Funding a National Freight Policy

CAGTC continues to build momentum for a funded freight program

In 2001, the Coalition of America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors (CAGTC) set out with a handful of members, to convince Congress that the U.S. needed to create a national freight policy with dedicated funding. Congress Members received the group with, at best, confusion and, at worst, laughter.

“We were like the Rodney Dangerfield of transportation,” says Leslie Blakey, Executive Director, CAGTC. “People would say, ‘You want to talk to me about getting money for freight and intermodal? Are we talking railroad here?’ We’d say, ‘No, we’re not talking railroads, we’re talking the freight system.’ And we’d get laughed out of peoples’ offices. They really didn’t have any idea what we were talking about.”

Building Speed
Things have changed since 2001. The handful of coalition members has grown to approximately 60. New members, like the Port of San Diego, continue to join, and momentum behind the program continues to build. Throughout the years, they have stayed focused on their encompassing vision.

“Our approach is to put into place a freight program that is going to deal with both a short term and longer term objective — to increase the mobility and the reliability and the capacity of the system,” says Blakey.

The coalition would create a National Strategic Freight Mobility Program and Trust Fund (FTF), requiring the following:

•  National strategy for planning and investment
• Merit-based criteria for prioritizing projects
•  Predictable, dedicated, sustained funding for freight infrastructure
•  Partnership with the private sector to anticipate and meet the needs of users

Freight on the Minds of Many
Through CAGTC’s hard work (as well as a bankrupt Highway Trust Fund and bridge collapses) the message is taking hold. There is growing consensus that something must be done . . . and soon.

Blakey says people are starting to understand that neglecting to invest in our infrastructure has terrible consequences. “It’s resulted in deteriorating air quality. It costs shippers and consumers more to get goods moved around,” she says. “Other countries are investing heavily and they got this message before we did.”

At the recent CAGTC annual meeting, the dialogue wasn’t about how to get people to see the issues, but how to proceed in creating a new program and funding structure.

Senator Barbara Boxer, 2009 Surface Transportation Authorization chairwoman, kicked off the annual meeting by telling attendees she understood and recognized that freight infrastructure needed dedicated funding, and she supports making the freight component the centerpiece of the next bill.

“She also said in order to make this successful moving forward, we have to build in a greener technology,” says Blakey. “There’s a lot of capability out there that would help not only speed the velocity and the throughput, but also be environmentally much sounder.”

At the meeting, heads of transportation associations, such as NIT League and AAPA, discussed specifics of a freight program. John Horsley of the Association of American State and Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) went so far as to say he would like to see $3 billion a year from the Highway Trust Fund go into this new freight fund, to support freight infrastructure that would benefit the motoring public and freight users. In fact, he said AASHTO had already incorporated that figure into their materials.

Blakey is excited to see so much agreement and dialogue from the organization. “They’ve all been discussing it,” she says. “Nobody wants to be the first to step up and say, ‘Our members want to pay.’ But there’s no getting around the problems we have and how we’ve been going about this — letting things happen, letting bottlenecks accumulate, and neglecting our freight infrastructure.”

Support from Administration
Momentum is building in Washington too. One of the most significant steps was the $1.5 billion appropriation in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for a new competitive grant program for surface transportation projects with nationally or regionally significant impact.

CAGTC can take a little of the credit for this. “Without CAGTC’s rapid mobilization to support the new program, its inclusion in the economic stimulus bill might not have come to pass,” Mort Downey, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Transportation and Senior Advisor of Parsons Brinckerhoff said in a press release.“We look forward to working with the Department on the development of the criteria and implementation.”

The Next Step
Blakey is now looking ahead to the realization of CAGTC’s effort.
“We’ve built this Queen Mary of a coalition of people who want to work toward the same goal. Now we need to steer the ship,” she says. “Now the job is to craft the best public policy vehicle possible. And we have every hope and expectation that it will find a safe harbor in Congress in this next authorization program.”

In This Issue

News, Trends & Analysis
New Items

Inventory Investment and the Implications on GDP Growth

Supply Chain
Responding to Changes in the Supply Chain

Compliance Corner: How to Utilize Technology to Manage Global Trade Compliance

Overseas Opportunities for Exporters

Create a Strategy before Cutting Costs

Features
Gateway at a Glance – Great Lakes, St. Lawrence Seaway

2009 Ro-Ro Trend

Supply Chain product review
Automotive Supply Chain Software

Ports & infrastructure
Five Major Ports, Five Different Ways to Handle the Recession

Funding a National Freight Policy

Commentary
Will the Stimulus Package Help the Trade Conditions?

Casualties

Who, What, Where, When

Final Say