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.

“We want to move from highly prescriptive programs to ones based on performance-based outcomes,” Oberstar said.

Oberstar said that the bill’s $450 billion price tag is consistent with what two blue-ribbon national commissions and several private research groups say is what’s needed to bring transportation infrastructure up to par. The last multi-year transportation bill authorized $286.4 billion.

The details for paying the $450 billion tab will be worked out with the House Ways and Means Committee, Oberstar said.

“You can’t ask the public to continue paying for current programs that don’t work,” Oberstar said. However, the government won’t be able to convince the public to support the new program until it demonstrates the public benefits.

“People are sick and tired of waiting in traffic” DeFazio said. “They will require that we have measurable results — improved road surfaces, transit projects that take a few years instead of decades to complete. $450 billion is really modest it terms of the magnitude of the problem.”

The Highway Trust Fund, which gets its revenue from fuel taxes, will still figure prominently in future transportation finance. The trust fund is running dry for the second year in a row. Oberstar said that short-term financing will be handled in separate legislation.

The Obama administration projects that the fund will need an infusion of $5 to $7 billion by August, the second year in a row that the fund has shown a shortfall. Last year Congress drew $8 billion from general revenues to shore up the fund.

Nearly all groups that have studied highway financing have recommended a fuel tax increase to assure the future health of the HTF, although the administration is firmly opposed to raising the tax during the recession.

DeFazio said one solution would be indexing a fuel tax increase to an improving economy. For example, the increase would not take effect until after two consecutive quarters of growth in the gross domestic product.

“Secretary LaHood said they don’t want a tax increase now,” DeFazio said. “Not tomorrow, but what about next year? We’re putting nothing off the table.”

Contact R.G. Edmonson at bedmonson@joc.com.