AASHTO Journal, 27 February 2015
The association representing state transportation agency chiefs has begun a multimedia campaign that calls on Congress to “think big” about how they want the nation’s transportation system to develop, and focus on long-term investment needs rather than short-term fixes.
The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials is making that case as Congress faces a late-spring deadline to reauthorize and replenish the Highway Trust Fund.
The campaign includes a video, mobile device app, layered infographic with its own website and interactive detail pages that show the impact of the federal infrastructure spending on dozens of state budgets. The app is available for download here.
“People want to know what they are going to get for their investment,” Wright says.This is a continuation of the “Nation at a Crossroads” educational effort AASHTO began in 2014, as the trust fund faced a summertime funding shortfall that could have disrupted thousands of construction projects and hurt the broader economy. In the months ahead of it, many states trimmed their project lists to make sure they would have the money to pay for work as bills came due.
This year’s May 31 deadline for Congress to extend the trust fund presents similar risks, and poses a new round of potential funding disruptions to state departments of transportation as they plan their 2015 construction and repair projects. Again, some are trimming their project lists.
In trying to focus attention on longer-term issues and get away from frequent funding “patches,” the educational campaign urges the public and policymakers to consider what is achievable in remaking transportation to support commerce and quality of life goals.
“The recent pattern of short-term funding actions hampers states’ ability to even plan for the next construction season,” said AASHTO Executive Director Bud Wright. But he said the campaign provokes discussion of such questions as how much brighter the future could be in terms of people moving around the nation or their cities, and goods moving between factory and consumer.
The campaign’s central message, then, is that the public and decision-makers in Washington should be more focused on what they want the transportation system to be, and then plan how to get there, rather than continue to focus on short-term fixes that starve states of the funding certainty they need to plan major improvements.
In a Transportation TV news report explaining this effort, Wright explained that “people want to know what they are going to get for their investment – not how bad things are today, but what’s the promise that is there for us if we make the investment.”
Instead of having the public accept that current congestion levels or highway safety conditions are permanent issues, he said industry leaders know that things can improve with good infrastructure programs. “We have the tools, we have the know-how,” he said, “to take that investment and turn it into something that really does change the way in which people use and take advantage of the transportation system.”
Wright said the policy challenge has prompted the AASHTO board of directors – the CEOs of all 50 state departments of transportation plus those of Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia – to this action. “They feel strongly that we need to help educate Congress on the importance of getting a long-term, sustainable investment program,” he said.
Earlier, AASHTO and the American Public Transportation Association produced a “Bottom Line Report” that showed government at all levels is investing too little in highway and transit infrastructure to both improve what’s already there and keep up with growth in population and freight traffic.
The video highlights various examples in American history when policymakers pursued a long-term vision, and planned major projects to make that vision a reality.
AASHTO Communications Director Lloyd Brown said: “This video and other parts of the campaign show the power of the big thinking of the past, and suggest what that can mean to public policy today. It is an educational effort that highlights the crucial role our transportation networks play in our economic strength and in our personal freedom to move about.”