|
04/30/2007 Looking Towards the Next Highway Bill
Though we are only halfway through the 2005 SAFETEA-LU highway bill authorization, the American Trucking Associations (ATA) and other industry and transportation groups are already planning for the next round of negotiations and lobbying for the 2009 highway authorization bill.
According to ATA President Bill Graves, because the legislative process is so long and difficult, early planning and the development of a comprehensive lobbying strategy are essential to crafting a bill which takes into account the needs of the trucking industry. “Much of the work in 2007 will be working toward a strong agenda,” for the 2009 negotiations, said Graves.
Other players are also gearing up for the upcoming negotiations. For example the trucking and railroad industries reached a “truce” concerning truck weight and length limits during the negotiations over the 2005 highway bill. For the time being that truce is still in effect. “Right now we’re still operating under the truce,” said Peggy Wilhide, a spokesperson for the Association of American Railroads. However the two industries have for years fought and lobbied against each other over the issue, and it is likely to become a serious point of contention again in 2009.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) is also gearing up and looking ahead towards the next highway reauthorization bill. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters noted that it is not too early to begin looking at the country’s overall transportation and freight needs and how those needs could best be addressed in the next highway bill. “We have the opportunity to take a broad look at our surface transportation needs,” and insure that “freight is at the table when we’re conducting transportation planning.”
Based on previous history, the sentiments expressed above may be right on the mark. Federal spending rules require that Congress reauthorize all transportation infrastructure projects every six years. Despite that requirement, the last highway bill was 2 years late and required Congress to pass 10 emergency appropriation extensions in order to keep existing projects from shutting down. What resulted was a pork-laden $286 billion bill that failed in many respects to address some of the most important issues facing the U.S. transportation system.
The next highway authorization bill faces a number of challenges that the previous bill did not. Both Congress and the White House were under Republican control during the negotiations over the 2005 bill. Despite that, as was noted earlier, the bill was still two years late. Now however, with the Congress having switched to Democratic control, it is likely that the negotiations will be even more difficult and subject to greater political considerations than they were in 2005. 2008 is also a Presidential election year, and a new administration is likely to have its own ideas of what a final bill should look like.
Highway bills, perhaps more than any other type of legislation, have become notorious as dumping grounds for pork-barrel projects. Indeed the 2005 highway bill contained an astounding 6,376 such projects, so many that the President of Citizens Against Government Waste characterized it as a “fiscal train wreck.” Competing interests such as urban versus rural, rail versus trucking, environmental versus development, make the inclusion of such pork projects almost inevitable.
The 2009 bill will almost certainly follow in that tradition. However, unlike previous bills, the parties involved in the negotiations for the next bill will face two overriding concerns – highway congestion is beginning to reach unmanageable levels that are starting to have national economic impact, and in 2009 the highway trust fund will begin to go into deficit.
The DOT estimates that currently traffic congestion in the nation’s largest 85 cities results in the average motorist spending 47 hours a year stuck in traffic jams. Estimates are that traffic congestion costs the economy $100 billion yearly.
The projections for the future are much worse. According to the Census Bureau the U.S. population will reach 400 million by 2043. If road construction levels continue at current rates, highway capacity will increase by just 9% by that same year. Traffic density however, will grow by an astronomical 135%. According to the president of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, Pete Ruane, in 2043 the average driver will spend four weeks a year in traffic jams. “It is a recipe for a gridlocked nation unless major steps are taken soon to add new highway and transit capacity,” says Ruane.
At the same time as the need for road construction continues to grow, the primary source of funding for such construction, the highway trust fund, is about to go from surplus to deficit. The highway trust fund takes in about $40 billion dollars a year, mostly from the 18.3-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax and the 24.3-cent-a-gallon diesel tax. The Congressional Budget Office, in recent House testimony estimated that the surplus in the trust fund will disappear in 2009 at current spending levels.
Should politics as usual override the pressing concerns outlined above during the negotiations for the 2009 highway bill, the next opportunity to address the issues will be in 2015. | 
