REMARKS FOR
THE HONORABLE MARY PETERS
SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION
I-70/REFORM PROPOSAL MEDIA EVENT
ST. LOUIS, MO
AUGUST 19, 2008
2:00 PM
Thank you, County Executive Dooley. And thank you, Tom [TOM
BLAIR, MISSOURI DOT ASSITANT ENGINEER], for the informative briefing on I-70.
Good afternoon, everyone. It’s great to be in St. Louis today 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 fast-growing communities like St. Louis, this plan will deliver fewer
traffic tie-ups, better transit services, a stronger economy, and a cleaner
environment.
This is where the Interstate was born when, in 1956, the very first contract was
awarded and ground was broken for I-70.
But residents of the Gateway City understand that they can’t fight tomorrow’s
traffic with yesterday’s transportation solutions.
So St. Louis is again embracing a new way of thinking as it contemplates an
ambitious plan to expand local interstates like I-70 and I-64 to get traffic
moving again into and through this region. Indeed, plans to add new truck-only
lanes along interstate 70 will go far to make daily commutes easier and freight
shipments cheaper and more reliable.
When you add the fact that this region is embracing innovative new contracting
approaches to expand I-64, you can see a future where local businesses enjoy
lower shipping costs and local commuters enjoy faster trips to work and home
again.
That’s something I know would make County Executive Dooley’s life much easier.
But the bottom line is that as ambitious as these local transportation plans
are, without real reform to the nation’s transportation program, good projects
like this will languish too long without the funds or the clearance needed to
move forward.
Our plan fixes that by re-focusing transportation dollars on getting people and
goods moving again in the nation’s busy cities and crowded highways.
Under our approach, cities will no longer have to slice and dice every federal
dollar to qualify for niche programs that do little to improve their communities
or commutes.
Instead, there will be a level playing field, with one overarching criteria:
does the project justify the investment of taxpayer dollars. Or in business
terms, does the project generate a good rate of return?
Projects 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.
In addition, our plan calls for a renewed focus on the nation’s Interstate
highways, especially along busy freight corridors like I-70. This means that
instead of being forced to fund light house projects and new museums, states
will finally have the resources they need to maintain and expand the highways on
which roughly one-quarter of all highway miles traveled in the U.S. takes place.
The idea is simple, good highway projects shouldn’t have to rely on earmarks
while bad projects shouldn’t get good money earmarked to them.
That’s bad news for those looking to build bridges to nowhere or highways for no
one, but it’s great news for people who want to find a faster and more reliable
way to get downtown, visit the zoo or see the Cardinals win a game.
In fact, our proposal will not only put an end to earmarks, it will give states
like Missouri greater flexibility to invest the over 10 billion dollars worth of
stale earmarks from previous years that are simply lying around unspent today.
We also give cities like St. Louis greater flexibility to embrace variable
pricing on the region’s roads, while improving the flow of traffic on local
roads.
That means it will be easier for communities like this to generate new revenue
for other, equally ambitious transit and highway projects.
So the bottom line is this, our proposal will make it significantly easier to
widen I-70, improve I-64, finance local transit projects and cut commuting times
region-wide.
It 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.
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 re-focus on delivering more
efficient roads and new transit systems for St. Louis’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 surface transportation legislation that
Congress will begin work on this fall. Today, I welcome County Executive Dooley
and anyone who wants to see a less-congested I-70 to join that discussion.
Thank you. And I will be pleased to answer any questions.
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