In a panel session “Transportation: Making the Case to the American Public,” the 2010 American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) chairman said it was time to level with the public about the scope of the transportation challenges facing the nation and how much time and money it will take to address them. He outlined a series of transportation-related “truths” during his remarks.

Larry Tate’s remarks follow:

“First and foremost, the nation’s future economic growth, which makes possible our quality of life, is heavily dependent on the state of our transportation infrastructure network,” Tate said. “If, in the future, we invest in making our network more efficient in moving people— and particularly goods—by adding capacity across all modes, we will be competitive internationally and able to and create and sustain American job growth. If we make the wrong choices, we won’t.”

Another truth, according to Tate, is that by 2050, the American population will grow by an estimated 112 million people, to 420 million, which by itself will tremendously increase demand for all products and commodities and American jobs. A third truth is that freight demand will also double in the next 40 years, from 15 billion tons today to 30 billion tons.

“For the future, we absolutely need to make adding significant new capacity to the nation’s highway system a top federal priority. We need to address the known traffic chokepoints and create regional critical commerce corridors to move goods,” Tate said. “That is not to say that we don’t also need to add capacity to the other modes. We do, including to our ocean ports and the connections to them. High speed rail could certainly compete with aviation at some point.”

In a fiscally-constrained environment, tough choices will have to be made by elected leaders, the ARTBA chairman said.

“Spreading the peanut butter around won’t cut it,” he said. “The question needs to be ‘What investments will give the American people as a whole the biggest return on their investment and help ensure a good quality of life for our grandchildren?’”

Tate lamented the nearly 10-month delay in passage of a new surface transportation bill and its impacts on the construction market. The current highway and transit program law—SAFETEA-LU—expired September 30, 2009. The current law is operating on its fourth short-term extension—the latest one expires December 31, 2010.

“At Caterpillar, we’ve had to lay off more than 20,000 employees over the past two years, in large part, because the domestic construction market has been so bad,” Tate said. “Contractors will not make investments in expensive new equipment if they are uncertain about the availability of future work. And the truth is, federal funding is what drives the state highway and transit construction programs.”

The best thing Congress and the President could do to foster economic growth and job creation is to pass a robust, multi-year reauthorization done right after the election or first thing in 2011, according to Tate.

“Again—tell the American public the truth. There will be a direct correlation between the economy and quality of life we leave our grandchildren and the investment choices the president, this agency and the Congress make in transportation over the next several years. Failure to make the hard choices is not an option,” Tate concluded.

Lack of such legislation is widely seen as contributing to the still gloomy jobless numbers posted today by the construction industry. Construction unemployment is 20.1 percent, giving this sector the dubious distinction of having the highest unemployment rate of any industry in the nation, according to NAPA.

“NAPA members are going to let Congress know, in no uncertain terms, that we need action on a multi-year transportation bill,” NAPA President Mike Acott said in a written statement. “Members of Congress have told us that they are not hearing from their constituents at home, but that is about to change.

“Hundreds of thousands of people at NAPA’s member companies helped to elect these representatives to solve the nation’s problems, not to point fingers. Along with our partners in the Transportation Construction Coalition, who represent additional hundreds of thousands of workers, NAPA is outraged that Congress continues to play politics with American jobs,” Acott continued.

NAPA has mobilized its members to meet with their elected officials during the July 4 recess, when U.S. Representatives and Senators are in their home districts.

“Our members are going to personally convey to their Representatives and Senators the importance of enacting a surface transportation bill now,” Acott said. “Our industry’s very survival, and the economic viability of these workers’ families, depends on the actions of Congress.”

NAPA has established a special Web site at www.hotmix.org/highwaybill to help with arranging meetings with Members of Congress.

​Ten months have passed since the expiration of SAFETEA-LU, the last surface transportation bill.

Congressional leaders have indicated that Congress would not take action on a multi-year reauthorization bill before the November elections.

As state and local governments slash highway spending, and the private markets remain soft, the transportation construction industry continues to lose jobs, NAPA says.

Current construction employment numbers mark three years of monthly declines, and brings the total decline in construction jobs since the peak in January 2007 to 2,226,000.

“Stimulus funding will begin to run out in the fourth quarter of 2010, casting an air of uncertainty over the 2011 highway market,” Acott said. “Transportation improvement projects are complex and may take several years to plan and construct. That’s why both the companies in our industry and the state Departments of Transportation need a multi-year highway bill. Planning is impossible in a climate of uncertainty. This does a disservice to the American people, who rely on the nation’s roads and highways for everything from emergency services to routine activities such as going to work, school, and worship.”

Since SAFETEA-LU expired, Congress has relied on short-term extensions to fund transportation construction, the latest of which will expire in December 2010. Additionally, over the past two years, the Highway Trust Fund has had to “borrow” $36 billion from general fund revenues, undermining the user-fee principle and the public’s trust. Without additional revenues, the state DOTs face a cut 30 to 50 percent in federal support as early as 2012.

“The Tailoring Rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency today does not solve the fundamental problems associated with regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, which is that failure to address the global dimension of the climate change issue will place U.S. manufacturers at a significant competitive disadvantage, costing valuable American jobs and actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

“Despite the proposed “tailoring” of the statutory requirements, EPA’s proposed regulation of stationary sources will discourage new investment and impose significant new costs on manufacturing industries at the worst possible time – just as the economy is in the early stages of what is likely to be a long, slow recovery from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

“All this latest EPA regulation does is arbitrarily pick winners and losers in terms of which facilities must comply immediately with the new permitting requirements. In the end, however, no business will be left untouched from EPA’s expansive interpretation of the Clean Air Act.

“Equally importantly, nothing in this rule will prevent the leakage of jobs and emissions to

unregulated countries like China, especially from energy-intensive, trade-exposed industries like steel. It is past time for Congress to step in and stop EPA from pursuing this job-killing regulatory approach.

Here’s his opening statement:

“This is an important hearing for this subcommittee. The reauthorization of the highway, transit, and highway safety programs has been stalled for almost a year now and that is largely due to the fact that we are unable to agree on how we will fund these programs in the future.

“Tax revenues are declining for all levels of government and everyone is being asked to do more with less. As a result, innovative financing methods will play a bigger role in the next surface transportation reauthorization bill than they have before.

“In the past, innovative financing has been associated with toll road projects. But in recent years transit projects and highway projects that do not include tolls have benefited from innovative financing.

“Today we will hear about Denver’s Union Station project which will utilize two USDOT loan programs, and we will hear about a tunnel project in Miami that uses innovative financing but does not include tolls.

“As the number of transportation projects that are financed with loans, bonding, or with private sector funding grow, there are important policy issues that must be addressed.

“We need to make sure that today’s governors and mayors do not leverage so much of their future federal funding that future governors and mayors do not have any federal money available to address the problems they will face.

“At the same time we do not want to give the federal government veto power over every financing decision made by a state DOT or a local transit agency.

“It will be difficult to strike the right balance between these two perspectives, but I believe that the witnesses today will provide us with valuable information that will help us move in the right direction.”

For a video of the hearing and for Duncan’s testimony, click here.

Accomplishing the goal of a more efficient 21st century surface transportation network will require a multi-modal strategy that includes new capacity, programmatic improvements, and a wide array of funding options. “There is no silver bullet or single solution to the nation’s transportation challenges,” ARTBA said.

ARTBA told the subcommittee the imposition of motor fuel excises at the federal, state, and local levels should continue to serve as the primary funding mechanism for highway and bridge improvement programs. The association cited the findings of two commissions created under the 2005 highway/transit law — known as SAFETEA-LU — which found increasing the traditional user fees in the near-term and transitioning to another user fee mechanism within 10 to 15 years were the most viable solutions.

Recognizing the nation’s enormous infrastructure needs, the association also said “non-traditional” funding mechanisms must be considered when appropriate to supplement core federal programs, including expanded use of toll highways and bridges, public-private partnerships (P3s), creation of other financing mechanisms like infrastructure banks and revolving loan funds, and bond financing for capacity enhancing surface transportation infrastructure projects.

ARTBA reiterated its support for providing states with toll financing options such as congestion pricing, high occupancy toll lanes and truck only lanes, if the revenue generated is used exclusively for transportation capital improvements. States should be able to use appropriately structured toll systems on existing portions of the Interstate Highway System. Debt financing is also a viable funding source for long-term capital improvements to complement the core highway and transit programs, ARTBA said.

The association cautioned that innovative financing methods should not be advanced for the purposed of reducing existing levels of highway user taxes, avoiding necessary increases in highway user fees, or diverting highway user generated revenue to non-highway uses.

“As this subcommittee continues its efforts to produce a multi-year reauthorization of the federal surface transportation program, we urge you to support policies that will promote P3s as a complement to robust core federal investment in highway and public transportation improvements,” ARTBA said.

The statement concluded, “It is important the goal of protecting the public interest in P3s not erect barriers that serve as an impediment to these non-traditional endeavors. ARTBA is convinced that the goals of an open and responsive process for P3s can be achieved in a manner that will not serve as a deterrent to these initiatives at a time when the nation needs every available option to address its transportation challenges.”

A copy of ARTBA’s complete statement is available under the “government affairs” section of http://www.artba.org.

The transportation planning process allows projects which neither individually nor cumulatively have a significant environmental impact, to be treated as a CE under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

State agencies must provide the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) with sufficient information on a case-by-case basis to demonstrate the environmental impacts associated with a project will not rise above the CE threshold. CEs are typically used for projects where no real alternatives analysis is necessary, such as road rehabilitation or bridge replacement projects.

In its comments, ARTBA called on CEQ to expand the number of opportunities where CEs can be used, as opposed to the more time consuming environmental assessments (EA) or environmental impact statements (EIS). In its current state, NEPA is ambiguous on whether a CE or EA would be required for a specific project. This can, and often does, cause project sponsors to opt for the more time consuming EA in order to avoid potential litigation at a later time, according to ARTBA.

The association cautioned that NEPA was never meant to be a statute enabling delay, but rather a vehicle to promote balance. While the centerpiece of such a balancing is the environmental impacts of a project, ARTBA noted other factors must be considered as well, such as the economic, safety, and mobility needs of the affected area and how a transportation project or any identified alternative will affect those needs. Modifying the CE process to allow for greater use of CEs, ARTBA reasoned, will help to achieve this necessary balance.

A copy of ARTBA’s comments is available under the “regulatory affairs” section of http://www.artba.org

Why is this simple equation not fully understood in Washington? Maybe it is understood but not accepted. Sometimes its possible to see Congress as a group of people standing out in the rain arguing about the best way to raise the umbrella.

The jobs bill will create jobs, even its critics concede it. But how many is one key question. Another is whether a better bill — in fact one that existed before it got shredded and pasted back together — would create far more jobs. The key to the second argument is that infrastructure spending is a proven job creator, and it almost got the chance to prove it, big time.

 New America Foundation Analyst Samuel Sherraden says the bill was stripped of infrastructure investment to the point where it will create far, far fewer jobs than it might have.  An effective original plan to use infrastructure spending to create jobs was watered down to allow far less efficient tax credits according to Sherraden, who writes in a CNN opinion piece.

According to a recent study by the Milken Institute, every $1 billion in infrastructure investments will create 25,000 jobs. By these estimates, an infrastructure package of $300 billion would create 7.5 million jobs, far surpassing the Senate’s tax credit in terms of number of jobs created for the buck.

Read Sherraden’s opinion here. Check out the Milken Institute and its report here, and see what the New America Foundation is here.

Association of American State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) News  reported that the U.S. DOT report, started in 2007 and released this month, was prepared using 2006 data to satisfy requirements for updates to Congress on the nation’s surface transportation infrastructure and future capital investment needs. (Given the size, complexity, and importance of the report, it has traditionally undergone an extensive review process prior to its release.)

Findings of the document, 2008 Status of the Nation’s Highways, Bridges, and Transit: Conditions and Performance, focus on changes in various indicators since 1997, AASHTO News reported.

That timeframe spans the TEA-21 authorization law era in its entirety (that law was in effect between 1998 and 2003) and the early period of SAFETEA-LU, the authorization law enacted in 2005 that expired in 2009 and has been temporarily extended through next month.

“In nominal dollar terms, combined investment by all levels of government in highway and bridge infrastructure has increased sharply since TEA-21 was enacted,” according to the report, AASHTO News reports. Those expenditures jumped 58 percent between 1997 and 2006.

Capital spending dropped 4.4 percent in constant dollar terms during that timeframe, however, because of construction inflation. The Federal Highway Administration’s Composite Bid Price Index shot up 43 percent between 2004 and 2006 due to notable increases in the prices of such materials as steel, asphalt, and cement, AASHTO News reports.

The House voted 221 to 202 in support of the bill, however, with the majority of Republicans opposing it, according to the Washington Watch report from the National Stone, Sand & Gravel (NSSGA) report. Also included in the package are the $64.4 Commerce-Justice-Science bill, the $24.2 billion Financial Services bill, the $163.6 billion Labor-HHS bill, the $78 billion Military Construction-VA bill and the $48.7 billion State-Foreign Operations bill.

According to the NSSGA report, President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill this week.

The remaining spending bill — the Defense bill — is expected to carry legislation that would extend SAFETEA-LU for two months, as well as raise the debt limit, extend a tax-exempt products provision by a year and extend unemployment benefits, according to the NSSGA report.

In the spending bill, the core highway program received $41.07 billion —the same as provided in the House and Senate bill. According to the NSSGA report, another $650 million from the general fund will be allocated to the states via the standard apportionment formula and subject to the usual 80-20 match, as well as an additional $240 million in earmarked projects. Another $739 million in mandatory spending from the Highway Trust Fund was also included in the conference report, according to NSSGA. –by Tina Grady Barbaccia

Use your voice and make it heard today as part of the Transportation Construction Coalition’s (TCC) phone blitz to Congress. The TCC has organized a nationwide call-in TODAY, Dec. 10, to urge Congressional action on a highway reauthorization bill.

I know we keep repeating this, but our nation’s infrastructure is in a sad state. It’s old and at capacity. And in a time with a fledgling economy, we need our infrastructure at its best to foster, economic growth, global competitiveness, and even the safety of our families.

The National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association (NSSGA), which is a part of the TCC, notes in its nationwide call-in PR: “Although Congress is embroiled in other high profile issues such as health care, senators and representatives must be reminded that this national imperative cannot be ignored.

“They need to address this crisis NOW. The first step they can take is to extend the expired Highway and Transit program authorization and get to work on passing a well-funded, multi-year bill. In visits by TCC members on Capitol Hill, members of Congress report they are not hearing from people at home. They need to hear from you TODAY!”

So just do it. Use your fingers and dial Congress. 

A toll-free number has been set up to allow calls directly to the offices of your senators and representative at 888-448-2782.

The TCC notes that while e-mail and letters are helpful, phone calls require an individual to answer and to make note of why you are calling.

The coalition also says not to be discouraged if you received a busy signal and to keep trying.

Congressional offices are being overwhelmed by calls on the health care bill so if you receive a busy signal, please keep trying until you get through and can deliver your message.

The TCC is callers to make the following points:

• (Name of state) has huge transportation needs that are not being met, including deficient bridges, deteriorating pavements, congested roads and safety hazards. America’s infrastructure is literally crumbling and with it our economic competitiveness.
• In addition, the construction industry has an unemployment rate of more than 18 percent.
• Without the certainty of a long term authorization bill, with increased funding levels, construction companies and material suppliers in our state will be forced to lay off additional workers.
• Businesses will not invest in new equipment when there is so much uncertainty about the on- going and future construction market.
• Congress must do its job and delay no longer. Pass a multi-year transportation authorization bill now and provide the revenue necessary to increase funding to address (name of state) short term need for jobs and long term economic growth.
• In addition, the TCC is delivering a letter to Congress today signed by its members’ various state-affiliated organizations and chapters as well as other business and civic groups urging action on a multi-year, surface transportation reauthorization. A downloadble PDF of the letter can be viewed here.