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October 11, 2010

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NEWS HEADLINES

Mineta/Skinner Public Transportation Report Urges Substantial Federal Funding, Recommends 10 Key Reforms

A study group led by two former U.S. secretaries of transportation has released a report warning that the deteriorating condition of the nation’s transportation infrastructure will drastically weaken the national economy without major reforms to transportation planning, financing, and implementation.

Well Within Reach: America’s New Transportation Agenda, released Oct. 4, is a product of the David R. Goode National Transportation Policy Conference, held last fall at The University of Virginia and led by former DOT Secretaries Norm Mineta and Samuel Skinner.

“The Interstate Highway System and all modes of transportation must have the benefit of a new vision and regain financial stability following the rapid, and at times disjointed, growth of demand and dwindling of funding,” the report states. “A lack of capital continues to critically hinder plans for the maintenance of existing systems as well as the successful introduction and integration of new systems.”

The report estimates that maintaining and improving the nation’s highways, public transportation, and airlines through 2035 would require an additional annual investment of $134 billion to $262 billion.

“Existing structures fall into disrepair, plans for new construction fail to adequately address the problems that they intend to fix, interconnectedness between various modes of transportation is not optimized, and millions of hours of productivity are lost and billions of tons of gasoline burned as citizens wait at a standstill. We are a nation in need of fresh strategic thinking,” said former Virginia Gov. Gerald L. Baliles, director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs, which hosted the National Transportation Policy Conference.

The report lists 10 specific recommendations, which include Congress addressing the immediate crisis in transportation funding; clarifying federal decision-making power and enhancing that power with states, localities, and metropolitan planning organizations; adopting an integrated approach to transportation planning that takes in freight and goods movement and stresses intermodal connectivity; finding more effective ways of reducing urban congestion; and encouraging public-private partnerships while also improving their oversight.

Failure to adequately plan for and invest in the transportation system “compromises our productivity and ability to compete internationally,” the authors wrote.

The report is available online.

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