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35–930 PDF 2007

CONGESTION AND MOBILITY

(110–48)

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 7, 2007

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

(

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

BOB FILNER, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

NICK LAMPSON, Texas 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

VACANCY 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

(II)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A ARCURI, New York 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

BOB FILNER, California 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

VACANCY 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota 

(Ex Officio) 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

(Ex Officio) 

(III)

(V)

CONTENTS Page

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

TESTIMONY 

Catlin, Peggy, Colorado Department of Transportation, Deputy Executive Director ..................................................................................................................... 28

Lomax, Timothy J., Research Engineer, Texas Transportation Institute, Mobility Analysis Program, College Station, Texas ............................................... 28

Shane, Hon. Jeffrey N., Under Secretary for Policy, U.S. Department Of 

Transportation, accompanied by the Honorable J. Richard Capka, Administrator, Federal Highway Administration and the Honorable James S. Simpson, Administrator, Federal Transit Administration ........................................ 4

Stone, Craig, Deputy Administrator, Washington State Department of Transportation, Urban Corridors .................................................................................. 28

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Carney, Hon. Christopher P., of Pennsylvania ..................................................... 40

Carson, Hon. Julia, of Indiana ............................................................................... 42

Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., of Maryland ............................................................... 43

Walz, Hon. Timothy J., of Minnesota ..................................................................... 49

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Catlin, Peggy ............................................................................................................ 50

Lomax, Timothy J. ................................................................................................... 68

Shane, Jeffrey N. ..................................................................................................... 82

Stone, Craig J. ......................................................................................................... 101

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Catlin, Peggy, Colorado Department of Transportation, Deputy Executive Director, presentation slides ................................................................................... 53

Lomax, Timothy J., Research Engineer, Texas Transportation Institute, Mobility Analysis Program, College Station, Texas, response to questions from 

Rep. Carson .......................................................................................................... 80

Shane, Hon. Jeffrey N., Under Secretary for Policy, U.S. Department Of 

Transportation:

Responses to questions from Chairman DeFazio .............................................. 88

Responses to questions from Rep. Carson .......................................................... 92

Responses to questions from Rep. Napolitano ................................................... 97

Stone, Craig, Deputy Administrator, Washington State Department of Transportation, Urban Corridors, ‘‘Low Cost, High Benefit Congestion Relief from 

Better Highway Management,’’ Washington State Department of Transportation ..................................................................................................................... 106

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(1)

HEARING ON CONGESTION AND MOBILITY 

Thursday, June 7, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT, 

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. BAIRD. Good morning. I want to welcome you here to this 

hearing of the Transportation Committee and thank our distinguished guests and my dear friend and colleague, the Ranking 

Member, Mr. Duncan. 

Mr. DeFazio, who is the Chair of this Subcommittee, will join us 

in a little while. I am Congressman Brian Baird and I have the 

privilege of filling in until he gets here. 

As you know, today’s hearing is on congestion, and as we all 

know, anybody who drives at all knows, that many of the regions 

of the Nation have really what you could call a congestion crisis. 

The surface transportation system is a national network that 

serves the mobility needs of the entire Country, but localized congestion has effects that ripple across the entire Nation. Addressing 

this situation will require a national response and strong Federal 

leadership. 

The most recent report by the Texas Transportation Institute 

found that congestion continues to grow in urban areas of every 

size. Congestion places a significant cost on the Nation in terms of 

wasted time and wasted fuels. In 2003, overall traffic delays totaled 3.7 billion hours; an extra 2.3 billion gallons of fuel was consumed due to congestion; and the total cost was estimated at $63.1 

billion, up from $12.5 billion in 1982. 

There is no silver bullet to solving this congestion crisis, but to 

begin reversing congestion, all levels of government must implement a range of strategies and policies. Solving the problem will 

require a multi-pronged approach involving expanding roadway 

and transit capacity, but—and I particularly want to emphasize 

this—solving this problem will require more than just additional 

capacity. We need to provide more travel options; we must improve 

the operational efficiency of transportation networks; there must be 

better demand management; employ new technology; and better 

align land use development and transportation planning. All must 

be part of the solution to this crisis. 

I personally believe we need particularly to encourage people to 

try to live closer to where they work and where their kids go to 

2

school, because a lot of folks think they are saving money on 

houses far outside of town, but when you factor in the cost of driving in and the time commitment, the savings is actually illusory. 

Congestion is a critical issue that must be addressed by this 

Committee as we begin our efforts to reauthorize Federal surface 

transportation programs which will expire in 2009—seems like we 

just did them, Jim—but we must look at the structural policy 

needs of our surface system before our congestion crisis worsens. 

I thank our witnesses for being here today. We look forward to 

the hearing. 

I recognize Mr. Duncan for opening remarks and, I understand, 

a presentation of some sort. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I know 

you will very ably fill the chair until Chairman DeFazio gets here, 

but I want to thank you and Chairman DeFazio for holding this 

important hearing on congestion and mobility. As you have very 

ably pointed out, this is an issue of great importance to not only 

large cities, but also our fast-growing communities around the 

Country. 

In my own hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, Knox County has 

a population of about 410,000. Even more than that, though, is 

that we have two interstates that meet in Knoxville and a third 

that comes to within 37 miles outside of the city, so we have just 

many millions coming through there, both going east and west and 

north and south. It has also become one of the most popular places 

in the Country to move to, so as our region continues to grow very 

rapidly, as it is, I am sure that our congestion problems will also 

continue to grow. 

Across the Country, in communities large and small, congestion 

is choking our economy and degrading our quality of life. Congestion costs motorists. There are all sorts of different estimates, but 

the most usual estimates you see are 60 or 65 or 70 billion a year 

in wasted time and fuel costs, and this means that it costs the average person at least around $800 a year. 

In addition, congestion has an impact on the cost of moving 

freight. Freight choke points at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long 

Beach, and domestic freight hubs like Chicago, tie up goods and 

raw materials that add to the final cost of just about every product 

we buy. These freight choke points and highway bottlenecks are no 

longer confined to our Nation’s older large cities; over the past 10 

years, transportation experts have seen dramatic growth in bottlenecks in fast-growing cities such as Charlotte, Phoenix, Denver, 

and Dallas. 

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

transportation system. We need to come up with a comprehensive 

approach to solving this problem that includes additional highway 

capacity and better access to public transportation. I think the 

Chairman has also pointed out that we need to work on programs 

to encourage people to move back into some of our inner cities, and 

we see that happening in a lot of cities around the Country. 

The success of the U.S. economy is dependent, as we all know, 

on a good transportation network that can move people and goods 

around the Country efficiently and reliably. The congestion crisis 

3

in the U.S. is so bad that the mainstream media carries stories on 

this issue on a regular basis. I saw the piece that we are about to 

show two months ago on NBC and I think it does a pretty good job 

of framing this problem, so we will show that. I think it lasts a 

minute and 50 seconds. 

Hopefully show it. 

Mr. BAIRD. Look, the traffic is dead-stop. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, can we get some sound? 

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Duncan, I think this actually shows how we can 

solve the congestion problem: cars are able to overlap one another. 

[Video played.] 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, at any rate, thank you. Thank you very 

much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BAIRD. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. I think we all appreciate the 

message of that, even though it was a little bit hard to hear. Most 

of us probably live with this on a regular basis ourselves. When 

you are just driving around in this town at almost any time you 

experience it. 

The general procedure of this particular Subcommittee is to try 

to limit opening comments so we can hear from our witnesses, but 

if someone is dying to say something important, I would be happy 

to recognize them; otherwise, we will hear from our witnesses. 

Mr. Coble? 

Mr. COBLE. Mr. Chairman, I will be very brief. You and the 

Ranking Member have already mentioned it, but I think vehicular 

congestion negatively impacts productivity, negatively impacts our 

quality of life, and I thank you for staging this hearing. I hate to 

be the eternal pessimist, but I am afraid that congestion is going 

to get worse before it gets better, but hopefully our panel may 

bring us through this maze. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BAIRD. Thank you, Mr. Coble. I spoke to the three panelists. 

Actually, we have two panels today. They promised that by the end 

of today they will have all the problems solved and we will be able 

to move forward judiciously to implement them. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. BAIRD. We are privileged today to have two panels. I will 

read the names of all of them and then we will hear from our first 

panel. Our first panel is comprised of the Honorable Jeffrey N. 

Shane, U.S. Department of Transportation Under Secretary for Policy; accompanied by the Honorable J. Richard Capka, Federal 

Highway Administrator. Good to see you again, Mr. Capka. And 

the Honorable James S. Simpson, Federal Transit Administration. 

Our second panel will be Dr. Timothy J. Lomax of the Texas 

Transportation Institute; Ms. Peggy Catlin, Colorado Department 

of Transportation, Deputy Executive Director; and Mr. Craig Stone 

from my home State of Washington, the Department of Transportation Deputy Administrator for Urban Corridors out of Seattle. 

So we have got outstanding people who will, I promise you, solve 

this problem, and all we will have to do is follow their sound wisdom and implement the legislation, and everyone will drive freely 

ever after. 

More seriously, though, I look forward to great testimony on a 

challenging topic. Appreciate the witnesses being here. 

4

Mr. Shane, we will start with you and then proceed in order from 

right to left. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JEFFREY N. SHANE, UNDER 

SECRETARY FOR POLICY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, ACCOMPANIED BY: THE HONORABLE J. RICHARD 

CAPKA, ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION AND THE HONORABLE JAMES S. SIMPSON, ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION 

Mr. SHANE. In the interest of time, Mr. Chairman, what we decided we would do is I’d present the opening statement, and then 

you may have access to all three of us. 

Thanks again, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Duncan, 

Members of the Subcommittee. We are very grateful for the opportunity to come before you today and testify about this important 

subject, congestion and mobility issues generally. I can’t tell you 

how delighted I am to be accompanied by our Federal Highway Administrator, Rick Capka, and our Federal Transit Administrator, 

Jim Simpson. 

Last May, the Department of Transportation announced a new 

effort to respond to the growing crisis of congestion in our transportation system, the Secretary’s National Strategy to Reduce Congestion on America’s Transportation Network, which we often refer to 

as the Congestion Initiative. 

The President underscored the importance of this effort in this 

year’s State of the Union policy initiatives in which he directed 

DOT to work with the States and the cities to utilize new approaches to reduce traffic congestion, save fuel, shorten commute 

times. This year’s Economic Report of the President further amplified the importance of the issue with an entire chapter—the first 

time in the history of the republic—dedicated to transportation and 

energy. 

Protecting the public interest requires policymakers and lawmakers to consider seriously the fundamental causes of the congestion crisis and to enact policy reforms that respond directly to those 

causes. The Congestion Initiative reflects the Bush Administration’s commitment to keeping our Nation moving. 

Let me talk for a moment about the real costs of congestion. 

Transportation system congestion is an enormous drag on our economic prosperity and way of life, as the opening statements we 

have heard already this morning have made clear. Transportation 

delay and unreliability costs America, we think, an estimated $200 

billion a year and have begun to chip away at one of our Nation’s 

most important economic assets: an efficient transportation system 

that allows businesses freedom of location and the ability to quickly 

reach customers across the Nation and around the world. 

Congestion also imposes substantial costs on our Nation’s families. We don’t often think about this sufficiently, Mr. Chairman. 

Congestion forces parents to miss events with their children, limits 

the time that friends and families can spend together, and reduces 

opportunities for civic participation. While difficult to quantify, 

these social costs of traffic congestion are enormous and they are 

growing. 

5

America isn’t alone in this experience. I represented Secretary 

Peters at an important meeting of transport ministers from around 

the world last week in Sofia, Bulgaria. The entire two-day meeting 

was devoted to the single topic of transportation congestion. A 

great many countries, in addition to the United States, are taking 

aggressive steps to combat this problem, which they all believe has 

the potential to compromise economic growth significantly. 

The Department’s Congestion Initiative is founded on two key 

premises: first, we do not have to accept growing transportation 

congestion as a permanent feature of our national life; second, 

chronic congestion is the result of poor policy choices, a failure to 

distinguish between solutions that are effective and those that are 

not. The Congestion Initiative includes a broad range of activities, 

not all of which I will discuss today. In the short time that I have, 

I would like to focus on the Department’s Urban Partnership program, which is arguably the most critical component of the entire 

Initiative. 

Within that program, the Department plans to sign Urban Partnership Agreements with up to 5 metropolitan areas that agree to 

implement comprehensive congestion-reducing strategies that include congestion pricing, enhanced transit services, and increased 

emphasis on telecommuting and flex scheduling, as well as the deployment of advanced technology. In exchange for their policy commitments, the Department will support its urban partners with financial resources, using current budget authority, as well as regulatory flexibility and expertise. 

The Department received applications from 27 metropolitan 

areas, from which we have just short-listed 9 preliminary urban 

partners. We will soon enter into negotiations with all of them regarding the specifics of their proposals, following which we will select up to 5 final partners. This targeting of discretionary grant 

funding in support of urban partners will allow the Department to 

strategically and intermodally focus its scarce discretionary dollars 

toward national priority, the national priority of congestion reduction. 

In closing, let me just commend the Subcommittee for holding today’s hearing. We all share enormous responsibility for ensuring 

that future generations can experience the freedom of an efficient 

and productive transportation system. It is important for Americans to understand that congestion is not an insurmountable problem, but that solutions will require a smarter approach to capacity 

expansion, as well as improving the productivity of existing transportation assets. 

Thanks again for inviting us, and Administrators Capka, Simpson, and I all look forward to your questions. 

Mr. BAIRD. Good. I appreciate that, Mr. Administrator. Thank 

you for your comments. We want to commend the Administration 

for recognizing the importance of the congestion issue. I have a few 

questions and then I will yield to my friend, Mr. Duncan. 

One of the questions I have as I look at our whole transportation 

strategy, which sometimes I think it is over-complimentary to refer 

to it as a strategy. No comment on you folks per se, but all of us, 

we seem to approach things post-hoc and piecemeal. By post-hoc I 

mean we wait until the development or the new construction or 

6

whatever has come into place and then our constituents come and 

say, gosh, development has exceeded capacity, we need you to 

scramble post-hoc to get the money; and even as we are chasing the 

money to meet the already excessive demand, the new development 

is going on, which will chase us on the next transportation version. 

The second thing I see is for me a question of fungibility. In 

other words, if the real issue is getting freight and people to and 

from their workplace, our transportation dollars tend to be dedicated towards just putting more asphalt or bridges or whatever the 

remedy is. 

I sometimes wonder, if we spent that money differently, could we 

actually address the problem more efficiently, and I will share with 

you what one right thinker suggested to me. He said he if we spent 

money on improving our urban schools, we could substantially reduce congestion in the outlying areas, and the reason was, apparently, if you ask people, why did you move from the inner city to 

the suburban area, oftentimes the answer is schools; and the 

premise being if you had a better school in the inner city, people 

wouldn’t have to live so far away to get to the schools. So they 

move outside so their kids can go to better schools, and then they 

drive a long way into work. 

So could you address those two issues, the issue of sort we are 

always swinging late, to use a baseball metaphor, but, secondly, 

fungibility? Could we spend our dollars or our resources in a more 

effective way than just laying down asphalt, putting up bridges? 

Mr. SHANE. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. I don’t think any 

of us disagree that we could be doing things smarter. The idea of 

comprehensive planning, looking at all sectors that affect the transportation problems, the transportation equation, it is something 

you really can’t quarrel with. I think, within the Department of 

Transportation, we are necessarily slaves to the appropriations 

process and to the way in which our programs are defined. 

We have limited resources within the Department of Transportation and they are specifically focused on infrastructure. The Congestion Initiative is an attempt, within the scope of what is available to the Transportation Department to do, to try to use that 

money in a smarter way, and that is why the urban partnerships 

that we are engendering right now are being graded on their ability to look across the board at smart solutions; not just more asphalt, as you say, but the use of technology, the use of flex scheduling for our workforce, a variety of approaches which go beyond 

the traditional transportation solutions and address the problem of 

congestion in a more holistic and societal way. But there are real 

limitations in that within, as you know, the transportation programs, so perhaps more intergovernmental interagency coordination with respect to transportation is something we should be focused on to a greater extent. 

Mr. BAIRD. I appreciate that and understand well the limitations. 

I guess I would just invite you folks to feel free to share with us—

we always refer to thinking outside the box; I think I would say 

think outside the freeway a little bit—if you feel there are options 

to be more efficient. The goal is to get goods and services and people to and from where they need to be in the most efficient way, 

and there may be a lot of ways to do that. 

7

And if there are better ways to do it but your hands are tied, I 

would appreciate the feedback about we look at some of those alternatives, not only for the issue of congestion, but congestions directly related to consumption of our fossil fuels, which affects our 

foreign policy, which affects our environment, etc., etc. So anything 

we can do to not just focus on what our own stovepipe authorization or appropriation is, but on what is the most effective way to 

actually achieve the goal would be most welcome. 

With that, I would yield five minutes to my friend and colleague, 

Mr. Duncan, the Ranking Member. 

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

First of all, I want to commend all three of you because, while 

we talk about these problems here, it is pretty clear, as I travel to 

other countries and read about what is going on in other countries, 

that we have by far the best transportation system in the world; 

it is just that you always need to be trying to improve and get better, and we do have some of these problems that we definitely need 

some work on. 

Mr. Shane, in the aviation sector they always say that roughly 

70 percent of the delays are caused by weather. What percentage 

of the delays on the highways are caused by weather, accidents, 

work zones, things that are at least partially or totally out of your 

control? 

Mr. SHANE. Thanks for the question. It is an excellent question. 

We think that what we characterize as non-recurrent delays attributable to accidents, incidents, weather, the like, represent something like 60 percent of the delays that we are dealing with today. 

So, therefore, we actually are focused to a great extent on trying 

to address some of those. Better incident management produce 

enormous dividends. 

Federal Highway Administration has a really forward-looking 

program on weather as it affects our surface transportation system, 

something that is not recognized enough. We are doing that in 

close concert with NOAA and really delivering tremendous 

amounts of better information to communities around the Country 

so that they can manage their resources better. But this is a very 

important part of the congestion problem, no doubt. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I understand that this urban partnership that you 

are talking about you have narrowed down from, now, I think, 27 

cities to 9 cities, and you are going to narrow it down to 5 more, 

is that correct? 

Mr. SHANE. That is correct, yes, sir. 

Mr. DUNCAN. And the plan is that you are going to spend approximately $1.1 billion on that? That is the figure I have. I just 

figured how that money was going to be spent. How is it primarily 

going to be spent, is that going to be up more to the Department 

or is that going to be up more to the local cities, and are they going 

to submit proposals on what things they want to try, or how is that 

going to work? 

Mr. SHANE. Yes, Congressman Duncan. The applications came in 

pursuant to our request for applications. We will end up with, we 

hope, 5 final urban partners. The funds that are dispersed to them 

will be dispersed pursuant to current statutory authority, pursuant 

to the programs that are currently available to us, targeted to iniVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:10 Mar 31, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\35930.TXT HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
8

tiatives which fit within the framework established by statute by 

emphasizing congestion relief through a variety of different tools. 

I think the $1.1 billion—I will ask Rick Capka to talk to this a 

little bit, as well as Administrator Simpson—that is money that 

would be available to the States in any event. We are simply attempting, again, to use these programs in a smarter way. The 

President’s budget for fiscal year 2008 includes—or, I am sorry, is 

it 2007?—2008, forgive me, includes $175 million of found money, 

we think, money that had been earmarked for other purposes but 

not spent, such that we actually can increase the amount of money 

that would otherwise have been available for this purpose. But the 

rest of the money is money that would have been received by the 

States in any event, but, Administrator Capka, perhaps you want 

to supplement that answer. 

Mr. CAPKA. Thank you, sir. 

Ranking Member Duncan, that is a great observation, a great 

question, and as Mr. Shane said, the Urban Partnership Agreement aspect to the Congestion Initiative is right there at the center. In addition to the funds that Mr. Shane talked about, we have 

discretionary funds in the Federal highway. With the 2007 appropriations process, we were given discretion that we did not have before, so it is another $300 million that we have to work with within 

Federal highways. 

Of course, as Mr. Shane said, those dollars will first meet the 

statutory requirement, as they have to do, and will support the 

programs under which those programs were authorized and appropriated, but we will apply those to wherever they can fit best within these urban partnerships as another criteria that we would include in the process there. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Simpson? 

Mr. SIMPSON. Yes. I guess traditionally, in the past, the DOT 

was pretty much stovepipe. Highways did their thing; transit did 

their thing. We have got this slogan: one DOT. So, strategically, together, we are looking at where we can best—highway and transit 

and other modes—come together to have a synergistic relationship 

with our stakeholders, and a lot of that is from the implementation 

of SAFETEA-LU. 

SAFETEA-LU said to us very early, with the MPOs and planning, we are not just going to look at building another highway; 

what is the problem in the corridor and is it best served with transit or is it best served with highway. Also, the flex funding that we 

have, the CMAC funding that allows funds to be flex and the STIP 

funding over to transit. So we are working as a unified, cohesive 

one DOT in order to get this done within the statute. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, I want to give these others a chance to ask 

some questions, but let me just ask all three of you what is the initiative or what do you see for the near future that you are the most 

optimistic about? What proposals are out there, a proposal that you 

have seen that you think is going to make the most improvement 

in relieving some of this congestion, increasing mobility? What are 

you the most hopeful about? 

Mr. SHANE. I will take a crack at it and then we will ask our——

Mr. DUNCAN. What is the best idea that you have seen recently? 

9

Mr. SHANE. To my mind—and I am not sure we all have the 

same answer, but my answer is pricing strategies are probably the 

most important near-term fix we can deploy. With the advent of 

electronic tolling, which really reduces—and not just by virtue of 

not having to stop at a tollbooth makes a big difference, but being 

able to calibrate price and keeping with demand, really keying the 

cost of using the facility to the amount of congestion that is on the 

facility. 

Not just in the United States, but around the world, this is probably the most important advance, I would say, in transportation 

planning that we have seen. Not without controversy, to be sure—

we are all aware of that—but we see wherever this pricing strategy 

has been used as a new tool for congestion management, in addition, of course, to raising revenue, the public embraces it, notwithstanding the fact that we know all of the mousetraps that a pricing 

strategy may pose to segments of the community. Nevertheless, we 

see broad support for pricing strategies in those communities which 

have actually adopted them because of the results that they deliver. 

So that would be my first answer, but, Administrator Simpson, 

perhaps you have an answer. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Congressman, some project that I am really familiar with from my hometown in New York City, just for a moment, 

back in 1985 I ran a trucking company and I would send out about 

100 workers a day and maybe 15 to 20 trucks from Staten Island, 

New York, which, in the most recent U.S. News and World Report 

is the number one community in the Country with gridlock. So that 

is where my corporate headquarters was. 

We would pay these 100 workers on an hourly basis, and from 

my depot it was 15 miles to the center of Manhattan on one interstate, Interstate 278, which, by the way, has not expanded since 

the early 1960s. It would take our drivers 45 minutes, and with 

traffic at the time, at the most, an hour each way, from depot to 

job site—let’s call it the Empire State Building—and back to the 

depot. 

Three years ago and today it is taking over two hours each way. 

So these high-paid workers at a fully loaded cost of $25 to $30 an 

hour, with a $100,000 truck, you can do the math. They are spending four hours in the truck, totally unproductive, for eight hours 

work. So that is a 50 percent waste in productivity. These are real 

dollars. 

Now, New York has been very bold, so they—let me first start 

by saying the Department has been going all over the Country—

this is not a static thing, this is a dynamic thing. The Department 

has been going all over the Country talking about these solutions 

like this urban partnership. New York is really bold. What they are 

proposing now, which is going to take some legislation, but almost 

everybody is on board, to have an access fee, similar to London, 

south of 86th Street to Lower Manhattan to free up maybe 5 or 10 

percent of the traffic so that the goods and services. 

And by the way, those trucks that are traveling to Manhattan 

every day, people on Express Buses, which is a misnomer, stuck in 

the same traffic two hours each way, so the Express Buses are not 

the express buses. We have this limited capacity. So New York has 

10

got this bold initiative, which includes a pricing initiative. There 

will be a transit component and maybe a highway component to it. 

So we are looking to see how we can take our resources—our financial resources, our technological resources—and help New York 

with that to break this gridlock. And the beauty of this program 

is whatever we invest in now, Mayor Bloomberg said that this congestion pricing will throw off about $300 million a year to finance 

such things as a $6 billion or $7 billion 2nd Avenue subway, more 

Express Bus service, and all those things so the commuters and everybody else can get to work in a lot less time. That is the real 

problem, and that problem plays itself out, maybe not to that magnitude, but it plays itself out in probably 50 to 60 cities around the 

Country day in and day out. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you. 

Administrator Capka? 

Mr. CAPKA. Sir, that was a great question you asked, and I think 

one of the things that excites me about the Congestion Initiative 

is not just one piece that makes progress for us, and I would like 

to kind of take an example. I think you have heard the pricing 

piece, but there are a lot of efficiencies and innovation, and the program itself is designed to stimulate innovation; not prescribe steps 

that need to be taken, but really reach out and tap the creativity 

that is there. 

In our Highways for Life program—you had asked a question 

about non-recurring congestion and the impact, and Mr. Shane 

mentioned it takes up about 60 percent of the congestion. Our 

Highways for Life program reaches out and looks for new construction techniques to minimize the work zone exposure time; get 

things in and out very quickly and have them last longer. 

You have probably seen images of bridges being floated down, 

fully complete, on a barge, raised and put into position overnight 

so that the driving public did not have to go through the inconvenience and congestion associated with reconstruction onsite. These 

are examples that are occurring across the Nation right now, and 

we are trying to, rather than have them the ad hoc examples of excellence, to make them mainstream, and the Congestion Initiative 

is focusing on that side of the equation as well. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you very much. Very interesting answers. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you. 

Mr. BAIRD. The gentleman from California, Mr. McNerney, is recognized for five minutes. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was definitely intrigued by some of the discussion so far. In fact, the Chairman’s 

comment about schools being better funded in the urban areas 

might actually have some impact. I have also noticed that in our 

region school buses aren’t funded, so a lot of parents are dropping 

their kids off, and that causes a lot of early morning and late afternoon congestion. 

But in terms of Federal actions, you are talking about advanced 

planning being important, regional transportation authorities, 

things like flex schedules and telecommuting. How can we, at the 

Federal level, help encourage those kinds of behaviors and regional 

11

transportation authorities to do the kind of work that is needed for 

future planning in congested areas? 

Mr. SHANE. Thanks. We think the answer is to create incentives 

through programs like the urban partnership program, in other 

words, provide a reason why local planning organizations and State 

transportation departments need to think more aggressively about 

how to implement teleworking, for example, or encourage teleworking among businesses throughout the region. 

The Urban Partnership Agreements program is designed by rewarding innovative applications to stimulate that sort of thinking, 

and we think that it is in fact already doing that. I am not suggesting there isn’t an awful lot of creativity already there, but 

strong Federal leadership, the use of the bully pulpit and the use 

of our programs, to the extent that they make it possible, to encourage some of this innovation are probably the ways to go. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Well, in the Bay Area, which is my home area, 

we had an incident lately where a crash took down one of the highways, and the Caltrans had that replaced within about a month, 

and, boy, I would like to see some way that the Federal Government could encourage that sort of aggressive and efficient repair or 

planning that could get things done. 

You also mentioned Bulgaria, which was interesting, because in 

Eastern Europe I know they don’t have as many cars as we do, but 

they are already experiencing congestion? Is that because their infrastructure is less capable than ours, or what is the scenario going 

on over there? 

Mr. SHANE. So many countries in Eastern Europe, particularly 

those that have recently joined the European Union, are experiencing unprecedented economic growth and, predictably, that is 

producing more real personal income, more vehicles on the roads, 

just as is the case in developed economies like ours. That increase 

in vehicular use and traffic is far outstripping the pace at which 

they are able to increase their infrastructure. 

But the meeting was in Bulgaria not because of a unique congestion problem there, but because it just happened to be the venue 

for a global meeting. We had ministers of transport from around 

the world basically telling exactly the same story; not just in their 

urban areas, but across all segments of their societies. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. I have one other comment. You were talking 

about congestion pricing. That sounds a little bit like a tax. How 

does that work? You said that it is acceptable to the population. 

How do they react to that sort of thing? Does it cause more problems by pricing? How does it work? 

Mr. SHANE. Well, it can work in a variety of different ways. 

There are cities in other countries where they have established 

cordoned pricing, something that New York is beginning to think 

about now. Administrator Simpson was talking about Mayor 

Bloomberg’s thinking on this front. You put a charge in place that 

you get charged if you want to drive your car into the inner city 

everyday, and that charge is at a sufficient level, maybe what 

economists would call a market clearing price, that it actually does 

drive an awful lot of traffic out of cars, personal vehicles, and onto 

public transportation. And if you can just reduce the vehicular use 

12

by even 5 to 10 percent, you make a tremendous amount of difference in the flow of traffic. 

We experience this in Washington every August, when we have 

a number of us go on vacation. Well, the actual reduction in vehicular use during August in Washington is probably not more than 

5 or 10 percent, but it is a different world during that month just 

because of that small reduction. So cordon pricing is one approach 

to it. 

But just variable tolls on roadways used for commuting purposes 

area a way of ensuring that a lot of discretionary traffic, traffic 

that wouldn’t have to be there during rush hour, chooses a different time of day. That is the whole idea. I mean, congestion pricing is precisely what it is, it is meant to reduce the peak load on 

our assets such that they have a much longer and more efficient 

life. 

With electronic tolling, of course, it is very easy to vary the level 

of the toll during the day, and we have seen a lot of successful examples of that, particularly in California. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Well, I understand in ancient Rome they didn’t 

let certain vehicles on the road during the day; they had to use the 

roads at night. So maybe that is sort of an approach that would 

be useful too. 

Mr. SHANE. I think we are doing that in many places. Modern 

Rome, Administrator Simpson said, is still doing that. 

But there is no question but that rules of that kind can make a 

tremendous amount of difference consistent with, of course, the 

need for people and businesses to use those roads. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BAIRD. Thank you. 

Mr. Coble. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Good to have you all with us this morning, gentlemen. 

Mr. Capka, let me ask you this question. The primary focus of 

the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program seems to be improving air quality, as opposed to relieving congestion. But would 

not relieving congestion inevitably result in air quality improvement? 

Mr. CAPKA. Sir, that is an accurate observation. In fact, the 

CMAC program that you referred to does focus on air quality. In 

fact, the application of the program is designed to work in areas 

where the air quality has not reached standard. But the C in the 

CMAC program is for congestion mitigation, and in the program, 

as it has worked over, oh, a number of years, 73 percent of the 

projects—and these are State discretionary projects—focus or at 

least have an impact on congestion. So there is a direct application 

of congestion mitigation associated with the program. 

I will say that it is a State administered program and the States 

set up the priorities for it. For our Federal Congestion Initiative, 

we don’t have the discretion to work those dollars as effectively as 

some of the other discretionary programs we do have. 

Mr. COBLE. I thank you. Not unlike most every district, probably, 

congestion is a growing issue. In my district there are two major 

interstates, I-85 and I-40, that are vital corridors. Furthermore, 

there is a third project, I-73/74, which has work progressing, which 

13

will add another thoroughfare to hopefully reduce growing demand. 

I also believe it is important that we continue to promote mass 

transit—as I suspect you all do—as a way to reduce congestion and 

offer commuters an alternative. 

My question is this. In light of these efforts, how do you all balance funding to add additional capacity on existing infrastructure, 

on the one hand, as opposed to promoting alternatives to reduce 

congestion? 

Mr. CAPKA. Sir, we have encouraged States and local planners to 

take a holistic view of transportation requirements, and as was 

suggested earlier, early in the planning process is where these 

kinds of balancing decisions are taken. As Mr. Simpson mentioned 

earlier, we are trying to set the example with our Congestion Initiative to show how all modes of transportation can come together 

and seek a balance in terms of how we move freight or how we 

move people from point A to point B. So a major foundation piece 

in the Congestion Initiative is to ensure that we are looking across 

all modes of transportation. 

Mr. SIMPSON. If I could add on, Congressman. 

Mr. COBLE. Sure. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Secretary Peters just had an executive one-day 

planning conference to come up with 21st century solutions to our 

problems today, and one of the questions was how do we increase 

capacity with existing infrastructure, because we don’t have a 

blank check. So she challenged everybody in their mode to go back 

and to turn research upside down and do all those other things. 

On the transit side, we are doing a lot and it has been an ongoing thing. A perfect example is rather than have a new—let’s say 

you need more capacity on the Metro. Rather than putting in a new 

line, you elongate the stations so that they could accommodate 

more cars. 

Secondly, technology has really done a lot for us not only in rail, 

but also in bus. But if you look on the rail side, with the signaling 

technology today, you can run trains closer together so you can get 

more throughput in the same fashion. 

Those are just two examples. So we have been hammering away 

at that in all the modes on transit and we have been working with 

the stakeholders, and trying to squeeze more capacity out of existing infrastructure is the number one priority at the Department. 

Mr. COBLE. I thank you. 

Mr. Shane, do you want to add anything to that? 

Mr. SHANE. No, sir. 

Mr. COBLE. All right. Thank you. 

Yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BAIRD. I thank the gentleman. 

Elijah? 

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

Secretary Shane, can you give us an update on the state of the 

Highway Trust Fund? 

Mr. SHANE. I would like to defer to our Federal Highway Administrator, who is in charge of writing the checks out of the Highway 

Trust Fund and probably can give you a much more relevant answer. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. That is fine. 

14

Mr. CAPKA. Congressman Cummings, that is one of the major 

topics we have going on between the Administration and the Committee here, is the status of the Trust Fund. As you know, during 

SAFETEA-LU, in order to reach the $286.4 billion size of the bill, 

we had to spend down the balance in the Trust Fund, so we consciously took a look at the Trust Fund and decided that at the end 

of 2009 we would not have an extra dollar in the Trust Fund. 

Because we are spending down the Trust Fund, it is clear that 

revenues are not keeping up with the current level of expenditure. 

At the end of 2009, we will have to take a look at how to restructure and re-look at the financing of highways. We may or may not 

get to the complete end of 2009 before we have a problem, and we 

are looking at that very carefully. In our budget submission for 

2008, we have made some recommendations in order to mitigate 

the potential that the Trust Fund would not be able to support full 

SAFETEA-LU funding before the end of the SAFETEA-LU period. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Well, in the longer term, do you believe that the 

gas tax can or will continue to be the primary source of transportation funding at the Federal and State level? If so, why? And, if 

not, what funding mechanisms do you believe are most likely to be 

able to supplement the gas tax? 

Mr. CAPKA. Looking into the future, the interesting thing about 

the gas tax from the highway infrastructure perspective, the more 

gas we burn, the better for revenues coming into the Trust Fund. 

It is counter to national programs that we have, national priorities 

with respect to dependency on foreign oil, with respect to the 

greenhouse effect and the carbon loading. We certainly don’t want 

to encourage the continued use of fossil-based fuels. 

So I would say, looking into the future, we have got to find ways 

to weaning ourselves off of the gas tax and looking to something 

perhaps like vehicle miles traveled, as is being experimented with 

in a couple of States, Oregon being one, where vehicles are in this 

pilot program. They are not charged gas tax when they fill up at 

the fuel pump; they are charged for the miles they have traveled 

and the periods they have traveled, much like a taxi meter rolling 

up a taxi fare. 

I think there are innovations like this with the technology that 

is emerging, with our sense that we are going to have to use some 

technique to help also throttle demand on our highways to work 

congestion, that these types of solutions are the ones we need to 

be experimenting with today, looking at them very carefully, and 

then working them into our long-range plan for the funding of the 

highway system. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Well, what, if any, steps is the Administration 

taking in its Congestion Initiative to promote improved land use 

planning and to create the kinds of communities that can shift people from cars to other modes of transportation? 

Any of you. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Congressman, on the transit side, you know, our 

discretionary program, which is for new fixed guideway systems 

like rail—and Baltimore has plenty of rails, so you understand that 

discretionary program—one of the things that we look at in statute 

and we pay very close attention to is the development around stations. In order to have sustainability, you need to have the right 

15

density. So we look for cities in area—while it is a local decision—

if they are going to get funded with the Federal dollar, to make 

sure that they have good land use patterns that are supportive to 

transit investment. 

We are a big supporter of transit-oriented development and we 

have got, additionally, HUD and FTA have a MOU, and we just 

completed a report and sent, I believe, to this Committee talking 

about not only housing around transit, but affordable housing, as 

well; that the people that need transit the most have to be able to 

live near where transit is and have to be able to afford to live so 

they can access transit and have mobility. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. All right, thank you. 

I yield back. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. [Presiding] I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. Brown. 

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I thank the gentlemen for coming and giving us all this good information. My question is to the Under Secretary. We have heard 

a lot about the corridors of the future. Can you tell us a little bit 

more about how the Department is defining the corridors? Would 

it be on a case by case basis based upon the application submitted 

to the Department or based on need. How would that be determined? 

Mr. SHANE. Thanks, Congressman Brown. Yes, we received 38 

proposals under the Corridors for the Future component of the 

Congestion Initiative. We, so far, selected 14 of them last February. 

We are going to winnow that list down—we have been working on 

that for quite some time—to the point where we are going to finally 

have five that will be chosen by the middle of the summer, we expect. 

Clearly, what we are attempting to do in the Corridors for the 

Future program is reward comprehensive planning that is designed 

to link together various regions of the Country in a productive 

transportation thoroughfare that will benefit not just one community, or even a group of communities, but a number of States, really enhancing the flow of commerce and trade in a much more effective way. 

Mr. BROWN. And you will be able to identify those by the summer, those five? 

Mr. SHANE. By mid-summer, I think. 

If you have anything to add, Rick. 

Mr. BROWN. And what will be the next step after the identification? 

Mr. CAPKA. Sir, the selections will be made mid-summer. At that 

point an agreement will be set up with the sponsors for the Corridors of the Future, setting up the objectives and milestone 

deliverables, those sorts of things, and we will work then very carefully with them to provide the support resources that we have 

available in that program. 

Mr. BROWN. I noted that there has been a lot of pressure on the 

Department of Transportation, I guess, since 1954, when they 

started the interstate system, and not much has been done about 

enhancing it since then other than maybe expanding the number 

of lanes, and that sort of thing. I think the Corridors of the Future 

16

is certainly a great innovative thing to look at doing some new 

planning based upon the population shift. 

I know down in my region—I represent South Carolina, which is 

a tourist destination, but we also have a port, which is a commerce 

destination, too, and I know that we have one interstate connecting 

Charleston. We don’t have any interstates connecting Myrtle 

Beach, which has 14 million visitors a year coming. So you can 

imagine the congestion we have during the summer months. But 

I would hope that those criteria would be placed upon whatever selection process you might have so that those type situations would 

be included. 

I know, Mr. Under Secretary, we talked about dealing with the 

shortfall of the Trust Fund, and I know that your idea about using 

miles driven, rather than gasoline purchased, because of the increase of the efficiency now of the new automobiles and constraints 

placed upon the carbon emissions, this sort of thing. How would 

you go about collecting miles driven? How would a user be able to 

tell you that? 

Mr. SHANE. There are a number of technologies, Congressman, 

that are being experimented with right now, not the least of which 

is the use of GPS. You simply have a transponder on a car and it 

is possible to monitor the movements of the vehicle. There are ways 

of protecting the privacy of the owner and so forth, which obviously 

have to be part of the program, but which end up being metered 

automatically and just producing an invoice at the end of every 

month which goes out and is paid. That is one way of doing it. Meters in cars which could be automatically read would be another 

way of doing it. 

There is no question that there are technologies around, and it 

is something that we are not experimenting with in the United 

States alone. I know The Netherlands is actually thinking about—

and I just learned this last week—a national program for metering 

vehicle use and charging for that use by the kilometer, rather than 

a fuel tax. 

The fuel tax, as my colleague said eloquently, is a way of penalizing ourselves. If we increase the fuel tax, we are, in effect, penalizing ourselves for having achieved fuel economy objectives that we 

all share and that we are trying to make tougher and tougher over 

time. There is a real conflict in the effort to reduce our reliance on 

fossil fuels and our reliance on those very same fuels as a source 

of funding for our transportation infrastructure, and that is what 

we are trying to de-link. 

Mr. BROWN. How do you plan to fund the Corridors of the Future? 

Mr. SHANE. Out of existing Highway Administration funding. 

Rick, you can be more specific than I on specifically where that 

money is coming from. 

Mr. CAPKA. We do have some discretionary dollars that have 

been made available to us this year. In our 2008 budget submission 

we have asked for $175 million to be reprogrammed from ISTEA 

era, 10 year old projects that have been inactive with unobligated 

balances, that would also be made available to support these programs. 

Mr. BROWN. Very good. Thank you very much. 

17

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. Lipinski? 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you for your testimony here today. In Chicago land, where 

my district lies, is one of the most congested regions in the Country, and my constituents and millions of others in Northeastern Illinois deal with this everyday. Now, much has been done to provide 

resources to State and local governments, but I think that we definitely need to do more. First and foremost, we need to continue to 

enhance investments in surface transportation capacity expansion 

projects. 

One of the most important in the Chicago region is CREATE, the 

rail modernization program, which would do a tremendous amount 

to help move freight in and out and through Chicago; help with the 

commuter rail, Amtrak lines; but also help to clear up congestion 

on roads by building underpasses, overpasses, you know, grades 

separations. 

So I think there is no question that we need to continue to do 

more and provide more funding for projects like this, but in the 

short term ITS can make a real difference in fighting congestion 

through operational improvements and demand management. We 

really have the technology available—it is growing more and more 

everyday—to help people to get traffic information, make it easier, 

try to make the commutes easier for them. This is another area, 

though, where I think that we can do more for State and local governments. 

Last year I met with former Secretary Mineta, and we talked 

about congestion in Chicago land and about the Congestion Initiative. We had a very productive discussion at that time. 

Today I just want to ask you in specific terms, with particular 

emphasis on any ITS applications, how can the Initiative help reduce congestion in the Chicago area. 

Mr. SHANE. Thanks very much, Congressman. Let me just, first 

of all, say that at the Department of Transportation we think CREATE is one of the most important projects that the Country needs 

to focus on. It is not just of significance to Chicago, as you know, 

but given Chicago’s role in the national freight movement system, 

CREATE has a tremendous amount of potential benefit to the 

Country at large. So we look forward to seeing further progress on 

CREATE. 

To your specific question about ITS, we are, through the Urban 

Partnership Agreements component of our Congestion Initiative, 

trying to encourage further deployment of ITS solutions, intelligent 

transportation system solutions, that really deploy technology for 

the benefit of reducing congestion in ways that are probably the 

most cost-effectively means we have of reducing the load on our existing transportation assets. 

This is, again, without quarreling with the need to continue to 

expand capacity. That is, of course, the central point of our transportation programs. Nevertheless, we know that it takes time to do 

that and, therefore, the efficiencies that can be gained by the use 

of intelligent technologies—and they are available and on the shelf 

today, as we all know; what they need is greater ubiquity—the use 

of those technologies have huge potential for helping to address 

18

some of the problems that we have both in our urban and rural 

areas. 

Administrator Simpson would like to supplement that. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Congressman, I have been out to Chicago a couple 

of times, meeting with Frank Kruesi, who I believe is no longer 

with the CTA, and also met with Senator Durbin, and Chicago is 

a great city, and the whole area, in terms of their ridership. Chicago area is actually number two in the Country for transit ridership; you are at about 12 percent. New York is 25 and Chicago is 

number two. 

But you are also number three in the Country for congestion. So 

there is obviously a need to make some change, so I would encourage you to work with the local folks to take a look at what is happening in New York, because maybe if that passes, to try to implement some sort of a model like New York. 

But with respect to the rail mod money, it has been doing a really good job for the Chicago Transit Authority. They are upgrading 

their signalization, their tracks. It is a very old system, as we 

know, but it seems like they are doing a great job and they are trying to get, I know, a great amount of needs, and they are looking 

at alternative sources for transit funding. The New York model 

today will spin off hundreds of millions of dollars that can go to 

transit projects, so I think that the folks in Chicago, if they take 

a look at what may be happening in New York, but what certainly 

has happened in London, it might help alleviate some of the extra 

pressure. 

Mr. CAPKA. Sir, also from kind of a low tech, but high tech with 

respect to ITS, is providing decision-quality information to drivers; 

when you should get out on the road or where there is congestion, 

when to avoid. The 511 system is a dial-up system that links a 

driver up with the latest traffic information, where you can determine where there are construction problems, an incident that has 

occurred, or just the regular congestion that allows the driver to 

make some smart decisions before going out on the road. Something like that can do an awful lot to address congestion problems, 

particularly in Illinois. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Well, I thank you for your responses, and I want 

to also follow up and agree with Mr. Simpson that transit is very 

critical, and with the great needs right now that we face in Chicago, but certainly in other places around the Country, I think that 

is another place where we need to have a greater Federal commitment, because it does a great job of reducing congestion. Cutting 

down pollution is to support transit. 

Thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

Representative Reichert. 

Mr. REICHERT. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have just one quick question, and if it has been asked already, I will get it over the telephone later, so I apologize. I was reading through the testimony 

and noticed that you want to establish a competitive process for designing up to five multi-State Corridors of the Future. Has that 

process been started and have the five corridors been identified, or 

where are we in that process? 

19

Mr. SHANE. Thanks, Congressman. Yes, we actually did talk 

about that earlier. We are well into the process. We received 38 

proposals back in February. We are winnowing those down to a list 

of 5, which will be announced in the middle of the summer sometime. 

Mr. REICHERT. Do you happen to know if the Seattle area is one 

of the 38 that has applied? 

Mr. SHANE. I-5, Administrator Capka tells me, was certainly one 

of the corridors that was proposed, yes, indeed. 

Mr. REICHERT. Okay, thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. I want to apologize for being late. 

Sometimes there are imperatives that relate to one’s district, and 

we had a meeting with our former colleague, Mr. Portman, and 

OMB to discuss an issue of extraordinary concern to my district, 

so I was unavoidably detained. 

I would like to go to Mr. Shane’s testimony. I guess maybe I live 

in a little different world or hear from different folks, but when I 

read today a growing course of economists, academics, transportation planners arguing that fundamental mis-pricing of highway 

travel must be addressed to tackle the congestion problem in a sustainable way, and prior to that you say there are there basic mechanisms available: one, rationing; two, formally allocating access 

rights to use the network at various times, as is done in the rail 

and aviation sectors; or three, using prices, as we do with most 

other goods and services. 

I guess the question for Secretary Shane, which I posed to Mr. 

Duvall, when he came and waxed eloquent about the congestion 

problems, all things we are having, is what about investment? 

There is no discussion, except in the context of the private-public 

partnerships, about investment. 

You might recall the President’s own Department of Transportation, during the consideration of SAFETEA-LU, said we needed 

$375 billion to basically keep up. That was their estimate when we 

started the discussion. This Committee wanted to work toward that 

number, and that just couldn’t happen between Congress and the 

White House. The President started at 250; we ended up around 

280. 

But it seems to me, if we are going to say there are ways to address this, number four might be significantly enhanced investment 

at the Federal, State, local, and, yes, even the private level. But we 

are talking about rationing and using prices and the growing chorus of mis-pricing of highway travel. That is not what I hear from 

people. They say when are you going to improve the off-ramp; when 

are you going to add another lane; when are you going to give me 

an alternative. They are not saying, gee, it is mis-priced. Granted, 

I come from the West Coast, and we are not as enamored of tolling 

as perhaps some people are here on the East Coast. 

So that is sort of the first question. Does investment play a role 

here? Does the Administration have a position on investment? Are 

you looking at 2009, when the Trust Fund might be depleted, and 

do you have any solutions for how we might fund the existing program in that year? 

Then the second question would be sort of on the whole theory 

of pricing people off the highways. You use the example of a doctor 

20

and someone going shopping. But what if the doctor was going 

shopping? Might the doctor, because of his high discretionary income, decide, well, he is not on the way to an emergency at the 

hospital, so it is not time sensitive in that way, but he is going to 

use the HOT lane because he can afford to? 

I mean, I think the thing that is being overlooked here is people 

don’t choose when they go to work. People don’t necessarily have 

tremendous discretion over where they live. I would use Portland, 

Oregon as an example. The Metro Council there is enamored of 

some of these ideas and being pushed by DOT, until I disabused 

them of the notion. Middle income, lower income people can’t afford 

to live in the city; that is a fact. So they have to live further out. 

We don’t happen to provide alternatives that go across the city for 

them to get to work. Well, I guess they are just out of luck, or 

maybe they have got to find a new job, or they are going to pay 

an extortionate amount to get to work that they can’t afford on 

their salary. 

It seems to me that we are skipping over a whole lot of issues 

here, and I wish you would address those, Mr. Shane, the first 

being investment and the second being the inequities and the problems that are potentially created when people don’t have a viable 

mass transit option and they just happen to work one place and 

live another, or it is a single mom who has got to get their kid to 

school and get to work and pick the kid up after school and there 

is no transit option available for that and she can’t afford 20 bucks 

to use the HOT lane. 

Mr. SHANE. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me just say, 

in response to the first part of the question, that we are talking 

about shades of emphasis here. There is no intention on the part 

of the Department of Transportation to de-emphasize investment. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, we just never hear any talk about it. I mean, 

Mr. Duvall was here; he didn’t mention it. It seems to me if you 

say there are three ways to deal with congestion and none of them 

mention enhanced investment——

Mr. SHANE. Well, we do talk about enhanced investment. That 

was the public-private partnerships part of the Congestion Initiative. There is not any quarrel with——

Mr. DEFAZIO. That, again, would be a fraction compared to—if 

you have heard all the testimony from the experts, they say maybe 

it is a 5 percent solution, public-private partnerships. Mr. Duvall 

was here. So let’s say it is even a 7 percent solution. What about 

the other 93 percent, which requires State, Federal, and local investment? We need to address those issues and I see a very unbalanced presentation. 

Mr. SHANE. What we are emphasizing is what is different in our 

proposals today. There is not any quarreling with the existing program, and I expect that that program will continue in some form 

going forward. We did have, I think, a productive discussion with 

Congressman Cummings about whether or not an increased gas tax 

is necessarily a formula for future success and tying our infrastructure finance to fuel that we are trying to reduce the consumption 

of. There is a fundamental conflict in our policies in that regard 

and we have to address that conflict. 

21

But it is not to gain, say, the notion that more investment is necessary. We happen to think that there are hundreds of billions of 

dollars—that is what people tell us—available in the private sector, 

money that is available for transportation infrastructure and that 

we should tap. We should do it intelligently. 

I have seen the correspondence from the Committee. I don’t have 

any quarrel with many of the points that were made in that correspondence. We do have to calibrate the use of these tools, but 

these tools are, nevertheless, available to us as a means of enhancing the amount of investment that we put into our infrastructure. 

And they are not just ideas that are brewing here. 

I mentioned in my testimony that I was overseas last week. I 

learned that these are tools that are being embraced, in fact, far 

more readily in other countries than they are here. We just wonder 

why it is that we are having so much difficulty marching in the 

same direction when it seems to be producing so many successes 

in other countries. 

So I don’t want to mislead the Committee. Investment will continue to be a core objective of all of our programs. We intend to 

work with the Committee, and this Subcommittee in particular, on 

trying to find intelligent ways of doing that. What we are trying 

to do, however, recognizing the extent to which demand has outstripped our capacity to invest through traditional means—and 

that is to say at the Federal level—is find additional solutions; the 

use of technology, the use of pricing strategies, things that are producing real dividends and addressing congestion in lots of parts of 

this Country and other countries which, if we could make more 

ubiquitous, would produce enormous dividends in terms of the 

quality of life and the productivity of our economy. 

Regarding the whole question of inequity, we are mindful of that 

and it has certainly been a source of a lot of discussion. What we 

do find, however, is that wherever pricing strategies have been implemented and then a referendum is taken after the fact or a survey is taken after the fact, we find that the reaction of the populations to those pricing strategies does not seem to be a function 

of income levels. 

By and large, these strategies have been broadly embraced by 

the people that have been subjected to them. In Stockholm, for example, they put a pricing scheme in place in order to calibrate the 

use of transportation assets for getting to and from the downtown 

area. They did it on a temporary basis because they wanted to see 

what the reaction would be. They had a referendum; the referendum was a broad acceptance of the idea, so that by mid-summer they are going to put it in place on a permanent basis. They 

have all levels of income, of course, in the population of Stockholm. 

There is not any effort here to ignore the issues that are raised 

by lower income elements of our population. If in fact that is a 

problem for our transportation system, for getting people to and 

from their jobs, particularly where they have no discretion, we 

should address that straight up. It may mean that we need to find 

ways of assisting lower income folks in using a transportation system more efficiently if in fact the use of that transportation system 

more efficiently requires a pricing strategy. We shouldn’t be chasing the lowest common denominator because of a problem that we 

22

have with some income strata in our society. We should address 

those problems in ways that respond to those problems, but not 

sacrifice the efficiency of our transportation system because of 

them. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So the example is Stockholm, where they have a 

massive investment in public transit in a region called Europe, 

where they are much less dependent upon automobiles and have 

totally different land use and development patterns, and suddenly 

we are going to apply things that work for the people of Stockholm 

to the United States and think that they are going to work and 

they will be popular. 

You know, maybe I just have too much of a western, U.S. view 

of the world, but I really don’t see that. And what I find is, again, 

a single-minded push here toward private-public partnerships—if I 

could, since you raised the issue of not having a problem with what 

the Committee has stated, because have tried to fairly state the potential benefits, small as they are, of private-public partnerships 

and the potential pitfalls, huge as they are, of private-public partnerships, especially when you are talking about monetizing existing assets and giving monopoly authority to an entity for up to 100 

years to price an asset which is irreplaceable and which you can’t 

compete with in many cases. 

I would note that the last time I think either you were here or 

Mr. Duvall was here, we heard that quite soon we would have a 

little more balanced presentation on the DOT website other than 

the so-called model legislation, which really points people at the 

pitfalls and the wrong approach, and it still isn’t posted yet. We 

heard that was imminent. 

I do note that you could find space to post some articles critical 

of the Chairman and myself, yet you didn’t post a number of articles that are critical of PPPs. It just seems like one-sided advocacy 

here, like we are making transportation policy out of the Heritage 

Foundation, and that is not going to be acceptable to a majority of 

the people either in the Congress or the United States of America. 

Mr. SHANE. There is no question that there is a controversy 

about all of this. What I see happening across this Country and, 

frankly, around the world is an increasing recognition that the reliance on government funding for transportation assets is something 

that we are approaching the end of; it is simply not going to be possible to——

Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, excuse me, but we are only approaching the 

end of this because this Administration said no taxes, no user fees, 

no bonding, no more money; and we had to drag them kicking and 

screaming to a marginal number. That is why. We are talking 

about will. It is just like Mitch Daniels saying, gee, there was no 

will to raise the tolls, until he entered a monopoly agreement; then 

suddenly he had the will to raise the tolls and now they have absolute discretion to raise the tolls and no one can touch them, it is 

in a contract. 

So you are saying there is no money out there, but somehow we 

can extract money from people through private contract agreements, which include a profit motive, but we can’t just get a costbased—which is without a profit motive—investment by the Federal Government. It goes to will at some point. I know the will isn’t 

23

downtown. Whether the will is uptown here, at the Congress, we 

will see in two years. 

But you can’t say there isn’t a capability of raising more funds 

in the United States of America to invest in transit and roads, and 

I look at, and a number of people have mentioned, Washington 

State. Washington State just raised the gas tax. They are talking 

about now raising title fees. My State raised title and other fees. 

People are willing to accept dedicated taxes when they see a real 

benefit, the benefits to their transportation and their movement 

and the economy. 

This White House and Administration has been totally unwilling 

to discuss that, but you are obsessed over here with the hundreds 

of billions of dollars of private money floating around out there. It 

might not be quite as much as you think if you read the most recent articles in The Wall Street Journal about Macquarie’s books, 

which is starting to look at lot like Enron’s. 

Mr. SHANE. Well, Macquarie is one of a great many investment 

banks that are beginning to look at this new vehicle for investment. 

I predict that no future administration is going to come out very 

differently on the issue of public financing of transportation. We 

know that the entitlement programs are simply overwhelming our 

budget. That will continue to be the case for a long time. There 

simply has got to be discipline on the use of government funds, and 

that is going to be a fact of life for every future administration, not 

just this one. 

When in fact there are so many alternative ways of funding 

transportation assets which produce a calibration of the use of 

those assets that actually makes them more productive, it is difficult to understand why there is so much controversy about it. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay, thanks. We will just have to disagree. As 

usual, you are in your diplomatic mode here. You know, the calibration of use means we price modest and middle income and low 

income people off the roads, which are taking up public space, 

where they have no alternative. I look at this road they are going 

to build out here. I don’t think Members of Congress are going to 

be able to afford the road at 20 bucks a pop, let alone modest working people So let’s go to transit for a moment, and then I will turn 

to Mr. Duncan. 

The question for Mr. Simpson, since we are talking about transit 

does get a minimal little nod here as part of this solution at the 

end, but it seems to be totally oriented toward bus rapid transit, 

utilizing private, for-profit HOT lanes. Is that the only vision or are 

we going to make some progress on new starts, small starts? Are 

we going to incorporate the mandated economic development and 

land use statutorily mandated criteria? 

Because I notice that you have now included non-statutory criteria, which happen to support this privatization congestion management program, and saying, well, if you adopt those, we will give 

you more points, but if you did the economic development or you 

did the land use that is required by statute, we can’t figure out 

how to rate that, so we will rate you up for what we want to do, 

which isn’t authorized by law, but we won’t rate you for the things 

required by law. Could you answer that? 

24

Mr. SIMPSON. Could you redirect the question? I am not sure of 

the question. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, the question is when are we going to see the 

formulas modified to actually incorporate the statutory requirements of economic development and land use, and how is it that 

you can suddenly add a criteria that isn’t statutorily authorized, 

which is to support this particular program——

Mr. SIMPSON. Right. You are talking about the Congestion Initiative? 

Mr. DEFAZIO.—but you can’t get to the economic development 

and land use. Why is that? 

Mr. SIMPSON. Well, let’s take the congestion piece first that we 

are adding to it. That is a sub-component of mobility and it is clear 

throughout SAFETEA-LU, at least on the transit side, that one of 

the things we are trying to do is free up congestion. 

With respect to economic development and land use, we had a 

stand-alone hearing—I don’t know, was it a month ago?—and I 

promised that the rule would be out by the end of the money, and 

I apologize in advance that it is not out yet. But after our long 

hearing we went back and had very robust conversation at the Department, and we are looking for ways to quantify economic development. We are going to be asking the stakeholder community and 

we do, in our project justification, we do look at land use and we 

do look at economic development. 

But Mr. Chairman, I have to tell you it is very hard—I have been 

talking to economists myself; I have been dragging the folks at 

DOT. It is very difficult at times to define the difference between 

economic development and land use. And when you are looking at 

a national program, if we don’t build a transit project, but we build 

a school instead, but we still have construction, you know, separate 

all that out. It is really a challenging——

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right. But we did have an economist sit right 

there who sketched out ideas for a model, and he did talk about 

Transportation System User Benefit and Summit Software as a 

really bad box that is being applied to everything that really distorts the whole system. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Chairman, I spoke to him—I think that was 

David Lewis. Was it David Lewis? 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I——

Mr. SIMPSON. Okay. Anyway, I spoke to the economist, and he 

has been to my facility, to the FTA, and he is welcomed back to 

talk about it further. But even with this cost-effectiveness issue 

that we talked about before, if a transit project is going to deliver 

good benefits, there has to be a mobility component to it. So, in a 

convoluted way, this cost-effectiveness is measuring economic development. 

We want to get where the Congress wants us to be, but it is a 

huge challenge, and I promise you we are working towards that. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay, thank you. 

Mr. Duncan. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have already 

asked the questions that I wanted to ask, but I will say that, Secretary Shane, you are exactly right on the runaway entitlements in 

future years. In fact, Dan McFeatters, who is a columnist for the 

25

Scripps Howard newspaper chain, wrote a couple years ago and 

said that we are headed for a financial tsunami shortly after the 

baby boomers start retiring in large numbers in 2008, and that is 

going to cut into every department and agency in the entire Government. 

But what I wanted to get at in this in just a few comments, I 

mentioned in my opening statement and then in my questions that 

I think the Congestion Initiative and the urban partnership are 

good things, and I pointed out that the congestion is not just confined to our older, what we traditionally think of as our larger cities, but also many of the newer, faster growing cities. 

I think that is all fine, but I also mentioned my hometown of 

Knoxville, which, if you looked at a population book, you would see, 

I don’t know, it might show 185,000 or something in that vicinity, 

and you might think, well, the problems there couldn’t be that 

great. But what you have, as I said, you can’t tell when you go 

from the city to the county. 

Knox County has about 410,000. Then you have got the really 

fast growth in the counties that touch on Knox County. So you 

have got close to a million and a half, I think, now in the SMSA. 

Then you have got between 9 million and 10 million coming to the 

Smokies, and most of those get off the interstate there at Knoxville. 

Interstate 75 is the heaviest traveled north-south interstate in the 

whole Country, so that is many millions there going to Florida, 

going to Atlanta, other places. 

You have got Interstate 40, one of the main east-west routes, 

running right through Knoxville. Then you have the heaviest traveled truck route on Interstate 81 coming to within 37 miles of 

Knoxville. In addition to that, we live within about 600 miles of 

over two-thirds of the population. 

What I am getting at is this. There are some places like Knoxville—I have said in here before in other hearings I generally or 

many times face much more traffic in Knoxville than I do here. So 

there are some places whose traffic problems far exceed their populations. And I hope you take that into consideration, because it is 

just mega-millions there in a place like Knoxville that you wouldn’t 

expect, and it affects all three of your departments and agencies. 

So I just hope you keep that in mind and take a close look at some 

of those places. 

Thank you very much for being with us, and I appreciate your 

very informative answers to these questions. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Mr. Hayes. 

Mr. HAYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Gentlemen, thank you for being here. I apologize for being late 

to the hearing, but there was an occurrence that I read about on 

Saturday and talked to Mr. DeFazio about. As it relates to congestion, do you all remember the situation in California where the 

tanker exploded? Did you read the outcome on Saturday of what 

happened there? 

The project, if I understand correctly, was scheduled for 50 days. 

There was a $200,000 bonus for every day that that deadline was 

beat. Congestion obviously was huge. The contractor, using American steel, Mr. Chairman, and the ingenuity of the marketplace, 

26

completed that project in 17 days. So the incentive was the bonus 

for early completion, as opposed to punitive liquidated damages. 

I don’t know as much as I should, but the results are stunning 

and very, very positive. What lessons have we learned from that 

and are there some things here that we can apply to future projects 

to take advantage again of American expertise, ingenuity, steel, 

and incentive for performance? Any comments on that would be appreciated. That was a really uplifting article. 

Mr. CAPKA. Sir, we are just as excited about the innovation and 

creativity that was demonstrated by California Department of 

Transportation in the private sector there in Oakland. Some of the 

features that were key to that success, first of all, was everybody 

was focused on a goal that needed to be accomplished, the publicprivate sector, everybody there was focused on making sure it got 

done. Secondly, California Department of Transportation used a 

contracting technique that just unleashed the creativity and the innovation of the private sector. You hit the bonus, $5 million. The 

winning bid on that project was $800,000. 

Mr. HAYES. Exactly. 

Mr. CAPKA. Because a contractor knew, I can make that bonus, 

and he set up an arrangement with the steel supplier to have those 

beams ready to go. California Department of Transportation was 

calculating that it would take another 30 days, at least, to have the 

steel onsite, so their expectations were another month to six weeks 

longer. The contractor saw that incentive, probably shared a little 

bit of that incentive with the steel fabricator to ensure that the materials showed up onsite, and they had a winning combination. 

That is the kind of example we are trying to export to other parts 

of the Country when we see how valuable that is. 

Mr. HAYES. And I think they saved $1 million. The next lowest 

bid was 6.8, as I recall. But the more I think about it, it kind of 

reminds you a little bit of the runway project down in Atlanta that 

was completed. 

But this, again, Mr. Chairman and Members, is where we need 

to be headed as we work to deal with congestion. So get that word 

out there. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Mr. Baird, quickly. 

Mr. BAIRD. Yes. I would just point out, Mr. Capka, we have spoken before about Buy America. Mr. Hayes cares deeply about this, 

as do I. He was only able to get that steel because he had a steel 

fabricator stateside. If he had been dependent on a foreign fabricator who said we don’t want to provide it to you, they would have 

been out of luck. So we need to keep those steel fabricators domestic. 

Mr. CAPKA. Sir, that was a great example of solid teamwork 

there, I agree with you 100 percent. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, and I certainly would emphasize what Mr. 

Baird did. Critical infrastructure materials need to be domestically 

produced on not just basic materials but, in my mind, obviously, 

hopefully more sophisticated things like streetcars, which we are 

trying to pioneer. 

I would just, in closing, reflect that we have a dedicated funding 

source. We know that there are some problems with that, but the 

27

highway program and transit program, with the exception of the 

potential shortfall in 2009, has been funded out of dedicated revenues; it is not like other programs which are funded from general 

funds. The question is can we find an enhanced revenue stream 

that will be dedicated to those purposes, yes or no. If there is absolutely no way to find one, sure, then we are going to have to cast 

a broad net for other alternatives. 

But we have discussed a few of the problems that could come 

with private-public partnerships and congestion pricing and some 

of the inequities and other issues that are raised by that, but beyond that you have got to remember many of these assumptions 

that have gone into Macquarie’s perspectives, they have said they 

are not going to make the money on increased efficiency on the Indiana Turnpike; they are going to make it on toll increases, plain 

and simple. 

So you are going to extract the money from people one way or 

another, and you can extract it from them and include a profit component, or you can do it at cost and serve the general public, or you 

can have some combination thereof, and I am just saying there is 

no one-sided answer to this problem. It is a huge problem. The 

costs of congestion are massive; the waste of fuel is horrible; the 

loss of time weighs on many people’s lives and it hurts business 

and our competitiveness internationally, and we have got to approach this in a way that doesn’t just offer a simplistic and diversionary answer, but a comprehensive approach. 

I thank you all for your time. We are going to now have two 

votes, and as soon as the votes are concluded we will have the next 

panel. With that, the Committee is in recess. 

Mr. BAKER. Mr. Chairman, could I ask him one more question as 

we are walking out the door? 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Yes, go right ahead. 

Mr. BAKER. I was just think about the coordination in that California Department of Transportation project. As we look, everybody 

here, in their district, has probably a bypass or a highway project 

that has been kind of slow. If you all could help us to help you coordinate some of the different agencies that are required to line up 

and sign up before the Monroe Highway 74 bypass can be completed, I think that would be a very positive exercise, because the 

sheriff and Congressman Baird and Mr. DeFazio and others, everybody has a Highway 74 bypass project. If we could apply the technology and skills that we discussed, that would be really good. 

Mr. BAIRD. We have just got to get some tanker trucks to burn 

up in our own districts, and we will be on our way. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Now, Mr. Baird, don’t. 

Just one other. I don’t want to leave that we are totally at odds 

here. I do agree that we can attribute 50 percent of the congestion 

to other than capacity constraints, and I note that you say more 

attention needs to be paid there. I would like to know what initiatives the Administration is undertaking in those areas. 

I think we ought to have some sort of clearinghouse. I mean, it 

seems to me there is a lot of jurisdictions out there that are doing 

some interesting and innovative things that other jurisdictions 

might not know about, and if we provided a service of sort of a 

28

clearinghouse at the Federal level for everybody to bring in or contribute their non-congestion ideas and make them readily available 

through a website or something like that, I think it could be very 

helpful. 

Mr. CAPKA. Sir, I will just comment on that very briefly. We do 

have a program that kind of sits right on target with what you 

have described, and it is the Highways for Life program. It certainly started out as a program focusing on how to reduce the exposure time of work zones; how can you get in, get out, stay out, and 

we have been setting up a website that gives these examples of excellence to others to consider so we make them the routine. And 

it is not just the construction techniques, it is the contracting techniques that we discussed earlier; it is the communications, it is the 

ITS aspects that goes along with it. 

So we are very much in line with you on sharing the good work, 

the good news, the innovation that is evidenced across the Country. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Great. Well, thank you very much. Again, thank 

you for your testimony. 

[Recess.] 

TESTIMONY OF TIMOTHY J. LOMAX, RESEARCH ENGINEER, 

TEXAS TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE, MOBILITY ANALYSIS 

PROGRAM, COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS; PEGGY CATLIN, COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR; CRAIG STONE, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR, 

WASHINGTON STATE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, 

URBAN CORRIDORS 

Mr. LOMAX. Thank you very much. I will try to use your time resource wisely. 

Thank you very much for the opportunity to discuss the future 

transportation issues and some of the solutions to the problems. I 

want to make sure you understand from the outset that I haven’t 

really changed any of my views from the last time I appeared before this Subcommittee. I think we have enormous challenges. I 

think there are some solutions and I think that congestion is only 

one of the challenges that we face. 

I also think that Congress can play a very important role in helping Americans get to their schools, their jobs, their health facilities, 

shops, as well as moving toward a desirable quality of life. I appreciate the chance to appear before you today and I welcome any 

questions you might have. 

I want to summarize my written remarks with a few observations. Number one, I think congestion problems are going to challenge the major metropolitan areas as well as the small urban 

areas and rural areas for many years to come. Travel delays and 

unpredictable times for people and freight will always be a problem. Certainly smaller cities are also seeing a problem from that 

as well. 

I also think it is important to note that some of these solutions 

don’t just address one issue, but safety and congestion, for example, 

are very integrated, congestion and air quality are very integrated. 

Solutions that work on one problem also provide benefits on other 

problems. I think if we think of these as related problems we come 

29

very much closer to comprehensive solutions and comprehensive 

improvements in quality of life and economic productivity. 

I think we should think about the problems, opportunities and 

solutions in terms of niche marketing. There isn’t a problem or a 

solution, a problem or a solution, some problems have very clear 

technology or infrastructure fixes, some can only be solved with 

better information and some will be best addressed by different 

policies, programs and financial or institutional arrangements. 

Some problems require big solutions and big price tags, but other 

problems require only small change in operations or design. 

Problems that agencies have found over the years create a lot of 

benefits for relatively little cost. Perhaps even more importantly, it 

is these simple ideas, obvious solutions to the public, that make a 

difference, that build the trust to support the bigger improvement 

programs. The transparent, data-driven analytical approach typically yields a variety of solutions with a range of cost, substantial 

benefits and good public involvement is a key to enacting these programs. 

The projects, programs and policies that each region uses to solve 

the problems will be different. As you have identified in the past, 

Portland has a different take on the solutions and the problems 

than some other places. I think that is a reflection of the diversity 

that we have in our Country, and I think that is good. I think the 

strategies are going to be different, depending on where you are 

within a metropolitan area as well. The same strategies that work 

downtown are not going to be the same ones that work at the port 

or out in the suburbs. 

The range of solutions obviously includes strategies to get more 

productivity out of this current system. I think they also require 

programs designed to provide travelers with a choice of travel 

modes, departure times, pricing and electronic options for trips, 

tele-commuting, for example, as well as projects to increase person 

movement and freight movement capacity. In our growing urban 

areas, we are going to need more capacity. 

It is also clear that solutions need to be pursued in a comprehensive way that involves the public. In all the fast-growing areas, 

there is not enough funding to keep congestion levels where they 

are, much less make improvements. Judging from successful approaches in the past, however, comprehensive strategies that combine investments in things as well as people work very well. The 

solutions, therefore, I think are broadly defined and integrated in 

a related combination of operating and maintaining what you have 

to the best of the ability, providing information and options to travelers, home buyers, businesses and other interested groups so that 

they make choices to avoid long travel times, whether that is day 

to day or year to year. 

Expanding the system where bottlenecks or growth make other 

options inadequate to meet the goals that the community has set, 

these are goals the community has set. Monitor the effect of the 

programs, policies and projects to make operational and design improvements and to provide an accountable and transparent reporting to the taxpayers. So operate it as good as you can, identify options, identify information, identify ways for people to make trips, 

so that they have the option of changing their trips, and then exVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:10 Mar 31, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\35930.TXT HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
30

pansion. Those three things, broadly defined, I think represent a 

good set of policies and programs. 

The final element, monitoring the programs, not only has a feedback effect of making the projects better as you go, but they also 

have the effect of building the public trust. The interrelationship 

of these factors has been clearly demonstrated. In California and 

Washington, only two examples have recently received significant 

funding increases, based on a combination of doing a good job with 

what they have, providing a clear plan for additional spending, 

that attacks the problems, and committing to a communication effort that both informs the public about the effects of the programs 

and is used internally to refine the next set of project designs and 

operating strategies. The varying amount of extra time travelers 

and freight shippers have to allow this reliability factor is also important. Improving that can reduce traveler frustration and taxpayer trust. 

Finally, let me say, I think we know what works. We know the 

projects, programs, policies that work, we know that there are 

some institutional reactions that need to take place. Public support 

and funding are vital to making this work. As my son’s baseball 

coach says, folks, this is really simple, it ain’t rocket surgery. He 

is sort of analogy-challenged in the Yogi Berra sense. 

But really, transportation is a service. We need to treat travelers 

and shippers as consumers of that service. Our ability to fund 

transportation needs rests on our ability to get the most out of 

what we have and communicate the costs and benefits of those options. Institutional structures, as I said, are organized around policies and programs that deliver reliable service and which prioritize 

spending around principles and along the lines of getting the most 

bang for the buck are vitally important. 

Thank you for allowing me time to express my ideas. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Doctor. 

I now turn to Ms. Catlin. 

Mr. CATLIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee. It is my distinct privilege and honor to be here before you 

today to tell a little story about a low-cost, easy-to-implement congestion management tool that we in Colorado have utilized just to 

manage our infrastructure better. We are one of the fastest growing States, and a western State as well, and we are pretty proud 

of our ability to implement this project. 

Actually, the Colorado Department of Transportation received a 

value pricing pilot grant in the late 1990s in order to implement 

such a tool. We did a study that identified I-25 from the central 

business district of Denver up to U.S. 36, about a seven mile 

stretch, as that HOV lane in the Denver Metro area that would 

best be suited for a conversion to an HOT lane that our general assembly mandated in legislation in 1999. 

As we planned the project, we embarked upon a public process, 

a number of focus groups, public opinion, surveys, and processes, 

meeting with stakeholders, etc., in order to best convert this project 

and to meet the public’s needs. As you can see on the map, this 

project, as envisioned, as from the central business district of Denver, north about seven miles to U.S. 36. It is reversible, it is barrier-separated, two-lane facility, and, quite frankly, at the time it 

31

was greatly under-utilized. The goal was to really optimize this section of road by allowing solo drivers the ability to pay a toll and 

buy access to this existing facility. 

Next, please. 

There are many stakeholders involved. They are listed here; I 

won’t identify them. But we very, very carefully crafted interagency 

agreements in order to protect the public’s interest. 

Next. 

This is a picture of the facility. You can see that it is barrierseparated, and the general purpose lanes. It is between the general 

purpose lanes of I-25. 

Next, please. 

How does it operate? Basically, as I mentioned, solo drivers and 

HOV lanes can utilize either lane except as the point of toll collection; and there is only one point of toll collection, about the midpoint of the seven mile facility. And at that point, but only at that 

point, solo drivers must be in the dedicated express lane in order 

to pay an electronic toll. HOV lanes must be in the dedicated HOV 

lane and signs—it is pretty clear where they need to be as they maneuver through the lanes. 

Next, please. 

It is all open roll tolling; it is electronic toll collection only. We 

were very, very fortunate to have some existing public highway authorities in the Denver Metro area with over 15 years of experience, and we capitalized on their experience and lessons learned. 

It is electronic toll collection only. Because they had over 400,000 

toll tags or transponders in existence, we were able to capture 

some existing market share, and we contracted with them to do 

back office operations and provide all the services in terms of electronic toll collection and violation processing. In so doing, we minimized any need for additional staff, any additional government, 

any additional FTE and kept our overhead costs pretty low. 

Next, please. 

It really is the way we manage traffic congestion, we have a hierarchy of use. The primary use is transit; the second priority of use 

is carpoolers; and the third priority of use is solo drivers. And we 

manage the influx of solo drivers by managing the price of the toll 

that the users pay. 

Next, please. 

This is the initial toll rate structure. You will notice that in the 

peak period there is a toll rate that is paid of $3.25. We negotiated 

with our transit agency, our partners, and we agreed that if someone were to pay a toll, they would pay no less than the express fare 

for an express bus service for the same trip. We wanted transit to 

be very competitive, and we didn’t want people to choose to pay a 

toll over the possibility of using transit. 

Next, please. 

But we also had to ensure that transit and HOV had no degradation of service, so we put together very, very strong metrics to ensure that there would be no degradation of that transit service. By 

doing that, we measure each and every bus trip into and out of the 

downtown area. There are about 6500 buses per month that make 

a trip on that facility. We measure the travel time as they enter 

and the travel time as they exit, and if they drop below a trip that 

32

would be maintained at the posted speed limit, then we measure 

that. I am pleased to report that other than incidents such as 

snowstorms, we are operating at over a 99 percent success rate in 

the bus trips that are there. 

Next, please. 

We also developed a comprehensive incident management plan 

that encompasses not only our express toll lanes and our HOT 

lanes, but also the general purpose lanes on I-25, and we worked 

with incident responders, has a courtesy patrol and everything, and 

there are protocols that were established, so it is very effective. We 

also wanted to make it very onerous for cheaters, so we have a 

pretty high, pretty steep fine if you are caught violating in the 

HOV lane. 

Next, please. 

Some unique challenges. The challenges were very unique in implementing this, but it did require a very concerted public process: 

reaching out to stakeholders and a promise that we would measure 

performance and find out what the actual usage was. 

Next, please. 

Many of you mentioned that it would provide a predictable 

choice. It is flexible. Drivers can use any lane; they can opt for 

transit, HOV, or they can choose to pay a toll. It is environmentally 

responsible and it is sustainable. 

Next, please. 

Performance. We have exceeded our expectations. We are very 

pleased to say that not only have toll paying customers increased, 

but HOV performance has increased as well, and it is somewhat of 

a byproduct of our advertising in advance. People said, wow, I 

didn’t even know that there was an HOV lane that I could use for 

free. And it is optimizing the use of the real estate in that about 

16 percent of the person trips on I-25 that are taken daily are taking those lanes and they are operating at full highway speeds without congestion. They are sometimes enjoying as much as a 10 to 

20 minute travel time savings, as opposed to those in the peak 

hour who are sitting in congestion. 

Next, please. 

And also, although it is not the primary purpose, it has certainly 

been a benefit that we have seen a much greater influx of revenues 

than we had predicted. It is not supposed to be a money maker, 

but what we did, we availed the transit agency of their obligation 

for maintenance on those lanes. They had previously spent about 

$350,000 a year in snow plowing and sweeping. 

Through the collection of tolls, we are now able to cover all those 

expenses, and they, in turn, have an additional $350,000 to use for 

transit service elsewhere, or to enhance their service. Furthermore, 

the State had the obligation of about $700,000 in maintenance that 

they had to bear for pothole patching, sign replacement, striping; 

and we are now, through the collection of user fees, able to offset 

those costs. And because we are so under-funded in our maintenance activities in Colorado, we are able to use those elsewhere in 

the system as well. 

We exceeded our first year revenue and our first year traffic by 

about two and a half times, and we just celebrated our first anniversary of opening on June 2nd, and we call it the little project 

33

that could. It is not a huge—and I also want to say that it is about 

an $8 million investment, and that included the first two years of 

operating. We are going to be able to recover that, pay back that 

loan, as well as cover all of our operations and maintenance expenses. 

Thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

Mr. Stone. 

Mr. STONE. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be 

here and testify before your Committee. I am Craig Stone with the 

Washington State Department of Transportation, where I am a 

Deputy Administrator for our Urban Corridors Office. What this is 

is an office in the Seattle area dealing with the seven most congested or most controversial corridors that we have there. 

I provided to you written testimony, to you and your staff, as 

well as what we call a folio of low-cost/high-benefit congestion relief 

for better highway management that our secretary, Doug McDonald, has put forward and has spoken to. 

If I could, I would just like to talk to a few points. 

Clearly, what you have heard today, our challenge is great and 

it is a major issue. In Seattle, the polls constantly say congestion 

traffic is the number one issue for them. With that, we are trying 

a balanced approach. We actually have a major investment program going on that you have heard about in Washington State 

with our nickel and nine and a half cent gas tax. We also have a 

major transit component going on transit, and this November we 

hope to have another ballot measure. So clearly there are major investments happening. 

I am here today to also say that we need to make sure that we 

are getting the most productivity out of those investments, and 

doing that is how we will operate and manage our system that we 

have, both where we are making improvements and where there 

are needs. 

You have also heard today about congestion happens. About half 

of it is reoccurring congestion; half of it is non-reoccurring. If I 

could just speak quickly to the reoccurring congestion. People think 

of delay, but, importantly, we actually lose half of our capacity of 

productivity during congestion. We have Interstate 405, which is 

one of our beltways, and instead of moving 2,000 vehicles an hour 

through that, we will only move 1,000 when we need it most. So 

how do you get the most productivity is really my focus here. 

We also need to think about the customer as getting information 

to them and reliability, because sometimes, an hour trip could be 

there, where other days it could be a 20 minute trip. Clearly, that 

is important. 

Low-cost/high-benefit congestion relief comes through better 

management. We are using tried and true examples. Things have 

been done other ways, but for 30 years we have had rent metering 

in place. We have about 150 rent meters, over 150 miles of what 

we call data collection. Obviously, traffic signalization, synchronization is very important. You get a 40 to 1 benefit out of that investment that you make in doing that. Those are really good 

things. 

34

Non-recurrent delay: incident response teams. We actually have 

40 incident response trucks that then travel our facilities to then 

respond to incidents because one minute of congestion can give you 

ten minutes of delay. So there is a huge return on that, and we 

work closely with the State patrol and emergency responders, and 

even put incentives for our tow truck operators to clear the incidents quickly. 

Construction work zone management I have spoken to earlier. 

We are doing more and more of early planning, including putting 

early what we call ITS out before the project, transit before the 

project, and not making it the last thing that we construct during 

a project. 

And then traveler information, I think now with the web-based 

systems, portable devices, is extremely important and giving them 

accurate information so they can make good choices on their mode, 

where they are going to do their route, their travel time, and including one time all of our websites had 14 million hits in one day 

just from that. So you can see the usage of that. 

Moving on, we are using the tried and true examples in Washington State and other places in the Nation, and Federal highways 

has been a big supporter of ITS, and we appreciate that. I have 

also participated with some States—Virginia, Texas, Minnesota—

as well as Federal Highway staff to go to Europe. We heard a little 

bit about Europe here. 

But we want to add on, we are right now studying how can we 

add some of the management systems that they have there, which 

are speed control, lane harmonization, kind of the end of your congestion warnings, possibly even opening up shoulders to only during your peak hours; and with that we are seeing potentially great 

return on safety, and then safety then means return on congestion 

and congestion relief. So, with that, we are looking for flexibility 

from the Federal Highway Administration and flexibility in our 

funding that we might be able to test some of those applications. 

My last point comes a lot to the previous session you had also, 

but for our future, even with the major investments we are making 

in the Central Puget Sound area and across the State of Washington, we think we need bold solutions, and part of that comes to 

the open road tolling that you just heard about. We are opening up, 

on July 15th, our Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and that will include 

about 70 percent of the users will be using these good-to-go tags. 

They are the size of a credit card, put in your windshield, and then 

your account will be credited for that, and that is clearly for payment and payment back of the bonding for that particular project. 

That same good-to-go tag will be used for what we are having as 

our pilot, our State Route 167 HOT lane, which will be a nine mile 

pilot where we are taking an HOV lane and converting it over, and 

we are going to test with our public, our users. But, again, one customer focus, one device so they can use our system. 

Value pricing is important also to our future, and from the standpoint, as I understand today, that our State Route 520 project was 

part of the short list of the UPA, and in that we are looking at the 

opportunity to not only look at how we might be able to bond the 

project and be able to make tolls for a bridge replacement, but how 

would we vary the tolls to maximize the throughput at the same 

35

time. So we are looking at two initiatives at the same point at that 

place. 

Clearly, with these systems, choices is very important. The 

choices of the route, the mode, time of day; will I take transit 

today, will I go in my single car, will I go in my HOV. We hear 

about the soccer moms. There are great examples in San Diego of 

what they observed, and that is why we want to do our pilot for 

four years, and we will test it, we will assess it, and then we will 

be able to look at our performance through that. 

In closing, the Federal support for enhancing ITS systems, along 

with this European active traffic management flexibility for the 

States to look at value pricing I think is important. Having a balanced approach where we are making infrastructure improvements, we are looking at how they will operate not only of year 

opening, but 20 years out; how they then tie in with bus rapid 

transit, telecommuting, all lead to the best practices, the best productivity from our systems operation and management. 

Thank you for the time to be here and look forward to any questions you might have. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. Thank you all for your testimony and 

for sharing your ideas. I assume that you all were here during the 

first panel, and it seems what Colorado is doing is a very different 

model. You had an under-utilized asset and you priced it to bring 

on new users to actually more optimally utilize it, which is sort of 

the opposite about what most of the rest of the discussion with the 

first panel, particularly Mr. Shane, was about, which is we are 

going to keep pricing the asset until we drive enough people off it 

that it works more efficiently. 

I don’t know what exactly the question is, but I think you were 

probably in a fairly unique position. There probably aren’t too 

many urban areas or urbanizing areas or heavily utilized areas 

where they actually have that kind of capacity that they could 

try—they want to induce more people onto it by having them pay 

to get a privilege. Are you aware of anybody else who has had this 

opportunity? It is almost the inverse of what we are talking about 

No? 

Dr. Lomax? 

Mr. LOMAX. I believe Miami is pursuing a similar option with 

some of their HOV lanes. Again, HOV lanes that are under-utilized 

are a perfect analogy here. I think the key is that Colorado DOT 

was able to get with their partners and make sure the public understood what the benefit here is. 

It is not that we are allowing a whole bunch of people into the 

lane and it is going to become congested, and you folks who are 

doing sort of the societally right thing by riding a bus or car pool 

are going to get penalized; it is we have got a whole bunch of extra 

capacity here, we can handle a lot more people, and let’s take advantage of that. We don’t have many under-utilized resources; let’s 

see if we can get this one to carry more people, but at the same 

time not degrade the service. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right. Do you anticipate a point at which, with the 

growth, where you might bump up against the capacity of that? 

And then would you, at that point, consider variable pricing in 

order to deter people? 

36

Ms. CATLIN. Actually, we delayed implementing a dynamic pricing strategy until people got accustomed to it, but, yes, we would 

implement a dynamic pricing strategy that would ensure that people that were using the lanes, whether it be transit car pools or 

solo drivers, would have an unrestricted trip, an uncongested trip. 

So we will be raising the price if enough solo drivers come in to 

start creating delays for the buses or something. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. But right now you have equity, basically, between 

the people that are using the bus rapid transit or the buses that 

are utilizing these lanes and the single occupant vehicle, is that 

correct? 

Ms. CATLIN. That is correct. Right now, the single occupant vehicle actually pays 25 cents more than a transit trip in the same 

route. The transit route would stay the same. If they decide to 

raise their bus fares, then we would accordingly raise the peak 

hour trip for single occupant vehicles. But if it becomes congested, 

then we are required to work with our transit partners to figure 

out a pricing strategy that would work. But we are going to be implementing dynamic pricing in the next couple of years. But we 

still, when there is no congestion in the adjoining lanes, we drop 

the fare to 50 cents. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. For any of the panelists, just given some of the 

concerns, societally, how is it—in your case, you have an equivalent 

option. I can choose to pay 25 cents more, drive my single occupant 

vehicle; I can take the bus rapid transit. But that is, again, a fairly 

unique, almost direct match. Whereas, in many cases, for someone 

to piece together a trip from a suburban area perhaps through an 

urban area to another area where they have to work, we don’t provide those sorts of transit options. Then when you start pricing, 

how do we deal with that issue, Dr. Lomax? I mean, are we creating some—basically, what is the message to that person, change 

your job or move? 

Mr. LOMAX. Well, I think that is what we have been telling them 

for 50 years. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right. 

Mr. LOMAX. We got mortgage deduction on your income tax and 

all kinds of policies that sort of make it easy for people to buy a 

house out in the suburbs. People had moved to the suburbs; the 

shops and the jobs had moved there as well, and how we have got 

this suburb-to-suburb commute that is much more difficult to handle with sort of the traditional infrastructure-based transportation 

systems. I think that is why you need a whole range of strategies 

targeted at what the problems are. California’s big investment program is oriented around corridors to try to get high volume, high 

demand corridors to work really well; spot improvements, fixing 

the bottlenecks; adding transit where that makes sense. 

But again, you have to recognize that transit isn’t going to work 

everywhere. Those low-density suburbs are very difficult to serve 

with transit, so having either a much less intensive form of transit, 

combined with some flexible work hours and telecommuting possibilities and ride share, sort of day-to-day trip making ideas and 

making the system operate better; getting the signals coordinated, 

those kinds of things. They are all strategies that work; we just 

have to figure out where they are best suited. 

37

Mr. DEFAZIO. Yes, Ms. Catlin. 

Ms. CATLIN. As we look at maybe expanding our system a little 

bit further, we are looking to expand it in concert with transit, and 

on some of the highly congested corridors where we are looking at 

adding capacity with a managed lane option, we are working in 

concert with our transit provider. Right now, they are not necessarily providing bus service between suburb-to-suburb because 

their buses are sitting in congested traffic. If we were to provide 

a priced option for solo drivers, they would consider increasing 

their transit service along that corridor. 

So every time we look into this or plan for this, we are trying 

to do it in concert with buses, and we already have a policy that 

we struck with our transit agency that buses would always go free. 

So we have tried to use this as a model if we go forward on any 

other corridors. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Is this a public transit agency? 

Ms. CATLIN. Yes, public transit agencies. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. We have been really focused on individual users, 

and I guess the other side of this we haven’t talked much about 

today is freight mobility, as congestion relates to that, and I am not 

sure, again, that the Administration’s advocacy for congestion pricing is going to be particularly applicable or help us really resolve 

the sort of bottleneck problems and things we have with freight 

movement, and I am interested in any ideas any of you have on 

dealing with our freight mobility problem. 

Yes, Mr. Stone. 

Mr. STONE. If I could, one of the observations we had overseas 

with Germany, they would open up their shoulders during these 

peak hours and actually the freight was one of the highest uses of 

those outside shoulders. And as we look at one of our corridors, 

that is one thing we are looking at and will be testing, is if you 

can open that up, you actually get about 25 percent increase in capacity for that period when you need it. It may be able to address 

some of those peaks and keep the freight moving. 

So, again, a test area, something on the future. Obviously, in Atlanta, with a truck on the toll lanes—and that has been a test, trying to consider what that would be, but obviously I am not the person to speak to specifics of that. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Just on using the shoulders, I mean, the question 

becomes you are going to have to have some awfully well stationed 

and quick removal of breakdowns, or you are going to have some 

big problems or accidents, potentially 

Mr. STONE. And that is what my message would be. Systems operations and management is everything comes together; incident 

response, early detection, responding to that, being able to lower 

the speeds in advance of a congested area so you don’t have rearend accidents that then create secondary accidents. You can do a 

lot if you really use the technology that we have. Our generations 

are growing up with technology, and that is part of the future, to 

put that in place. And then with that, then we look at other smaller strategies that can fit into it. 

Mr. LOMAX. I would think that what Craig is talking about in 

terms of the best incident management program is to keep the incidents from happening, so to the extent you can keep people from 

38

running into each other at the back of a queue or sideswipe collisions or entrance ramp traffic flows, the ramp metering really has 

a huge beneficial effect at just sort of spacing out the cars that get 

to the freeway, so you are preventing collisions. 

But then very rapid response that is provided in many States to 

incidents when they happen. Houston has a program where tow 

trucks are contracted to operate on the freeways and are responsible for a six minute response time. When they get there, they 

pick up the car and they haul it away. They don’t worry about 

doing minor engine repair on the side of the freeway; they get it 

out of the way. It has led to more than a 10 percent reduction in 

collisions just on the freeway. 

But to your issue of the freight mobility, I think the truck only 

toll lanes idea is a good one. Again, it is not a ubiquitous kind of 

program, but if you focus toll lanes on ports or intermodal terminals or big truck volume flows, I think the trucking companies are 

going to find out that they are going to save these large amounts 

that Administrator Simpson was talking about in terms of their 

productivity. There is an enormous benefit there for them. 

So I think that is a part of it, but I think also, as your business 

community in Portland has found, that the port is a vital component of travel and you are not going to put containers onto light 

rail trains. You have got to do something about roads that serve 

the port area, or the economic engine begins to die away. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, that is a point I would like to find a way to 

deal with in the next reauthorization, is sort of what I call a least 

cost approach to transportation investment, and we would heavily 

weigh factors like congestion, fuel consumption. Right now we are 

talking a lot about carbon footprints, all those sorts of things. 

But we have a rail system that is at capacity in the West, for 

the most part, privately operated. We have public highways that 

are at capacity, and the question becomes does it make more sense 

to build another lane mile on I-5 or would it make more sense 

maybe for some sort of public-private, truly public-private partnership to enhance the railroad to double tracks so we can get some 

of those containers and freight off the highway. Any innovative 

thinking or ideas you have in that area would be welcome. 

You don’t have to respond now, but if you think about it and get 

back, because right now we have got sort of the chimney approach. 

Okay, this isn’t the rail Subcommittee, as you noticed, so they are 

off doing different things, and we are not really—I mean, if we 

want to be truly fuel efficient and perhaps cost-efficient, it looks to 

me like there has got to be a lot more utilization of rail for movement of freight. 

Mr. LOMAX. I think Mr. Stone talked about the flexibility as an 

option. I think that is really what many States in Metro regions 

are looking for, and even long distance regions like the Administration has heard from in their corridor plan. They are looking for 

ways to be able to move money and move decision making sort of 

out into the open and be able to invest in projects that make sense 

sort of no matter what stovepipe or what institutional arrangements have existed in the past. So anything that you all can do I 

think would be greatly appreciated and would unleash some of that 

creative power. 

39

Mr. DEFAZIO. I would like to get there, so if anybody else has 

any thoughts about that, I would appreciate them. 

I don’t have any other questions and I see no other Members 

present. Unless any of you feel there is something you would like 

to comment on that has gone on during today or something else 

you would enlighten the Committee with? If not, then I would 

again thank you for your time and your testimony, and this Committee is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:30 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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