Last week, the Bipartisan Policy Center published a thoughtful look at our proposal to reform, refocus, and renew surface transportation policy in America. While we don't agree with all of the Center's findings, it is definitely worth a read.
-Secretary Peters
Continue reading "Bipartisan Policy Center Comments on our Reform Proposal" »
Whenever the economy hits a rough spot, politicians often say that we need to spend more on transportation infrastructure to create jobs. They often cite numbers like “47,500 jobs are created for every billion dollars spent on infrastructure.” The Federal Highway Administration has indeed done estimates of the number of jobs that are supported by spending on highway infrastructure, and the “47,500 jobs” number comes from one such study done in 1997. But a billion dollars doesn’t buy as much as it used to, in highways as in most things, and, because that billion dollars buys less steel, concrete, and employment-hours, recent updates of those studies have cut the number of jobs supported by a billion dollars in federal highway spending to about 34,800 jobs.
Moreover, that number is based on a federal investment of $1 billion, assuming that it is matched by $250 million in state spending. If we calculated the number of jobs supported from $1 billion in total federal and state spending, the jobs created would fall to about 27,800. Also, it’s really more correct to say that the billion dollars “supports” 27,800 jobs, because the actual number of new jobs created depends on how much unemployment there is when the highway spending starts. If most people already have jobs when the construction starts, people will just leave their old jobs to take a new job, and there might be very few new jobs created. The highway construction jobs might be better jobs than people had before, but they won’t all be new jobs. It’s also important to understand that not all of these jobs are construction jobs. About half of the jobs are created in the construction industry and in supporting industries like steel and concrete production, but half of the jobs are in industries that produce consumer goods and services that construction workers and highway engineers buy with their increased incomes – everything from movie production to fast-food services.
Finally, it takes a long time for these jobs to be created. Infrastructure construction requires a long series of steps to plan, design, get environmental clearance on, and construct infrastructure projects. Only about 27 percent of the funds, on the average, are actually spent (“outlayed”) in the first year, while another 41 percent are spent in the second year.
A billion dollars spent on almost anything will create jobs. John Maynard Keynes used to say that, if necessary, we should bury pound notes in bottles and bury them, so that people could dig them up. It’s not very useful, but it does create jobs (digging up bottles). The real question is, if we have a billion dollars to spend, what is the best thing to spend it on – better education? Better health care? Better infrastructure? What will produce the greatest benefits, short-term and long-term, for our economy? The real question to focus on for transportation infrastructure is what impact it will have on improving the long-run productivity of our economy, and how that compares with alternative uses of those tax dollars, rather than on the short-run impact on jobs.
-- Chief Economist Jack Wells
In the United States, motor vehicle fatalities are the leading cause of death among those ages fifteen to twenty. Approximately 4,000 teens died and 300,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes in 2006. Even though they drive less than other age groups, mile for mile, teenagers are involved in three times as many fatal crashes as all other drivers.
Teens driving on rural roads face a greater challenge. Even though rural roads carry less than half of America’s traffic, they are home to over half of the nation’s vehicular deaths. Worse, the fatality rate for rural crashes is more than twice the fatality rate in urban crashes. For teens, the mix of speeding, not wearing a seat belt, driving while distracted (on cell phones or with other teens in the car), driving under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, and driving inexperience, often times has a deadly consequence.
As part of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Rural Safety Initiative, we have partnered with National Organizations for Youth Safety (NOYS) to develop a new generation of advertising and educational materials to encourage teenagers to drive safely. To do that, we called on the one group in America that actually understands how to talk to teenagers and knows how to get them to do something different….other teenagers.
Last month, I invited six extraordinary teenagers living in rural areas around the U.S. to exchange ideas on new ways to communicate with teens about safer driving by teens. Their enthusiasm and passion for advocating traffic safety issues was clearly apparent. We discussed why teens were not using seat belts each and every time they are in a car, ways to prohibit retailers from selling alcohol to minors, how to better target teen drivers through media and communication campaigns, why teens do not perceive distracted driving (such as text messaging while driving) as a dangerous and also what can be done to better prepare teens through driver education to drive on rural roads which are often gravel instead of paved.
Continue reading "Deputy Secretary Barrett: Teen Driving Safety: A National Priority" »
I want to thank the thousands of volunteers and Department of Transportation employees who have pitched in to help evacuate the Gulf Coast, house the 2 million evacuees, and get them back home and rebuild. Natural disasters always pose major challenges, but this nation is up to the task.
As part of the Federal response to Hurricane Gustav, the Department is making $4 million in emergency relief funds immediately available for Louisiana and Mississippi to help pay for urgent repairs to roads and bridges damaged by floods. The funds will help the Gulf Coast pay for debris removal and initiate repair contracts.
Secretary Peters has been working with other cabinet agencies and with state governments to ensure a strong response to Gustav, and to the storms looming on the horizon. She, I, and the Department will continue to do so, and will make more resources available on an as-needed basis.
-Deputy Secretary Barrett
On a sunny day in August, the Bush Administration reached an important landmark in mitigating a potential threat to the environment of the historic James River in Virginia, as a decommissioned ship was towed away to be recycled. I watched with Representative Rob Wittman and members of the media as the former oiler Truckee was towed out—the 75th ship to leave the fleet for recycling since January of 2001.
The Department of Transportation keeps ships in three National Defense Reserve Fleet sites—in Virginia, California, and Texas—to support Armed Forces movements and to respond to national emergencies. When the ships become obsolete, the Maritime Administration arranges for their disposition in an environmentally-sensitive manner.
In January 2001, there were 107 ships in the National Defense Reserve Fleet site at Fort Eustis, Virginia, near the historic Jamestown site. At that time the James River fleet contained 37 of the worst 40 ships—that is, the ones most likely to deteriorate and leak oil or otherwise contaminate the environment. We had few resources to dispose of obsolete ships, but we got great help from the Virginia delegation and new incentives as prices for scrap steel rose. Now, all 37 of those ships are gone. Out of the 107 ships in our three fleets in 2001, now only 34 ships remain. By year’s end, we hope to be down to 15.
What’s more, we have taken measures to make sure that our old ships never again pose a threat to the environment. The Department of Transportation instituted an Environmental Excellence Initiative, whereby ships have to be cleaned and emptied of oil before they come into the National Defense Reserve Fleet, so it is safer to keep them there.
To learn more about our ship disposal program, check out our web site at www.marad.dot.gov.
-Administrator Connaughton
