Businesses Urge Highway Bill to Help Freight Movement
Trucking and other industries that rely on highways to move goods pressed Congress again Feb. 26 to pass a fully funded, long-term surface transportation bill to improve the nation’s highways.
“States are unlikely to participate in projects if they can’t be certain that federal funds will be there over the long term,” said Darrin Roth, director of highway operations at American Trucking Associations.
“So a long-term federal program is critical to the trucking industry,” said Roth, one of eight transportation experts who met in a roundtable discussion with the House subcommittee on highways and transit.
The Interstate Highway System carries about 40% of all truck miles, and the National Highway System, which includes the interstates as well as other highways, carries 97% of all truck miles, Roth said.
“For the trucking industry, highway bottlenecks are a very expensive proposition,” he said. “We waste about $19 billion a year sitting in congestion, just at [traffic] bottlenecks.”
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and its subcommittees have been holding roundtable discussions and public hearings in advance of writing a new spending authorization law to replace MAP-21. The current transportation spending law expires Sept. 30.
ATA is among the groups represented at the roundtable event that have called on Congress to raise fuel taxes in order to underwrite the new bill. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also supports an increase, as do various labor unions represented at the roundtable event.
Representatives of retail and manufacturing associations also said that a long-term bill was the best way to ensure economic competitiveness and that there needed to be a conversation about how to pay for infrastructure investments.
