National Strategy to Move Freight
Should Be Cornerstone of Future Federal
Highway Program, ARTBA President Tells
Business Community Conference

Washington, D.C. [February 14, 2007]—The development of a national strategy to improve the efficient movement of freight is critical to future U.S. economic productivity and should be a top priority for federal policymakers charged with writing the next highway and transit reauthorization bill in 2009. That’s the message American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) President Pete Ruane delivered February 13 at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s “Moving Enterprise: Transportation & the Global Economy” conference, held in the Nation’s Capital.

Ruane cited a Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) report showing that freight bottlenecks are causing trucks more than 243 million hours of delay annually, at a cost of nearly $8 billion. “If the U.S. economy grows at a conservative annual rate of 2.5 to 3 percent over the next 20 years, domestic freight tonnage will almost double and the volume of freight moving through the largest international gateways may triple or quadruple,” the FHWA report says. “Without new strategies to increase capacity, congestion at freight bottlenecks on highways may impose an unacceptably high cost on the nation’s economy.”

According to U.S. Census Bureau data, Ruane said, the U.S. population is expected to reach 400 million people by 2043. With traffic levels expected to increase 135 percent and new highway capacity projected to increase only nine percent over the same period, there will be serious consequences for the future mobility of products and people, he warned.

In his remarks, Ruane outlined a plan approved by the ARTBA Board of Directors in September 2006 that is aimed at addressing the nation’s future surface transportation needs. The ARTBA plan envisions two separate, yet equally important, components.

• The current highway and transit programs should be significantly better funded through the existing user fee structure and reformed to address future safety and mobility priorities, with the focus on upgrading and protecting the nation’s enormous past investments in surface transportation infrastructure, particularly on the Interstate and National Highway Systems.
• The federal government should initiate a new program, funded with new, “fire-walled” freight-related user fees or other innovative mechanisms, such as public private partnerships, that would improve U.S. freight movement and emergency response capabilities.  This new component of the federal surface transportation program would be called the “Critical Commerce Corridors (3C) Program.”

The scheduled 2009 reauthorization of the highway and transit investment law—SAFETEA-LU—provides a meaningful opportunity for Congress to develop a national freight strategy and allow the U.S. Department of Transportation to assume the lead role in identifying and defining a “critical commerce corridors” system, according to Ruane. The process would include significant consultations with a wide variety of public and private stakeholders, such as state departments of transportation, metropolitan planning organizations, the trucking and logistics industries, major port operators, representatives of international and domestic shippers and the freight rail industry.

“The result of this initiative would be a clear and focused strategy directed at the growing dilemma of efficiently moving freight,” Ruane said. “This challenge is about more than congestion, bottlenecks and delayed deliveries. It is about securing America’s place in the global competitive market. The American people and business community deserve nothing less.”

Established 105 years ago, ARTBA represents the U.S. transportation construction industry before Congress, the White House, federal agencies, news media and general public.

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