WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. interstate highway system will turn 50 this year, on June 29.

President Dwight Eisenhower signed the law creating the system and the Highway Trust Fund to finance it in 1956.

So when the Transportation Research Board held its 85th annual meeting in Washington, D.C., recently, a panel of academic and private sector experts took stock of the half-century gone by and gazed down the road ahead for our car-centric nation.

Like the Internet, the interstate has affected the American economy in ways its creators couldn’t and didn’t imagine. Bruce Seeley, professor of history and chair of the social sciences department at Michigan Technological University, reminded would-be seers that planners didn’t anticipate how the interstate would affect freight movement. “The idea of trucks replacing railroads in so many areas was not envisioned,” he said. Nor did planners foresee the economic importance of logistics hubs so prevalent outside such cities as Chattanooga, Tenn., and Indianapolis.

Full story at Forbes.com

Washington, D.C. – Since its enactment in August, the $287 billion U.S. transportation-spending law has been a target. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita prompted calls for partial repeal of some of the spending, namely the 6,000 projects, or earmarks, that lawmakers set aside for their constituents. High gas prices have led some to suggest suspending or eliminating the wellspring of transportation funding: the federal gas tax. And now House conservatives are sharpening their budget-cutting knives.

But none of that will stop the powerful highway lobby.

Instead, officials from the American Road & Transportation Builders Association are watching their rear as they move on to their next big project: reauthorization of the highway bill in 2009. “Those are two sides of the same coin,” says David Bauer, ARTBA’s senior vice president for government relations.

Full Story at Forbes.com

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, the Bush Administration showed its intention to put the screws on domestic discretionary spending with a budget cutting or shutting down 150 federal programs. With such a clampdown afoot, can federal funding for “Deer Avoidance Research” survive? Sure, if Neil Schuster has any say in the matter.

“We have a vision,” says Schuster, president of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITSA). “Zero fatalities and zero delays.”

Maybe it’s all the time they and their staff spend stuck in Washington traffic, but members of Congress seem to like that message. Funding for intelligent transportation systems stands a decent chance of more than doubling to $3.7 billion when Congress gets around to passing a gigantic highway and transportation spending bill.

Full story at Forbes.com

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Among the big-ticket items it didn’t get around to this fall, Congress failed to finish work on a six-year transportation spending package. Even a $299 billion compromise between House and Senate versions, 37% bigger than the 1998 highway bill and reportedly backed by the White House, fell short of coming to a vote.

Good riddance, according to Don Chen, executive director of the anti-sprawl group Smart Growth America. “We prefer extension of the debate to passage of a bad bill,” he says. “We’re still looking to see a bill that actually carries out the wishes of the American people.”

For Chen and colleagues, those wishes are embodied in the goals of the “smart growth” movement: to reduce traffic, preserve open space and develop communities where people can get to work and leisure without their cars. In policy terms, that means favoring repair of existing roads over new construction, creating incentives for transit-oriented real estate development, and more funding for mass transit and programs to encourage walking and biking.

This is no easy agenda to push at the federal level, especially given legislators’ historic fondness for laying pavement. But as far as the highway bill goes, smart growth proponents at least have some time to press their case. Two weeks ago, President George W. Bush extended existing transportation spending laws through the end of next May.

Full story at Forbes.com

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Despite Congress’ fitful efforts to renew a multiyear federal transportation bill, the highway lobby has once again proved its reputation as one of Washington’s most effective operators. How effective? Think $52 billion.

Since 1991, funding for highway and mass transit has been rolled up into a giant package reauthorized every six years. The existing law, a $218 billion program known as Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), was enacted in 1998. It expired last September.

Things haven’t been pretty since. Congress has sent President George W. Bush no less than five extensions of TEA-21 to keep money flowing to federally funded transportation projects. In February and April, respectively, the Senate and House passed their differing versions of the reauthorization bill. Members of a conference committee charged with reconciling the House and Senate bills have been at work since early June.

The big holdup: money. In November, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee proposed a generous package totaling $375 billion, with a hike in fuel taxes as a possible way to pay for it.

But the tax-averse House ultimately settled on a more modest $275 billion version of the bill. The Senate came in at $318 billion. The Bush Administration, smarting from charges of fiscal profligacy, was the stingiest, with a $247 billion proposal–and it backed that lower number with a rare veto threat.

Just before legislators left for their August recess, however, a flurry of negotiations took place. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, offered up a $301 billion compromise. Two days later, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman William Thomas, R-Calif., offered a $299 billion proposal, which he said had White House backing. The conference committee adjourned for the break without acting on either arrangement.

But the highway crowd can tentatively declare victory: $299 billion is a long way from the $247 billion line in the sand that the Bush Administration had originally drawn.

Full story at Forbes.com