REMARKS FOR
THE HONORABLE MARY PETERS
SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION

BOSTON REFORM SWING EVENT
SOMERVILLE, MA

AUGUST 20, 2008
1:15 P.M. EDT

Thank you, Secretary Cohen. And thank you, Undersecretary Stern, for showing me the highlights of this exciting new development at Assembly Square.

Good afternoon, everyone. It’s great to be in Boston to talk about how to keep this exciting city moving forward.

The Bush Administration just released a comprehensive new plan to refocus, reform, and renew our very approach to the nation’s highways and transit systems.

For places like Boston, this plan will deliver fewer traffic tie-ups, better transit services, a stronger economy, and a cleaner environment. It is a clean break with the past when it comes to transportation in this country.

Bostonians understand that they can’t fight tomorrow’s traffic with yesterday’s transportation solutions.

This area is home to the nation’s first subway system, which mobilized its citizens and allowed them to travel the city and its suburbs without the hassles of congestion.

Now, this region is moving forward with a plan to revitalize this bare patch of land on the banks of the Mystic River by re-developing the Assembly Square District.

It may not look like much now, but this area will soon be home to new places to live, work, shop and play.

Key to that plan is building a new Orange line station right near where we are standing, and doing it with more than 15 million dollars in private sector investments.

Projects like this represent the kind of innovative thinking and creative financing that we should be encouraging in this country, and not discouraging.

But the bottom line is that with the nation’s current transportation program, it simply takes too long and requires too much red tape to get good projects like this approved, funded and built.

When you consider how important cities like Boston are to the strength of the nation’s economies, getting traffic moving in our largest cities must be a priority, not a pain.

So, as part of our new plan, we refocus on the nation’s urban areas by proposing a new Metropolitan Mobility Program.

This program will provide directly to regions like Boston unprecedented levels of federal funding based on how busy your roads and transit systems are.

Under our approach, Boston and other cities will no longer have to slice and dice every federal dollar to qualify for niche programs that do little to improve their communities.

Instead, there will be a level playing field, with one set of criteria: does the project justify the investment of taxpayer dollars?

Under the Metropolitan Mobility Program, local officials are free to make investments based on their most pressing transportation needs, whether it is new highways or expanded transit systems.

Under our plan, projects like this new station would qualify for funding if they stand up to benefit-cost analysis. In other words, projects that make sense for commuters get funded, while projects designed only to help local politicians don’t.

That’s bad news for those looking to build bridges to nowhere or highways for no one, but its great news for people who want to ride the T to and from Somerville.

In fact, our proposal will not only put an end to earmarks, it will give states like Massachusetts greater flexibility to invest the more than 10 billion dollars worth of stale earmarks from previous years that are simply lying around unspent today.

Let me be clear, if the Assembly Square station project is as good as local sponsors say it is, it will get reviewed, cleared and funded more easily and more rapidly than under our current, broken federal system.

More importantly, projects like this also stand a much better chance of being able to tap into the more than 400 billion dollars available worldwide today for infrastructure investments under our proposal.

Our plan recognizes that federal funding is vital. But it is rooted in the common sense belief that those funds should encourage, instead of discourage, other sources of funding.

Projects like this station will be faster to build, too, because our plan pilots changes to the federal review process so it will not take the 13 years on average to design and build new highway and transit projects it does today.

We also give cities like Boston greater flexibility to embrace variable pricing on the region’s roads that are designed to generate new revenue while improving the flow of traffic on local roads.

That means it will be easier for communities like this to generate funds for other, equally ambitious new transit and highway projects.

Cities like Boston shouldn’t have to pray for earmarks or plead for niche grants simply to get commuters moving again. Our plan fixes that by making urban congestion a priority and giving local leaders the money and flexibility they need to get traffic flowing again.

Ultimately, if the Assembly Square project is as good as local sponsors say it is, it will be easier to fund under our proposal than under the current, broken federal system.

Trying something new is never easy, but the time has come to fundamentally reform the way U.S. transportation decisions and investments are made, to renew our commitment to metropolitan mobility and to refocus on delivering more efficient roads and new transit systems for the Boston area’s businesses and families.

We’ve laid out a plan intended to spur local, state and federal debate about how best to incorporate new reforms into the highway legislation that Congress will begin work on this fall.

Today, I welcome anyone who wants to see stations like this built, traffic improved and cities moving again to that discussion.

Thank you. And I will be pleased to answer any questions.