For the past several months the argument over transportation in Washington has been about money, and how to plug the hole in the federal highway trust fund. This happens every few years: Waves of mayors, stakeholders, and advocates regularly fly in and demand the government do something to prevent reductions in federal spending on roads, bridges, and mass transit. For anyone who cares about transportation, the highway trust fund’s funding woes are a source of constant frustration.

The focus on money can make it seem like the big problem with American transportation is how we fund it. But that’s really just a symptom of the deeper problem: For a generation, maybe more, the U.S. hasn’t really figured out what its transportation policy is supposed to do.

That might seem surprising for a nation that takes such great pride in getting around, and where the call of the open road feels like our national song. And indeed, when the program was created in the 1950s, it had just such a clear purpose: to knit a growing nation together with the fastest, most modern roads in the world. The Interstate Highway System that resulted was the largest single public works program in American history, and became a touchstone for the rest of the world.

That system was declared completed in 1992, and to an extent most of us don’t realize, America has never really figured out what should come next. Our approach to transportation has been running on autopilot for two decades. Whatever funding schemes Congress comes up with, tax money is still paying for the same 1950s vision, with occasional changes when a new transportation bill moves through Congress. As a result, transportation policy is littered with small, precious, ill-funded efforts to deal with the important national problems that transportation can address, from metropolitan congestion and deteriorating air quality to basic job access for Americans, as well as the freight movement that helps our economy hum.

For nearly two decades our team has been conducting research on American transportation, and one thing has become clear to us: It’s long past time for Congress to throw out its Eisenhower-era transportation policy and replace it with something new, a vision that reflects the reality we inhabit now. Our world is faster-moving, more competitive, far more volatile, and more metropolitan-focused than the 1950s economy was, and the U.S. needs a transportation program that reflects it.

Today, the legacy of the mid-century transportation program is the focus on “mobility,” essentially just increasing speed and velocity for moving vehicles. If you can move more vehicles faster, that counts as success. This approach brings with it a built-in bias toward building new roads, largely for higher-income drivers, and fails to deliver on broader national goals.

If we started to think about transportation as a way to build the kind of country we want in 50 years, we wouldn’t just talk about moving people and goods faster. Instead, we’d lay out our bigger priorities and figure out how transportation can help us achieve them. Our tradable industries need physical access to goods, services, and workers so they can compete in the global marketplace. The transportation network is a tool for the equality of opportunity that politicians of both parties promise, connecting residents to jobs and vital services and leaving them time to spend with their families. And as the country’s second-largest polluting sector, transportation plays an important part in the national conversation about sustainability, both through vehicle technology and land use planning.

Given the track record, doing all this will not be easy. But based on our research and discussions with civic, corporate, political, academic, and nonprofit leaders from around the country – players from both parties – we’d suggest a three-pronged strategy to re-imagine our transportation priorities.

FIX IT FIRST. Now that America’s vast interstate highway network is complete, overall maintenance should be a much higher priority than new construction. Our highway system set the global standard when it was built, and it needs to be kept to that standard. But that’s not how we allocate money: a recent study found that between 2009-2011, 55 percent of roadway spending nationally went to expansion, with only 45 percent for repair. At minimum, that ratio should be flipped. As a matter of national policy, it would make sense to restrict the money from federal gas tax receipts to fixing, updating, and modernizing the existing system. That doesn’t mean states can’t build new roads if they need them, but the federal government should give them stronger incentives to repair.

FOCUS ON FREIGHT. With more than 77 percent of goods crossing state lines, federal transportation policy should be intensely focused on creating smooth freight connections between large trading centers, rural production hubs, and international ports. It’s crucial to our global economic competitiveness, and a clear example of a place where Washington’s national-level view can bring huge value to the country’s economy. Yet the federal government largely delegates freight policy to the states. We need a national freight policy that cuts across all modes – truck, air, rail, and sea—and considers everything from local community impacts to international supply chains.

DIRECT FUNDING FOR CITIES. With the federal government focused on areas of national concern, there are other aspects of transportation policy where localities should naturally lead. One of the most important changes in America since the 1950s is the growing centrality of cities and metropolitan areas. The country was only 56 percent metropolitan in 1950; it’s now over 83 percent. These places often think very differently than state transportation departments: Cities need to consider high-frequency transit, economic development in dense areas, and safe streets for pedestrians and bicyclists. The problem is that despite their disproportionate role in the economy, they control only about 10 percent of transportation money. Washington should direct more straight to them, particularly for programs that focus on urban needs like improving air quality and transportation alternatives.

With these priorities in mind, it’s not hard to see the next step: that the existing highway trust fund should be converted into a unified transportation trust fund, doing away with the government’s separate accounts for roads, bridges, and public transit. The result overall will be a change the country has long needed, from the old roadbuilding mentality of Ike’s day that primarily serves to move cars around, to a new conversation about how the transportation system can link Americans citizens and firms to economic opportunity.

These reforms won’t come easily; the status quo in transportation is deeply rooted—in constituency and money politics, in state governance, and in the history of metropolitan development. Yet change is long overdue. If our nation is going to build consensus for more spending, and solve the money problem that ties Washington in knots, a new framework for the purpose of the program is a good place to start.

Robert Puentes is a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program where he also directs the program’s Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative. Adie Tomer is a fellow at the program.



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