a coherent national vision and focus on specific areas of national importance: the preservation and maintenance of the interstate system, 

the development of a true intermodal freight agenda, and a comprehensive national plan for intermetropolitan area passenger travel. 

Second, the Federal Government should also empower major 

metropolitan areas by giving them direct transportation funding 

and the flexibility to make unbiased decisions between different 

modes of transportation. To ensure that States and metros can innovate, Federal transportation policy needs to be modally neutral 

and outcome based. 

Third, the Federal Government needs to reorient transportation 

policy to remedy the mistakes of the past and to establish a coherent performance-based program for the future. Lost in the dominant discussion about how much money we are spending on the 

Federal transportation program is a frank and rigorous debate 

about how to spend that money better. After such a discussion, I 

believe all options toward reinvigorating transportation funding 

should be on the table for consideration. 

In conclusion, I believe that during this time of economic uncertainty, environmental anxiety, and household stress, the Nation 

must get the most out of its largest discretionary domestic program, transportation. By focusing reforms on these three major policy areas, Federal transportation policy can move from the outdated, outmoded structure that exists today to something that actually works for the Nation and for metropolitan America. 

I look forward to this Committee’s ongoing leadership and I want 

to thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you 

today. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

Next we will have Robert D. Yaro, President of Regional Plan Association of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. Mr. Yaro. 

Mr. YARO. Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank 

you, Ranking Member Duncan and Members of the Committee for 

the opportunity to testify today on the transportation challenges of 

metropolitan areas. 

6 

I am Bob Yaro. I am President of Regional Plan Association. We 

are America’s oldest, independent metropolitan planning organization. Founded in 1922, RPA shapes the growth of the New York 

metropolitan region, but has weighed in on national policies at key 

points during our history, including participation in efforts—actually, leadership—of the National Resources Planning Board back in 

the 1930s during the New Deal, when our then Chairman Fred 

Delano chaired that Commission on behalf of President Roosevelt; 

and the advocacy in the 1960s that we led a campaign in support 

of the creation of the Urban Mass Transit Administration, now the 

FTA. 

Now, RPA is currently engaged, and has been for the past several years, in a national initiative called America 2050, the goal of 

which is to develop a strategic framework for America’s future 

growth. 

Let me get straight to the point: America’s transportation policy 

is currently not doing the job to meet the needs of America’s metropolitan regions as they struggle with increased population, aging 

infrastructure, rising congestion, the global imperative to reduce 

carbon emissions. And, yet, metropolitan regions are the places 

where we have the best opportunity to achieve several national 

goals. 

One is to accommodate anticipated population and economic 

growth; two, to compete in a global economy; three, to coordinate 

land use and development transportation decisions to make public 

transit, walking, and biking options viable and enjoyable; and, finally, in so doing, to reduce VMTs, reduce congestion on the interstate system, and on local highways across the Country and to reduce their impact on global climate change. 

We believe that the Country requires a massive investment in infrastructure and that most of the need, as Rob Puentes pointed out, 

is in fact concentrated in the Nation’s metropolitan regions. We 

can’t, in good faith, allow our national investment in the highways, 

bridges, and public transportation systems to fall into disrepair, 

and we can’t invest in new capacity projects that promote low-density, inefficient development patterns when major metropolitan 

economies struggle because of under-investment in their existing 

systems. Finally, we believe that we need a vision as a Nation for 

the Federal role in transportation that rises above the parochial 

squabbles of which State gets the biggest piece of the Federal funding pie. 

America 2050 was launched in 2005 to respond to four key challenges facing metropolitan regions across the Country and the 

Country as a whole. First, America’s population is growing. The 

Census Bureau has estimated that we will add somewhere in the 

neighborhood of 120 million additional residents by 2050, a 40 percent increase over today’s levels. We have simply used up the capacity of our 20th century infrastructure systems in metropolitan 

areas across the region to accommodate that growth. 

Second, our global competitors are investing ambitiously in 21st 

century infrastructure systems while we struggle to maintain a 

20th century and in some cases, like the Baltimore rail tunnels, a 

19th century system. The places that we are increasingly competing with—China, India, Spain, the rest of Europe, the develVerDate Aug 31 2005 18:23 Jun 26, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\41822 JASON
7 

oping countries around the world—are investing 10 percent, 8 percent, or 7 percent of their GDP—that is China, India, and Spain, 

respectively—on infrastructure, compared to America’s 1 percent. 

Third, transportation accounts for 30 percent of America’s share 

of greenhouse gas emissions, and the share is growing due to rising 

VMTs. Meanwhile, we must reduce carbon emissions 80 percent by 

2050 to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. 

Fourth, we are witnessing the emergence of mega-regions, and 

we have this image up on the charts here today, the slides that 

show the networks of metropolitan regions linked by economic agglomerations and transportation links. Eleven of these regions are 

emerging nationwide, which will absorb over 70 percent, close to 

three-quarters, of projected population and economic growth by 

2050. These mega-regions are competing with similarly sized global 

integration zones—that is the European term—in Europe and 

Southeast Asia, where tens of billions of dollars in investments 

have been made in high-speed rail and goods movement systems to 

support the highly mobile workforce of the global economy. 

Together, these challenges require a dramatic new approach and 

role for the Federal Government in charting an ambitious and strategic framework for the Nation’s growth. It turns out—and we have 

done some work on this that we would be delighted to share with 

you—that this Country has a history of ambitious national plans 

which define its growth, beginning with the 1808 Gallatin Plan, 

which President Jefferson commissioned to look at ways to integrate the Louisiana Purchase into the rest of the Country and out 

of which came proposals that were implemented for a national system of roads—initially canals, later railroads—incentivized by the 

Federal Government in accordance with a national plan developed 

by Albert Gallatin, the Treasury Secretary from the Jefferson 

through the Madison administrations. 

A century later, in 1908—and I hope these dates resonate with 

you, 1808 and then 1908—President Roosevelt convened the first 

meeting of the Governors Conference and then led, coming out of 

the Governors Conference, in 1908, a national plan led by Gifford 

Pinchot, Forest Service Director, to develop a nationwide network 

of resource-based economic development, resource protection, and 

water management projects, which became the inspiration for 

projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Bonneville Power 

Administration, and these other projects, the Colorado River 

Project, that made 20th century America possible. Later, the interstate system, again developed in the 1930s, the concept by the National Resources Planning Board. 

That brings us to 2008. So the sequence here, 1808, 1908, 2008. 

We need a new national infrastructure strategy building on the tradition of the Interstate Highway Act. I would like to suggest three 

points in developing this system. First, we need a national transportation investment plan, a physical plan for the development of 

the infrastructure, similar to the interstate system. Second, we 

need to maintain the existing system of interstate highways and 

transit systems. And, third, we need to direct more resources to 

metropolitan regions to give them the flexibility and the authority 

to develop these. 

8 

There is no more suitable role for the Federal Government than 

to chart the direction of the Nation’s growth. You are standing in 

the shoes and in the footsteps of Jefferson and both Roosevelts and 

so forth, the oldest tradition in American national policy and development. Now is the time to develop an ambitious framework for 

these investments to shape the Nation’s prosperity and sustainability for generations to come. Thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Yaro. 

I now turn to our colleague, Mr. Reichert, to introduce the next 

panelist. 

Mr. REICHERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you 

for giving me this opportunity to introduce my good friend, Ron 

Sims, who has worked tirelessly for the people of the great State 

of Washington and of King County, and the 8th District, which I 

represent, since his election to the King County Executive’s Office. 

Actually, the County Council first in 1985 and then his appointment as King County Executive in 1996. 

Ron has been a champion of mass transit innovation and reform 

as King County and its surrounding areas continue to growth at a 

breakneck pace. On a personal note, he has worked closely with the 

Sheriff’s Office in King County, an office which he appointed me 

to—and I gratefully thank him for that—in 1997, an office which 

I held until I came to Washington, D.C. to represent the 8th District. 

Ron recognized not only the need for a mass transit system, successful system not only needs to be affordable, but it needs to be 

efficient and it also needs to be safe. As Executive, he we charged 

with overseeing the fourteenth largest county in the Nation. It includes the City of Seattle and the City of Bellevue in the 8th District, with an overall population of 1.8 million people. King County 

is home to about 30 percent of Washington State’s population and 

an even larger percentage of its congestion woes. 

I welcome him to this Committee and look forward to Mr. Sims’ 

testimony. Thank you, Ron, for being here. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Reichert. 

Mr. Sims. 

Mr. SIMS. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Duncan, and Members of the Committee and my good friend, Congressman Reichert, 

it is always good seeing you. I want to thank you for inviting me 

to testify today about the transportation challenges facing America’s metropolitan areas, the economic engines of this extraordinary 

Country. 

I am King County Executive Ron Sims. I am proud to serve as 

the elected leader of the fourteenth largest county in the Nation. 

Our county contains Seattle and Bellevue, and 38 other cities as 

well, farmlands and forests. It is the home to 1.8 million people 

and includes the corporate headquarters for companies as diverse 

as Starbucks, Amazon.com, PACCAR, and, of course, Microsoft. 

Our region’s economy and population are both growing extremely 

fast. The Puget Sound region is expected to add 1.5 million people 

over the next 30 years. I think about how the decisions I make as 

an elected official today will shape what our region looks like decades from now, and about whether the people living there, including my children and now my grandchildren, will enjoy well-being 

9 

and prosperity. That is why I am pleased to speak before you today 

about transportation, which consistently polls as one of the most 

important concerns of the public, especially the issues of traffic congestion. 

Transportation is vital to our region’s economy and metropolitan 

areas like mine are, in turn, the drivers of the American economy. 

According to The Brookings Institution, America’s top 100 metropolitan areas generate 75 percent of the Nation’s gross domestic 

product. Our Puget Sound region, made up of three counties, is the 

twelfth most populous metropolitan area in the Nation. About half 

of Washington State’s population resides in the region, and just 

under 30 percent in King County alone. But Puget Sound accounts 

for more than two-thirds of the value of all goods and services produced in the State of Washington. 

Based on our own experience, these economic engines could begin 

to sputter if we do not address two major transportation challenges 

facing metropolitan regions: aging highway infrastructure and crippling traffic congestion. According to the Texas Transportation Institute, in 2003, congestion in the top 85 urban areas caused 3.7 

billion hours of travel delay and 2.3 billion gallons of wasted fuel 

at a total cost of $63 billion. In addition, the transportation sector 

generates 33 percent of harmful greenhouse gas emissions, and increased passenger vehicle miles traveled in idling and congestion 

hurts our national environmental goals. 

The good news is that we have innovative approaches and new 

tools available for us to meet those challenges. Instead of viewing 

transportation narrowly as an issue of road capacity, we are gaining many benefits by taking a broad approach that looks at the 

whole transportation systems; that consider transportation impacts 

in the broader context of the economy, national security, the environment, and social needs; and that employs an integrated set of 

transportation management tools. Many tools are available to us. 

Variable tolling in combination with increased transit services hold 

particular promise as a tool for reducing traffic congestion and paying for infrastructure improvements. My written testimony includes two case studies that illustrate how new tools and innovative approaches can be used to replace aging transportation infrastructure and to reduce congestion; however, I am going to highlight only one of them today. 

The State Route 520 bridge replacement project involves the 

Lake Washington floating bridge between I-5 and I-405, one of the 

most congested corridors in the region. This corridor connects Seattle and the growing suburban cities, linking major technologies, 

manufacturing, and residential centers. It is critical to our region’s 

and our counties’ economic core. 

520 was built in 1963 as a four-lane toll bridge. The bridge was 

designed to carry 65,000 cars per day; today it carries an overage 

of 115,000 cars per day. State engineers gave the bridge a rating 

of 44 out of 100 on the recent structural integrity test. For comparison, the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota last year was rated a 

50. 

Last spring, King County and the Washington State Department 

of Transportation and the MPO, the Puget Sound Regional Council, 

successfully competed for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s 

10 

Urban Partnership Program. Our strategy incorporates variable 

tolling, expanded transit technology to improve efficiency, and increased telecommuting. We estimate an increase of up to 35 percent in transit ridership, as well as reduction of vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, revenue generated 

by variable tolling, along with gas tax revenue, will be used to finance the replacement of this tired, aging bridge. 

Last August, the Lake Washington Urban Partnership was 

awarded $127 million to implement this strategy, and the Washington State Legislature, in its recently completed 2008 session, 

passed a policy bill that will enable variable tolling to be on the 

520 bridge. 

I believe metropolitan regions across the Country are ready to 

take bold, new approaches like this to solving the challenges of critical aging road infrastructure and congestion, and we hope you will 

consider several key principles as you take up the matter of reforming national policies concerning Federal highway and transit 

investments. 

First, we need a holistic approach to transportation investment. 

Dividing transportation funding into narrow programs and projects 

tends to limit thinking on the best way to solve transportation 

problems. Particularly in the larger metropolitan areas, we need to 

have the local officials who are responsible for the streets, transit, 

and non-motorized travel sitting in the same room with State highway officials to come up with the best transportation solutions. 

Transportation decisions must also take into account the broader 

role of transportation in the society. 

Land use and transportation are inextricably linked. Reducing 

sprawl and long drive times can improve our quality of life and our 

health. For example, King County recently undertook a land-use 

transportation and air quality and health study that demonstrated 

the links between how communities’ transportation systems are 

built and the effects on public health. Environmental impacts must 

also be considered in particular. The transportation sector’s production of greenhouse gas emissions is critical. We need to observe 

those. Strategies that reduce vehicle miles, travel such as compact 

development, increase transit; highway pricing are essential for our 

efforts to combat global warming. 

Our holistic approach should also employ a coordinated set of 

transportation strategies to improve mobility, rather than the narrow focus on roads alone. 

Second, we need to reduce our dependence on unreliable sources 

of foreign oil. This is both an economic and a national security imperative. 

Third, the principal concerns who should manage tolling projects. 

While I share current Administration’s interest in variable tolling 

as a congestion relief tool, I do not support privatizing our publicly 

financed infrastructure assets. These assets must be managed to 

meet the public’s transportation needs and responsibility to do so 

much remain with the government. At the same time, we must not 

divert tolling revenues to general government purposes. 

Finally, we must consider social equity as we embrace variable 

tolling. I believe variable tolling is less burdensome to low-income 

residents than sales, property, gas, or car taxes. Variable tolling 

11 

also gives people choice either to travel during off-peak hours, take 

slower roads to reduce costs, or to pay for important trips. Low-income bus riders also benefit from faster and more reliable bus trips 

after tolling reduces congestion. Transit must be a variable tolling 

proposal. In our county, 95 percent of all residents are within onequarter mile of a transit stop and within one and a half miles of 

a Park & Ride lot. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. If you could summarize quickly now. You are a bit 

over. 

Mr. SIMS. Public opinion nationally and locally indicates a strong 

preference for tolling over sales and other vehicle-related fees. 

Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member of the Committee, thank 

you very much for this opportunity to speak to you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Sims. 

The next witness, as was noted by Representative Space, is no 

stranger to the Committee and we welcome her back in her new 

role as Assistant Director of the Ohio Department of Transportation. Ohio is lucky to have you. Ms. Molitoris. 

Ms. MOLITORIS. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman and Ranking 

Member Duncan and Members of the Committee, and for your kind 

introduction, Congressman Space. It is good to be home, Mr. Chairman. On behalf of the governor, Governor Strickland, and Director 

Beasley, I want to thank you for having this hearing; it is a very 

important one. As you have said, I am in my fifth week as the Assistant Director of Transportation, so it is good to be back. 

My message to you will be really three-fold: we, Ohio, have an 

urgent need for adequate Federal investment. Number two, our 

transportation challenges in metropolitan areas are critical and we 

need a partner. We need a Federal partner that will work with us 

at all levels to solve our problems. 

First of all, our highest immediate need is the solvency of the 

Highway Trust Fund. We face a loss of somewhere between $140 

million and $400 million, and these will affect projects next year 

and the year after, and many of them, if not most of them, are in 

the urban areas. So it is a critical issue. Second, for a State that 

is thirty-sixth in land mass, we have a large number of metropolitan areas; seven are very large and ten small. So we are facing 

these critical issues all over our State. And the under-investment 

that has been going on for decades leaves us with a deteriorating 

system and one in dire need of repair. 

It has to be upgraded, and some people say it is like threading 

an eight-lane highway through the eye of a needle because these 

roads are tightly woven into built areas, so everything is very, very 

expensive. Even on and off ramps, something as simple, apparently, as that, 30 years ago they were up to snuff; today they are 

not even safe by today’s standards. We often try to do the repair 

under traffic because there are no alternatives; makes it much 

longer and much, more expensive. 

With regard to our donor status, I have to mention that 

SAFETEA-LU helped some; we are at 92 now. However, every dollar we give to FTA we get 51 cents back. This is just totally unacceptable. In addition, the bias toward highway investment, with a 

90 percent possible and only 50 percent for alternatives like public 

transportation is unacceptable for our goals in Ohio. Governor 

12 

Strickland is committed to a multimodal transportation solution. It 

is what we need. It is what we need to help attract jobs and retain 

the businesses that we have. Just last week, the governor and our 

legislature introduced a bipartisan economic incentive bond package of $1.57 billion, and this will be major investments in logistics, 

bridges, other transportation projects and infrastructure. 

So I am here to say we are stepping up to the plate. We are trying to begin to create solutions at home, but we need a partner. 

The private sector is helping us; other public entities. My colleague, 

Chester Jourdan, who is President of the Metropolitan Planning 

Agency in Central Ohio, is here. We have broken down those divisions between us; we know that we have to work together. And we 

need that same kind of partnership with the Federal Government. 

We can’t do it alone; we need your help. 

One story, one real story. It is a simple one, but I think it really 

says something important. We have 59 public transit systems and 

we serve half a million customers every weekday, and over 60 percent are work-related trips. For Ohioans, many of them, it is public 

transportation or it is public assistance. That is how dramatic it is. 

In Cleveland, for example, ranked as the poorest city in America 

last year, one out of every four persons does not have access to an 

automobile. 

Last year, a new shopping center was set to open on the site of 

an abandoned steel mill, the redevelopment in a core urban metropolitan area meant to bring jobs for those who didn’t have them. 

At the new Target store, to get those jobs, they found out half the 

people needed public transit; they couldn’t get there any other way. 

By investing only $200,000, the transit system in Cleveland was 

able to provide the service that was needed. However, they had to 

take it from someplace else, because they didn’t even have 

$200,000 of wiggle room. 

So the bottom line for us, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member 

Duncan, is that we need for you to be our partner. We need realistic, adequate investment levels to get our system where it needs 

to be, because if we are going to be a first rate State and if we are 

going to be a first rate Country, we need a first rate transportation 

system. Thank you very much, sir. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

Next we have Michael Wiley, General Manager/CEO of Sacramental Regional Transit. 

Mr. WILEY. Chairman DeFazio, Ranking Member Duncan, Members of the Committee, thank you for allowing me the opportunity 

to address you today, and also a special thank you to Congresswoman Matsui, a tremendous advocate for Sacramento and our 

public transit system. 

I have worked for Regional Transit for over 30 years, so I have 

a strong familiarity with our relationships with our State DOT, as 

well as our local MPO. The Sacramento region’s MPO, SACOG, has 

developed an innovative land use program called the Blueprint that 

integrate transit with smart growth. For this innovative plan to be 

successful, the partnership between Regional Transit, SACOG, and 

CalTrans, our State DOT, must continue to grow. 

The Sacramento region’s growth has exceeded both State and national averages. Development has historically relied on the practice 

13 

of building large lot, low-density housing with no integration of retail, employment, or public services. A continuation of this sprawling growth in the next 20 years will consume another 660 square 

miles of farmland and greenfield if allowed to continue undeterred. 

In 2004, SACOG took the first big step to reverse this trend and 

set us on a path to a brighter future. The Sacramento region’s 

Blueprint is intended to guide land use and transportation choices 

over the next 50 years as the region’s population grows from 2 million today to more than 2.8 million. SACOG crafted an alternative 

land-use vision that embraces smart growth concepts, higher density mixed use transit-oriented developments, reinvestment in existing neighborhoods, and more transit choices as an alternative to 

sprawl. 

To compliment this new land use vision, last month SACOG 

adopted the Metropolitan Transportation Plan. The MTP provides 

a new vision for transportation in our Greater Sacramento region. 

The combined Blueprint and MTP estimate that transit trips will 

increase over 600 percent. The percentage of trips taken by transit 

to downtown Sacramento will increase from 20 percent today to 

over 40 percent. To support this transit expansion, the MTP also 

calls for the passage of an equivalent of an additional one half cent 

local sales tax by 2012. 

In response to this new vision and future reliance on transit, Regional Transit is undertaking a comprehensive update of our transit master plan. This update will guide RT for the next 30 years 

and will provide a detailed implementation strategies, programs, 

and projects that will assure the success of our Blueprint and MTP. 

Regional Transit, SACOG, and Caltrans work closely to utilize 

flexible Federal funds by allowing local decision-making to apply 

the funds to the most urgent needs. The Sacramento region and 

the State of California have stepped up to provide support with 

local matching funds. RT’s recently completed $206 million Amtrak 

Fulsom light rail extension is an example of this strategy, where 

local, State, and flexible Federal funds provided 100 percent of the 

project funding. 

In 2009, RT will begin the construction of a one-mile light rail 

extension that will be the first phase of an eventual New Start federally-funded light rail project that will bring service to Sacramento’s International Airport. The first phase of this one-mile extension will be funded entirely with local and State dollars. 

In 2006, California voters passed over $20 billion in general obligation bonds to fund transportation improvement projects. 

Regarding reauthorization, it is crucial that Congress identify a 

funding source that is sustainable and grows to meet the Nation’s 

infrastructure needs. Priority for funding should be granted to 

those urban locations that are considered non-attainment areas for 

air quality. Those regions that provide local funding and commitment to land-use plans, that create more compact transit-supportive neighborhoods should be given financial incentives to continue this practice. Adoption of smart growth principles is a key 

step in cleaning our air and reducing our dependency on foreign oil. 

We must also look at more flexibility between highways and transit 

funding and create criteria that focuses on and rewards vehicle 

mile travel reduction and greenhouse gas emission reductions. 

14 

Today, in Sacramento, a productive relationship between 

SACOG, Caltrans, and RT has resulted in better outcomes measured by funding allocations and projection selections. By recognizing the central role of public transit in achieving critical national policy goals, including national security, cleaner air, energy 

conservation, and reducing dependency on foreign oil, we create 

more livable communities. 

In conclusion, a strong partnership between transit, the metropolitan planning organization, and the State DOT will ensure that 

these goals are reached in a much more timely manner, and such 

partnerships need to be encouraged and rewarded by national policy. Thank you very much for your time. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Wiley. 

The last witness will be Ronald Kirby, Director of Transportation 

Planning, National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board, 

Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, a long title. 

Thank you. Mr. Kirby. 

Mr. KIRBY. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Duncan, Members of the Committee. I will forego repeating that title. 

I am the MPO Director for the Washington metropolitan area. The 

Transportation Planning Board, or TPB for short, is one of 385 

MPOs currently serving urbanized areas throughout the Nation, 

and is an active member of the Association of the Metropolitan 

Planning Organizations nationally. 

Membership of the TPB includes representatives of the transportation agencies of the States of Maryland and Virginia and the District of Columbia, 20 local governments in the Washington region, 

the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the Maryland and Virginia general Assemblies, and non-voting members 

from the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority and Federal 

agencies; 40 board members in all. 

The transportation challenges facing the Washington metropolitan area are common to many large, growing metropolitan areas 

throughout the Country. Currently, the area is home to 5 million 

people, a little more than that, and 3 million jobs. Over the current 

planning period of 2008 through 2030, we are expecting increases 

in population and jobs of 26 percent and 31 percent, respectively, 

which will lead to additional vehicles, trips, and congestion on the 

region’s transportation system. 

Because of funding constraints, highway lane miles are expected 

to increase by only 13 percent over this period, while vehicle miles 

of travel are expected to rise 23 percent, resulting in a 41 percent 

rise in lane miles of congestion in the a.m. peak period. The outer 

suburbs will experience the most dramatic increase in congestion, 

with more than 100 percent increase in lane miles in congestion 

over this period. Transit work trips are forecast to increase by 31 

percent, which will create even more crowding on the Metrorail 

system because transit capacity is also limited by funding constraints. 

Emissions of ozone precursors and fine particulates for motor vehicles are declining steadily due primarily to cleaner vehicles and 

fuels, and the Washington region is on track to attain national 

standards for these pollutants. Carbon dioxide and other greenVerDate Aug 31 2005 18:23 Jun 26, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\41822 JASON
15 

house gas emissions from motor vehicles continue to increase, however, and represent a major new challenge. 

Transportation revenues projected to be available to the Washington region over the period of the plan, through 2030, come from 

several different major sources: Federal 27 percent, State 32 percent, local government 17 percent, transit fares 17 percent, and 

tolls 7 percent. The share of funding from tolls has grown from just 

1 percent in 2003 to 7 percent currently, due to the addition in the 

plan of three major new highway projects which will have tolls that 

vary by time and day to manage congestion. 

Our studies indicate, however, that these tolls revenues will be 

needed to finance construction, operation, and preservation of the 

toll facilities, along with expanded transit services, and will not in 

any way substitute for other sources of transportation funding, all 

of which will need to be sustained and increased if the region’s 

transportation challenges are to be addressed. 

A number of proposals and recommendations are currently being 

advanced for refocusing the Federal Surface Transportation Program on key national priorities when the program is reauthorized 

next year. Three major goals stand out as national priorities 

around which the Federal program could be structured: firstly, 

preservation and operation of the existing system; secondly, highvalue investments in new infrastructure capacity; and, thirdly, support for metropolitan areas to address pressing congestion, environmental, and social challenges. 

With the mid-20th century goals of building the interstate highway system and recapitalizing the urban transit systems accomplished, it is time to replace the modally-oriented program delivery 

structure designed around those earlier purposes with a mode-neutral Federal program to support system preservation and operations, as well as new infrastructure investments aimed at critical 

choke points in surface, passenger, and freight transportation systems. I would agree with an earlier witness that the rail tunnel in 

Baltimore is one of those major choke points that needs attention. 

MPOs have long believed that in addition to formula funding for 

metropolitan planning, the Federal transportation program should 

provide formula-based funding directly to metropolitan areas for 

project selection and implementation. Such funding would empower 

metropolitan areas to turn strategies developed in response to Federal planning requirements into real projects on the ground. 

A relatively small scale but nevertheless groundbreaking provision of SAFETEA-LU provides a model for how a new metropolitan 

transportation program could be structured and administered. 

Prior to SAFETEA-LU, the Job Access and Revert Commute Discretionary Program administered by the Federal Transit Administration for metropolitan areas had become unwieldy and heavily 

earmarked. SAFETEA-LU restructured JARC along with a new 

New Freedom Program into formula programs allocated to metropolitan areas in accordance with urbanized area population. Metropolitan areas were required to designate recipients who could administer these programs through a transparent and competitive 

project selection process. The TPB was among the first of almost 

30 MPOs that sought and received these designations. 

16 

This JARC and New Freedom delivery mechanism could be the 

basis for a much broader and more comprehensive program of 

project selection and implementation at the metropolitan level. A 

number of other disparate elements of the current Federal program 

could be bundled together with the JARC and New Freedom programs into a metropolitan program that would bring project selection and implementation closer to local government and stakeholder groups. Examples include funding devoted to such priorities 

as pedestrian safety, coordination of transportation operations and 

incident management, promotion of commuter ride sharing transit, 

bicycling and other alternatives to single occupant vehicle use, and 

perhaps most important of all, the coordination of transportation 

and land-use planning and implementation at the local and metropolitan levels. 

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I would like to express the appreciation of the MPO community for the strong and growing support the 

Congress has provided for metropolitan transportation planning in 

the ISTEA, TEA-21, and SAFETEA-LU authorizations. Federal 

planning resources and requirements in these bills have provided 

a firm foundation for MPOs to assume increased responsibilities 

not only for planning, but also for some key new components of 

program delivery. 

Thank you again for giving me the opportunity to testify before 

you this morning. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Kirby. 

We will now proceed to questions. I guess my first question, particularly directly to Mr. Sims and Mr. Kirby, but others can certainly have an opinion on this and I would be happy to hear from 

them, is on the issue of imposing tolls on a system previously not 

tolled and/or congestion pricing on that. I guess my concern is 

about the viability of alternatives. 

I think someone raised, I can’t remember who it was, the social 

equity issue. I think that was Mr. Sims also. I mean, the question 

would be imposing congestion pricing or tolling. And someone else 

testified as to how there are many people—and I think it might 

have been, I can’t remember, Ms. Molitoris or Mr. Wiley—about 

what percentage of people had current access to transportation alternatives. 

How are you approaching that, Mr. Sims, given those equity 

issues? 

Mr. SIMS. Mr. Chairman, in our county, because we are very 

similar to Oregon in regards to how we have developed, we have 

a defined urban area, under 1.8 million, and in that urban area 95 

percent of our people have access to transit, as well as within a 

mile and a half of a Park & Ride lot. 

We did a pretty definitive study on race and equity, a pretty 

blunt study that I think stunned our community in regards to the 

impacts of what was happening to the people of color in our community and poverty in our community, and we have said that we 

have to increase what we call the options of choice. Variable tolling 

does that for us because we believe variable tolling coupled with 

the ability to use tolling revenues to increase your transit capacity 

is key. 

17 

Mr. DEFAZIO. And what would be the sequencing? Would you 

have to impose the tolling and then a few years later you enhance 

transit, or would you enhance transit before you do the variable 

tolling, or at the same time? 

Mr. SIMS. We are doing it at the same time. We already have a 

very robust transit system; we are the seventh largest in the 

United States. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. But when you talk about people having access, the 

question is do you measure the elapse time. I mean, okay, you have 

access to an option, 95 percent of the people have access, but does 

that access mean three changes of lines and does it take them an 

hour and twenty minutes to get to work versus what if they drove 

themselves, even with congestion? Do you compare those things? 

Mr. SIMS. We compare those things, but the way our system is 

designed, in fact, we can provide ready choice. Our issue is the expansion of transit using tolling revenues, because right now, as gas 

prices have gone up, we have seen that people who are poor, in 

particular, desiring to actually have increased transit access. The 

way we do it right now in our county is through a sales tax. 

Using tolling for the purposes of financing expanded transit to us 

is very, very important. What we found in all of our polls was that 

poor people actually had the strongest views on variable tolling, its 

desire to see it used for expansion of transit. They wanted that 

choice and that option. So, to us, variable tolling in this day and 

age as a method of financing transit expansion is critically important, particularly if you are talking about equity issues. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. Anyone else on that issue? Mr. Kirby? 

Mr. KIRBY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I alluded to three major 

projects that we are moving forward with in this region with congestion tolls. All of them are new lanes or conversion of HOV lanes, 

existing lanes, so that no one is going to be tolled on a lane that 

is currently free. That makes it much easier to deal with the equity 

issue. Two of the projects, all of the toll revenues will be required 

for construction and operations of the lanes. On one there will be 

surplus revenues which is going to be put into bus transit, and that 

was a very important component of that project. 

We have looked at the potential for pricing existing lanes in certain choke point areas of the region. There are a number of locations where it is not possible to build new capacity and the key 

there is going to be provision of alternatives to those who are 

tolled. 

The rationale for tolling is easily explained: it is where the revenues are devoted and how various groups will be impacted. That 

is the issue. In London, which is a model we have been looking at, 

major investments in transit were the key to maintaining total person movement into the central area; they shifted people from driving to transit, and that is the kind of the model we have been looking at. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. But as the Committee found in our recent visit to 

London, before the cordon pricing, 85 percent of the people were 

using mass transit and the cost to park an automobile on a daily 

basis in downtown London was somewhere around $75 or $80 U.S., 

which meant we aren’t dealing with middle-class people commuting 

to work here, it is the guy with the chauffeur driving the Bentley, 

18 

maybe, who is going to now wonder about whether or not he should 

be doing that. So there is an equity. 

Mr. Yaro, you also had a comment? 

Mr. YARO. Yes, just three points. One, this year marks the fortieth anniversary in the New York metropolitan area of using essentially cross-subsidizing transit investments and maintaining our 

transit system from toll revenues, toll facilities through the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that was established by Governor 

Rockefeller to do that. As you know, we came very close this year 

in Albany to get a congestion pricing system in place; we didn’t succeed. 

We have done a tremendous amount of analysis that I think has 

concluded that congestion tolling is actually a very progressive way 

of financing transit investments. You don’t need the experience in 

London, the plans of New York; you don’t need to wait years to 

make these investments. In fact, the most important investments 

in London were investments in new bus services, and that was 

what we have planned and are actually moving ahead with portions of in New York. 

I guess the final thought is just when you look at what our competitors are spending in metropolitan regions and mega-regions 

around the world, these are the places that are beginning to knock 

our socks off economically. They are investing several times what 

we are as a percentage of GDP. We are going to have to find these 

revenues one way or another, and tolling and user fees may be 

something we have seen in our region and I think in other parts 

of the Country that in fact the public is ready for this and understands the connection between using a facility, paying a fee, and 

having those revenues be dedicated towards transportation expansion and transportation improvements. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I would address this again to anyone who wants 

to respond, but several of you brought up this point, and since you 

just made that point. The current Transportation Secretary says 

we should freeze the current levels of Federal investment, which is 

essentially phase out Federal investment over time, ideally, in her 

mind, and just do everything with tolling and congestion pricing. 

But a number of you made the point that the tolling and congestion pricing, either as Mr. Kirby said, in two out of three cases it 

is just going to go for the project itself, and is not going to supplement the greater system. And I think you and others are making 

the point you may look at alternatives, they may be viable in certain areas, but the tolling and congestion pricing will still need 

more support, whether it is sales tax, gas tax, or other investments. 

Mr. YARO. I think there is no question that this would be a contributor to a larger and much more robust set of public investments. I think there is room for private investments and new highway facilities, expanded highway capacity and so forth, but I think 

our conclusion has been—and we have been working on this in 

New York and New Jersey—that this is going to be a relatively 

small part of what is going to be needed. There is going to have 

to be a much more robust public investment. Simply relying on private investments or user fees and so forth, that sounds like the 

kind of Argentinean strategy for economic development. Do we 

19 

really want to be like Argentina when we grow up? I don’t think 

so. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Mr. Sims. 

Mr. SIMS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Variable tolling is one of 

our tools; it is not our exclusive tool. We like a tool kit, because 

we have used gas taxes in our region, we have used sales taxes in 

our region. We just look and say variable tolling is key for us as 

another tool to use for financing, particularly if we can couple it 

with expanded transit investments. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. Anybody else? Okay, Ms. Molitoris. 

Ms. MOLITORIS. I just want to comment on having the devolution 

of a Federal partnership. We are going to be looking, in fact, announcing this week, a 21st century transportation task force called 

by the governor and the director and the business plan, and it is 

really the people’s task force; the department will support and enhance and so on. But there are really two questions: what kind of 

system do we really need to have, and how are we going to pay for 

it? 

I will wait to sort of report to you the results in September, but 

I cannot imagine that it is possible to do it without the Federal 

partnership. I think all the data shows that; certainly the Surface 

Transportation Policy Commission report shows it strongly. I think 

it is critical now and going forward that you are our partner. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. All right, thank you. Okay, quickly, Mr. Wiley. 

Mr. WILEY. Very quickly. I would absolutely agree, we cannot 

look to have the Federal Government eliminate their partnership. 

We need a toolbox and we need to grow the toolbox; we don’t need 

to reduce the toolbox. We are looking for resources from many different avenues. In California and in our region, developer fees play 

a significant role, for example, in funding the capital investment, 

and we use those revenues from throughout the toolbox to match 

those Federal revenues so we are stretching those dollars as far as 

we possibly can. We don’t want to reduce the pie; we need to grow 

the pie. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

Mr. Duncan. 

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

The National Surface Transportation Commission has reported 

that the average major highway project now takes about 13 years, 

and we had a hearing a few months ago about either a 9-or 12-mile 

project in California that started in 1990 and was hoped to be completed by 2007. I don’t know if they actually completed it or not. 

We are hearing that in every aspect of this Committee. The main 

runway at the Atlanta Airport took 14 years from conception to 

completion; it took only 99 construction days. In water transportation projects, the Kentucky Lock authorized in 1996 was supposed to have been completed in 2008; now the completion date is 

2014. The Homestead water project, the original cost estimate was 

$775 million; now we are up to $2.1 billion on just that one project. 

What I am getting at is this: the other developed nations in the 

world are doing these projects two or three times faster than we 

are, and almost all of the delays seem to be on the environmental 

rules and regulations and red tape and paperwork that is not adding anything to the project except cost. We tried to put environVerDate Aug 31 2005 18:23 Jun 26, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\41822 JASON
20 

mental streamlining provisions in the last highway bill, and I don’t 

know if they are doing much good yet or not, but, Mr. Puentes, do 

you see any way that we can speed up those types of rules and regulations and delays, or do you even think we should? 

Mr. PUENTES. I certainly do. Thank you, Ranking Member. I certainly do believe that we should. There is no question that we are 

having difficulty getting transportation projects built, good projects 

and otherwise, and the inflationary costs are driving up the costs 

of these projects. This is an untenable situation right now. I don’t 

think there is any doubt about that. 

The question about what is responsible for the delay I think is 

a difficult question to answer. We do know that the environmental 

regulations certainly do impose some kind of extra process in there; 

whether it is delays or not, that is a question. I think that more 

to the point is that we see that the lack of coordination, the lack 

of real comprehension of what these projects are supposed to be 

doing is also responsible for a considerable amount of delays. 

The partnership that we just talked about between the Federal, 

State, local, metropolitan governments is not clear right now, so 

who is initiating these projects, where they are coming from, what 

plan they are adhering to, all these questions in some places are 

very difficult to determine. So when these projects get built—some 

are controversial, some are not—roadblocks get thrown up and the 

project delays take a number of years. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I guess the problem we are dealing with is this: if 

a project ends up costing three times more than it should, then 

that means you can only do one project, where you could have done 

three; and it makes for more fatalities, it makes for higher taxes 

and so forth. 

I don’t have much time, so I am going to try and move on. Mr. 

Yaro, your testimony describes the current Federal highway enforcement and transportation planning process as giving States a 

blank check to build bridges. It says, ‘‘giving States a blank check 

to build bridges to nowhere and highways that enable sprawl development.’’ Do you mean by that do you favor a more top-down approach and do you think that the Federal transportation people are 

somehow more knowledgeable than the State or local transportation people? I wonder what you mean there. 

Mr. YARO. Well, I think what I am getting at there is that in fact 

we would like to see responsibility devolved from—and you are 

talking about highways, but I think it is probably across the board 

that we have these array of siloed agencies in U.S. DOT. I think 

one of the things we are learning from our investigations of the 

way that our competitors around the world are doing these things 

is that, increasingly, they are breaking down the barriers between 

the funding silos and so forth and, increasingly, they are devolving 

responsibility to regions for decision-making about projects, but instituting return on investment outcome-based measures to do 

project selection. So it eliminates the—I shouldn’t say eliminates, 

but it reduces the temptation for projects that might be showboat 

projects, as opposed to projects that might deliver real utility on 

the ground. 

Just a quick response also to your last thought about the delays 

of permitting. I think it is absolutely fundamental that we get our 

21 

arms around this one, and I think it is not just environmental regulations, I think there should be ways to streamline those regulations, to streamline environmental reviews, but it is also procurement policies, it is the red tape of dealing with Federal agencies, 

and there has to be, again, more devolution of responsibility. 

I know when we built the 1 and 9 subways lines after 9/11, we 

went from a destroyed transportation system to a functioning one 

in less than a year because FTA fast-tracked the reviews that ordinarily take two or three years, but in that case there was a real 

focus on doing that. So we know we can do it in an emergency. We 

have to treat every one of these projects as an emergency. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Okay. Thank you very much. 

Executive Sims, I was fascinated by your statement in which you 

say that 78 percent of the people in King County favored tolling, 

because just a few days ago, as I was along in Knoxville, there is 

a husband and wife team that has a very popular radio talk show 

in our area, and they were talking—the Tennessee legislature is 

considering going to tolls, and we don’t have any tolls anyplace in 

Tennessee as of yet—and they said that they thought 90 percent 

of the people were against tolls; and you have 78 percent in favor. 

Do you think that there is nationwide support for more tolling or 

do you think this is just sort of unique to your area and your people? 

Mr. SIMS. Congressman Duncan, I think that what we are finding right now is that people are moving toward variable tolling. I 

have to clarify this. If you talk about just putting tolls on like you 

are doing an ATM machine, there isn’t a lot of support; it will look 

like one more tax. If you are looking at variable tolling and you are 

looking at coupling that with what people call congestion relief improvements—whether that is transit, whether that is bridge repair—then you see that as the preferable method of financing 

those. 

So I think in our area we are pretty typical, I think, of many 

urban areas throughout the Country where people are looking at 

variable tolling as the preferable financing mechanism in lieu of 

tax increases. You can avoid a toll; you can never avoid a tax increase. When taxes are there, we are very good at collecting them, 

and we think that people want a choice. 

Mr. DUNCAN. All right, thank you. 

Ms. Molitoris, Mr. Puentes has said that the Transportation Department is doing too much funding based on consumption and it 

needs to go to newer ways of funding highway projects. Now, you 

testified that Ohio has a real interesting or unique mix of very 

large metropolitan areas and very small metropolitan areas. How 

do you go about making your funding decisions? I know you are 

new, but I know, even in the short time you have been there, you 

have studied the way the Department is operating. Are you going 

with traditional ways of funding or are you trying new innovative 

type approaches? 

Ms. MOLITORIS. Mr. Duncan, our 21st century transportation 

task force that will be announced this week is really all about the 

business of recreating the process. Right now we have a turnpike, 

which is our toll road, and we have the gas tax, and then we use 

the monies that are available to us from the Highway Trust Fund 

22 

and other FTA and so on. But I personally, Mr. Duncan, think that 

this opportunity—that is why I am so excited to be back—this opportunity in the next authorization is to really, from the bottom up, 

recreate our process. I believe we can get some nimble kind of simultaneous processes going because we are suffering in Ohio from 

this tremendous added expense of very, very long processes, where 

there is duplicative things. In fact, I went to the district deputies 

in our State and I asked them what are the big things that are 

tough, and this whole consensus building that is the process that 

we are encouraged to do, we do it and then we are questioned 

about whether we really did it well enough. 

And that is this partnership that I really am urging the Committee and the Congress and all the partners and stakeholders to 

commit to, a partnership that gets things done, a partnership that 

is about thinking how does business do it, these opportunities for 

design/build/operate/finance. There is an improvement in timing. 

We can learn to do that. This is a partnership that can happen. I 

am looking forward to presenting to the Committee the results of 

our people’s task force, because it is not the Department’s. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I know we are dealing with very difficult problems. 

I mentioned in my opening statement that two-thirds of the counties are losing population. And it is not just the counties; I read recently that Detroit has gone from 2 million population a few years 

ago to 800,000 now, and a lot of the people that are left—you mentioned Cleveland, where you said one in four don’t have access to 

an automobile. 

Ms. MOLITORIS. That’s right. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, what you are left with in those rapidly declining population areas frequently are lower income people. So, can 

you justify increasing the funding to areas that are losing population, as opposed to giving to areas like mine that are just growing 

by leaps and bounds? In fact, all the people I represent wish I could 

put up walls and just keep anybody else out; it is just getting 

amazing. 

Anyway, I don’t have—— 

Ms. MOLITORIS. Can I just make one more comment? 

Mr. DUNCAN. Yes. 

Ms. MOLITORIS. If I may. The State of Ohio is still an agriculture 

State, and we have many, many rural areas, and we are as responsible for them as we are for the Columbus-Central Ohio area that 

is growing. So our answers have to be for all the people. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I have a couple questions for Mr. Wiley and Mr. 

Kirby, but I have gone way over my time, so I will just stop now 

and come back later. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. We will certainly give you an opportunity in the 

next round. 

We would go in the order in which people appeared on our side, 

so Mrs. Napolitano would be next. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate your 

holding this hearing because my area is a metropolitan area, the 

San Angeles County, southern California; it is one of the most congested, one of the most under-funded in terms of upgrade of transportation systems. And while I have heard a great deal of information from you and I agree with most of you, tolling won’t work in 

23 

my area, I am sorry. People are used to driving cars. We have a 

love affair with cars. We need to get those individuals off the cars 

or provide some mobility, because we have one of the largest parking lots in the sky, and that is Highway 5, Santa Ana Freeway. 

What I think I am hearing from you, especially Ms. Molitoris, is 

the excitement to see something evolve in this next TEA-LU and 

be able to put all the heads together, have interagency cooperation 

to cut the red tape. If we can do it in New York, we should be able 

to do it in every other State. But it is up to the agency. If the agencies were businesses, how would you want them to function? That 

is a question I have for you. Because, in the end, we can put all 

kinds of money into all these different programs, and even if we 

put new programs together, are we getting the others enough funding to be able to operate properly, to be able to help and prioritize, 

to be able to look at the growth States and still help the rural 

areas? All of those are questions that are in my mind. 

Over 40 to 50 percent of the Nation’s goods travel through my 

whole district. I have 34 grade separations that are not being funded; 20 may be funded. That is going to cause a lot of grief in my 

communities not only for public safety, but pollution; and that is 

coming to the rest of the Country coming through my area. I have 

a great concern. 

But until we sit and be able to actually work together and be 

able to figure out—because it has to come from you and others like 

you, to tell us where the administration, where the agencies, DOT, 

all those silos that you mentioned, work together to be able to come 

up with a faster way of approving your projects and not secondguess what you, the ones that are at the bottom line, know needs 

to happen. 

Again, if you had a crystal ball, what would you have this next 

TEA-LU accomplish? 

Mr. PUENTES. Thank you. I think that if it was run like a business, clearly, we would have a business plan. There should be a 

purpose for the National Surface Transportation Program, and I 

think that it is arguable that there isn’t a clear purpose or vision 

for the program today. The program seems to be strangely adrift 

and out of touch with the needs of this Nation; not just Metro 

areas, but rural areas in general. The conversation around the 

transportation program, though, revolves almost exclusively around 

funding; the questions we have had addressed here today have 

been around funding. And I am not naive enough to think funding 

doesn’t matter, but, again, back to your question, if it was a business, the last thing you would do to a business that was failing 

would be to keep pumping more funds into it. You would need to 

restructure, you would need to reassess, and you would need to 

find a new purpose for that business, and I think that analogy 

works very well for the program today. 

Mr. YARO. I think your point about the critical role that Los Angeles and perhaps a dozen other global gateways across the Country play in the national economy, national mobility systems needs 

to be reflected in the next transportation act. It is very clear that 

if the Port of Los Angeles and the connections through your district 

aren’t working, it is going to take a bite out of the national economy, a bite out of the national logistic system, and we can’t allow 

24 

that to happen; it will have repercussions through the entire Country. 

Now, I will add that the Port of New York and the concentration 

of seaports and airports around New York, the international gateways north of Seattle and the airports and seaports in Seattle and 

Tacoma and so forth, there are about a dozen of these places that 

are competing globally that are the key to the national transportation system. And this is a place going back to what Mr. Duncan 

asked earlier, about whether there needs to be a national framework or not. I believe that there does need to be a national framework, a prioritization of projects that really represent the keys to 

the whole national transportation system in which there needs to 

be a national plan, a business plan or a national plan and a 

prioritization of those investments. 

Then we need to push responsibility down to the regions to manage those projects. The second-guessing that goes on on the part of 

the Federal agencies of what ought to be the prerogatives of the authorities that build and operate these facilities, that is what we 

have to cut out. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. I am running out of time, sir, so do you mind, 

Mr. Sims? Thank you very much. I agree with you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentlelady, as usual, for her astute 

questions and her experience. 

I would turn now to the former Chairman of the Committee, Mr. 

Young, to see if he has questions. 

Mr. YOUNG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the mentions of TEA-LU. We tried in that bill to get some things done we 

were unable to do. One was projects of national significance, and 

that was a major project of the congested areas, because I believe 

this year we will spend $100 billion or more in congestion. It was 

$78 billion in 2005. 

That is a terrible waste, and we do have to address this issue 

and I do agree with the idea of having a model on how we address 

this issue because we have so many different people playing in this 

game. We have troubles within the State, Mr. Chairman, with the 

State Department of Transportation second-guessing communities, 

which bothers me a great deal because it is in the capital and they 

do have the purse strings within the State even though the dollars 

we get, we earmark dollars and I am proud of that, but they sometimes run the earmarks if we don’t solve this problem. 

And you may think what has Alaska got to do with this. Well, 

even in my State, the least populated State in the union, we have 

tremendous congestion problems in Anchorage right now—huge— 

and it is going to get worse, and we have to do something about 

that. It is going up to 166 percent in 10 years and we recognize 

that within the community. We are trying to address it. We have 

some—you have heard about the bridges to nowhere. That was 

really a relieving a congestion problem. And I think each community should address that, bring this to the Congress and see if we 

can’t address the major bottlenecks in this great Nation of ours and 

solve these problems. 

I just have one question. We are facing a different era of time. 

In your thinking, have you put into this equation the change in the 

way we are going to move in the next 10 years? Because I believe 

25 

that is going to change. We will still have some of the things we 

have now, including these big mammoth cars, but has anyone 

thought about parking lots and highways and right-of-ways, et 

cetera, with a smaller vehicle, possibly, maybe running on different 

forms of fuel? Anybody crank that into your equations? Anybody 

want to address that? Mr. Sims, you are from Seattle; you ought 

to know. 

Mr. SIMS. Congressman Young, yes, we have. We actually went 

to 2050 and have gone backwards. So instead of planning forward, 

we decided to say here is the world in 2050, and you are going to 

have different options, so you are going to have to have—you are 

going to have alternative fuel vehicles, you are going to have electric vehicles. 

So you are still going to have people in cars in many respects. 

You are going to have to have your light rail systems, very efficient 

bus rapid transit systems; you are going to have to have even more 

buses; you are going to have to have transit-oriented development. 

You are going to have ability to move freight, because that is still 

going to be the way that we see the benefits of commerce, and you 

are going to have to have very, very efficient movement of freight 

systems particularly when they are tied to ports. 

So we think you are going to see changes more in the technology 

side, but not on the basic movement of people. You will see more 

dense areas because that will be very, very efficient. 

The one thing that I have really got to say is that, at the local 

level, we don’t sense that people—let me back up a little bit. The 

Federal agencies, I don’t think, share our urgency at wishing to 

have mobility. My wife grew up in the Philippines, and I went to 

visit where she grew up, and I always say that the Philippine economy is burning up on its roadways. Our economy is beginning to 

burn up on our roadways and the kind of need to really declare an 

emergency so that the metropolitan areas can have their mobility, 

can move the commerce, I just think it is—— 

Mr. YOUNG. I appreciate your saying that, but I have to tell you 

that is because, very frankly, the bottleneck areas have not made 

their voices heard. And if you do that—I am going to be a little political here, Mr. Chairman. I haven’t heard any of the presidential 

candidates talk about transportation congestion; solving the problem. Talk about energy, they are wasting the biggest part of this 

energy right now sitting still. I have been saying this for 10 years. 

And it is time that you start telling the public this is what has to 

be done and we should do it, and we will respond. But until that 

happens, we are going to sit here and twiddle our thumbs. This is 

the closest thing we have come to solving this problem today with 

this hearing, because no one is paying attention. You are because 

it affects you. But we ought to make this the number one issue. 

This and energy in this Country should be the number one issues 

because the two are tied together. Our economy is based on the 

ability to move product and move goods to and from, and we can’t 

do that when we are congested. So I compliment all of you for 

bringing this to the forefront. If we can get something out of this 

Committee, if any one thing, let’s make this the number one issue, 

solving this congestion problem for the good of the Country. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

26 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the former Chairman for his remarks. I too 

am disappointed at the lack of robust discussion by the presidential 

candidates, and hopefully we can engender some of that as we 

move toward the fall. Certainly we congratulate the gentleman for 

his past efforts to shine a light on this and enhance the funding, 

which, of course, although we approached that on a bipartisan 

basis, was shot down by the current Administration. 

With that, we will turn next to Ms. Matsui. 

Ms. MATSUI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very 

much for holding this hearing today. 

First of all, I would like to welcome Mike Wiley to our panel 

today. Mike has just recently been promoted to be our General 

Manager at Regional Transit. The interesting thing about Mike is 

he is homegrown and he has been in Regional Transit for 30 years, 

so he has seen all the challenges along the way and now has a 

chance to really look ahead to really kind of implement his vision. 

We are expanding and Sacramento is sort of a test case of what 

we are trying to do here, I hope, in the rest of the Country with 

a lot of light rail. We saw this 20, 30 years ago. We have a golden 

opportunity to do things right and I am looking forward to working 

with the Committee to ensure that we truly capture the benefits 

of transit. 

To that end, Mike, in your 30 years at Regional Transit, in your 

opinion, have you seen a change in the perception of transit from 

the MPO and DOT perspective? Also, how does the recent Sacramento Area Council of Governments’ recently approved MTP, the 

new transit plan for 2035, play into that perception? 

Mr. WILEY. Well, thank you very much, Congresswoman Matsui, 

for your kind remarks. There has been a tremendous change in 

how we collectively view transit within our State DOT, within our 

local MPO, and within our region. I talk to people often, individual 

citizens throughout Sacramento, and the number one complaint or 

criticism that I receive about public transit is when are you going 

to build a light rail system, a light rail line to my area? When are 

you going to get that line to the airport? When are you going to 

get south? It is not a criticism of how we operate or what we do, 

it’s would you hurry up and get it done sooner. 

We have recently adopted a new MTP that is a visionary document that is tied to our Blueprint land-use vision. Every jurisdiction in our region is going through a process of updating their local 

general plans to reflect this new 50-year land-use vision for development, and we are really talking about massive change in how we 

grow and develop. We are looking at growing and developing in a 

smart manner, not in a leapfrog typical pattern that we are used 

to. We found that, in all the analysis we have done, this new higher density, smart growth development tied to extensive expansion 

of public transit reduces total trips per household, it cuts it in half. 

People will walk more, they will bike more, they will use public 

transit. They reduce their dependency on the automobile tremendously. You talk about reducing congestion. That is a tremendous 

way to reduce congestion. We don’t have to build these massive 

freeways if we look at how we develop and grow. 

And that is what we are doing locally in Sacramento, we are 

matching our updated transit master plan with the MTP and this 

27 

new land-use vision for the greater Sacramento area. And it is not 

just within Sacramento County; it is throughout the region. 

Ms. MATSUI. And I understand it is a six-county region, too, so 

it is a whole region that we are talking about. I know that you 

have also had some success in providing transit options for students as a way of getting more people involved. Can you expand 

on the partnership between transit and higher education in Sacramento? 

Mr. WILEY. Certainly. We have a tremendous relationship with 

our local community college system, Los Rios Community College 

district, as well as the State university; we have a campus in Sacramento called California State University-Sacramento. Both of 

those institutions’ student bodies have assessed themselves, they 

voted to tax themselves, if you will, through their student body registration fees to provide access universally to all students that are 

registered students to our entire system. They pay through their 

registration fees an increased fee to provide access to 100 percent 

of the student bodies. So they have unlimited use of our system, 

both bus and rail, throughout our service area. Most recently, Los 

Rios Community College students actually passed a 10-year measure that keeps that provision in place for the next 10 years. Consequently, Los Rios Community College has updated their master 

plan such that all future campuses will be built at existing or future planned light rail stations. 

Ms. MATSUI. Thank you very much. 

And thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentlelady. 

Mrs. Schmidt? 

Mrs. SCHMIDT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. 

And thank you, panel, for coming. I am going to direct my question to Ms. Molitoris, not only because she comes from the great 

State of Ohio, but because she hit on something that I have a direct experience with. 

In your testimony—and I read it—you talked about the fact that 

we micro manage up here and sometimes drive up costs. When you 

have your panel back home, I would suggest that you look at the 

Fog Road issue in Pike County as a direct example of Federal overreach. My predecessor, Rob Portman, got the money for the Fog 

Road expansion, but it was tied up. By the time I got here, it was 

tied up with a Federal bureaucracy that would have made the cost 

twice what the original estimate was. What we did, working 

through the Ohio Department of Transportation and the county engineer in the respective counties, was to get that money into the 

hands of the State of Ohio, and the project manager assured us, because it was local, that it would be done on time and that we would 

open that on Thanksgiving, and the day after Thanksgiving we ribbon-cut and we drove that road. So it is an excellent example of 

how we can give you the money and let the State of Ohio, which 

might be a little bit more efficient because it is more local, handle 

it in the best and appropriate manner. So I would suggest that you 

use that as an example with your working group. 

Ms. MOLITORIS. Thank you, Congresswoman Schmidt. I appreciate it. I don’t know about it, but I certainly will learn about it. 

28 

But I think that there is another point to weave into this. When 

you read the policy commission report, for example, and you think 

about how do we get from where we are to where we want to be— 

and I don’t know if 108 to 110 is the right number for the kind of 

programmatic organizational structure we would have, but there is 

an issue of culture. 

It has been since Eisenhower that all of these things have developed, and I think the fine people who work at the Department of 

Transportation here in Washington, at the State levels, they can 

learn a new way, but we have to give them the opportunity to learn 

from the best. So I think it needs to be a part of the answer. 

Mrs. SCHMIDT. I couldn’t agree with you more, and I wish you 

well on your working group. 

Ms. MOLITORIS. Thank you so much. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. We will now go to Ms. Richardson. 

Ms. RICHARDSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I would 

like to thank the Chairman and also Mr. Duncan for conducting 

this hearing. I, like my friend here from Southern California, Representative Grace Napolitano, can attest to the fact that there is 

no greater concern that we have from an infrastructure perspective 

than the congestion and the traffic delays that we experience in 

Los Angeles County. As stated earlier, the Texas A&M study concluded that Los Angeles, in fact, has the Nation’s longest delays for 

commuters, with an average of 56 hours a year on the highway. So 

that is the framework of my questions that I have for you. 

Number one, Mr. Sims, would you mind providing this Committee a copy of that study that you did? I thought you called it 

Race Inequity or something like that. If you could provide this 

Committee a copy. 

And I would like to build upon the comments of what our Chairman said, as well as Ms. Napolitano, regarding your variable tolling idea. In your statement you say that it would be less burdensome to low-income residents, and that is on page 6 of 7 of your 

comments. I would like to also further drive home the point of I 

really don’t understand the connection, and let me tell you why. In 

my district, I would say that lower income constituents have to 

typically drive more and drive a further distance, as well as more 

often, several times in a day. A lower income constituent in my 

area might be a gardener, might be a plumber, might be someone 

who has several accounts of where they are going to, versus someone who is driving from their home to downtown Los Angeles; and 

I think a lower income individual has less flexibility in terms of the 

hours that they work. 

So when you talk about variable pricing, it might be one thing 

to say, oh, give us options, but usually a person of a lower income 

doesn’t have the type of job where they can go in and tell their supervisor, okay, I want to work from 10 to 6 instead of 9 to 5. Usually, that person is lucky to have a job, period, let alone to determine some sort of flexibility in hours that they might greater take 

advantage of your presentation of variable tolling. So I just wanted 

to hear more from you of why you really think that this is beneficial to lower income constituents. 

And I would further say an example in Los Angeles that we had 

in California, if someone purchased a Prius, a hybrid Toyota vehiVerDate Aug 31 2005 18:23 Jun 26, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\41822 JASON
29 

cle, or any—I think it was-hybrid and had the decals on their car, 

they could then, even if they were a single driver, due to the less 

emissions that they were doing, could go through the car pool 

lanes. Well, I can tell you there were not low-income individuals 

who were buying Priuses and Toyota Camrys, et cetera, because 

those cars cost more on the front end. So things where your analogy is saying would be beneficial for lower income constituents, 

what I have heard from my colleagues is completely the opposite. 

So I wanted to push a little further to get your thoughts on that 

point. 

Mr. SIMS. Congresswoman, I will get that report to you on race 

and poverty in King County, which was a very sobering report for 

us. But what we found is that variable tolling actually reduces 

what we call traffic volume normally about 15 to 20 percent, and 

the reason why that was so critical for us, because time was very, 

very important in the lives of low-income people. So if you look at 

the existing system we have today, you basically tell poor people 

that you have a limited job range. Variable tolling, because it increases the efficiency of a roadway and reduces traffic, actually extends that job range. So in our county, for instance, if you are lowincome or poor, your access to the higher paying opportunities or 

more moderate paying opportunities on the east side of our county 

are far more limited, so our issue is are we going to continue to 

have a system that right now confines mobility and limits the ability of low-income people to access to jobs, or are we going to actually strike out and change that; and we believe that variable tolling, because it creates efficiencies on the roadways and reduces 

traffic volume and, therefore, increases speed, provides an opportunity for people to access jobs that are right now denied them. 

If you look at the sub-prime failures that have occurred, you find 

a lot of low-income people moving to the edge cities because they 

were assuming that moving out to the edge they would have greater access to those jobs that previously had been foreclosed to them 

by the existing system of transportation in this Country. 

We had a program where we had a call center on the east side; 

it paid very, very well. We were bussing people there out of a very 

poor area through our Metro transit system. The program worked 

for 60 days because we couldn’t deal with one issue: the traffic volume was so significant that we couldn’t get people back to child 

care by 6:00, which was key, and their employer was not providing 

it. So, to us, variable tolling lessens traffic and, therefore, extends 

the reach of employment opportunities and housing opportunities 

that are right now foreclosed to poor people. 

Ms. RICHARDSON. Okay. 

Mr. Chairman, my time has now expired. I would just suggest 

that we get a very balanced, at some point, have a discussion about 

this whole congestion pricing idea. 

I hear what you are saying, sir, but on the flip side what I would 

say is even if the congestion on the highway is then thereby reduced because other people are taking advantage of this variable 

tolling, that lower income person then still has to pay that higher 

rate to travel on that particular highway, and that is the point of 

question that we have here. And that is our concern, is ensuring 

that everyone has the ability to, in an equitable fashion, travel. 

30 

And if a person has to pay more, then that is where the issue of 

constituents’ access really comes in. But I look forward to further 

discussions. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I think the gentlelady’s questions are very thoughtful, very well put, and I share a number of concerns she has raised. 

I am intrigued by Mr. Sims’ response in the Seattle case. But this 

certainly does merit more scrutiny. The Administration has been 

very cavalier about this and we did, prior to your election, delve 

into this issue a bit, but I believe it warrants more focus and discussion and understanding for the full implications, so I thank you 

for that particular line of questioning. 

We will now go to Mr. Baird. 

Mr. BAIRD. I thank the Chair. 

I want to particularly welcome County Executive Sims, who is 

not only a leader on transportation issues, but health care as well. 

It is good to see you again, Ron. In your testimony, Mr. Sims, you 

raise the issue of a holistic approach, and others have talked about 

this. And you alluded in one of your comments to a sense that the 

Federal Government doesn’t have the sense of urgency about the 

congestion problem. I have that sense of urgency, but I will tell you 

that, as a lawmaker, the experience tends to be this: counties, municipalities expand either in their industry or residential zones, 

and then come to us post-hoc and say can you give us money to 

relieve the congestion that our development has created; that there 

is not in fact a holistic effort in general where people say, look, if 

this many people are going to move here, we are going to need X 

amount of dollars to transport them and they will end up flowing 

into the broader down-river transportation streams. 

So I would ask all the panelists, how do we get there? I have 

tried unsuccessfully to initiate this in my county and it was one of 

these games where everybody was pointing fingers and saying, 

well, so and so is taking care of it, so and so is taking care of it, 

et cetera But I will tell you, at a time when we are being beaten 

up for earmarks on the one hand and asked for earmarks at every 

turn on the other hand—and the earmarks are usually behind the 

wave, not in front of the wave—I would welcome any thoughts 

about how we can do that and how that can be incorporated in our 

next transportation bill. 

And I will start with Executive Sims, but after that I would welcome any other comments. 

Mr. SIMS. If I had my dreams, I would—the Federal Government 

has a series of siloed pots of money, and it would be so nice for that 

money to be given without all those silos, more in terms of a block 

grant, allowing the region to figure out how it wishes to distribute 

and how to invest, and in what order to do that. Right now, sometimes we believe that even within those silos, they don’t talk to 

each other, so we wish that they did. 

But our experience has been that technology money stays on this 

side and they have their formulas, and then you have the roads 

money, then you have your various pots of transit money. I would 

just love to see it given in one single block grant, without all of the 

strings, without all of the conditions, allowing us to say these are 

the investments we are going to make for our mobility. 

31 

Mr. BAIRD. There is merit to that, but how would that address 

the other issue I talked about, in terms of sprawl and management? Mr. Yaro? 

Mr. YARO. Well, here is a choice. In much the same way that the 

Congress created a modest incentive for States to adopt a national 

drinking age or a national seatbelt law, why not say that 1 percent, 

or something like that, of Federal transportation dollars will be 

added or withheld from regions that—let’s say added for regions 

that have coordinated land-use and development strategies on the 

one hand and transportation strategies on the other? And we know 

from the experience with seatbelt laws and the national drinking 

age that a very modest incentive could in fact achieve that desired 

result. 

Mr. BAIRD. Or perhaps grant the flexibility that Mr. Sims has alluded to as the reward for this for. In other words, maybe not adding extra money, but saying we will give you more flexibility if you 

incorporate this. 

Mr. YARO. That would work as well. 

Mr. WILEY. Mr. Baird, let me give you a specific example that 

we have implemented in Sacramento. In 2004, we renewed our 

local sales tax for transportation improvements. However, tied to 

that is a requirement that all jurisdictions, in order to participate 

in receipt of those funds, must have a specific developer fee in 

place to help fund those improvements as well. If they don’t have 

the developer fee in place that help mitigate the impacts that they 

are creating to the system, they don’t get access to that local sales 

tax at all. So there is a tremendous incentive for the jurisdictions 

and every jurisdiction is stepping up to the plate to renew their developer fees specifically for those transportation improvements. 

Mr. BAIRD. How did you pull that off? Because any mention of 

development fees back home raises an enormous firestorm politically. 

Mr. WILEY. Well, I guess locally we know that, as you indicated, 

growth and new development has a tremendous impact on the existing system, and that we need to make improvements to the existing system not just to extend to those areas that might be in 

new growth areas, but also to make improvements to the existing 

system to expand the existing system to handle that additional 

growth. So it is something that we have built up over the years in 

terms of increasing the knowledge and awareness of the impacts 

that that development has. So we have as a requirement that they 

must in fact have developer fees in place, so they are paying their 

fair share. They are not paying 100 percent of the cost of the improvements, but they are paying their fair share because we know 

that existing development and existing users take advantage of 

that enhanced system as well. 

Mr. SIMS. If I may, Congressman Baird, talk about what Mr. 

Yaro was talking about. In King County, we have actually combined our transportation system as a part of our comprehensive 

strategies on land use, on health, on carbon reductions. So you end 

up having to constrain your growth. So you are going to have people move, but our idea is to reduce sprawl. 

I was asked to speak to the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia two weeks 

ago, and I pointed out to them the greatest threat to public health 

32 

care in the United States today is sprawl and our transportation 

systems, so what we try to do is calibrate them based upon public 

health issues as well as carbon reduction issues. 

Mr. BAIRD. Thank you. 

Mr. Kirby? 

Mr. KIRBY. In the Washington region we have already a very extensive Metrorail system, the best in the Country, I would say, a 

very extensive commuter rail system. One of our main priorities of 

the MPO process is to encourage the right kind of development 

around the stations in that system, and we have a planning incentive program, Transportation Land-Use Connections (TLC), where 

we provide technical assistance to support local planners in getting 

the right kind of development. You don’t want a Home Depot next 

to a big Metrorail station, and a lot of the action is really working 

at the local level, local planners and landowners and so forth. And 

if we could follow up that planning assistance with some funding 

for projects, which sometimes are not that expensive—street lighting, sidewalk support and so forth—we could incentivize those 

kinds of projects. We are looking out to 2030 and we see a lot of 

our rail stations with relatively little development forecast around 

them, rail stations that are there now. So that is really a major priority for us. 

Mr. BAIRD. Thank you. 

Mr. PUENTES. Thank you, Mr. Baird. I am pleased to go last. 

Mr. BAIRD. Very briefly, yes. Go ahead. 

Mr. PUENTES. Just to reinforce the point that what you have 

heard here are excellent examples of the innovation that is happening in metropolitan areas all across the Country. As we move 

to authorization to the next bill, we need to recognize that there 

are places where the Federal Government should lead some of 

these broad, national goals and there are a lot of places, where you 

just heard, where we should get out of the way, quite frankly, and 

let these metropolitan areas innovate and provide some kind of 

grants incentives so they can do these right things—break down 

the modal silos, break down the funding silos that prevent these 

things from happening—but allow a lot of these innovations you 

have heard here to flourish. There is so much going on across the 

Country to deal with some of these questions that we should let 

metropolitan areas do them. 

Mr. BAIRD. I thank the Chair for any indulgence. 

I thank the witnesses. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Mr. Boozman? 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just very briefly. 

I think you, Mr. Sims, were you the one that was talking about 

the tolling? Okay. When you did the tolling, was that based on new 

roads or tolling old roads, or both? New construction versus putting 

tolls on roads that were already there? Did you break that down? 

Mr. SIMS. Congressman Boozman, it was the replacement of a 

major bridge, the I-520 bridge, so it was tolling on an existing 

bridge now for purposes of being able to generate the capacity to 

replace it in the future, along with the use of gas tax. It also was 

a public transportation enhancement as well. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. I would be surprised. I really shared the same apprehension that Mr. Duncan had, as far as Arkansas doesn’t do 

33 

tolling now, and we are looking at possibly tolling perhaps the first 

area in the State. But I would think that—again, I am a person 

that feels like giving you all the ability to toll new roads is a good 

thing. I have a lot of concern about tolling roads that are already 

in use. 

Mr. Puentes, you mentioned about a strategic transportation 

plan. How would you prioritize projects? Somebody mentioned outcome-based things. Do you have any other ideas as to how you 

prioritize what projects the Federal Government should be involved 

in? 

Mr. PUENTES. Thank you. I think that there should be some 

prioritization based spatially. We know that these metropolitan 

areas, metropolitan engines really are the driver force to the Nation’s economic, environmental, and social health today, and we 

have ignored them for too long. So I think there needs to be some 

kind of reorientation that recognizes how profound these places are 

for the national economy. So it matters that the Port of LA-Long 

Beach, it matters to Arkansas that these places are functioning. It 

matters to the Nation broadly that some of these gateways and 

hubs are functioning. So I think there needs to be a very frank, rigorous, and clear debate about which places matter disproportionately, quite frankly, to the American economy. We should invest in 

those places. 

When it comes to projects, I think that it is the way that you 

phrased the question. It is not about the projects themselves, but 

about the outcomes, and what kind of performance we want and 

what we want the system to look like. So backing into it from a 

project focus or framework I think is the wrong approach. I think 

we need to figure out what we want the system to do and then figure out which projects are going to get us there. This is the whole 

idea about being modally agnostic and just choosing the right mix 

of projects and modes that will get us to these certain objectives. 

At this point, I am not agnostic, but what those outcomes are, 

but I would like to see that debate happen here in these halls, in 

the leadership of this Committee, about what the national priorities should be and how we structure the program to get to those 

priorities. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Very good. I agree. 

I think most of the people on the Committee on Transportation 

push hard to get as much funding as we can in the system, and 

I think that most Members of Congress are very friendly towards 

transportation spending on our infrastructure. The reality is, 

though, hopefully we can get some more money, but I was visiting 

with Dan Flowers, our head of transportation in Arkansas, and he 

was saying that in the last 15 years he has lost 65 percent of his 

purchasing power. So even if we get significant funding back into 

the stream, it is going to be difficult just to keep up. So I would 

really encourage you all—and you have given us some good ideas 

today, and I hope you will continue to do that, because the funding 

issue, regardless of our commitment, is just a major problem. So, 

again, I appreciate your testimony, it was very helpful. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. Arcuri. 

34 

Mr. ARCURI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for conducting this hearing, and thank you to the panelists for being here. 

I have a concern that I would like to bring up, and I hear it 

sometimes throughout my district, which is rural, and I would call 

it—I am not sure if it is an urban legend. I don’t want to call it 

an urban legend; I will call it a rural legend because it is really 

out in the rural areas more than anything else—and that is this: 

that as the tolls on the New York State thruway continue to rise, 

that more and more truckers and more and more drivers use local 

roads, and as they use local roads they put more and more stress 

on the local roads. And my concern is that as we raise tolls and 

as we have this congestion pricing, are we then going to have—is 

this going to be counterproductive, because are we going to have 

really just people using local roads and abusing roads that aren’t 

intended for the kind of traffic that will result in it? I just would 

like your thoughts on that. Yes, sir. 

Mr. KIRBY. We just completed a study looking at impacts around 

the Washington region and potential tolling, and one of the major 

lessons was that this is very location-specific, the impacts, and you 

have to look at not only the people that are going to be affected 

by the tolls, but the ones you mentioned that will be affected by 

diverted traffic. And rather than focus on the efficiency arguments, 

we looked at a report which I would commend to everyone interested in congestion pricing. It was written in 1964. It is called The 

Theory of Congestion Pricing: The Tolled, The Untolled, and the 

Tolled-Off. 

And the entire article is devoted to tracking through the distributional effects of tolling projects, and it deals with spillover traffic 

on other roadways and it deals with alternatives to those that are 

affected, and it is a lot more complicated, cost-benefit analysis than 

is often presented when you really dig into it. And their conclusion 

is these sorts of projects have to be looked at in the context of the 

community fabric, the local conditions, all of those things. This is 

not a kind of a theoretical silver bullet that you can apply everywhere. 

And we don’t have any examples in the United States right now 

of putting a toll on an existing roadway, and there is a good reason 

for that: it is pretty hard to do. Very few places around the world 

have done it just because of these reasons; the impacts are so complex that it is very hard to go around and compensate all the losers, potential losers. Very difficult to do. 

Mr. ARCURI. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. 

And that is an interesting study that we will have to—I am not 

familiar with that—follow up on. 

Mr. Brown. 

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, members 

of the panel. I apologize for not being here for all of your testimony, 

but this is a major concern of mine and I am grateful for our Chairman Oberstar for creating a real vision for the new authorization 

of some $500 billion, and I think that probably might not adequately meet all the needs, but it certainly will address more of the 

concerns than we have had in any other authorization bill. 

35 

My question is—or my general observation is, and I will just 

open it up to all the members of the panel for whatever conversation you might have—not since 1954 have we had a vision for expanding the interstate system. Since then, there has been a great 

population shift from the northeast to the south and to the coast. 

It seems everybody wants to live within 50 miles of the ocean, or 

at least come visit, which puts a tremendous burden on the infrastructure of those regions. With that said, do you agree with me 

we should take a new look at our interstate system? I believe we 

should create new corridors to address this new shift of population 

and find funding to make it happen. 

Mr. PUENTES. Thank you, Mr. Brown. I think that one of the 

prime purposes of the Federal program in its next iteration should 

be the preservation and the maintenance of this tremendous asset 

that we have built. That was the result, frankly, as we pointed out, 

of general consensus 50 years ago. We had a vision, we had a purpose. The interstates were not particularly controversial, as I understand. We went out, we have done it, we built it, and we have 

what we have today. I think that whatever the iteration is of the 

next bill, the next law, preservation and maintenance of the existing system should be a fundamental role for the Federal Government. So there are certain areas where only the Federal Government should lead, and that is one area in particular. 

I think that your point is well taken, that this Country is going 

to grow by 120 million people very quickly. I don’t think that this 

Nation is equipped to handle the next 20 million, no less 120 million. So understanding where those growth patterns are occurring—and we know the south and the southwest in particular are 

places where we are going to need to accommodate a lot of growth 

in this Country and other places, quite frankly, are not. So how the 

interstate system plays out in that larger growth scheme is something we need to have a very frank and rigorous discussion about. 

Mr. YARO. I would just add that I think we are going to need new 

capacity in all of these systems. We will need new capacity on the 

interstate system. But one of the things we have learned, I think, 

in a number of places is that we can’t simply add capacity and 

build our way out of this problem. My favorite example is the Katy 

Freeway. What are we up to, 16 lanes on the Katy Freeway? And 

it is still tied up in knots. So, in fact, we are going to have some 

more creative solutions. It is going to have to be a mix of modes. 

And I think the point you are hearing from everybody today is 

that within the metropolitan regions it is not Federal bureaucrats 

who are going to make those decisions, it needs to be people who 

are on the ground, in fact, who can coordinate the land-use and development patterns and the transportation investment so that we 

really do give people choice and we really do create the capacity 

that is needed in all of these systems. 

Mr. BROWN. And that is exactly my sentiment. I think that we 

just can’t continue to keep adding lanes; I think we have to find 

alternative routes and even alternative means of transportation, to 

be quite honest. Thank you. 

I still have another minute. Anybody else have any other comments? Okay. 

36 

Mr. YARO. I have one last thought, and that is that in New York 

we have added a million residents in New York over the last 20 

years. We are expecting another million over the next 20 years. We 

looked at alternatives of getting people in and around the city and 

from the north we looked at two alternatives, and one of them was 

a transit alternative: 2nd Avenue subway that will carry over a 

million passengers a day when it is completed; now under construction. 

The alternative was 26 new lanes of limited access highway. And 

I think everybody looked at that and said we are probably not 

going to squeeze 26 new lanes into the lovely island of Manhattan. 

So transit can provide that capacity and, again, there are plenty of 

places where there needs to be new roadway capacity as well. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I think Mr. Kirby had also a comment. 

Mr. KIRBY. If I could make one brief comment. In the Washington region, must of the congestion on the interstate highway 

system is due to local development and local traffic. The Capital 

Beltway in Northern Virginia, Tysons Corner area is a very good 

example, and I remember vividly at one meeting a local planner 

saying the problem with the Capital Beltway is there is too much 

interstate traffic on it, and I think that is a part of the issue. And 

you cannot address the interstate congestion problem in metropolitan areas without dealing with the land development problem, and 

there is a tension there between local decision-making in State and 

Federal decision-making, which really has to be addressed. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

I turn now to the Chairman of the Full Committee, Mr. Oberstar. 

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

Duncan, thank you for your steadfast participation in these hearings. And for our colleagues, both sides of the aisle, we have had 

very thoughtful observations today. Mr. Boozman, I appreciated 

your observations. Mr. Brown, I concur with your thoughts about 

new thinking, new development, new ideas. That is the purpose of 

these hearings, all through last year and all through the balance 

of this year, as the Subcommittee reviews existing law, SAFETEALU, and reviews the implications of and the recommendations of 

the National Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission. 

We have a very distinguished panel here today. I particularly 

welcome Ms. Molitoris, whom I knew when she was the head of the 

Federal Railroad Administration and imposed a culture of safety on 

Federal Railroad Administration and the railroads, a culture that 

we are now trying to inculcate into the FAA. 

And the subject of today’s hearing brings together these distinguished panelists on the challenges of transportation in metropolitan areas. The Commission’s report set forth some facts that we 

know, but just restating it was important: that 60 percent of the 

value of all goods and services in the United States are generated 

in urban areas; 85 percent of the Nation’s market share of critical 

transportation infrastructure exists in Metro areas; and it is these 

metropolitan areas that face the most complex and vexing transportation challenges—aging infrastructure, the need for investment 

to update and upgrade our portfolio of facilities built decades and 

decades ago, more congestion, environmental compliance requireVerDate Aug 31 2005 18:23 Jun 26, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\41822 JASON
37 

ments, air quality needs, planning for transportation projects in a 

coordinated way. 

And as was just said, the diverse needs, and even into signage. 

Do you put the signs up to accommodate the long distance travelers 

using the interstate system to get through your local area, to his 

or her ultimate destination, or do you sign for local residents who 

really know where they are going but they need just a little better 

signage? Those are big challenges. 

And we haven’t talked much, although I have been in and out 

of the hearing today, but I read the testimony ahead of time, about 

land-use planning and housing needs and economic development 

initiatives that have to be a part of the overall transportation 

plans. 

Now, Mr. Sims I have known as Executive of King County and 

the work that he has done there, he pays attention. Each of you 

has had to deal with these issues in varying degrees. That is where 

we have to go in this next transportation legislation. 

Now, I want to make some observations and read from a very intriguing text: ‘‘For more than half a century, the context in which 

public transportation operated was increasing suburbanization 

called sprawl, driven in part by government policies and in part by 

human desire for space, privacy, safety, and more and more people 

moved out of cities and towns into suburbs. There they lived in single-family homes on lots large enough for the children to play on. 

Low-density population. They shopped in centers miles from their 

homes; schools well beyond walking distance. They worked even 

further away. And most Americans live that way today. 

As conservatives, we do not join the left in condemning suburbs. 

We understand why people want to live in them; they are good 

places to have children, raise a family. Most American families will 

want to continue to live in suburbs. But over the past decades, two 

important counter-trends have developed, trends that provide a 

new context for bringing back streetcars. 

Quoting the mayor of Milwaukee, John Norquist, said, for years 

I advocated in my community a light rail project and people said, 

no way, what do we want to do with that. But then when I said 

let’s bring back the streetcar, everybody said, I am all for streetcars. Change the wording, change the name, change the image and 

you change people’s attitudes. 

The most important development and trend of current times—in 

this report that I am reading from—is the recovery and restoration 

of city centers. Why? Because even when people live in suburbs, 

they want a physical center to their lives that offers more than a 

shopping center can. That is what metropolitan areas offer. Those 

are the opportunities.’’ 

This document I am reading from is entitled A Conservative Vision of Tomorrow’s Urban Transportation by Paul Weyrich of the 

Free Congress Foundation. A new urban view, a refreshing look at 

America’s past that we need to bring back to America’s present and 

future. 

So, as we go through this hearing and to the thoughts that each 

of you has presented, that our Committee Members have reflected 

on, we have to look at these alternative transportation initiatives 

in addition to roadways as, as Mr. Brown said just a moment ago 

38 

and as was cited from the witness table, are you going to build 12 

lanes of freeway or one lane of rail? 

Just a week or so ago I was in Hawaii for a conference on China, 

but took the opportunity to visit with the mayor of Honolulu and 

our Committee colleague, Ms. Hirono, on Honolulu’s light rail—it 

is called a streetcar—project. Forty-two miles in an area that is 

growing at—well, expects to add 50 percent more population than 

they have today. They have a narrow corridor. They have mountain 

on one side and ocean on the other, and nowhere to go. You can’t 

add more lane miles. Trip times have increased 20 to 30 minutes 

in the last 10 years. They have the highest parking fees of any 

metropolitan area in the Country. That is pretty hard to do when 

Minneapolis-St. Paul has probably the first or second highest. People in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro area are spending $2 billion 

a year just to park their cars. Why not keep the car out of the center city and use the light rail? Well, they finally have a light rail, 

20 years later than they should have. 

But here is Honolulu planning a 20-foot elevated light rail that 

will avoid grade crossings, that will accelerate movement of people 

throughout this whole urban corridor. They can’t build more lane 

miles of roadway, as the panel has suggested. They have taken 

upon themselves the initiative to tax themselves, provide a dedicated revenue stream out into the future for building the facility 

and assuring its operating costs, and what they need is the partnership with the Federal Government. 

What has to happen in metropolitan areas is increased intergovernmental relationship—city, counties, State government, Federal 

Government—all working together and then developing your plan, 

your vision for integrated transportation systems that must include 

light rail, streetcars, commuter rail, whatever you want to call it, 

in order to move the greatest number of people most efficiently, the 

least impact on quality of life and, in fact, benefitting air quality. 

I think the vision set forth in the Bring Back the Streetcars document from the Free Congress Foundation is an instructive road 

map for the future and an incentive for us to move vigorously 

ahead. 

The challenge that I think we face is what should be the degree 

of pass-through of Federal funds to metropolitan planning organizations and what should be the degree of dependence upon the 

State to use the funds and allocate, and what are the conditions 

precedent to a pass-through. You are all practitioners of the art. I 

want your thoughts about this. 

Mr. Sims, I am going to start with you, since everyone else is reluctant. They are all sitting back praying. Come on. 

Mr. SIMS. For metropolitan areas, if we are going to look at a 

fully integrated transportation system, the MPOs and our interface 

with the State would be important. For instance, Puget Sound differs from Spokane, where I grew up, which is a smaller community, 

or differs from Clark County. So the ability to have an integrated 

approach that is locally bought off and implemented, free of the 

Federal silos, would be very, very good for us. 

And you can condition that; you can say, these have to reflect reduction of carbon emissions; these have to reflect land-use decisions; they have to reflect health decisions. But it would be nice if 

39 

it was, it is not that we are asking the Federal Government to 

write a check. The Federal Government can set the terms. 

But the vision should be something, I believe, that is constructed 

locally, because it is going to be that local implementation and enthusiasm. We are growth management accounting. Ninety-eight 

percent of all our growth goes into the cities. But the city of Seattle’s central core, the city of Bellevue’s central are growing substantially, they are the two fastest-growing areas of the entire 

county. 

So to us, being able to direct density it important, and to be able 

to have transportation systems that make living in a dense area efficient is critical. But also the ability to achieve our goals of 80 percent reductions and to reduce what we are really worried about 

now, which is the disparity issues and access to employment issues 

as well as what we call the significant ramifications on public 

health. We could marry all of those. But I would love to have our 

local vision and what we call the good handshake and buy-in from 

the Federal Government would be great. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, and it is good to talk about silos in the Federal Government’s transportation structure, but there are State 

silos as well. 

Mr. SIMS. Oh, yes. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. There are loads of silos. There are divisions and 

divisiveness and overlapping jurisdictions and I will just cite from 

the Twin City metropolitan area. We have the metropolitan council 

that has a certain role to play. We have the city of Minneapolis, 

we have the city of St. Paul, we have the State department of 

transportation. When it came to developing our first, finally, light 

rail project, Hiawatha, there was big squabbling over who was 

going to get the funds, who would be the operating agency, who 

would issue the contracts, who would oversee the contracts. 

Do you have those issues resolved in Washington? 

Mr. SIMS. No, Congressman. In King County, as a matter of fact, 

there is an effort right now by a group of people to actually create 

that governance authority, to finally marry the land use applications along with transportation governance. I think we’ve been able 

to work through it, through a series of agreements. And the agreements depend upon personalities. I think as long as we are in a 

cooperative mode, it works. 

But there isn’t kind of the structural way of doing it. We have 

an excellent MPO that has laid out a vision that everybody has 

agreed to. Our issue now is how to fund that vision and whether 

they should be the group that receives the money to process it for 

the rest of the region. This group that has emerged and said, yes, 

why don’t we merge the transportation funding authority with our 

local MPO and they will direct the funding on a regional basis. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Since the development MPOs over 20 plus years 

ago, and their growth in skill, in professionalism and staffing and 

local resources, there has been an increasing demand to have a 

pass-through of Federal funds, bypass the State department of 

transportation, send the money directly. But yet we find divergent 

conditions all across the Country. Now, U.S. Department of Transportation is exploiting those conditions locally and driving a policy 

40 

that is at odds with existing law, in fact, on the cost-effectiveness 

index for transit projects. 

Let me ask others to comment. Ms. Molitoris. 

Mr. MOLITORIS. Mr. Oberstar, it is very interesting that you raise 

this point, for two reasons. First of all, in 1910, the State of Ohio 

had an inter-urban system. It went 90 miles an hour and it went 

to every town of 5,000 or more. So talk about what is old is new. 

And the mayor of Columbus just announced a streetcar project to 

be ready for 2012 bicentennial. 

Right here is Chester Jourdan. I mentioned him while you were 

out of the room, sir. He is the President of our Central Ohio MPO, 

MORPSI [phonetically]. And one of the things I brought up is, it 

is incumbent upon us to create the partnerships that work. That 

is what is occurring. We are going to have our 21st century transportation task force. Chester is a steering committee member. And 

on his own dime, Chester is creating a State-wide coalition of his 

peers to help us promote the resolutions and recommendations 

from that. 

To me, that is real partnership and I believe it will succeed every 

time. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Kirby? 

Mr. KIRBY. Congressman Oberstar, I think one of things we try 

to do is to create these coalitions. Because the reality of major 

projects is that there are a lot of different players who have to be 

participants. The local governments control the land use decisions. 

State DOT may control the highway decision. The regional transit 

agency controls the transit decision. There’s also the citizens and 

interest groups who have an important role to play. 

But if the common interest and vision is there, which I think you 

have heard from a number of panelists today, these visions have 

been developed at the metropolitan area. You can build these coalitions and agreements. They are very customized, case by case, in 

each area. But if, as we have in the metropolitan planning program, formula funding with a set of requirements that we accomplish, but not money packaged in all kinds of different pots, we can 

work through those issues likely. If we had implementation money 

of that character, where we were given performance standards and 

goals, then we can work the details locally. And the planning program, we have a lot of flexibility on how to use our money. But we 

don’t have the flexibility to ignore air quality conformity, or congestion or the safety issues that are in the planning regulations. We 

are monitored by the Federal Government, by our citizens. We 

have to address them. But the emphasis varies from one area to 

another. Baltimore is very focused on its port. We don’t have a port 

in the Washington area. So they use their resources differently. 

I think it is a very good model that can be built upon. 

Mr. YARO. Chairman Oberstar, I would like to first congratulate 

you on that opening statement. I hope that the final legislation 

next year reflects that progressive outlook. It is really what we 

need, I think, as a Nation. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Believe me, it will. 

Mr. YARO. We are confident that you will pull it off. The future 

of the Country, I think, rests in part on our ability to do that. 

41 

One of the things that is happening, and I have been teaching 

regional planning, I have been a regional planner for 40 years now, 

and I really do believe that regional planning and these metropolitan planning organizations are coming of age across the Country. 

But there are groups, and not all of them, but a number of them 

are really achieving a level of maturity, credibility, professionalism 

and so forth, political support, that I think bears investing in. I 

think there are ways that the Federal Government can incentivize 

the strengthening of those committees. 

In a former life, I worked with Mike Dukakis in Massachusetts, 

and we created the Cape Cod Commission. I remember when we 

started this thing, the chief elected officials for the advisory regional planning agency wouldn’t show up at a meeting of the Cape 

Cod Commission, and you would get all three members of the planning board, lowest form of municipal life. And then Mike Dukakis 

said, we are going to put some teeth into this thing. And the decisions of the commissioner would be binding on municipalities. 

All of a sudden, 15 chief elected officials started showing up at 

meetings. They started taking this thing seriously. I think some 

modest incentives from the Federal Government can in fact 

incentivize that growth, that maturity and so forth. 

Then finally, I really do believe that the responsibility for coordinating the land use and development and the transportation investments has to happen at the metropolitan level. I think the 

kinds of partnerships that have been mentioned here today happen 

at that level, and they can also coordinate up to State governments 

where the State DOTs will always have responsibility for managing 

highway systems and so forth. 

So I think there is a way that this Committee, in the next bill, 

the next piece of legislation, can in fact promote the maturity and 

the success of these metropolitan planning efforts. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. Mr. Puentes. 

Mr. PUENTES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At the risk of being redundant, I would like to thank you both for your leadership and 

for your comments on the need for a better partnership between 

the Federal Government, the States and the metropolitan areas. I 

think a clear articulation of roles that recognizes the primacy of 

metropolitan areas, but also the differences in this broad Country 

are critically necessary. I think that would help get us to issues 

like environmental streamlining, which we talked about, project delivery, all these things would come out of a very clear articulation 

of what these roles are and a better partnership between the Federal Government, the metros and the States. 

And in that regard, I think there are clear areas where the Federal Government should lead, on interstates, intermodal freight, 

inter-metropolitan area passenger movement. But then there are 

some ares where we should kind of flip the pyramid and empower 

States and metropolitan areas to do many more things, that we 

should take the experiment that began in 1991 and carry it much 

further. I think that only haltingly recognized the primacy of metros. It dealt them a very weak institutional hand in terms of the 

institutional MPOs, really didn’t empower them to fulfill the vision 

that was laid out in 1991. 

42 

So to your point about pass-throughs, you could call it different 

things. But I think we do need to increase the amount of money 

that is sub-allocated to the metropolitan areas and to the MPOs. 

We need to give them more ability to make decisions based on 

these issues that are so critical to metropolitan areas. 

But it is not just about money for these places. There are certain 

areas where we need some kind of Federal guidance in terms of 

pricing, as we have heard here today. We need to level the modal 

playing field between highways and transit, so they are not operating on an un-level playing field with different requirements, different regulations for one mode and different regulations for another. 

Then this whole issue of sustainability grants to enable metropolitan areas to create this visions like we have seen in Washington and Seattle and Sacramento, all down the line here, they 

are critical areas that metropolitan areas need this kind of Federal 

support in order to do their own thing and to have these bottomup visions. 

But all that money should be tied to something. There should be 

a purpose for the Federal program, and we need to optimize the, 

as it is, almost $300 billion program, and there probably will always be more at some point. So we need to commit to a real evidence-based program that is tied to performance measures and outcome orientation. I think looking at metropolitan areas as the lens 

to do that will enable us to achieve broad national visions. 

Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Wiley? 

Mr. WILEY. Chairman Oberstar, thank you so much for your comments. They were right on target. And I have to share with the remaining Members of the Committee as well as the panel that we 

take very good care of Mr. Oberstar’s son and daughter-in-law and 

children in Sacramento. They use our system frequently. And we 

are very pleased to be helping to raise his grandchildren. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. OBERSTAR. You are, indeed. 

Mr. WILEY. I think we have a model in Sacramento, and I have 

shared that earlier, that we can demonstrate to the remainder of 

the Country, frankly, in terms of how we have allocated the decision-making to our local MPO for the allocation of transportation 

dollars, both Federal flexible transportation dollars as well as State 

flexible transportation dollars. We have established criteria that 

are tied to smart planning, blueprint, smart growth principles that 

in order to receive those transportation dollars, you have to have 

projects that are completely consistent with that new, emerging vision. 

Also in California, we have modified the allocation of State 

funds, such that the real decision-making for State funding is occurring with the MPO and not at the State level. Our California 

transportation commission, which is responsible for State-wide 

transportation planning, must accept entirely our local transportation improvement program or reject it entirely. They cannot pick 

out or cherry-pick individual projects. They must accept or reject 

the entire program. Our program must be completely consistent 

43 

with our metropolitan transportation plan in order for it to go forward. 

So I think what we have done is we have tied all those together, 

including smart growth land use planning with transit, and 

prioritized the allocation of those dollars to those projects to support that vision. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much, Mr. Wiley, and thanks to 

each of the panelists and to our colleagues for their forbearance on 

going a little longer on this matter. 

California is, I think, the only State in its transportation commission that combines housing, land use in the overall agency. And 

that is a good model for the rest of the Country. Mr. Chairman, I 

think we are writing right here a chapter for the next transportation bill. And it is one that needs to be refined. This issue of the 

MPO, the relationship to local, other local government units, to the 

State department of transportation and the role of both Federal 

Highway Administration, Federal Transit Administration, this critical thrust, to shape a grant revision. 

As you think through how that should be structured, that relationship should be structured in the next legislation, include also 

non-motorized transportation. Include also rails to trails and scenic 

byways, which each of you do in sub-allocations. Make that a major 

part of your overall thinking. We want to do this right. And I think 

as Mr. Puentes said, we have gotten away from the I of ISTEA, the 

intermodalism of ISTEA. That is coming back in the next transportation bill. That is going to be a centerpiece. And under Mr. 

DeFazio’s leadership, the hearings we have been holding, he has 

been hearing and Mr. Duncan as well, we are shaping the future 

of transportation. 

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

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Brown? 

Mr. BROWN OF SOUTH CAROLINA. I was just going to say, it 

seems like to me we found that person with a vision. I thank you 

all for helping me identify him. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I just have one quick last question, we don’t need 

to go through another entire round. Mr. Yaro, you touched in your 

testimony on the failure of the cordon pricing for New York. I guess 

my question would be, I am somewhat familiar with the plan they 

had proposed. And it has tremendous merit, far beyond this particular aspect of it. Is it your understanding, the same as mine, 

that basically since this Administration really doesn’t care about 

congestion, but what they really care about is pushing a neo-conservative principle, that New York is going to be deprived of any 

funds because of the failure to adopt the cordon pricing? Is that 

correct, under this program? 

Mr. YARO. That is my understanding, yes. I would say this also, 

that at least at RPA, we have been at this for about 15 years, promoting a congestion pricing system in New York. We think there 

is a place for it. It has nothing to do with a neo-con agenda or anything else, it is just that we think we have a problem of congestion, 

we need to manage it. We have a problem of financing our transit 

system and expanding it, and there is a connection between the 

two. 

44 

Mr. DEFAZIO. But you have been working on a local solution and 

not blackmail. What I am pointing to is your plan includes far 

more than congestion pricing, yes, congestion pricing was in favor 

of some elements of the plan. But the point is, if they were truly 

concerned with congestion pricing, I think they would say, oh, gee, 

well, New York being the largest urban area and most congested, 

or second most congested, I don’t know if you are first or second 

in terms of congestion. 

Mr. YARO. I think our friends from L.A. get the blue ribbon on 

this one. 

Yes, it turned out that it wasn’t a sufficiently large incentive to 

get the legislative action that we were hoping for. We will be back, 

this is not going away. There will be a renewed attempt to manage 

congestion in New York and to finance our transit system. I think 

what everyone does understand and what came out of this debate 

is just how important those investments are to the future of New 

York and I would argue to the future of the Country. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

I thank all of the participants for your fine testimony. It definitely will help us with building blocks as we move toward reauthorization. 

With that, the Committee is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:35 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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