A clean and historic break with the past is needed to encourage the future vitality of our country’s transportation network, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, who on Tuesday, July 29, helped unveil the Bush administration’s new plan to refocus, reform and renew the national approach to highway and transit systems in America.
“Without a doubt, our federal approach to transportation is broken,” Peters said at an Atlanta press conference. “And no amount of tweaking, adjusting or adding new layers on top will make things better.”
John Hill, head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, echoed Peters’ statements during a visit to the headquarters of Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems in Elyria, Ohio. “It is time for a new, a different and a better approach,” Hill said.
Peters said the plan sets a course for reforming the nation’s transportation programs by outlining a renewed federal focus on maintaining and improving the Interstate highway system, instead of diverting funds for wasteful pet projects and for programs clearly not federal-priority areas like restoring lighthouses.
Addressing urban congestion and giving greater flexibility to state and local leaders to invest in their most needed transit and highway priorities is another key focus of the reform plan, Peters said. Local leaders will have greater freedom and significantly more resources to fund new subways, bus routes or highways as they choose, based on the needs of local commuters instead of the dictates of Washington.
As part of this focus on congestion, the plan would create a Metropolitan Innovation Fund that rewards cities willing to combine a mix of effective transit investments, dynamic pricing of highways and new traffic technologies, Peters said.
The reform plan also calls for greatly reducing more than 102 federal transportation programs that have proliferated over the last two decades, replacing them with eight comprehensive, intermodal programs that will help focus instead of dilute investments, and cut the dizzying red tape forced upon local planners, she said.
