Lawmakers press DOT to maintain intermodal focus
Intermodal thinking is now embedded in the Transportation Department's policymaking, budget, research and development, and even the collection and analysis of transportation statistics following decades of addressing transportation needs mode by mode without concern about how their connectivity could make the national transport system more efficient, Jeffrey Shane, undersecretary for policy, told a House panel.
But two lawmakers questioned whether multimode transport remains a top priority in the wake of Secretary Norman Y. Mineta’s decision in early 2005 to transfer the Office of Intermodalism to the newly created Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) from his office.
Shane and Mineta have taken a personal interest in changing the department from a modal to an intermodal culture, but the Office of Intermodalism may lack influence in subsequent administrations that may not be as attuned to the importance of passengers and cargo moving seamlessly between highways, rail, waterways, seaports and airports, said Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn.
“If we leave it there and you and Secretary Mineta are gone, who’s going to listen? Shouldn’t it be like cream, and rise to the top?” he said Thursday during a hearing on the subject by the Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on highways, transit and pipelines.
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., likened the reorganization to the demotion of the Federal Emergency Management Agency from a Cabinet-level organization to a division within the Department of Homeland Security. Part of FEMA’s poor response to Hurricane Katrina last year was attributed to its inability to get resources and attention from a department focused on antiterrorism.
The Office of Intermodalism is now subsumed within the bureaucracy and has to communicate through layers of assistant secretaries rather than having the direct ear of the secretary, he said.
Shane responded that the creation of RITA was the “most profound” organizational change in the department’s history and that his office relies heavily on it to make sure it tackles issues in a comprehensive way.
“The vision is that (the current organizational set up) will mainstream the intermodal thinking of the department as never before,” he said.
The DOT should establish an undersecretary for intermodal policy, recommended Patrick Sherry, a professor at the Intermodal Transportation Institute at the University of Denver, because the Office of Intermodalism lacks “appropriate resources and likely the political clout, to effect meaningful change.”
Recent DOT initiatives to reduce surface and air transportation congestion and develop a national freight policy place heavy emphasis on finding intermodal solutions to transport bottlenecks.
Current DOT estimates show that between 2000 and 2010, passenger vehicle travel on public roads will grow 24.7 percent, and freight moved by truck, rail, and water will increase 43 percent.
Chairman Tom Petri, R-Wis., said that growing demand for road and rail capacity means that a focus on intermodal projects will be a high priority for the federal government.
Intermodal transport is increasingly important for the freight industry. Many of the containerized goods that arrive from Asia at West Coast ports are placed on trains to the Midwest and East Coast, where they are offloaded onto trucks for transport to their final destination.
Transportation planners are beginning to realize they can’t solve problems in isolation. Expanding runways at an airport doesn’t help if the cargo can’t be delivered quickly because of poor road connections. New York City, for example, is studying how to improve road access to John F. Kennedy Airport to improve passenger and cargo flows.
One way that Congress could assist the DOT in developing projects for nationally significant intermodal corridors is to give the department more discretion over the funds it is appropriated, Shane said. The multiyear surface transportation spending bill that Congress passed in 2005 gives money to several intermodal freight projects. But the money is dedicated to specific purposes listed by individual congressmen for their states and districts.
Shane said members are entitled to earmark funds if they have identified pressing needs, “but I would like some latitude too.
“If funds are going to be earmarked at least they should be earmarked in a way we are all supporting.”
All states should be required to have a comprehensive intermodal development plan in order to receive federal highway assistance, Shane added. A 1995 law eliminated that requirement.
“Making the intermodal management system optional made transportation planning less consistent and implied that a systemic, intermodal vision for transportation might not be that important after all,” he said.
Most transportation departments are heavily staffed by highway engineers who are predisposed to build roads, lawmakers and transportation experts say. States and local governments typically control how they spend their allocation of federal highway funds, but the DOT is pushing states and local governments to include regional and intermodal projects in their planning.