LaHood Touts ‘Livable’ Transportation Plans, Says Goal Is to Remove ‘Gas-Guzzling’ Trucks

By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter

This story appears in the March 29 print edition of Transport Topics.

ARLINGTON, Va. — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood defended his earlier pronouncement of the equality of non-motorized modes of transportation, saying they are “what the people want,” and that a key part of the administration’s livability program was getting “gas-guzzling trucks” off the road.

LaHood told reporters March 22 at a meeting here of the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association that people want more transportation options such as mass transit and bicycles.

“We’ve been promoting the idea of livable and sustainable communities almost from the first day that we came into this job,” he said. He added that the administration’s fiscal 2011 budget proposal “reflects the idea that people want more walking paths and biking paths. They want more transit. They want more light rail. They want more street cars. This is what the people want.”

LaHood’s March 22 comments followed a posting on the Department of Transportation’s blog that non-motorized transportation modes would be treated as “equal” with other modes as DOT makes funding decisions (3-22, p. 39).

In looking at freight transportation, LaHood said the department’s livability efforts centered on getting trucks off the road.

“If you look at the $1.5 billion that we allocated from the TIGER program, 51 projects were funded and the lion’s share went into our freight system because it takes trucks off the road — it takes gas-guzzling trucks off the road,” he said. TIGER is the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery Discretionary Grant Program.

The three largest grants were for freight rail projects totaling roughly $300 million (2-22, p. 2).

LaHood said the grants provide the rail system “with the opportunity to really enhance the ability to get goods around the country . . . we believe that the freight [rail] companies enable us to get vehicles off the road.”

In a March 24 hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Deputy DOT Secretary John Porcari reinforced the administration’s freight policy, saying the TIGER funds issued to freight rail and other projects “have a number of environmental benefits, including reduced fuel consumption, but also take some of the goods movement off the highway network and move it through more efficient modes.”

“In our goods movement hierarchy, we want to keep goods movement on water as long as possible, and then on rail as long as possible and truck it for the last mile. It’s a big step forward,” Porcari said.

Industry officials bristled at the notion that other modes would overtake trucking as the preferred method of moving freight.

“If the administration’s intent is to keep the nation’s freight on the transportation system for as long as possible, they picked the right two modes — they measure on-time service in weeks not hours,” said Tim Lynch, senior vice president of federation relations and strategic planning for American Trucking Associations. “For an administration claiming to be focused on unemployment, they don’t seem to get that, for every truck they take off the road, they send a truck driver to the unemployment line.”

“You’re burying your head in the sand, and you’re not addressing the highway needs that this country is going to require to stay competitive,” said Mike Joyce, a lobbyist with the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. “When we talk about the amount that freight volumes are projected to increase in this country . . . you’re not going to be able to move that all to rail or to barges or to other forms of transportation.”

“The commercial shipping industry — including the 1-in-10 shipments that are construction — can’t be transported via bike or someone’s back,” said Brian Turmail, spokesman for the Associated General Contractors of America. “A lot of the alternatives for moving people are not viable alternatives for moving goods.”

Turmail added that the ability to move goods efficiently by truck “continues to be one of the key reasons that our economy is so nimble and so strong.”

Joyce also said that if communities or interest groups wanted to make their transportation systems more “livable,” then they should “pay for their want and they should have skin in the game.”

“Right now, they are robbing Peter to pay Paul,” he said.