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REMARKS
FOR
THE HONORABLE MARY PETERS
SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION
ASSOCIATED
BUILDERS AND CONTRACTORS
17th ANNUAL EXCELLENCE IN CONSTRUCTION & NATIONAL SAFETY EXCELLENCE
AWARDS CELEBRATION DINNER
WASHINGTON, DC
JUNE 12, 2007
6:45 PM
Thank you, Dave (Myer). I am very glad to be here on such an exciting evening and am honored to be at this incredible event. I want to congratulate those of you being honored for your contributions to safety. I was also impressed to read about the advancements in completing tough projects that many of you are being recognized for tonight.
The federal government can learn a lot from your willingness to embrace creative solutions, and your drive to make them a reality. That is why I was eager to come tonight.
I want to learn from your achievements as much as I want to honor your successes.
In many ways, the challenges we face with our transportation network are no different than the challenges you face every day. Just as safety on the jobsite is paramount, cutting the number of highway fatalities, train crashes, and aviation fatalities is my top priority.
Just as you struggle to find better ways to build things that last longer and that are more durable, we deal with the challenge of designing transportation systems that can withstand growing traffic volumes.
Just as you have to find new ways to finance and oversee increasingly complex projects, we are searching for new and more effective ways to fund and manage an increasingly congested transportation network.
This congestion is a threat to the kind of success we are celebrating tonight. And failing to fix the traffic jams that are coming to define our daily lives will hamper our growth and success for years to come.
Accidents on our highways inflict a tragic toll on our families and loved ones. But they also tie up roads, delay deliveries, and frustrate drivers.
Aging highways, railroads, and air traffic systems are causing needless delays and putting strain on travel and delivery schedules once thought overly conservative.
Our current policies for funding and managing transportation networks are failing to deliver the relief from traffic that ought to come with the record levels of money we are investing in new roads, transit systems, and airport projects.
Indeed, traffic congestion has increased steadily over the last 50 years and shows no sign of stopping. With commercial ground transportation expected to increase by 30 percent or more by 2020, the time for action is now.
Americans spend four times longer stuck in traffic now than they did 20 years ago, wasting almost 3.7 billion hours each year. In addition, engines in stop-and-start traffic or idling in a traffic jam worsen air quality and increase our dependence on foreign oil.
With our network strained to capacity, deliveries of everything from concrete to plywood are arriving too late too often. These delays mean more than just project delays and unhappy customers. Late deliveries mean workers have to rush just to get back on schedule, threatening the safety of the work site, and harming the cost and quality of the project.
Factoring in schedule changes, storage and buffer time requirements, substitute deliveries, and the cost of lost customers, the price tag for traffic congestion in the United States is approaching $200 billion a year.
Worse, these costs have been growing at about eight percent a year, or about three times faster than our economy. Neither you nor I – much less your customers – can afford more congestion.
To help put an end to the choke-hold of gridlock, the President has asked me to find new ways to improve our nation’s transportation system.
We are doing just that, and in many ways, the solutions we are developing are very similar to the successes we honor tonight.
We are encouraging new safety innovations by giving states more flexibility to target trouble spots.
We are investing millions to encourage the development of transportation projects that last longer, need less maintenance, and can withstand heavier traffic loads.
Through our national congestion strategy, we are encouraging state and local leaders to look at solutions like congestion pricing, variable-price tolling, HOT lanes, and public-private partnerships designed to reduce traffic in our most congested communities.
We are pulling states together to focus on regional mega-corridors to speed commercial shipments from ports and airports to intermodal transfer centers. And we are using technology to improve traffic flow, such as timing traffic lights to respond to congestion.
We are also exploring innovative new financial options for states.
Our new Urban Partnership Agreement program will provide resources to help cities choked by traffic, and our Corridors of the Future program will help not only states but entire regions of the country.
Just last week, we announced that nine cities have made it to the semi-finals for our Urban Partnership Program – which carries with it close to $1.1 billion in federal funding for up to five communities. Those cities are Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Miami, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle.
But, as a former state official, I know better than most that the solutions to today’s transportation challenges are not going to come down from Washington. We must follow in the footsteps of groups like ABC and make safety the utmost priority, accept new ways of doing business, and focus on reality if we are going to win in our fight to improve transportation.
This is our challenge, and armed with the help and leadership of groups like this and winners like you, it is one we will win.
Thank you.
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