America’s transportation infrastructure is enfeebled, Washington’s transportation policy is broken, and we need to start building fast trains.

While that might be old news to readers of Progressive Fix, what is news is who’s saying it this week: Samuel Skinner, Secretary of Transportation under George H.W. Bush, and Norman Mineta, DOT Secretary under George W. Bush, were co-chairs of a conference at the University of Virginia behind a new report making this case. Mary E. Peters, Mineta’s successor under Bush, and a smattering of ex-DOT undersecretaries filled out the roster of 80 transportation experts.

Describing government spending on transportation as woefully underfunded, the report estimated that between $134 billion and $267 billion more is needed each year from now to 2035 to make U.S. roads, rail, and air transportation competitive with other countries.

The report lamented the “pork and political opportunism” in the current transportation reauthorization act, SAFETEA-LU, and advocated the setting up of core national priorities for transportation such as high-speed rail networks.

“High-speed rail has the potential to provide a fast, efficient and integrated alternative to driving and flying,” the report said. The best approach for genuine high-speed rail would be rights of way separate from existing freight lines – a policy strongly advocated by PPI (see here and here).

A major increase in the federal gas tax, which has remained unchanged at 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993, would help pay the bill for getting America’s transportation systems back to state-of-the-art standards.

Derailing High-Speed Rail

The group’s “call for action” comes at a time when Republican leaders have steered the GOP in a completely different direction. Extending the Bush tax cut has become their top national priority. The White House’s plan last month for $50 billion in infrastructure spending on highways and rail was met with open contempt by House Republican Leader John Boehner.

Several state races are shaping up as tests of whether President Obama’s higher-speed rail initiative can survive Republican hostility. In Wisconsin and Ohio, Republican candidates for governor have called federal stimulus money awarded for train improvements a major waste of taxpayer funds.

Scott Walker, the Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin, has launched a website called notrain.com. He’s ahead in the polls, as is John Kasich, the former House Republican who vows to kill a $400 million federal stimulus project to link Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati by rail if elected the next governor of Ohio.

The anti-rail contagion has spread to New Jersey, where Republican Gov. Chris Christie is threatening to scuttle a train tunnel to Manhattan – and forfeit $6 billion in pledged funds from the federal government and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey – citing concerns of large cost overruns.

Christie yesterday postponed his announcement of whether he will back out of the agreement to build the tunnel – which would create 6,000 long-term construction jobs – in part so that he could campaign for other Republicans in the Midwest.

In California and Florida, where full-scale high-speed train networks have been awarded federal stimulus grants, GOP candidates are suggesting that they would delay or disrupt the projects.

Meg Whitman, running as the Republican candidate in California, says the state cannot afford “at this time” the costs associated with new high-speed rail. Rick Scott, Republican candidate for governor in Florida, has jumped on the same bandwagon, questioning whether the state can afford a rail line between Orlando and Tampa that has been awarded $1.25 billion in federal stimulus money.

Ironically, the current governors of California and Florida, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charlie Crist, gained office as Republicans and have been big rail supporters. “To say ‘now is not the time’ shows a very narrow vision,” Schwarzenegger’s communications chief told the New York Times in response to Whitman’s tepid support for California’s rail investment.

The Eisenhower Model

“We’re going to have bridges collapse. We’re going to have earthquakes. We need somebody to grab the issue and run with it,” Mineta told reporters on Monday.

His earnest tone, delivered at the Rayburn House Office Building, was at odds with the anti-tax, anti-government vitriol coming from those of the same political stripe occupying nearby offices.

Advocates of infrastructure spending must offer specific data and concrete examples of the damage that continued underfunding of transportation projects could inflict on America’s standard of living and economic security. A starting point would be America’s dangerous overdependence on gasoline coming from unstable or hostile foreign countries. Add to this the lost productivity for U.S. drivers stuck in traffic jams, which the Mineta-Skinner report estimated at $87 billion in 2007, or $750 for every driver.

And consider that our population is expected to grow by 90 million in the next 40 years. These citizens will need to move, and high-speed rail is cheaper to build and causes much less environmental damage than new highways and airports.

A role model for such educational outreach is Dwight Eisenhower. The Republican president launched the Interstate Highway System by articulating a vision of top-quality roads benefiting all citizens and secured bipartisan support in Congress. It was part of his crusade to win the Cold War.

There’s a new battle out there – in the form of competition from emerging economic powerhouses like China, which plans to spend over $1 trillion in the next 10 years on a comprehensive 220-mph train system. While China builds its future, many of our politicians welcome gridlock as a way to wrest short-term partisan gains.

Photo credit: aussiegal