If Congress approves significant funding to upgrade the country’s aging roads and bridges, travel times throughout the freight industry would improve dramatically, according to a report released July 14 by the Obama administration.
“When shipping takes longer, businesses must reorient their supply chains, hold more inventories, or rely on more distribution centers, resulting in added costs,” the White House’s National Economic Council and the President’s Council of Economic Advisers said in the report. “More congestion also means that both businesses and families must account for the unreliability of travel times when making their plans.”
For the trucking industry, the Federal Highway Administration calculates that highway bottlenecks cause more than 243 million hours of delay each year, at a cost of $7.8 billion annually.
In the report the administration also calls on lawmakers to advance the four-year, $302 billion legislative proposal it presented to Congress, aimed at approving long-term funding for the country’s crumbling transportation network through changes to corporate taxes.
“Current estimates indicate that America’s transportation infrastructure is not keeping pace with demands or the needs of our growing economy, for today or for future generations,” the report said.
For more than a year, President Obama and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, formerly the mayor of Charlotte, N.C., have called on Congress to shore up the cash-strapped federal Highway Trust Fund, which is projected to run out of money in August. The fund is used to reimburse states for large-scale highway projects.
This week the House and Senate are expected to take up bills that would each approve about $11 billion for the trust fund, enough to keep the account solvent through May 2015.
