DOT announces plan to relieve congestion, improve freight movement
The U.S. Department of Transportation unveiled Tuesday a plan to combat highway, freight and airport congestion that experts say costs the economy more than $200 billion a year in freight delays, lost time and wasted fuel for commuters, carriers and shippers.
The national strategy is designed to improve the efficiency of existing networks and increase investment for expansion of highway and airport infrastructure, especially in large metropolitan areas. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta said he has instructed agencies within the department to make congestion mitigation a top priority.
Mineta introduced the plan at the National Retail Federation’s annual conference in Washington, and said the industry “is slowly being strangled by transportation congestion” that is wiping out advances in supply chain efficiency.
“Without shipping, trucking and air freight, America’s retailers would have nothing to offer consumers but blank catalogs, empty Web sites and bare showrooms,” he said.
The strategy incorporates elements of the national freight policy the department has been developing during the past year. Key efforts to relieve freight bottlenecks include:
* Designating three to five interstate trade and travel corridors where targeted expansion projects will have the greatest impact on reducing congestion.
* Expanding the department’s liaison office in Southern California to work with state, local and industry officials on plans to achieve consensus on how to reduce delays for imports moving through port, rail and highway systems to the rest of the country.
* Convene the first meeting of a new Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Commission on May 24 to study ways to fund and reduce the cost of highway and transit projects. The commission will schedule at least four public hearings around the country.
* Convene a joint border transportation task force with the Department of Homeland Security to accelerate investments to relieve bottlenecks at the nation’s borders, where car and truck backups can sometimes last several hours during peak hours at busy ports of entry.
* Engaging shippers from the retail, manufacturing, agricultural and technology sectors, as well as freight carriers and logistics firms, through a series of “CEO Summits” to discuss freight policy solutions.
* Continue efforts to modernize the air traffic control system and accelerate airport expansion programs through better use of the Airport and Airway Trust Fund.
Under the plan, the DOT will also encourage cities to adopt high-tech highway toll systems that vary pricing based on demand in an effort to use market-based principles to get people to drive during non-peak hours and maximize existing road capacity. Mineta said the department will also speed up the review process for highway projects under way, and press states to consider legislation allowing private sector investors to design, build and operate transportation infrastructure such as toll roads, bridges, tunnels and airports.
DOT officials have previously said that the federal government can no longer act as a funding spigot for infrastructure projects, and that the private sector and transportation consumers will have to pay more to fund projects. The government’s role will be to stimulate investment and help localities and states coordinate projects in a way that benefits national freight and travel flows.
Partnering with institutional investors and construction companies to manage public infrastructure will provide better responsiveness to system users, lower costs of repairing and maintaining infrastructure, accelerate deployment of technologies such as automated tolling facilities, and guide resources to the investments that generate the largest returns, Mineta said last week at a Bear Stearns investor conference in New York.
Among the options to fund freight infrastructure are designated truck toll lanes. Mineta said he didn’t believe truckers would object to increased tolls on highways if the lanes were dedicated to truck traffic only and helped them stay on schedule.
Mineta said once the key freight corridors are designated the department will set an ambitious permitting schedule, identify new financing options and put the projects on the fast track for federal funding “to get them moving from the drawing board to completion faster than ever before, without sacrificing appropriate environmental protections.”
The department will spend $100 million to study traffic flows and identify the major transportation corridors that will receive priority attention. Many of the DOT’s proposals were made possible by passage of the surface transportation spending bill last August, which authorized the department to explore new funding schemes for infrastructure projects.
The DOT report said it is hard to quantify the cost to business from lost sales, additional inventory and extra pollution caused by delays and congestion in the transportation system. The freight congestion policy has received impetus from shippers who have met with Mineta and other Bush administration officials during the past 18 months to explain that federal assistance for transportation networks is essential for them to remain competitive.
The report listed several examples of how the lack of investment in transportation has hampered business. Traffic on the nation’s highways has increased 300 percent since 1970 while new road capacity has only increased 12 percent over the same period.
One national retailer added 10 days of buffer stock to its inventory to account for shipping delays at an annual cost of $2.7 million, while a computer chip manufacturer moved up its last shipment departure time two hours for outbound shipments through Portland International Airport due to increased afternoon peak congestion on area roads. The report also said a small Atlanta area distributor of pet food can make 12 deliveries per day with one truck compared to 20 per day in 1984.
Trucking companies attribute $14 billion in wasted time and fuel costs to congestion.
“Growth in the transportation infrastructure hasn’t kept pace,” said John Bowe, president of the Americas for ocean carrier APL and APL Logistics, at a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Transportation and Logistics. “If we don’t fix this, supply chains will bog down, consumer prices will go up and the economy will suffer.”
“Congestion is not a scientific mystery, nor is it an uncontrollable force. Congestion results from poor policy choices and a failure to separate solutions that are effective from those that are not. We need a new approach, and we need it now,” Mineta said.
The National Retail Federation praised the new strategy. “Secretary Mineta has recognized that congestion is more than just inconvenience or frustration — it has a huge impact on the economy,” said NRF President Tracy Mullin in a statement.
The “National Strategy to Reduce Congestion on America’s Transportation Network’ is available in full at: http://isddc.dot.gov/OLPFiles/OST/012988.pdf .