House Transportation Bill Seeks ‘Dramatic Changes’

House transportation leaders, seeking to move out in front of a White House that’s urging measured steps, said they will send a plan to Congress next week calling for “dramatic changes” in the management and direction of national transport policy.

The Surface Transportation Authorization Act of 2009 would create a high-level undersecretary for intermodalism at the Department of Transportation to coordinate the work of all modal administrations, design a national transportation strategy, oversee major transportation projects, and monitor strategic planning by state transportation departments, said Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

“If we get this thing passed, within two years we’ll make dramatic changes at DOT,” Oberstar said.

The announcement follows Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s call Wednesday for a stopgap 18-month highway authorization plan that would restore backing to the depleted Highway Trust Fund while broader issues such as revenue sources are addressed.

Oberstar has said repeatedly he will not support interim steps for the six-year reauthorization plan, which expires Sept. 30, and release of his plan’s outlines signals he won’t set the timetable to the administration’s agenda.

A white paper with the main features of the bill was to be released today. Committee work on the bill itself by the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit will begin on June 24, said Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. The committee expects to pass the bill by mid-July, passage by the House before the August congressional recess.

Oberstar said that the new intermodalism chief will preside over a monthly meeting of DOT administrators, plus representatives from the Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers, and Amtrak. He said modal administrators don’t even get together for coffee now, meeting at least once a month should go a long way to breaking down the “stovepipes” that have kept the department from living up to the promise of seamless transportation policy that was made at its creation in 1967.

The reorganization is the centerpiece of what is expected to be a 6-year, $450 billion spending bill that focuses mainly on highway and mass transit. Oberstar said the bill will eliminate or reorganize 108 DOT programs, to be replaced with four broad, national goals: critical asset preservation, improved highway safety, infrastructure improvement, and reductions in congestion and improvements in air quality.