As Congress returns from its summer recess, there is a growing consensus among the transportation community that there will not be a comprehensive surface transportation authorization bill signed into law this year.
Senate leaders have agreed with the administration that they need more time to develop new legislation and identify an appropriate funding mechanism. As such, the committees having jurisdiction over the surface transportation program have passed bills authorizing an 18-month extension of the existing program and transferring $26.8 billion from the General Fund to the Highway Trust Fund. At press time, these bills were expected to be consolidated and brought to the Senate floor for a vote in September.
The House leadership has taken a different path altogether. The leadership of the House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee has introduced a draft surface transportation authorization bill, the Surface Transportation Authorization Act of 2009, which would authorize $500 billion for fiscal years 2010-15 for surface transportation programs. Of this amount, $337.4 billion would be spent on highway projects, $99.8 on mass transit, $50 billion for high-speed rail and $12.6 billion for behavioral and motor-carrier safety.
The House bill was expected to go to full committee markup in early September, and Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) has said that he had a commitment from the House leadership to bring the bill to the House floor for a vote in late September. The big uncertainly was whether the Committee on Ways and Means could identify an appropriate funding mechanism. To date, the Ways and Means Committee had shown no inclination to take this on any time soon.
Regardless, the White House has indicated that they will not approve any tax increase or new funding mechanism to support this bill this year. Given the White House and Senate opposition, it seems highly unlikely that a major reform bill will be signed this year.
Smart education
ITS America has been working with the administration, the House and the Senate to educate them on how smart technology can help them address the transportation problems faced by communities.
It is imperative that Congress approach the next surface transportation bill with a focus on the transportation user. The old way of doing business—to build transportation infrastructure, let traffic loose and wait for something to crash or break before responding—is no longer acceptable when we have smart technologies and operational tools that can detect problems in advance, reduce accidents and emergency response times, eliminate unnecessary gridlock and emissions and achieve higher performance and output from our existing capacity.
The roles of federal, state and local governments must be redefined such that, in cooperation with the private sector, we can achieve delivery of real performance improvements. New sources of revenue and innovative approaches are needed to provide a smart transportation system that will have fewer fatalities, improved mobility for the traveling public, efficient and reliable movement of goods and financial and environmental sustainability for future generations.
Increased funding and policy reforms
The current SAFETEA-LU legislation eliminated dedicated funding for deployment of smart transportation technologies and provides only $110 million per year for ITS research and development. These funding levels are grossly insufficient to support the critical role that technology must play in modernizing our transportation infrastructure. The current law lacks proper incentives for transportation agencies to use all of the tools at their disposal to improve system performance. Dedicated funding for deployment and the operation of ITS, combined with meaningful policy reforms, will result in significant improvements in the transportation system while also providing tremendous opportunities for the ITS industry.
Incentivize performance improvements
Transportation funding should be linked to specific, aggressive performance goals to ensure that transportation users receive an appropriate return on their investment. To align state and metropolitan planning with national goals, each state department of transportation (DOT) and metropolitan planning organization (MPO) should develop a performance management process to monitor progress toward meeting national goals. State DOTs and MPOs should establish short-term and long-range performance targets in areas including, but not limited to, traffic-related fatalities, traffic congestion and travel times. The U.S. DOT should establish a financial incentive program that will reward state and local agencies for achieving or exceeding national goals and should create a national scorecard to publish data on performance results and improvements.
Plan for performance
To ensure cost-effective investment decisions in the state and metropolitan planning process, a cost-benefit analysis of ITS solutions and operational strategies should be performed by state DOTs and MPOs as part of their annual and long-range statewide and regional plans. Where a cost-benefit analysis shows performance benefits that outweigh other alternatives, ITS technologies and operational strategies should be integrated into transportation plans and projects and, where appropriate, implemented as stand-alone solutions for optimizing system performance and return on investment.
Put smart technologies to work
To provide public agencies and private-sector partners with the tools to effectively manage and improve the performance of their intermodal transportation systems, ITS America supports the $3 billion-per-year operations and management program requested by the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials. From this amount, at least $1 billion should be available annually to state and local agencies for deployment and intermodal integration of ITS to improve safety, reduce congestion, minimize emissions, facilitate mode choice, improve economic productivity and optimize multimodal capacity, efficiency and system performance. The re-established ITS deployment program should be modeled after Section 1205 of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient, Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU), which authorized $3 billion for ITS deployment, but was ultimately not retained in conference. ITS caucus co-chairs Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) and Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) also have called for re-establishment of the ITS deployment program funded at $1 billion annually.
Address strategic challenges
ITS and systems operations and management solutions should be eligible for funding and encouraged as part of any congestion reduction, metropolitan mobility, air quality, climate change, highway safety, freight, transit or other targeted programs or strategic initiatives. ITS and operational strategies should be funded at 100% federal share in order to encourage rapid, effective and low-cost performance results.
Create smart towns and city streets
Imagine a future where cars help prevent crashes, where rush hour is a thing of the past and where vehicles have wireless connectivity to an infinite range of traveler services, from real-time traffic, transit and parking information to collision-avoidance systems and even the ability to reschedule a bus, train or plane ticket from your cell phone or in-vehicle navigation device.
The technologies are here to make this vision a reality, but a strong federal leadership role is needed to deploy an integrated, interoperable communications network to deliver these services to transportation users.
As a first step, the authorization bill should create a competitive selection process to designate several “smart” cities, towns and communities to serve as model deployment sites for wireless safety, mobility and environmental solutions. Selected sites would provide ideal locations for demonstration of a vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) user fee and other innovative financing options and would be required to perform rigorous data collection and analysis and report back to Congress on costs, benefits, lessons learned and recommendations for future deployment strategies. An effective smart towns and city streets initiative should be funded at $200 million per year.
Advance next-generation innovations
In addition to putting existing technologies to work, the authorization bill should provide $250 million annually for ITS research conducted through the U.S. DOT’s ITS Joint Program Office in order to advance next-generation innovations. The ITS research program should focus on advancing solutions in areas including vehicle and intersection collision avoidance, congestion management, environmental solutions, emergency response, IntelliDrive, real-time multimodal traveler information, performance evaluation, innovative financing including a VMT-based user fee, driver distraction and other human factors research, and architecture and standards development to ensure interoperability of technologies.
The ITS community is better positioned than ever before to make a difference in the next transportation bill and other upcoming legislative battles. It is critical that the transportation community continue to send the message to Congress and the new administration that the federal government needs to begin investing seriously in the deployment and integration of currently available technologies into our transportation infrastructure system.
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