Secretary Anthony Foxx
Remarks AASHTO Annual Meeting
Charlotte, NC • November 23, 2014
Remarks as prepared for delivery
Good morning, everybody. Thanks, Michael for that great introduction – and thanks, everyone, for welcoming me home to Charlotte.
There are a couple other folks I want to thank today.
I want to give a big shout to Greg Nadeau, the leader of our Federal Highway Administration. You’re doing a great job Greg.
And I want to thank your executive director, Bud Wright, for pulling this event together.
And I guess you could say that this is sort of a birthday party. AASHTO is turning 100 in a couple weeks. And when you think about it, you guys really are the great-granddaddy of American transportation: You’re the same age as the first Dodge vehicle… older than America’s first stop sign.
And you’re older than DOT too. Our first day of operation was only in 1967.So we’re just kids compared to you guys.
That said, in some ways our shared history – the partnership between DOT and AASHTO – goes back farther than 1967. With your help, we’ve been literally redrawing the map for a century.
You might know this but… before there was USDOT, there was a DOT proto-agency called the Bureau of Public Roads. And in 1919, a man named Thomas MacDonald took over as its chief. He would stay in that position for six administrations – and long before Eisenhower, he’d usher in a new era of road-building.
By 1926, there was a whole sort of early national highway system. And that year, McDonald actually addressed AASHTO. He praised the country’s ability to lay pavement – which he said was on par only with the road-building of the Roman Empire and Napoleon’s France.
And McDonald also praised this organization.
He praised you because – and history is clear on this point – AASHTO was in large part responsible for getting those roads built. You were responsible because you offered technical expertise (which, by the way, was a big step up from the weekend road repair-parties farmers used to throw).
It was also because you were infrastructure evangelists. It was because you visited school assemblies and civic groups to talk about how good roads would make their lives better. And it was because you persuaded members of Congress too in the early 20th century. You convinced them to see that those road projects got funded
This was a drumbeat that you continued for decades. In 1955, after Eisenhower outlined his vision for a national highway program, Congress debated how to fund it for 18 months. And that debate may never have been resolved if it wasn’t for this organization putting pressure on Congress to resolve it.
In fact, when Eisenhower signed the final highway bill, he set aside two pens. One was for Senator Albert Gore, whose son you might also know. And the second pen… that went to you. It went to AASHTO.
Now, this is a nice story. And it goes to show that AASHTO doesn’t just own a piece of transportation history… you ARE transportation history, and I want to applaud you for that.
It also goes to show what we can do if we’re united, if we all give our full effort in support of transportation.
And I would like to say that we’re living up to that legacy right now. I’d like to say that it’s been sixty years, but still transportation stakeholders haven’t lowered their volume; that they’re still calling on Congress to invest in this country’s infrastructure as loudly as ever.
I’d like to say all that.
But we all know it wouldn’t be true.
If we’re being honest with ourselves, support HAS flagged… the volume HAS lowered.
Today, just like sixty years ago, we need Congress to pass a transportation funding bill. But the difference this time is: Not enough people are putting in the muscle to make sure it’s a good one.
The truth is: Transportation stakeholders could be fighting harder right now. And yes, that includes you. It includes AASHTO
So yeah, this is the tough love part of the speech.
And I don’t like that the love has to be tough. But it does. And here’s why:
Because in Washington, the conventional wisdom is that, when funding starts to run out in May, Congress is going to do what they’ve done 28 times in the last six years: They’ll pass another short-term patch, that’s probably also short of the funds our transportation system needs.
It’s not that they can’t pass a long-term bill. It’s that they think they don’t have to. They think that as long as you get level funding in a short-term patch, your states will be happy.
You have to tell them, “No.”
This is precisely why I sent the GROW AMERICA Act to the Hill back in the spring. I didn’t expect there to be agreement about every policy and provision in the thing. I’m not naïve. I knew there would be back and forth – that where we began might not be where we’d end up.
But we introduced the bill to sound an alarm. To let Congress and the country know: We can’t keep investing for a couple months at a time – and underinvesting to boot – and still have a modern transportation system.
I know this is something we agree on – and I need you to let Congress know you agree with it.
For example: You, more than anyone, know what happens when we invest for the short-term: It means you your states can’t plan, you can’t build.
Tennessee took a bold stand and told the truth: they need to mothball $400-million dollars’ worth of projects because of the uncertainty caused by Congress’ behavior. I applaud Tennessee DOT Commissioner John Schroer for doing the right thing. More of you need to do that.
You should join Tennessee and publish that list of projects that are imperiled by short-term, short-sighted measures. That will get attention, and help change the dynamic.
Another thing: You have to stop undershooting the target. If we get a long-term bill, it should not be at level funding. You more than anyone else know we are underinvesting in a dangerous way. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, we’re on track to underinvest in transportation by about $1 trillion dollars by the time the decade isup.
At this rate… When 2050 comes – and we have up to 100 million more people in America and have to move almost twice the amount of freight – our roads won’t be able to handle it. No mode will.
My point is this: We may disagree on some of the policies. But we do not – and we cannot – disagree on the basic facts. And the fact is: The system we’ve built over the last fifty years… isn’t the one we’ll need for the next 50. And in order to prepare for that future, we have to start now. .
We need to set aside personal interests, old ways of thinking, and take an unemotional look at what our transportation system needs – and then show some emotion, show some passion, and get Congress to approve it.
So I’ll end my remarks there except to say this: I know that a lot of you have been in the trenches for a long-time. I know that these funding fights have left you battle weary.
But I need you not to buy into the Washington fallacy that a long-term transportation bill isn’t possible.
I know it can be done. But I also know it CAN’T be done without you… without you raising your voices, reaching out to your delegations, meeting with your chambers of commerce. Get you governors on board with us.
It never has been done without you. And it never will be done without you.
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