ATA Urges Separation of Highway, Transit Funding

The American Trucking Associations is calling for "fundamental reform" of the federal surface transportation program to "maximize resources" for highways.

In particular, the ATA supports a "consolidated highway program" that supports the National Highway System and other key highways and targets congestion.

Congress needs to quickly pass a multi-year highway spending bill, ATA Chairman Barbara Windsor said at a congressional committee hearing Tuesday.

"Our current system no longer meets our needs," said Windsor. Congestion is a mounting problem, costing the nation $115 billion and trucking $33 billion in 2009.

Windsor testified at a two-day House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing in Washington on surface transportation funding reauthorization.

Her testimony outlined what the ATA wants to see in a transportation spending bill that T&I Committee Chairman John Mica, R-Fla., hopes to pass this year.

Windsor stressed the surface transportation bill should focus on highways, which she described as key to the global multimodal transportation logistics system.

"Despite the emphasis on promoting the use of intermodal transportation for moving the nation's freight, 93 percent of freight moves by a single mode," she said.

In her written testimony, she said the federal highway program "now gives as much priority to funding bicycle paths" as to providing funds for Interstate highways.

Funding for non-highway infrastructure such as mass transit should be drawn from the general fund, not the Highway Trust Fund, Windsor said at the hearing.

"This would provide an immediate injection of approximately $5 billion in highway funding annually," said Windsor, who is president and CEO of Hahn Transportation.

While acknowledging Congress isn't prepared to raise fuel taxes, "the trucking industry is willing to accept a fuel tax increase" to fund highways, she said.

Windsor said the ATA opposed putting tolls on non-toll Interstate highways.

"Tolls are a very inefficient means of revenue collection and they cause diversion of traffic to alternative routes which are usually less safe," she said.

-- Contact William B. Cassidy at wcassidy@joc.com.