Segment 2 Of 2 Previous Hearing Segment(1)
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OBSTACLES TO RAIL INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENTS
Tuesday, May 22, 2001
House of Representatives, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Railroads, Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 3:30 p.m. in room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jack Quinn [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Mr. QUINN. Good afternoon. I would like to call the Subcommittee to order.
I begin by mentioning that my partner in crime here, Mr. Bob Clement has asked to be excused for a few minutes. He is on his way and will be here. In the meantime, Mr. Larsen has agreed to, I am not sure what, I guess keep an eye on me while we are doing this.
[Laughter.]
Mr. QUINN. But we are pleased to be able to start. We just finished some votes and we are going to be called back in in about an hour or so, so we would like to get as much of our work out of the way here as we possibly can. Ms. Morgan is here as our first witness. I have a short opening statement that I would like to ask unanimous consent to be included in the record. Hearing no objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. Larsen, do you have an opening statement?
Mr. LARSEN. I do have an opening statement. I will just enter it in the record if that is all right. But I just want to point out that Mr. John Okamoto, who is the Transition Director for the Secretary of Transportation in Washington State, is on one of the panels today and I want to welcome him from Washington State.
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Mr. QUINN. Wonderful. And I would also now, in his absence, for Mr. Clement's sake, I would ask unanimous consent that his opening statement be submitted as part of the record. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. Blumenauer, anything for opening statement, sir?
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your coming forward with this issue of rail banking. It is something that I care deeply about. Over 100 Members of the Congress who are members of the Bicycle Caucus, and I think both you gentlemen are members, know first-hand what a huge difference rail banking has made with the Rails to Trails program. I am hopeful, Mr. Chairman, that this means the issue of rail banking will be before our Subcommittee. Since I have been on T&I it has been in resources. Now I hope this means that this will be before us here and we can work on it. I am very interested. I have a formal statement that I would like put in the record.
Mr. QUINN. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. But I would just say that I am sorry that the Rails to Trails people are going to be witness number nine, something like that, in the line up because I think these folks have had some direct experience working with people around the country in terms of how the program actually works. I spent an hour today with one of the ranking members of the Appropriations Committee, actually one of the subcommittee chairs, and I could not get to the subject that I wanted to talk about because he had material on their rail program that is going to move across an entire State.
I think when we scratch the surface we are going to find that this has made a huge difference for the livability of communities. It preserves rail right-of-way, something that I hope we never lose another inch of in this country, and it also is a very flexible approach.
But I will, Mr. Chairman, reserve for a little later on because I do want to hear from the witnesses. But I hope that, if there is any way that you can look at how we are managing this hearing, that we will have a chance to hear from some of the people who have experience from maybe a transportation environmental perspective before we sort of dissolve into the afternoon.
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Mr. QUINN. Thank you, Earl, and let me just thank you for those comments. I come from the Veterans' Affairs Committee, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Benefits, and I always thought that the order of witnesses were in reverse because we always had the veterans groups, the American Legion and others, go last after the Administration, for example, had something to say, and after other expert testimony had something to say. It seemed that we always waited until the end to hear from the veterans organizations. I am also happy to say that in the last two years we reversed that order. We now over there hear from the veterans groups first and have those members of the Administration hear what they have to say in person as they wait for their turn on the witness stand.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Right on.
Mr. QUINN. So maybe we can make some changes over here. Thank you for the comment and the suggestion.
I would like to ask unanimous consent that the record of today's hearing be held open for the usual 30 day period to allow post-hearing questions from members and witnesses' responses. Without objection, it is so ordered.
And regarding the record, let me briefly note that, because of some of the time constraints and the late start this afternoon, we had to limit some of the number of witnesses today. But the Subcommittee always welcomes follow-up written submissions that may speak to any of the policy issues that we will be discussing today, particularly in light of Mr. Blumenauer's good suggestion here, too.
I want to mention that later on, so that we do not have to interrupt ourselves, also consistent with the Transportation and Infrastructure's long-standing policy of encouraging any Committee member to attend meetings, even those of Subcommittees to which a member may not be assigned, I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Thune be seated today as a visiting member to participate in the hearing on obstacles to improve rail infrastructures when he gets here. Without objection, that is also ordered and part of this afternoon's record. Thank you.
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Our first witness today, Linda Morgan is here, waiting patiently for us, I might add. I appreciate your patience with us. We do not want to rush through this. You know we are here to hear what you say. I would mention that your full testimony has been received and will be made a part of the record and we would ask that you keep your opening statement in this part of the hearing to about five minutes or so. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF LINDA J. MORGAN, CHAIRMAN, SURFACE TRANSPORTATION BOARD
Ms. MORGAN. Thank you very much. At the request of the Committee, I am here to testify about two issues within the jurisdiction of the Board that affect the addition of freight rail infrastructure: first, the construction of new rail lines; and secondly, the rail banking process through the Trails Act, which allows rail lines that otherwise would be abandoned to be preserved for further reactivation. My written testimony goes into detail regarding the Board's activities in these two areas and I will briefly summarize my testimony now.
First of all, with respect to railroad construction, authorization to construct a new rail line must be obtained from the Board and construction applications are to be approved unless they are inconsistent with the public interest. To give full effect to Congressional intent, the Board has stated that rail construction proposals are to be given the benefit of the doubt.
Before a rail construction project can be approved, however, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the so-called NEPA law, requires the Board to consider the environmental consequences of the proposed transaction. While NEPA requires the Board to take a hard look at the environmental consequences of proposals to construct new rail lines, it does not mandate a particular substantive result. Thus, once the environmental effects of a proposal have been adequately identified and evaluated, the Board may conclude that other benefits outweigh the environmental harm.
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In fulfilling its NEPA responsibilities, the Board, through its Section of Environmental Analysis, so-called SEA, prepares an Environmental Assessment, an EA, or, as appropriate, a more expansive Environmental Impact Statement, an EIS.
The public, including other agencies, affected communities, and members of the general public, plays an important role in this environmental review process as envisioned in the environmental laws that the Board implements. And the Board must provide for a process to appropriately analyze and take into account all potential environmental impacts discovered during the course of the environmental review. Otherwise, there is a clear risk that a reviewing court would remand the case and require the process to be conducted more thoroughly a second time.
Concern has been raised about the extent of the Board's environmental review process in certain cases and the impact of that process on the timeliness of the ultimate construction approval. The Board understands these concerns. While the NEPA process is not undertaken pursuant to laws within the jurisdiction of the Board, we have taken various initiatives to expedite the environmental review process as much as possible as well as to facilitate the transportation merits portion of our review.
In this regard, first of all, the Board does an EA rather than a full EIS whenever possible. In addition, during the environmental review process, railroads may enter into privately negotiated agreements with affected communities and other entities, which the Board encourages, consistent with its overall preference for private-sector resolution in place of governmentally-mandated solutions. When such agreements are submitted to it, the Board generally will impose these negotiated agreements as conditions to approved constructions, thereby expediting the process by obviating the need for the Board to focus its time and attention on fashioning and justifying governmentally-crafted environmental mitigation.
Also, sometimes a new rail line construction proposal affects lands or other resources administered by more than one agency. To avoid needless duplication, these agencies can become cooperating agencies in the Board's environmental review process, and all relevant agencies contribute to one NEPA document, which forms the basis for each agency's final decision. In the end, this streamlined approach is more expeditious and efficient than would be the case if each agency were to conduct a separate environmental review.
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The Board has considered a number of rail line construction projects since its establishment in 1996, which are discussed in greater detail in my written testimony. Some have involved unusually complicated and sensitive environmental issues and have required extensive environmental review and the preparation of a full EIS, while others, less complex and less controversial cases, have required less review and have been completed more expeditiously with the preparation of EAs taking less than a year.
One pending case, however, the Dakota, Minnesota, and Eastern Railroad proceeding, the so-called DM&E case, about which we will hear testimony later today, has taken longer than that time frame I mentioned earlier. And that case, of course, is discussed in more detail in my written testimony. While I cannot discuss the merits of the case specifically, I can say that it has been the largest and most challenging rail construction proposal ever before the Board. The project involves approximately 280 miles of new rail construction along with 600 miles of rail line rehabilitation, transversing three States, includes the participation of five cooperating agencies, and entails a variety of environmental issues.
SEA issued a 5,000-page draft EIS for public review and comment in September 2000. SEA then held 12 public hearings in the affected areas and has received approximately 8,500 comments of varying degrees of extensiveness during the comment period ending in March of this year on the draft EIS. SEA is now preparing a final EIS and is working closely with the cooperating agencies to review the comments and conduct additional analysis needed to adequately respond to concerns raised. SEA is also engaged in close consultations with the Environmental Protection Agency, which has expressed various concerns in its comments on the draft EIS.
The Board is working hard to move the DM&E proceeding forward expeditiously without compromising the quality of the environmental process. But NEPA has certain process requirements, and the magnitude and complexity of this project has made the effort particularly challenging. When completed no later than late Fall of this year, the final EIS should provide the information needed for the five cooperating agencies to issue their own decisions related to this proposal, which is the most efficient way to bring closure to this complex proceeding.
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In sum, as it relates to the rail construction cases before the Board, the Board remains committed to reviewing all proceedings brought before it as expeditiously as possible, as it does with other matters before it. However, the Board must balance the need to move forward with the need to meet its obligation to ensure a thorough, adequate, and legally sound environmental review under NEPA and related environmental laws. Conducting a meaningful environmental review is critical to ensure the legal defensibility of the Board's decisions and, ultimately, to minimize delay in the processing of cases and in the implementation of transactions that are approved.
Turning to rail banking for a minute, rail banking, as I said earlier, is a way to preserve railroad rights-of-way for future use, and it is achieved through the implementation of the Trails Act. The Trails Act gives interested parties the opportunity to negotiate voluntary agreements to use, for recreational trails, railroad rights-of-way that otherwise would be abandoned. The Act also is intended to preserve railroad rights-of-way for future use, which is called rail banking.
The Board has adopted specific procedures that are ministerial in nature to implement the Trails Act. The Board cannot decide on whether or not rail banking or trails use is desirable.
The Trails Act process is invoked frequently in abandonment proceedings before the Board. Statistics kept by the Board indicate that 247 trails use conditions were requested from fiscal year 1996 to fiscal year 2000, and that 164 of these requests moved forward. Thirty-six additional trail use requests have been filed in 24 cases so far in fiscal year 2001. According to a study prepared by the General Accounting Office in October 1999, approximately 147 trails have been established or are being developed on rail-banked lines. And a total of three rail-banked rights-of-way have been returned to rail service.
In conclusion, over the last few years the rail sector has experienced service issues that have reminded us all of the need to have in place rail infrastructure that can accommodate the shipping needs of today and tomorrow. In this regard, the Board has handled the new line construction process as expeditiously as possible in accordance with the laws that it must implement so as to create new competition and additional infrastructure. And the Board has performed its ministerial functions under the Trails Act in accordance with the rail banking objective that is reflected in the current law and has appropriately facilitated the restoration of service over rail-banked lines.
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I would be happy to answer any questions that you might have.
Mr. QUINN. Thank you very much, Ms. Morgan. We are going to keep you for a couple of questions now before we get to our second panel, if you do not mind. I wanted to thank you for your comments on both issues this afternoon. We are going to hear from Mr. Schieffer on that DM&E example that you talked about.
Ms. MORGAN. Yes.
Mr. QUINN. And I would like to use that as my first question I guess, and I think I know the answer. But both you and Mr. Schieffer in your written testimony point out that the transportation analysis part of the DM&E was done in under a year, but some of the environmentals, almost all of it, is ongoing still two years later.
Ms. MORGAN. Yes.
Mr. QUINN. Would it be helpful to the Board if some kind of a statutory deadline was added to give you, the Board, some leverage? Because you really do have to balance, as you point out in what you just said a few minutes ago, moving forward but also meeting your obligations. It is always a balancing act. But we are always asking from the Subcommittee and the full Committee what we can do to help you. Does it make any sense to you, and I am going to ask the question later on to the other panelists, to put some kind of statutory deadline in there to give the Board, not to be a pain to you or anybody else, but to give you some of that leverage that you might need? Does that make any sense to you?
Ms. MORGAN. I certainly appreciate the question and understand the question. The Board has many statutory deadlines, as you know, in our statute and we are very vigilant about meeting those statutory deadlines. So I am not shy about having statutory deadlines or meeting them.
I think the key here to understand is that the NEPA process, which is again not our statute, is a statute that was put in place by others and implemented by agencies other than the Board as well as the Board, and is a law that focuses on process, not on the ultimate substantive policy goal. It has a process focus. And so the reason that some of these cases take the time that they take is because we must ensure that the process is done right so that whatever decision we make is not overturned because a court decides that our process was not adequate. So if you put a time limit on us and that means that our process will not accommodate the process goals of NEPA, then what you may have done is created a situation in which we meet the deadline and decide a case, it is appealed to court, and then the court throws it out because the process was not thorough enough in accordance with NEPA.
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So my suggestion is, if you were to go that path, and I am certainly not suggesting how you should do your work, there needs to be some substantive policy statement about the importance of whatever it is you are putting a deadline on so that if it is reviewed there is more of a balance toward the policy, the substantive policy that you are headed toward rather than the process.
Mr. QUINN. Agreed.
Ms. MORGAN. And this is not a Board decision I have just given you. This is just my view.
Mr. QUINN. I understand. And that is why I asked the question. I am not a lawyer either and would not attempt to put square pegs into round holes because the integrity of the process is what is important. I come from local town government before I came here, and if you short-circuit that environmental stuff early, it will cost you twice as much later on in time, and money, and effort, and everything else. So I do not want to suggest creating unrealistic goals for the Board, or to short-circuit the process.
Maybe we need to look at the NEPA process as it relates to your business at the STB and get some help if we were to put some deadlines there so it would stand up in court, so it would not compromise, the two things that you pointed out before, moving forward but also meeting your obligations. Thank you. That is a thoughtful answer. I appreciate that.
Mr. Clement?
Mr. CLEMENT. Mr. Chairman, since I did not get here on time and am under the weather, I am going to yield to my colleague down there. But I would first like my statement to be accepted into the record.
Mr. QUINN. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. CLEMENT. And then I do have some questions. But I would like to yield to my colleague, Mr. Earl Blumenauer, from the State of Oregon.
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Mr. BLUMENAUER. I am just curious. I wanted to pursue one line of inquiry. In a number of instances these rail corridors may be the object of a wide variety of transportation opportunities beyond just freight rail. Does the process that we are talking about here, isn't it possible in some circumstances it actually provides a little bit of a head start since we already have preserved a transportation corridor, unlike if you were going to start from scratch, for other transportation purposes—passenger rail, light rail, commuter rail—that the current system actually helps us jump start the system?
Ms. MORGAN. Well, certainly, through the rail banking process you are providing for a line that can be reactivated for rail service. I think the question really that I hear you asking is, in terms of the jurisdiction of the Board in restoring rail service, how far can we go in our actions. Of course, we are limited pretty much to rail service and, in particular, authority as it relates to freight rail service.
So if there are other activities that need to be approved associated with that particular line, then, obviously, others would have to be involved in the process. I could not just restore rail service and then that would be the authority that others would use for whatever intentions they had.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. But in terms of the overall transportation system, we could actually be having a head start for the range of other uses to which the rail banked corridor may be desired?
Ms. MORGAN. That is correct.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. I will yield back to Mr. Clement.
Mr. QUINN. Mr. Clement?
Mr. CLEMENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At this time, I yield to my friend and colleague, Mr. Rick Larsen from the State of Washington.
Mr. LARSEN. Thank you, Mr. Clement.
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You mentioned in your testimony that other Federal agencies can become cooperating agencies. There is a difference between ability and willingness and requiring. I was wondering, when you said they can become cooperating agencies, do they as a matter of course, do you have to negotiate for that to happen, should there be a requirement for that to happen? Do you have any opinions generally?
Ms. MORGAN. Well, I think our experience has been that those agencies that have the authority to do something affirmative relative to a line construction, whether it is a wetlands permit or whatever, do become involved in our process, although perhaps not exactly from the beginning. For example, in the DM&E case, we now have five cooperating agencies; at the beginning we only had three and then two joined later on. We have to work out Memoranda of Understanding with those agencies, which we have been able to work through since we have been doing this.
There are other agencies that have impact on what we do that are not necessarily called cooperating agencies because they do not necessarily have authority to grant something relative to the particular project. For example, EPA is not a ''cooperating agency'' but they are what I would call the grader. They grade our work, they tell us whether we have done well or not, and that, obviously, is always there, so they are involved in our process.
But I think what you are asking is do we have to demand that people get involved. My experience has been that they eventually get in the process early enough for us to deal with them if they are a cooperating agency.
Mr. LARSEN. Okay. I was also a local government official before coming to Congress. I recall one particular experience with a particular project where the EIS was not quite 5,000 pages; it might have been only one volume of War and Peace rather than several volumes of War and Peace, but it was still a very long EIS and a very long hearing process. I am also very respectful of the quasi-judicial nature of those kinds of projects. So I appreciate your comments with regards to that.
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But with regards to the DM&E, and perhaps even generally as well, do you see the STB as having enough authority to negotiate specific solutions? Do you see STB's role as negotiating specific solutions, or only working the process to a solution? In other words, do you have authority to inject yourself into a solution, or letting the process define one?
Ms. MORGAN. Well, the process certainly helps to define the issues, and it helps to define possible solutions to the issues that are raised. We get involved in the solution part of it in one of two ways. Either we impose what we call mitigation conditions--if there is an impact that needs to be addressed by way of mitigation, we will impose that. Or what the Board has focused a lot of its attention on in the last couple of years is what I talked about earlier, these privately negotiated agreements, which we have encouraged and which we adopt as conditions to address particular issues that have come up. We feel that the privately negotiated agreement process really gets at the local issues a lot better as a general matter than government would be able to. And that is a philosophy that the Board has espoused in the past in a number of areas.
So I think you are asking if we have authority, and while I do not want to speak for each particular case, and DM&E is pending, in terms of the general authority, we have had it in the past to do what we felt we needed to do.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Clement.
Mr. QUINN. Mr. Petri?
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. I apologize for getting here a little late. I have not had a chance as a result to hear it all. We appreciate the good work your agency is doing in moving forward with efforts to improve the railroad industry.
In our region of the country, probably the biggest bottleneck is moving freight through the Chicago area.
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Ms. MORGAN. Yes.
Mr. PETRI. And one of the efforts to try to provide better service is the merger between Wisconsin Central and the Canadian that may provide opportunities to move freight through the region more quickly. Of course, you are a regulatory agency, people file cases before you, and then you do your best to deal with it in the national interest. We are having hearings on congestion or trying to make the railroad system more efficient for our country. There is no, as I understand it, no real office or group of people who are looking at things not on a railroad-by-railroad basis, but from the point of view of the country and saying maybe we should have some national effort to break the Chicago bottleneck or other bottlenecks around the country. We are relying as a country on initiatives by individual railroads or groups of railroads to try to put programs together, that is my understanding.
Do you think that is working very well? Or should there be some more national effort, either on a one-time basis or on an ongoing basis, to come up with solutions to rail bottlenecks? We would like to move a lot more freight and value-added freight on the rail system but we cannot now because the level of service is not what is required. And no one seems to know how to get from where we are to where we would like to be, which is a much higher percentage of value-added product delivered in a timely fashion on a dedicated system, the rail system in the United States. I know it is not exactly in your bailiwick, but being a close observer of the railroad industry for many years, do you have any comments on all of that or what we might do as a country to move forward?
Ms. MORGAN. Well, let me just answer that in two ways. First of all, clearly there is always a need for ongoing transportation policy review, and obviously the Department of Transportation and other groups are involved in that with Congress as we look ahead to what the transportation needs should be into the future. Obviously, the railroads have an important part to play in the transportation system of the future.
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Getting to more specifically what my job is and what we do at the Board, I think we have tried to implement our law in a way that shows appreciation for some of the more general issues that you are referencing. And we have also used our institution not so much to impose regulation, but more to work with groups informally in the private sector to work through issues that arise. Chicago is one such example where there has been a lot of informal discussion and meeting going on with the Mayor and others about rail service in and around Chicago. That is not something we are doing as a result of a regulation but more a general interest in rail service.
So I think you raise an issue that is important, that needs to be reviewed on an ongoing basis. There obviously are policy places where that can be going on. To the extent that the Board can be in that, I think we have been and we will continue to be.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you.
Mr. QUINN. Thank you, Mr. Petri.
Mr. Clement now?
Mr. CLEMENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Morgan, because the Trails Act requires that the abandoning railroad and trail-sponsor develop an agreement before rail banking can take place, what other, if any, means may the STB employ to ensure rail corridors are protected when no agreement can be reached?
Ms. MORGAN. When you say no agreement, do you mean no trails use agreement?
Mr. CLEMENT. That is correct.
Ms. MORGAN. I do not know that we have any authority to force an agreement because, under the Trails Act and our law, essentially we are ministerial in our function. If people bring us a trails proposal, we make sure it is part of the abandonment process, the abandonment proceeding before us, but we do not force people into it, we do not determine whether it is the right thing or the wrong thing, we allow it to happen and we make sure our processes allow that private-sector exchange to go on.
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Mr. CLEMENT. Madam Chairman Morgan, how do you feel about that? Or does that put us in a very precarious position for the future?
Ms. MORGAN. Well, I guess it depends on what the goal of Congress is relative to this area. Obviously, there are those individuals who do not want trails and there are those who do want trails. That is a decision that obviously has to continue to be made in the context of how we handle this. If you are for some sort of rail banking, obviously the trails process is the way to get to that. Having said that, there are those who feel very strongly that they do not want trails and so that is a concern that others have. So it is really a question of where we want to end up.
There have been bills introduced altering the Trails Act process, suggesting that the Board have more responsibility in this area and so forth. I think it really boils down to where Congress wants to be in balancing rail banking and the landowners.
Mr. CLEMENT. But you have not made a decision yet, or will you make a decision whether you would like to have such authority?
Ms. MORGAN. Well, if Congress were to decide that rail banking was something that you wanted to make sure was in place and the trails process was the way to do that, and then amended the law to make sure that happened and put the Board in some sort of process of making that happen, then certainly I would need to have a law that was very clear in that regard with resources to do the job, because, clearly, that would get us into substantive areas that we are not now in.
Mr. OBERSTAR. Would the gentleman yield?
Mr. CLEMENT. Yes.
Mr. OBERSTAR. I thank the gentleman for yielding. You raise a very important issue.
Welcome, Chairman Morgan. The rails to trails issue is a matter very close to my heart, very great significance. I am just wondering how many such cases has the Board confronted during your chairmanship?
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Ms. MORGAN. In terms of rail-banked lines returned to rail service?
Mr. OBERSTAR. Yes.
Ms. MORGAN. Three.
Mr. OBERSTAR. Just three cases?l
Ms. MORGAN. Yes.
Mr. OBERSTAR. And your concern is the lack of clarity in the law, lack of clear authority; is that correct?
Ms. MORGAN. Well, my concern is not with the law today, it is with if the law were to be changed. If Congress were to decide that rail banking was clearly to be where people wanted to be and it wanted the Board clearly and affirmatively involved in that process, then I would hate—what I am trying to say is I would hate to be the one to get into a fight between landowners and trails users in an arena in which the policy was not clear.
Mr. OBERSTAR. I see the point you are making.
Ms. MORGAN. There is a very, very, as you probably know, controversial debate between those two groups.
Mr. OBERSTAR. I will not pursue that. Thank you very much.
Mr. QUINN. Thank you, Mr. Oberstar. Thank you, Mr. Clement.
The Subcommittee welcomes Mr. Thune with us this afternoon. He will be recognized for questions now.
Mr. Thune?
Mr. THUNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your allowing me to participate in this hearing. As you and I have discussed before, I have a particular interest in railroad issues and appreciate the opportunity to sit in on this hearing.
Thank you, Madam Chair, for appearing before us today. Just a couple of questions. Coming back to the points that were raised earlier, what can the Surface Transportation Board do by law as the lead agency in the Environmental Impact Statement process to keep cooperating agencies moving forward on their assessments? Short of statutory deadlines, which were referenced earlier by the Chairman, do you have tools at your disposal to keep this process moving forward, because you do have a lot of lines in the water, so to speak, to all the various agencies who have something to say about this. What authorities do you have?
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Ms. MORGAN. The authority that we have is general, and that is that we are responsible for moving a case. And so we continue to work with the cooperating agencies, push them along, make sure that they are part of our process in the way they need to be. That is a general responsibility that we have.
Mr. THUNE. Do you have any kind of legal leverage to impose a schedule on those agencies? If you say that we need your response back, your analysis, evaluation of this by a time certain, is that a deadline that you would have the ability to impose on those agencies?
Ms. MORGAN. Well, I guess that we might have the ability to do that. The question would be whether it would be followed up on, and whether once the case was decided and in court someone would determine that some schedule that we imposed on another agency did not accommodate their responsibilities appropriately or did not accommodate the NEPA process appropriately. See, this is the issue that we discussed a little bit ago. Regarding the statute that I implement, I understand the parameters of that statute, I am in charge of it and I know what to do with it. But the environmental process involves NEPA and a lot of other statutes and a lot of other agencies with a lot of other responsibilities. They have their responsibilities that they feel they need to accommodate, and that is part of our process.
So what I am always concerned about in these cases is making sure that we make the types of decisions along the way with respect to all of these environmental issues so that when we get taken to court we are not thrown out because we have not accommodated all of these environmental issues around us.
Mr. THUNE. Do some of the agencies that, you said a couple joined later, you started off I think you said with four?
Ms. MORGAN. There was three in the beginning and then two joined later.
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Mr. THUNE. Right. Okay. And that is something that as they see this process move forward, if they determine they have got some jurisdiction over the issue, then they would want to weigh in.
Ms. MORGAN. Right. And I would prefer that they come and join with us rather than wait for us to be finished and then decide oh, we have an issue, we need to address it, and then we are delayed further. I think the process of cooperation is an important process that we have engaged in and it has assisted us in moving these cases along. And, frankly, as we all know, it is better working with someone than against someone.
And if the impression is we are working against them, then chances are they are not going to work with us, which is not in the best interest of the applicants in the transaction involved. So what we have tried to do is to build relationships with these agencies so that we have a cooperating arrangement. And not all cases, I might add, have five cooperating agencies. That is a significant number, certainly, by comparison to others.
Mr. THUNE. Right. With the particular case of the DM&E, my understanding is that the announcement now is that you expect to have the EIS process completed by late Fall. Once that is done, the STB still has to go through a permitting process; is that correct?
Ms. MORGAN. Well, we have already tentatively approved this project based on its transportation merits. So once the Board receives the final EIS document, then it will be the Board's responsibility to look at that document and to make the final decisions about the environmental piece of this in the context of a final decision on the case.
Mr. THUNE. Do you have any guess as to how long that might take? Once you have the EIS piece completed, and then your ultimate passing judgement, approval, or disapproval, how long would it take once you are at that point, once the EIS is completed?
Ms. MORGAN. Well, a lot of it will depend upon what issues get resolved in the process. Certainly, applicants in these cases work out arrangements in the private sector. The more arrangements that are worked out, the more issues are resolved, the less we have to do in terms of governmental action, and that will certainly help. If we can work out our differences with EPA, and we are working very hard at that, that will certainly help. So I cannot really tell you what the final document will look like, what the final issues will look like. I am hoping that all of these things will come together to the extent that issues get resolved along the way, so that by the time the final EIS is done and it is to us, we are honing in on whatever particulars are left.
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Now I will say, I think the Board has been responsible in handling its cases, at least since I have been there, and we do not drag our feet. We get cases out as expeditiously as we can. I think the track record there is clear whether it is a line construction case or another matter. So I can assure you that if I am in a position to move it along, I will move it along, just the way I have moved other cases along, as expeditiously as I can.
Mr. THUNE. I appreciate your answers. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. QUINN. Thank you, Mr. Thune.
The Chair recognizes the Ranking Member of the full Committee, Mr. Oberstar.
Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I congratulate you and Mr. Clement on holding these hearings on congestion as part of the overall Committee review of transportation congestion in the several modes, and here in railroading it is particularly critical. I, unfortunately, was detained at several other transportation events, so I will just ask to have my statement included in the record.
Mr. QUINN. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. OBERSTAR. Forgive me, Chairman Morgan, for bringing up sort of casework here to the Committee.
Ms. MORGAN. That is my job.
Mr. OBERSTAR. But that is what we do. We do this very well. You have before you the matter of the DM&E railroad. Others will testify later today that the Board does not have authority to require the DM&E to build a by-pass in place of the tracks it currently proposes to run through the city of Rochester near the world renowned, revered Mayo Clinic.
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Ms. MORGAN. Right.
Mr. OBERSTAR. I have told DM&E railroad, look, either you folks get it straight and you do everything humanly possible in your power to mitigate the vibration, the noise so that you are not vibrating instruments in the operating rooms or in the laboratories of the Mayo Clinic, or, if you have to stand up against an adversary, who would you rather go up against, a group of businessmen who want you to do something or the Mayo Clinic? Who wins that publicity argument?
If the contrary view is right, the Board can direct routing only for new construction. What is your view of the Board's authority? This is really a generic question. This is not just DM&E. There are other cases in the wings of this nature.
Ms. MORGAN. Yes, there are. I certainly must note that this is a pending matter and that this issue is a pending issue.
Mr. OBERSTAR. I am not asking you to prejudge the case.
Ms. MORGAN. I understand that. But I just need to say that so there is no—
Mr. OBERSTAR. I want you to separate out the case from the principle.
Ms. MORGAN. Right. And let me just see if I can generally walk through the issue. The Board has acted in the past in a way that reflects the fact that we believe that we have jurisdiction over transactions or activities that would not be occurring but for the underlying transaction that is before us. So that is principle number one.
Principle number two is that there are in an individual case other activities going on, whether it is a Corps permitting process as it relates to wetlands or some other agency activity, which then will kick in some other issue that will allow us to get into a particular matter. Then once we have the jurisdiction, under NEPA we are to look at all reasonable and feasible alternatives to the particular proposal in front of us, and that is part of NEPA.
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With respect to DM&E, we have looked at a lot of issues so far, as you know, and we believe that we have the authority to look at those issues. We have so stated that. And, obviously, having looked at those issues, we feel that we should be looking at them.
And on what we do with that now, because I know what you are talking about, which is the Rochester by-pass, I cannot really have that conversation with you, but we obviously have taken comment on that and looked at that. But I have given you the general principles to give you the broader scope.
Mr. OBERSTAR. If that statement of principle is followed further, then I would infer that the Board believes that it has such authority to order rerouting.
Ms. MORGAN. Well, we are where we are today in terms of the review of the issues so far.
Mr. OBERSTAR. Just briefly, you said earlier that the Board has acted expeditiously. But some would argue that three years from the time that this project started is not particularly expeditious.
Ms. MORGAN. Well, again, and I do not want to repeat what may have been said before in my conversation with the Chairman earlier, with the NEPA process you have a challenge, which is that the goal of NEPA is process, it is to make sure that the process is full and thorough and adequate, and that is the goal of NEPA. And so to expedite a process that must be full and thorough and adequate is a challenge. Now, obviously, there are those who feel that this has taken longer than it should have, the DM&E case, that is, and I understand that concern. I understand the concerns that everybody has.
I feel that we have done so far what we have had to do to make sure that this process complies with the NEPA process. What I do not want to have happen is for us to go through this process and then at the other end have somebody take us to court, and someone will take us to court if we approve this, I am sure of it, and maybe someone will take us to court if we do not approve it, but if we approve it, for sure, we will be in court and I would hate, after all this work, and given the importance that it may have in the future if we approve it, to have it thrown out and us told to have to start all over again. And with NEPA, that is a very important concern.
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Mr. OBERSTAR. I think that whether you have been thorough enough is not at stake. I think the question is one of, and I would complete with a sentence you uttered just a moment ago, we have worked diligently with the personnel available. When the ICC was terminated the staff of almost 2,000 was emasculated. And I do not think, from what I have seen at my work with the Board over these years since it was created, that you have sufficient personnel to do the magnitude of jobs that are requested and required of the Board.
Ms. MORGAN. Let me just say with respect to the environmental area, that the DM&E case, as I indicated in my oral testimony, is the biggest construction case that we have had at the Board and it has a lot of issues associated with it—covering three States, 280 miles of new construction, 600 miles of rehabilitated line. And so there is a lot there. It may be that we could never have enough staff on board to take care of that case quickly and in any event could not keep all of them busy on other issues in the environmental area after the case is resolved. I think what I am saying is that there are cases that are unique in nature and it may not be appropriate to determine how much staff you want on board based on handling that particular case.
Now having said that, we have had the resource discussion, you and I, before. If I had more people, I would certainly put them to good use. But that is not where we are, so we do the best we can with what we have.
Mr. OBERSTAR. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. QUINN. Thank you, Mr. Oberstar.
Mr. Simmons, any questions of this panel?
Mr. SIMMONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have heard the word ''process'' a lot. I guess my view is that when I hear the word ''process'' it means not much gets done. As somebody who represents a New England State where freight rail has a great tradition but is increasingly constrained, I guess by process issues, my question to you is, in your testimony you have indicated that you have experience with 50 cases where the process has worked well. Could you give me a sense, on the top of page 4, could you give me a sense of how long each of those cases took or what the average is?
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Ms. MORGAN. Well, some of those 50 cases are line construction cases and they were handled at the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was the predecessor agency to the Board, as well as the Board. I can give you a list of all those cases and the timetables. I have cited in my testimony the cases that have been handled by the Board where the environmental review process has been less than a year. But I would be happy to supply each and every one of those cases and the time it took to handle those if you would like that.
Mr. SIMMONS. What I am getting at is I would like to have a sense of how long, are we talking one year, three years, five years, how long on average are these cases taking?
Ms. MORGAN. Well, of the cases that we have handled at the Board, we have had a couple of them that have been handled in a year to a year and a half, including environmental review. The DM&E case is taking longer than that. We are doing a full Environmental Impact Statement and, as I have discussed, there are a lot of issues associated with that. We did the decision on the transportation merits in six to nine months. I cannot remember exactly, but they filed it early in 1998 and we made our transportation decision in late 1998. But then the environmental process has been ongoing since then.
It is hard to give you an average because it really depends upon the issues that surface. And, again, I do not want to over-use process here because that is not an excuse, it is just that the environmental laws and NEPA focus on process. And the issues dictate how the process will go. They dictate whether you do an EA or an EIS, for example. They dictate whether you have zero cooperating agencies or five cooperating agencies. They dictate how long the document is going to be that is issued. So I cannot really give you an average time period except to cite some of the experiences we have had, and we have had the less controversial and the more controversial.
Mr. SIMMONS. It is my understanding also from your testimony that preemption does occur in some of these cases, preemption of State and local requirements, especially environmental requirements. So my question to you is, if setting deadlines for the process is not a good idea, should we expand the flexibility on preemption?
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Ms. MORGAN. I think that the preemption language that is in the statute that I implement, the ICC Termination Act, is a very broad provision and it is implicated in two different situations. There is one situation where we are affirmatively involved in approving a particular transaction and then preemption will kick in there. Then there are situations where we do not have anything to do with the project. For example, regarding a rail yard that is built somewhere and just isolated, not connected with a construction or a merger or anything like that, just a rail yard that somebody wants to build or improve upon, we do not approve that, we do not get into that, and, of course, State and local communities can be concerned about the situation and they go into court and they argue that they have some authority to keep that from happening. The court law has been pretty focused on preemption, on indicating that States and localities cannot take actions that will prevent something like that from happening because it unreasonably interferes with interstate commerce.
So, I guess I am answering you by saying that the preemption provision is broad. It was broadened in the ICC Termination Act by Congress, and the courts seem to be interpreting that broadly, and certainly we have been involved in that process. There have been cases clearly confirming preemption.
Mr. SIMMONS. I thank you for the answer. I have an additional question, I see my time has run out, but it does occur to me that if preemption is upheld by the courts, I do not see why constraining the process along timelines would not also be upheld by the courts. And if we are serious about strengthening our rail capacity, especially in areas where there is huge congestion on the highways and that congestion contributes to a loss of public safety as well as economic loss, I think we have an obligation to look at those issues.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. QUINN. Mr. Simmons, before you leave, two things. I would, one, as a follow up to your question, for the purposes of the full Committee, Ms. Morgan, ask for that information that the gentleman questioned you on, how long they take. We can figure out for ourselves what the average is. He did not clearly say send it over, so I will say please send it over.
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And then I would ask a follow up question, maybe submit it writing to Ms. Morgan. I would like to give Mr. Nadler a chance for questions before we break to go over to some votes.
Mr. Nadler?
Mr. NADLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Morgan, I was reading your testimony and am intrigued by some pieces of it. As you may know, the city of New York and some others have been studying the possible construction of a rail freight tunnel from Bay Ridge Brooklyn to either Staten Island or New Jersey. In fact, the city of New York has just started work on the EIS with the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Rail Administration as co-lead agencies. From your testimony, first of all, it had never occurred to me, but will we need STB approval to build this rail freight tunnel?
Ms. MORGAN. You might. It would just depend upon the circumstances. I know about the issue, I just do not know all the particulars.
Mr. NADLER. Why would we need it or not need it?
Ms. MORGAN. It would depend upon whether we are giving new authority to somebody. I do not know all the details.
Mr. NADLER. Okay. As opposed to authority inherited?
Ms. MORGAN. In other words, if there is someone already there and you are just building around—
Mr. NADLER. There is no tunnel there.
Ms. MORGAN. I am sorry, I do not know the particulars. But if there is a rail line that is already there being operated by somebody and what you are doing is building around that or complementing it in terms of other transportation facilities, that may not necessarily be something the Board gets into. On the other hand, if it is a new line construction or it is an acquisition by one carrier from another carrier—
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Mr. NADLER. It would be construction between a rail line that ends on one side of the harbor and a rail line that ends on the other side of the harbor.
Ms. MORGAN. And it would be a rail connection?
Mr. NADLER. We would connect it through. Yes.
Ms. MORGAN. And if that is a rail line that is going to be used by the public in a common carrier type of situation, then likely we would be involved. We may not be the lead agency involved in it because there may be other agencies—
Mr. NADLER. But the EIS that is already being done, from your testimony, you normally get involved in the EIS?
Ms. MORGAN. Well, in the cases that I have talked about in my testimony, we are the lead agency, and there are other agencies involved. There are other circumstances where we are not a lead agency but we are a cooperating agency and we are involved in the process.
Mr. NADLER. I can see we have to talk to you.
Let me switch subjects for a moment. I am also a little confused about a different case that is going on in my district from some of the testimony you have here about the rails to trails program. This is before your agency, so I am asking you about the principle involved and what decision you have to make, not about the merits. We have in Manhattan the high line that some people want to tear down and other people want to turn into a rails to trails thing. What is the decision before your agency? From reading your testimony, it would seem that it is up to a negotiation between people who want the rails to trails and the railroad that owns it.
Ms. MORGAN. That is correct.
Mr. NADLER. So what is the proceeding before your agency? What decision do you have to make?
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Ms. MORGAN. Well, presumably it would be an abandonment proceeding before us and we would not allow the abandonment to occur if there was a trails use agreement reached. Because in essence—
Mr. NADLER. But your testimony says that first the abandonment occurs and then it gets turned into—there has to be an abandonment with a trail condition.
Ms. MORGAN. No. It is an abandonment proceeding but the line is not technically abandoned because it is rail-banked.
Mr. NADLER. Okay. There is an abandonment proceeding. So, in other words, am I correct then, there people who want the railroad abandoned, there are other people who want a trail there, and if the people who want the trail there reach an agreement with the railroad, then you have no decision to make in that case?
Ms. MORGAN. Well, then we make sure that the abandonment does not happen and allow the trail to go into effect.
Mr. NADLER. But you do not determine whether the trail should happen. That is really between the railroad and the trail people.
Ms. MORGAN. That is correct.
Mr. NADLER. Thank you very much.
Mr. QUINN. Thank you, Mr. Nadler.
We suggested when we began that if there are any further questions for Ms. Morgan that we would put them in writing. Are we clear on what I asked for from you?
Ms. MORGAN. Yes.
Mr. QUINN. Thank you very much. I did not mean to confuse the issue.
Ms. MORGAN. Oh, no. Absolutely not.
Mr. QUINN. We are going to recess. We have a series of three votes, a fifteen minute and two five minute votes. As soon as we get back here, as soon as Mr. Clement and I get over there and back, we will have the second panel and we will get on with business.
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[Recess.]
Mr. QUINN. Good afternoon. We have completed our three votes. Mr. Clement is on his way and said we should begin in his absence.
We thank Ms. Morgan for her testimony and her understanding with our schedule and for her helpful answers.
Our second panel will consist of Mr. Edward Hamberger, the president and CEO of the Association of American Railroads; Mr. Ray Chambers, a partner of Chambers, Conlon, and Hartwell, representing the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association; Mr. Kevin Schieffer, the president and CEO of the DM&E Railroad, the topic of discussion of the first panel it seems much of the time there.
Mr. Hamberger, if we could start with you. We would ask that your oral testimony be limited to five minutes. And when all three of you have finished, we will entertain some questions. Thank you.
STATEMENTS OF EDWARD R. HAMBERGER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN RAILROADS; RAY B. CHAMBERS, PARTNER, CHAMBERS, CONLON, AND HARTWELL, INC., REPRESENTING AMERICAN SHORT LINE AND REGIONAL RAILROAD ASSOCIATION; AND KEVIN SCHIEFFER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, DAKOTA, MINNESOTA AND EASTERN RAILROAD
Mr. HAMBERGER. Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, it is a pleasure to be here this morning, this evening, to comment on the topic of this hearing, infrastructure investment. You have before you a relatively lengthy statement which I would ask to be included in the record. In view of the time, I will skim through my oral statement as well.
Mr. QUINN. Thank you.
Mr. HAMBERGER. The essence of the statement is that there are six basic obstacles that we see to future investment.
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Number one, the cost of the investment itself. As you know, we are the most capital intensive industry in the United States. We spend $42 million a day in investment, day in, day out. That is raised two-thirds by internally generated, one-third borrowed. And that, of course, is the issue. When you have to go into the capital markets, when you are in the lowest quartile of the Fortune 500 companies on equity, it makes it very difficult to compete in capital markets. So we, of course, look at return on investment as the number one issue.
Number two, we debated this at the last hearing, demand for access to freight railroads for passenger operations. We talked at that point about the impact that has on our ability to have enough capacity to meet freight needs.
Third, we heard a lot earlier today about the environmental laws and regulations. While we obviously applaud the objectives of those laws, they have at times forced delay or cancellation of needed rail investments.
Fourth, inequities that discriminate against the railroads compared with other modes. There, of course, I am talking about the fact that we pay for just about 100 percent of our infrastructure whereas our competitors in the larger trucks pay about 60 percent, and as the trucks get larger that percentage goes down. In addition, we pay the unequitable 4.3 cent deficit reduction fuel tax, which we would love to see repealed.
Number five, inefficient command and control safety regulations. It is our belief that performance-based safety regulations would not only enhance safety, but also would save capital. We would like the Committee to begin to take a look at that as the safety reauthorization bill comes forth.
And sixth, the barriers to free flow of international trade. There we are looking at two issues: (1) adequate customs facilities and personnel at the border crossings with Canada and Mexico; and (2) adequate infrastructure investment. TEA-21 had $700 million in it for the borders and corridors program. That is woefully inadequate given the cost of many of these gateway and corridor programs. And so we would urge you to take a look, as you reauthorize TEA-21, at the need for further investment in infrastructure at the gateways. Thank you very much.
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Mr. QUINN. Thank you very much, Mr. Hamberger.
Mr. Chambers?
Mr. CHAMBERS. Thank you. Ray Chambers, representing the Short Line Association. On May 10th in 1869 the Golden Spike was driven. It ushered in the modern industrial era. And that one of the coincidences of history, we, at least in the small railroad sector, feel that the railroad industry is in a position to make a great contribution to the world economy. We have got to simultaneously tackle highway congestion, we have got to find better ways to move the harvest, coal, manufactured goods, and so forth. The question is, can the private sector and Government together unleash the force of the large and small railroads?
There is a need today to rebuild the small railroad system. You had a hearing on that and we appreciate that. There are bottlenecks across the main line railroads, which you are well aware of. At this afternoon's hearing, we are going to look, and in my formal testimony we look, at two obstacles to capacity expansion which we address. The first are regulatory issues. And by way of example, we want to comment on the Rails to Trails Program, which has been the subject of discussion here. The second, we will explore Government obstacles to financing rail improvement projects through public-private partnerships.
But first a comment on the underlying problem. In the 1950s, the American Government made a core decision to construct an interstate highway network built to the specifications of freight movement by the heaviest trucks. The rail mode was left out of the investment program. The subsidy to highway freight put freight railroads on an economic iceberg that continues to melt today.
In some telling testimony by James Valentine, who is a market analyst for the transportation, he noted in the Senate that U.S. railroads today as a percentage of the 500 largest companies traded in the U.S. equity markets is about one-fifth of what it was in 1980. If you are as old as me, in 1980 we were on the brink of a financial collapse. By the way, we are not on the brink of financial collapse, but we do have intrinsic problems.
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So the question is what to do. One solution is to modernize the regulatory process to remove obstacles that exist to improving rail infrastructure. You have heard good testimony from the AAR, you are going to hear it from the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern, the State of Washington, which has some excellent testimony and some excellent ideas, and I am not going to rehash any of that. What I want to do is join with them and appeal to this Committee to look at removing regulatory impediments to rail infrastructure improvements.
I do want to comment on the Rails to Trails Program. Jim Oberstar, who was here earlier, stated in an earlier hearing a few years ago that this program has two purposes: one is recreation, and the other is preservation of the extraordinary railroad roadbed structure for future possible use as a railroad line. The first objective has been a spectacular success, and I want to make it clear that the Short Line Association supports the Rails to Trails Program. However, the second objective has not worked at all. A rail bank line has never been returned to active service during the entire life of the program.
The Rails to Trails Act states that it is ''national policy to preserve established railroad rights-of-way for the future reactivation to rail service.'' However, while there is a procedure in place, maybe it should be refined, there is a procedure in place for creating trails, there is no procedure in place other than the existing new construction statutes for reactivating an abandoned rail line. So a process of opening a line runs the gamut of regulations, approval, and obstacles, which you are going to hear a little bit about this afternoon. I do have an example in my testimony. It was not a Rails to Trails but it was an abandoned line that took years and was finally turned down in the State of Ohio.
So we think that this is the time, especially since there have not been any rail bank lines which have been up for renewal, and I think that is partially because we have been abandoning lines across the country, not creating new construction, but I think the times are changing and I think there is going to be a need into the future to look at this issue. So this may well be the time to look at a procedure or process to place for conversion recreational trails back into passenger and freight rail use. We think it should be an expedited procedure, since conversion will simply restore the rail use that had been previously in place for decades. We would look forward to working with the Committee on this. There are some big questions. The rail users may oppose it, certainly there will be a desire for a line to maintain a trail if it goes back to rail use. All these issues have to be looked at. There are cost issues, there are safety issues, there is huge liability issues here. But we think it is time to begin, for all the stakeholders to begin to look at these questions.
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My last point is we believe that there are Government-imposed financial obstacles to public interest rail infrastructure improvements. Freight rail projects involving private-public partnerships on private rights-of-way were excluded from any of the TEA-21 programs. We think that needs to be reviewed. For the longer term, we believe that railroads should be brought to the transportation investment table. When TEA-21 is reauthorized in 2003, there should be clear flexibility for the States and the metropolitan planning organizations to fund freight rail projects from such categories as CMAQ, the Highway Trust Fund, and innovative highway programs such as TIFIA and the infrastructure banks. Certainly a contribution will have to be made by the railroads for the private benefit that will be created by these projects. But we think that can be done if we are innovative and if we are creative.
So, we think there has got to be a better way for these public-private partnerships to finance rail improvements which provide public benefits. We look forward to working with you and the Committee to finding those solutions.
Mr. QUINN. Thank you, Mr. Chambers. We appreciate your brevity.
Mr. Schieffer, you have been talked about here all afternoon a little bit, at least the initials. We would like to hear from you. Please go ahead.
Mr. SCHIEFFER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank the Committee members for holding this important hearing. DM&E was created in 1986 from a line that a previous Class I owner wanted to abandon. We own approximately 1,100 miles of track in five States—Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska. The track infrastructure, frankly, is worn out on most of our railroad. Some of it is 100 year-old fatigued rail. Two-thirds of our tie structure needs to be replaced. And the subgrade needs to be rebuilt on a majority of our line. These are fundamental problems that we cannot effectively address with our existing traffic base.
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We have a unique opportunity by luck of geography, in the rail world today, to add to that traffic base by extending our existing line approximately 200 miles further into Wyoming into the Powder River Basin. Not only would this project save our existing line, but it would also serve very important and officially recognized national transportation policy, agriculture policy, energy policy, and safety policy. As recent as last week the President's energy policy specifically noted and recognized the need for additional rail capacity infrastructure to serve the Wyoming Powder River Basin, the environmentally clean coal.
But the endless black hole called the NEPA environmental review process presents a very real threat to this project. We are not here today to argue that NEPA review ought to be curtailed, or that substantive hurdles should be lowered. NEPA is an important policy and we support it. But we do think that the process of NEPA, as opposed to the substantive policy review issues that need to be dealt with, needs to be changed and can be effectively changed.
A hundred years ago the biggest obstacle to building a railroad was actually building it and designing it. That today has drastically changed. A hundred years ago the Government was there to provide economic and other incentives. As little as twenty years ago Congress passed a statute citing and providing Federal money for other railroads to go into the Powder River Basin because of the importance of it and putting on specific timelines. But today the biggest obstacle is simply slaying the invisible dragon of the Federal regulatory process which has at the heart of it the NEPA review process.
Accountability, really, is at the heart of our suggestions--not lowering the hurdles, not sticking to rigid timeframes necessarily. We think it would be important to put in timeframes, but have accountability in there for those who want to throw rocks at it. Today, the process is very easy to stop. It is easy to throw rocks at it. It is easy to ask questions. The name of the game, if you are opposing projects today, is study it to death, and that is what happens. These projects are rarely killed on their merits. They are killed by studying them to death. That is the concern we have.
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I think anybody that has a legitimate reason to delay the process should raise it. But make the individual, whether it is an agency or whoever, accountable for the delays they require. If you set a standard or a timeframe or anything else, stick with it. And if you cannot meet it at that point, be accountable. Identify the ones asking for it. It should not be anonymous. It makes a huge difference, and here is why—they have to justify it.
That is what we have tried to do as an applicant in our own case. Sometimes the biggest obstacle is the developer themselves, or the industry. I have learned from personal experience where the term ''I just got railroaded'' came from. This industry does not have a glowing record, and you cannot use a 19th century mentality in developing these cases, and we are not trying to. We have said to agencies, to Congress, to others, hold us accountable. If you want us to do something, we will do it and we will commit to that in writing. And if we cannot, we will tell you in writing why we cannot do it. That way an objective observer from the outside, whether it is Congress, or an agency, or a policymaker, can look at the record and say who is being reasonable and who is not. They can make some judgments on that. We have some specific suggestions in our written testimony. But, really, accountability is at the heart of each and every one of those.
The last thing I guess I would add very briefly is there is no culprit, there is no malice in these cases. We are frustrated with the agency process. We have a specific example in our testimony, where we study things over and over and over again. It is not because anybody is purposely trying to be devilish about it. It is just a frustrating process. And putting some accountability into that process will help. These are well-intentioned people, whether they are opponents, or the applicants, or the individual agencies trying to do a job with very limited resources. So we are not here to pick on agencies or individual folks working on these cases. They are doing the best they can in most cases. But there are crazy things that happen, and we cite one example in our testimony. But it is a frustrating process, not just for the applicant, but I think for a lot of the agencies involved in this as well. Some clear direction and accountability from Congress I think would be a huge, huge improvement in the process. Thank you.
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Mr. QUINN. Thank you, Kevin. I appreciate your remarks. There is the word ''process'' again from the second panel.
Mr. Hamberger, you mentioned just a technical point, something about $7 million was in TEA-21 for the border crossing. Is that the right number, about $7 million?
Mr. HAMBERGER. No. Before I respond and before I forget again, in my haste to get through my opening comments, I neglected to thank you and the members of the Committee for your leadership not only on H.R. 1120—do I have the number right?—H.R. 1140 and H.R. 1020, both the short line and the railroad retirement bill. Thank you for moving those as expeditiously as possible.
The program I believe was $700 million.
Mr. QUINN. My question was going to be how much of it has been spent, do you know?
Mr. HAMBERGER. Well, it has been divided out over five years, so it is $140 million a year. I know in the first year the applications were $2.1 billion, versus $140 million.
Mr. QUINN. Your point then that it is not even close.
Mr. HAMBERGER. Not even close.
Mr. QUINN. Okay. Thanks.
I will just ask a general question of all three of you, if I may, and frame it as a follow up to Mr. Larsen's question of the Board on our first panel. His question was can the Board be actively involved in this process. As we talked on the way over to the vote, our experience in local government is if the Board is not involved in some of that accountability somehow, then what you end up with is sending the parties away to work it out, even if you have a time line, and the parties that are involved will try to work it out, but it is almost like guess what I am thinking here. And then what you ask some parties to do, whether it is the applicant or multiple applicants, or companies, or environmental agencies, they may in good faith go and bargain and discuss and give a few things away here or there along the way, in competition or not, and if they come back and it is not what we were thinking, it is almost like you have to start over again. And that is not meant as a criticism because I bring it from a different perspective than here, and I do not want to get into casework either.
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But let me ask all of you the first question I asked the panel. Do you think some kind of a time line in this process, Mr. Hamberger, would be helpful or workable?
Mr. HAMBERGER. When you asked that, my immediate reaction was, gee, that seems pretty logical. It is always nice to have a clear time line. But I thought Chairman Morgan's answer was very compelling, that if you are going to do it, you need to do it the right way, and I am not sure that an amendment to the Interstate Commerce Act does the trick. So if you are going to be able to amend NEPA, that probably then becomes a much bigger issue than amending to move along rail lines.
Mr. QUINN. And that is exactly the process here. I do not want to interrupt your answer, but sometimes we can get at these things better in a discussion rather than a hearing setting where you are timed and I am timed and we are all trying to get out of here. But my point, and you are right, the Chairman answered it exactly the way I was thinking of, that—
Mr. HAMBERGER. Conceptually, a time line makes sense.
Mr. QUINN. Sounds like a good idea.
Mr. HAMBERGER. How you get there is—
Mr. QUINN. I do not know. And protect against law suits.
Mr. HAMBERGER. Right.
Mr. QUINN. Mr. Chambers, any comments on that?
Mr. CHAMBERS. Well not particularly. It is a shame when the regulatory procedure can be so amorphous and drawn out that it ends up killing projects, having nothing to do with the merits of the projects. I am taken with the idea of some sort of coordinating process which does have some sort of timelines, although I certainly agree with Mr. Hamberger and Chairman Morgan, that some sort of a process that keeps all of these various jurisdictions and organizations kind of together and communicating with each other, the idea of some kind of a strike force, for example, on a large project and then some set rules on smaller projects. So, yes, I think some more needs to be done in that area.
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Mr. QUINN. And the question would become, again, this is not fair for this panel because it was a question on the other panel, who serves that role? Who would end up being the referee?
Mr. CHAMBERS. Well we will think about it and get back to you.
Mr. QUINN. Kevin, anything to add to that?
Mr. SCHIEFFER. Yes. I guess I would simply say that I think timelines do work, they are very defensible. That is part of the process adjustment that you can do. It is required in merger cases, but not in construction cases. You deal with a merger that involves 20-some States and far, far, far more traffic impacts than we are talking about with our construction project. The big difference between those two cases, in mergers there is a statutory requirement that says you have to do them in 18 months. We are looking at merger issues which are nonjurisdictional in our case. And it is being done in ways that they were not looked at in the merger cases. We have a lot of traffic impact issues come up that aren't addressed in merger cases, where there is a statutory time line.
I do think, though, that there are always cases that are exceptions to the rules. Put in a deadline and if somebody has a good, compelling reason to extend it, then articulate it and defend it. But timelines clearly work and they are clearly defensible in court. They are done all the time, not just in merger cases but I could point out many statutes that go project-specific and say thou shalt act within this time period dealing with this project.
Mr. QUINN. For instance, thou shalt act by 6:00.
[Laughter.]
Mr. SCHIEFFER. Yes. Something like that.
Mr. QUINN. Thank you, all three of you.
Mr. Larsen?
Mr. LARSEN. Thanks for your testimony today. Mr. Hamberger, as you know, I am from Washington State and we are working on Sound transit and the commuter issues and the relationship between the Sounder commuter rail and BNSF. The negotiations have been fairly good. I was wondering if you had some thoughts on when parties cannot agree to terms what you believe can be done to break impasses?
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Mr. HAMBERGER. Well, number one, I think that what is going on out there in the FAST corridor is a perfect example of cooperation between the freight railroads—
Mr. LARSEN. It could be that we are all Scandinavians and we all want to get along too out there.
Mr. HAMBERGER. Granted. And BNSF and UP being good corporate citizens. To me, that is the way it should work. As far as setting up a tribunal or setting up a third party with the authority to command and direct what a freight railroad must do with its private property, as some on this Committee have put in legislation, we would have to oppose that. That is to say, it is, again, something that we go into on a bilateral basis, our members do, city after city around the country, and there are many where it does operate well. We tried to make it work, we try to be good citizens. But where it does not work for purposes of capacity, then we just have to agree to disagree.
Mr. LARSEN. Okay. I do not know if this is so much a question as a comment. In Washington State, we made some amendments to our State's SEPA, State Environmental Policy Act, that actually does put limits on appeals, there are timelines involved with projects. I do not know how applicable they would be to what we are talking about today, or whether those would apply to NEPA or not. But the story of what I am hearing is something that is not unfamiliar to me. The challenge, of course, is public participation and the requirements that come with NEPA, at the State level with SEPA, and some of the other laws and the myriad of laws that we are trying to comply with to move projects forward. This is probably more of a precursor to Mr. John Okamoto's testimony that we are going to hear a little bit later about something that we are trying to do in Washington State about.
And so, with that, Mr. Chairman, unless someone has another comment on that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. QUINN. Thank you very much, Mr. Larsen.
Mr. Clement?
Mr. CLEMENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Hamberger, is there any reason that a Class I railroad would not want rail banking?
Mr. HAMBERGER. Yes, I can think of several, well I can think of one major one, which is why we would like to see it continue to be a voluntary program. If the Class I or any railroad wishes to abandon service and then upon consummation of the abandonment wishes to sell that property for some other reason, perhaps at a much higher value, for example, than is achievable through a rail bank program, then, obviously, they would like to get the benefit of that sale.
Mr. CLEMENT. What about competition in the future, would that have anything to do with abandoning track?
Mr. HAMBERGER. Well, one assumes that if you are abandoning the track, that you are doing so and it would only be approved if there has been no traffic on it and so it is not figuring into the movement of freight at the time.
Mr. CLEMENT. In your testimony, you note that many commuter rail authorities want to use freight railroad rights-of-way to meet the growing demand for commuter service but they are unwilling to fairly compensate the freight railroads for the use of their facilities. Many commuter authorities claim that the railroads either will not negotiate at all or make unreasonable demands on the commuter authorities. When the parties cannot agree to terms, what do you believe can be done to break the impasse?
Mr. HAMBERGER. I think the only thing that can be done is the same thing as can be done when two private individuals get together and try to make a deal, they either can reach a deal or they do not. And from our standpoint, it happens again in city after city. At the last hearing, unfortunately you had left, but Mr. Millar indicated that there were 413 million passengers on commuter rail last year and that most of those were on freight rail lines. So, in fact, we do cooperate 413 million times a year. So it is not a freight policy not to cooperate or not to negotiate in good faith, we do that. Where it cannot be achieved, it is, again, not because we have a policy against it or because no one wants to be a good citizen, it is because the economics just do not work or the freight capacity just would be shifted onto highways.
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And so I think, and I know this is one we are going to have to continue to wrestle with, and I know you are going to have a hearing on your bill directly, the only out that I can come up with at this point is the need to figure out a way to get more capital to build more capacity to accommodate both demands. Because it is counterproductive to the local authority's demand and desire for more mobility and cleaner air to shift freight into trucks onto highways which does not do much for clean air and congestion. And so we have got to somehow get our arms around that together, and this Committee I would hope, to figure out a way to get more capital for commuter rail.
Mr. CLEMENT. Okay. Mr. Chambers, Mr. Schieffer, do you want to comment on any of the questions that I have posed to Mr. Hamberger?
Mr. CHAMBERS. Well, I agree with Mr. Hamberger. And I think that, again, one part of the answer, which is part of my theme in my prepared remarks, is that we need to provide a larger place for rail and rail needs to be at the transportation investment table. We are going to need a great deal more capital if either the freight railroads or particularly the commuter passenger railroads are able to achieve their potential. And they must achieve their potential or we are going to have more cars on the highways and more trucks on the highways. So that is the answer and we have got to come to grips with it. It is money.
Mr. CLEMENT. Mr. Schieffer?
Mr. SCHIEFFER. I do not have any real comments other than I just look forward to the day when we have a railroad that can support passengers, and we look forward to that negotiation.
Mr. CLEMENT. Thank you.
Mr. QUINN. Hearing no further questions, on behalf of the Subcommittee, I would like to thank all three members of the panel. Thank you, gentlemen.
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Mr. QUINN. I would ask our third panel to come forward please.
Mr. Okamoto, I understand you have a plane you are trying to catch today. So what we are going to do, if it is okay with you, is begin testimony with you, let you get a start on your five minutes, and then we will stop there if there are any questions, Mr. Larsen, of course, may want to question you, and then we can release you while the rest of the panel stays so we can get you out to the airport as quickly as possible. Is that all right?
Mr. OKAMOTO. Thank you very much for your understanding.
Mr. QUINN. Happy to do it. Why don't you begin right now. Go right ahead.
STATEMENTS OF JOHN OKAMOTO, TRANSITION DIRECTOR FOR THE SECRETARY OF THE WASHINGTON STATE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; EDWARD H. COMER, VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL, EDISON ELECTRIC INSTITUTE, REPRESENTING THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL TRANSPORTATION BOARD; KATHRYN D. WATERS, MANAGER AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, MARC TRAIN SERVICE, MASS TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION OF MARYLAND, CHAIR, APTA COMMUTER RAIL COMMITTEE; CURT WARFEL, MANAGER CUSTOMER SERVICE AND LOGISTICS, EKA CHEMICALS, INC., ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL TRANSPORTATION LEAGUE; AND ANDREA C. FERSTER, GENERAL COUNSEL, RAILS-TO-TRAILS CONSERVANCY
Mr. OKAMOTO. Chairman Quinn, ranking member Clement, and distinguished members of the Subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to address what we believe is a significant obstacle not only for rail infrastructure improvements, but for all transportation improvements. Specifically, the obstacle of timely environmental permitting. I am John Okamoto, transition director for the Washington State Department of Transportation. I have submitted written testimony. I am going to summarize those comments here.
Mr. QUINN. Thank you.
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Mr. OKAMOTO. Environmental permitting, whether for rail, marine, aviation, highways, is becoming extremely important as the amount of time it takes to prepare permits increases. In Washington State, simple projects to increase rail capacity for freight and passenger rail, and projects to improve even rail maintenance facilities are encumbered by the same environmental permit processes. In a recently published report by the Federal Highway Administration, the length of time for preparing an Environmental Impact Statement pursuant to NEPA has increased a mean of 2.2 years in the 1970s to a mean of 5 years in the 1990s. The additional length of time to prepare an EIS is a critical obstacle to improving the Nation's transportation infrastructure and protecting the environment.
The Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century recognized the need for environmental streamlining to reduce red tape and paperwork in project reviews without compromising environmental protections. But efforts to streamline the environmental process need an extra boost.
While several States including Washington State are undertaking reinventing NEPA pilot projects, we believe new enhanced experiments are required to improve the regulatory process. We propose the designation of certain States as pilot States for integrated Federal and State transportation permit streamlining. These States would be chosen as pilot States on the basis of their own streamlining efforts. As part of the proposal, we would suggest directing key Federal agencies to join in on these State-based initiatives.
Many States, as I mentioned, are undertaking their own environmental streamlining efforts. We are doing it in the State of Washington. We believe that transportation and environmental investments can be coordinated and made well. But that can only happen if both Federal and State and local Governments join hand-in-hand in the environmental regulatory process. Active participation by the Federal Government is essential. Federal transportation environmental entities must participate in a direct and substantial manner.
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In summary, we are proposing to enhance the environmental streamlining components of TEA-21 in the following ways: First, designating States, like Washington State which is undertaking its own environmental streamlining, as pilot States; second, providing modest funds for these pilot States; and finally, directing the USDOT and key Federal resource agencies to join in on these State environmental streamlining initiatives.
Thank you for your time today.
Mr. QUINN. Thank you for your time and patience with us, actually. I understand Mr. Larsen now would like a question of you before we release you. So if you could stay a few minutes, we would appreciate it.
Mr. Larsen?
Mr. LARSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chair. John, thanks for coming 3,000 miles to help us out. I appreciate that. What is different from what from we are doing now compared to what you are proposing in terms of the role of the Federal agencies?
Mr. OKAMOTO. What we are doing that is different is we are creating a table on which all the State resource agencies join in, we negotiate timelines, plans on the front-end—and this gets to the question of should there be statutory mandates for timeframes. I believe that some of these projects are so complex you cannot develop a time line that fits all. But creating a process whereby there is agreement on the schedule, there is agreement on decisions, there is agreement on standards to the extent possible, you reduce the number of redundant environmental studies so that all purposes are served in as short a period of time as possible.
In the State of Washington, it has become quite complex with the listing of the chinook salmon as an endangered species. It has exacerbated the problem in our area. It really has pressed the button on the urgency to come up with some means to streamline our environmental process.
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Mr. LARSEN. Just on that point, Washington or the central Puget Sound moved I think from number three to number four in the most congested areas. So the good news is we went down the list. The bad news is it is only because other people got worse; we did not actually get any better. So not only have we not necessarily addressed the transportation congestion issues, we have this Puget Sound chinook listing of the salmon under the Endangered Species Act as an overlay on top of all the other permitting we are trying to do.
Are you saying then the USDOT currently is part of the streamlining effort but you are suggesting that other Federal agencies, through this permitting process, would be not only invited, or you are asking for legislation to direct them to come to the table?
Mr. OKAMOTO. Under TEA-21, USDOT Secretary was directed to look at ways to streamline NEPA. There are several pilot efforts across the United States to do that. TEA-21 also allowed to use transportation funds to support the staffing for the Federal resource agencies. It is our opinion that while Federal resource agencies have in good faith come to the table in most cases, that the mandate, the direction from TEA-21 was not nearly strong enough to encourage active and full participation.
Mr. LARSEN. One final question. Getting back to freight and BNSF and the negotiations between the State and BNSF and Sound Transit, things seem to have moved along fairly well in the State. Do you have any thoughts on why we had a pretty good track record, if you will, on the negotiations between the parties in Washington State on that?
Mr. OKAMOTO. I think it has moved along well for several reasons. We recognize the mutual interests of the other parties at the table when it comes to sharing track capacity. But I think the other key point of this is that I think money solves a lot of problems. There was a local initiative to raise money to enhance inter-city rail. And with that money along with some State funds, it has allowed those discussions to proceed without the level of animosity which I think I hear from other parties across the United States.
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Mr. LARSEN. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. QUINN. May I just before you finish testifying ask one question. Getting back to the regulatory process that Mr. Larsen asked in the first question, your response was in line with some of the other responses we have heard, that one size does not fit all, you cannot say that 18 months is good because one project is more complex or longer, larger, bigger than the others. Are you suggesting then that the interested parties meet at the beginning of a project and together set out a time line depending on how complex or how difficult the problem is?
Mr. OKAMOTO. Yes. I think that a requirement could be that the interested parties, the permitting agencies sit down on the front end of the process and define that process, the decision points, the schedule, and to create I guess a set of carrots and sticks where those schedules mean something.
Mr. QUINN. For that project.
Mr. OKAMOTO. For that project.
Mr. QUINN. This gets to Mr. Schieffer's accountability comments I think of the last panel. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Clement, anything?
Mr. CLEMENT. No, thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. QUINN. Thanks for coming this far. Thanks for your input this afternoon. You are free to go.
Mr. OKAMOTO. Thanks for your understanding.
Mr. QUINN. Mr. Comer is next. I understand Mr. McBride is with you for technical help if we need it. What we would like to do now with the remaining panel, if it is okay, is to hear from all of you before we go to any questions. About five minutes each, if you will, and then if there are any questions at the end for all of you, we will do them all at once.
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Mr. Comer?
Mr. COMER. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. I am Edward Comer, vice president and general counsel of Edison Electric Institute. EEI is the association of the Nation's investor-owned electric utilities. Our members generate approximately three-quarters of the electricity in the country. Over 50 percent of our Nation's electricity comes from coal-fired generation.
Our Nation's electricity supply must keep up with growing demands. There are currently shortages in California and the West and there is substantial need for new electric generating capacity over the next twenty years, even if the Nation implements aggressive efficiency and conservation measures. Coal, especially cleaner ways to use coal, will continue to be a major source of electric generation.
The Powder River Basin, which the DM&E Railroad would serve with efficient unit coal trains, provides a tremendous resource of low-sulfur coal that can play an important role in increasing electric generation while reducing air quality impacts. The DM&E project is an important part of the new infrastructure this Nation needs to assure adequate energy supplies consistent with environmental quality.
In addition, a third Powder River Basin coal-carrying railroad would provide much needed additional capacity and also create additional rail-to-rail competition, which EEI members greatly desire.
Briefly, on the environmental review piece, the timing and the problems with the timing are not something unique to the STB or the rail industry. The President's Energy Report that came out last week recognized that it is an issue with all energy infrastructure projects. The President has recommended and already issued an Executive Order that would direct the Council for Environmental Quality to try to address the issue of expediting the process for environmental reviews. We are hopeful that the Council will come up with some suggestions.
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Of the kinds of delays that we have seen, I think the most frustrating source of delay is the one where a lead agency will set time limits and the other agencies do not comply. This really is frustrating because it puts the lead agency and the project applicant under a risk that the project would ultimately be deemed inadequate if comments and suggestions from other agencies do not get considered. It may be useful to look and see what the CEQ is doing in the context of the President's Executive Order to address this.
In addition, with respect to the STB, they do have a very full small staff that addresses environmental issues. We believe the Board may need more staff resources to avoid delays in the future.
Finally, the DM&E project and a lot of other projects have caused a lot of local reaction and State and local officials and others have asked for delays. We recognize the concerns the communities have about localized impacts of new projects and we encourage them to articulate those concerns. But we think it is essential that they do so in a timely manner and that they not be allowed to delay the ultimate decision-making on important projects.
I would like to note that for the DM&E project, when you are doing an environmental analysis, we are not only looking at potential adverse environmental impacts, but also the benefits of the projects. I think DM&E, by making low sulfur coal more available, which is very valuable and very useful, will have some substantial environmental benefits as well as the kind of adverse impacts that the people are more used to hearing about.
Finally, I would like to note that the issue of delays and approval applies not only to something as major as this project, but to build-outs that we encounter at electric generating stations. These are situations where utility generating plants are trying to build relatively short new lines to connect either with alternative railroads or increase capacity. Hopefully, it should not take as long as a year for a relatively minor environmental assessment to analyze those projects. We would hope either the Board could get more staff to do it quicker, or could have a rulemaking that would make a generic finding that these kinds of build-outs, under specified circumstances, do not have a substantial environmental impact and do not need a detailed individual assessment. Thank you very much.
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Mr. QUINN. Thank you very much.
Ms. Waters?
Ms. WATERS. Thank you. Good evening, Chairman Quinn and members of the Subcommittee. I am Kathryn Waters, manager and chief operating officer for the Maryland Mass Transit Administration's MARC Train Service, and I also serve as chair of the Commuter Rail Committee for the American Public Transportation Association. I am honored to speak on behalf of APTA today on today's topic.
The issue of gridlock and congestion is so timely that it is on the cover of U.S. News and World Report this week in a report that is titled ''Traffic: How it is Changing Life in America.'' The message is that it is going to get worse unless things change in a real big way.
Very recently, Secretary Norman Mineta spoke in this very room concerning the need to address the gap between the demand for transportation and the capacity of our transportation infrastructure. It is clear that congestion is a problem that affects all modes of transportation. Very briefly, I would like to talk about some specific examples of how capacity constraints are affecting commuter railroads in our country.
One of the key issues is the limited expansion capability at the core of many of our urban centers in our central city rail terminals. While there may be the possibility to expand at the suburban ends of our lines or to extend lines, we do face the limited ability to expand center city terminals, both from the standpoint of trackage and platforms as well as storage facilities. This is putting a severe hamper on the growth and the demand that we are seeing for our services. Some specific examples include: Long Island Railroad in New York where they are at capacity in the morning and evening peak periods currently into New York Penn Station. New Jersey Transit reports storage yards at or near capacity, platform lengths that limit the ability of their system to accommodate any longer trains, and they are seeing looming shortages in rolling stock. I can speak specifically in our own system, we share Washington terminal at Union Station with the owner Amtrak, also with our sister agency Virginia Railway Express, and we are at the very limits of finite capacity to store trains in mid-day which is limiting how much service we can operate.
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The capacity crisis is helping bring along some extraordinary cooperation by regional partners. There is a Mid-Atlantic Rail Operations Study which has been initiated by Amtrak, Norfolk Southern, CSX, and the I-95 Corridor Coalition, which is a coalition of States and public interests from Maine to Virginia, and, of course, Maryland is one of those States. We are all working openly and together to look at the choke points and what can be done to relieve the capacity problems. While time has restricted us here today, there are many other examples and some of them will be spoken to in our written testimony. Certainly, if the Committee would like additional information, we would be happy to poll our members to provide that.
Finally, In the Subcommittee's exploration of obstacles to rail infrastructure improvements, we would like to highlight that a major obstacle for many communities seeking to implement new passenger rail service is access to freight railroad corridors, as discussed on April 25th by APTA president Bill Milar before this Subcommittee. Where passenger rail agencies have been denied access to rail freight corridors, there is no process for the public interest to be taken into consideration, and local officials have no recourse or ability to appeal the unilateral decision of a freight railroad. APTA has called for a Federal process for local and regional passenger rail projects, as currently exists for Amtrak, to help resolve disputes involving use of freight railroad rights-of-way and allow passenger projects to advance under fair and reasonable terms. I understand the Subcommittee will be giving further consideration to this topic, and we will have more to say at that time.
I would like to just point out that this is an opportunity for partners in passenger and rail to share the infrastructure and to share in the improvements to the infrastructure. And we would hope that our friends in the freight railroads would consider that as a possibility.
Finally, we stand together with all of our railroad partners in the community in noting the importance of all the Nation's railroads in the context of two headline policy issues—both congestion and energy. While the hearings this week are on congestion, we note that our national energy policy is at the top of the list also. The growth in the Nation's railroads will help our Nation address both of these policy goals.
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In conclusion, I would like to thank you for this opportunity to speak today.
Mr. QUINN. We appreciate your being here. Thank you.
Mr. Warfel?
Mr. WARFEL. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee. My name is Curt Warfel, and I am manager of customer service and logistics for Eka Chemicals in Columbus, Mississippi. In addition, I currently serve as the chairman of the Railroad Transportation Committee of the National Industrial Transportation League, on whose behalf I am speaking. I thank you for inviting us to testify on this important topic.
While rail capacity is difficult to measure, it seems safe to say that the capacity of U.S. railroads has increased over the years even as the number of miles of track has declined. More powerful locomotives, larger freight cars, and computerized dispatching systems are among the advancements that have combined to wring more capacity out of a smaller physical plant. In fact, we believe that, for the most part, existing rail capacity appears to be adequate to carry the current normal rail market share. This is not to say, however, that capacity constraints, or choke points, if you will, do not exist. Indeed, despite our belief that the Nation's railroads have enough track, locomotives, and so on to handle today's normal traffic flow, there are several areas about which we are concerned.
First, it is our opinion that the current rail system is losing some of its ability to successfully weather shocks. This suggests to us that the existing system is approaching its limits to absorb new traffic growth.
Second, there do exist areas where substantial amounts of money will need to be spent to resolve capacity constraints or choke points. Chicago, Illinois has been a problem for years, perhaps decades, and the League is aware that the Class I railroads are attempting to address the problem there. Houston, Texas is another area where recently there appear to be capacity constraints, particularly from BNSF. And from my own company's recent experience, I believe additional capacity is needed on Kansas City's Southern line from Meridian to Vicksburg, Mississippi, and on Norfolk Southern in both the Buffalo, New York and Birmingham, Alabama areas. In the Buffalo area in particular, Norfolk Southern has admitted that its operations would be significantly improved by addition of a second bridge at a point known as ''CP Draw.'' Unfortunately, larger storage and transit yards in Houston, second tracks in Mississippi, or construction of bridges in Buffalo require considerable expenditure of capital.
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Moreover, in addition to special projects such as these just mentioned, railroads do need to spend large amounts of money on an annual basis just to keep their systems in current condition. Yet, according to recent Senate testimony provided by BNSF's CEO Matt Rose, 2001 rail industry capital expenditures will be approximately 32 percent lower than they were in 1998.
One of the principal reasons for the railroad's overall reluctance to continue capital spending at the levels seen in the late 1990s is pressure from Wall Street analysts and their institutional investors. These folks are far more interested in maximizing the return on past investments than worrying about capacity constraints that may appear five to ten years from now. Despite Wall Street's next quarter's earning approach to the railroad business, we firmly believe that the Nation's railroads need to begin spending now to upgrade their properties and expand their capacity to handle future increases in traffic. Recent DoT estimates call for a doubling of freight traffic in this country by the year 2020.
The League believes railroads are the logical choice to move most of that increase. Not only are railroads more fuel efficient than trucks, they are also more environmentally friendly and far safer for the transportation of hazardous chemicals. Additionally, trains do not add to congestion on our highways.
So how do we prepare the railroads to accept this increased volume of traffic? The League feels there are five possible solutions that warrant consideration.
First, information technology, such as the use of Positive Train Control, could enable the railroads to expand capacity without having to add track.
Second, rail system traffic flows can be redesigned to avoid terminal areas perhaps by making up trains that bypass as many intermediate terminals as possible.
Third, shippers should be granted improved access to other rail carriers either within terminal areas or to the nearest physical interchange with another carrier.
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Fourth, paper barriers that prevent short line railroads from offering their online shippers access to noncongested railroads should be eliminated.
Finally, although the League has not officially endorsed the concept yet, the possibility of using public funds for certain nationally critical rail capacity improvement projects should be examined. Thank you.
Mr. QUINN. Thank you, Mr. Warfel.
Ms. Ferster, please. Welcome.
Ms. FERSTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the Subcommittee, for the opportunity to testify at this oversight hearing. My name is Andrea Ferster. I am general counsel to the Rails to Trails Conservancy, a nonprofit organization with more than 100,000 members and supporters nationwide. I will focus my remarks today on the role of the Federal rail banking program and the role that it can play in removing obstacles to the reinstitution of rail service.
It is our view that the Federal rail banking law, which is administered very ably by the Surface Transportation Board, has proven to be an effective mechanism for preserving railroad rights-of-way for future rail transportation. Even though the program is relatively young, a number of rail banked corridors have already been returned to active freight rail service. The STB records show that three railroads have reactivated freight rail service on rail banked corridors.
It is also important to note that many freight rail service reactivations have been accomplished by State and local governments on rail banked corridors. And these transactions are exempt from STB regulatory oversight under the modified certificate of public convenience and necessity program and, therefore, not reflected in the STB records.
It is our experience that rail banking does not in any way stand as an obstacle to freight rail service reactivation. To the contrary, these reconversions have been accomplished without the lengthy regulatory reviews applicable to new starts and were not viewed as time consuming, complicated, or controversial in comparison to attempts to reactivate service on non-rail banked corridors, which would cover the example given by Mr. Chambers earlier. For example, the Surface Transportation Board took only two weeks to approve the most recent rail service reactivation of the rail banked Corondal branch in Missouri by Union Pacific in 1997. And this is what Douglas Brookhardt, vice president of the Western Ohio Rail Authority, which acquired a rail banked line from Norfolk and Western Railroad in Ohio and which is now an active short line, told us about the Federal rail banking law. He said: ''I think it is a good law. It did what it was supposed to do. It kept the line from being taken apart so we didn't have to buy it back a piece at a time.'' And I might also note that this reactivation took only three months for the ICC to approve.
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Nor, in our experience, does the reactivation of freight rail service on rail banked lines result in lengthier environmental reviews. To the contrary, the STB takes the view that its actions with respect to the rail banking program are ministerial, and therefore are not subject to environmental review requirements at all. If a new railroad seeks to acquire operating authority from the licensed operator, this transfer of operating authority requires a separate STB review. But this is not a function of the rail banking of the corridor. It is also worth noting that transfers of operating authority are exempted from the more elaborate regulatory reviews associated with new starts and do not normally require even the preparation of an Environmental Assessment or an Environmental Impact Statement.
In addition to its role in facilitating freight rail service, the Federal rail banking program can also play a role in solving one of the most intractable problems of modern life—traffic congestion. According to the U.S. News and World Report article, already referenced by Ms. Waters, the average driver now spends the equivalent of nearly a full work week each year stuck in traffic. And time spent waiting in traffic gives Americans less time at work, with family, or at leisure and community activities. A number of rail banked corridors have, in fact, been reactivated for commuter and light rail purposes, and we have given some examples of these in our written testimony.
We believe that the Federal rail banking program provides a solution, not an impediment, to addressing the Nation's current transportation crisis. Thank you.
Mr. QUINN. Thank you very much. I do want to note, Ms. Ferster, that I talked to Mr. Blumenauer on the ride over, he was going to try to get back here this afternoon, but if he could not, he said he had some questions that he would submit. He becomes our resident expert, so to speak, on some of your issues.
We appreciate your testimony this afternoon, as we do everybody's testimony. We will have an opportunity for some additional information in questions that Mr. Clement and I have both agreed to submit in a joint letter to you.
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Mr. Warfel, I want to thank you for your mention in your written remarks of Buffalo, New York, my home district back in western New York. We appreciate that very much. In fact, I have a question about that but I am going to submit that in writing.
Mr. Clement?
Mr. CLEMENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the panel very, very much, and all the others who testified today, and all those in attendance. We will be submitting, as the Chairman said, some follow up questions because we do have some conflicts about various statements that have been made today. And to clarify it, we surely want to make sure that we understand the record fully before we close this hearing. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. QUINN. Thank you, Mr. Clement.
Thank you for your attention and participation. We appreciate everybody's attendance.
With that, we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 6:09 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned, to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]
SOLUTIONS TO HIGHWAY CONGESTION
Wednesday, May 23, 2001
House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:30 a.m., in Room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Thomas E. Petri [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
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Mr. PETRI. Good morning. The hearing will come to order.
Before we begin the hearing this morning, I want to just take a moment to acknowledge the dedicated hard work and accomplishments of one of our subcommittee staff members who will be leaving to become Chief Financial Officer of the FAA. Chris Bertram, to my right, has been with the subcommittee for over 5 years and during that time has provided me and I know all members of the subcommittee, whether Republican or Democrat, with wise counsel and advice.
When he was hired away from OMB in 1996, it was our specific intent to draw on his budget and Highway Trust Fund expertise during the reauthorization of our highway and transit programs, a task that was looming before the committee. As those members who were here in 1997 and 1998 know, budget battles were waged endlessly as we worked to achieve the spending guarantees that ultimately were included in TEA-21. Chris was an integral part of those negotiations and in formulating the strategy to accomplish that goal. His experience and background played a major part in the success of this committee.
Chris was also instrumental in developing the TEA-21 formula for the distribution of highway funds to the States. This is a thankless job and Chris did formula run after formula run until all the numbers actually worked, or pretty close.
Whether looking at budget numbers or formulas, he was never lacking in creative solutions to seemingly impossible problems and would try one idea after another until he found just the right combination to make everything fit together. In the course of putting together TEA-21, Chris was seen prowling the hallways with his trusty black binders, filled with endless computer runs that addressed any problem, and amazingly he could always find exactly the right chart when any particular issue was being discussed, so he became known as the numbers guy.
The last several years, Chris has served as the Senior Professional Staff Member on our subcommittee and has provided steady leadership as we tackle the many areas under our jurisdiction. I know for myself I will greatly miss having Chris on the subcommittee and be able to call on him at any time and know the job will be done well and the advice can be trusted.
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These sort of occasions are always bittersweet. A good opportunity exists at the FAA and they are frankly fortunate to have you, but we will certainly feel your loss here. Again, I would like to thank you for what you have done and wish you well in your new responsibilities and tell you we appreciate your many years of loyal and dedicated service to the committee.
This morning's hearing will focus on real feasible solutions to the highway congestion that has been on the rise all over our country. I want to know what solutions have been implemented successfully and what roadblocks we need to tackle to provide help to the areas where highways are most stressed. At our first hearing on the outlook for highways and transit, we reviewed the problems caused by congestion. According to Dr. Tom Womax, the witness from the Texas Transportation Institute, congestion costs $78 billion per year and it is growing in metropolitan areas of every size. Each year congestion wastes 6.8 billion gallons of excess fuel, which I understand to be about 5 percent of our Nation's total fuel consumption, $4.5 billion of time is wasted in traffic, time that could be spent at home with families. Studies have shown that those who sit in heavy traffic day after day raise their risk of high blood pressure, sleep deprivation and depression. Without wise and timely transportation investments, congestion will continue its growth, inhibiting the mobility of freight and people and harming the economy, energy supplies, air quality and our quality of life.
When we put together TEA-21, our top priorities were increasing funding by restoring trust to the Highway Trust Fund and program streamlining and flexibility. These provisions of TEA-21 should have gone a long way to reduce the congestion problem. Unfortunately, when more funds are available for congestion reducing projects, the streamlining provisions have not been effective in getting projects off the drawing boards efficiently.
Today we will hear testimony from two panels of witnesses on behalf of State transportation departments, groups that advocate innovative congestion solutions, and advocates for the motorists caught in traffic. By reviewing all of the ideas presented by the witnesses, the subcommittee should be able to put together a comprehensive strategy for further action.
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At this point, I yield to the ranking member of the subcommittee, my colleague, Bob Borski.
Mr. BORSKI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me also start by joining you in wishing Chris Bertram all the best in his new endeavors. He has been an enormous help to members on both sides of the aisle. I consider him a friend and someone who does the hard work that the public never gets to see to make all of us look better, Mr. Chairman, and to do a better job. I just want to wish him all the best. Our loss is FAA's gain. It is good to hear he is staying with the government. Good luck to you.
Let me thank you, Mr. Chairman, for scheduling today's hearing on highway and transit congestions, conditions that affect our ability to move people and goods efficiently. With the help of our witnesses, I hope we can move beyond a discussion of the problems associated with congestion and begin to develop some real and practical solutions. I look forward to working with you, Mr. Chairman, and the members of the subcommittee as we undertake this task.
First, I hope we can get a lot smarter about how our communities should develop to avoid congestion by requiring less dependence on the automobile. Smart growth strategies aimed at reducing trip distances, promoting walking, bicycling, and facilitating transit use will pay huge dividends. I also hope we can learn how pricing and electronic technologies can promote more efficient highway use.
There is no question highways and cars will continue to be the primary means of transportation in our communities. However, I certainly hope we can do a lot better than the approach suggested by one of our recent witnesses, who said get yourself an air-conditioned car with a stereo radio and a tape deck, a CD player, a fax machine, a hands-off telephone, and learn to love being in congestion, because there is nothing we can do about it.
That is not my idea of a good solution. We need to exploit the use of new technologies to avoid congestion, not get stuck in it. While no substitute for new capacity, new technologies, such as the transportation information systems provided by Traffic.Com in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, will help. These systems provide traffic information through various media, so that motorists will be able to better plan their routes to avoid congestion and delays.
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Finally, Mr. Chairman, greater investment in public transportation should also help reduce congestion. Last year transit use increased by an estimated 320 million rides, a total of 9.4 billion trips. Since 1996, transit ridership has averaged an annual growth of over 4 percent, exceeding growth in population and highway travel over the same period.
I hope this trend will continue, and, over time, begin to produce the modal shifts that will improve highway conditions.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. Now we will turn to our first panel. As you know, we appreciate your full statements, they will be made part of the hearing record, and we invite you to summarize them for the committee in the 5 minutes that will be provided.
The first panel consists of the Honorable Dean Carlson, Secretary, Kansas Department of Transportation; Tom Warne, who is the Director of the Utah Department of Transportation; Elwyn Tinklenberg, from the Minnesota Department of Transportation, where he directs business; and Mr. William Millar, President of the American Public Transportation Association.
Gentlemen, welcome. We will begin with Mr. Carlson.
STATEMENT OF HON. E. DEAN CARLSON, SECRETARY, KANSAS DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF STATE HIGHWAY AND TRANSPORTATION OFFICIALS; HON. THOMAS R. WARNE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UTAH DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; HON. ELWYN TINKLENBERG, COMMISSIONER, MINNESOTA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; AND WILLIAM W. MILLAR, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATION
Mr. CARLSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Dean Carlson. I am the Secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation and President of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. I also might say that I didn't realize that you changed the microphones from when I made this testimony as the Executive Director of the Federal Highway Administration during the reauthorization of ISTEA, so things do change in Washington.
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First, I want to thank you on behalf of the State transportation departments across the country for the record funding levels in TEA-21. As you return to your home districts this weekend, I can guarantee that you will see the funding is being put to good use nationwide. It is truly orange barrel season. I commend you to hold this hearing to seek solutions to the dual problems of congestion and streamlining. In a nutshell, Mr. Chairman, to allow States to build the capacity needed to reduce congestion, changes are needed to eliminate unnecessary delays in the project approval process.
Over the past 40 years, the U.S. population grew by 100 million people and traffic more than tripled. We built the interstate highway system, and over 200,000 miles of additional arterials. This network provides the mobility which has made the modern American economy possible. Unfortunately, I don't think that we would be able to replicate that in any future years.
During the last 20 years, however, the pace of adding capacity has fallen far behind travel demand. Over the last 10 years, the project review process has increased on average from 3 to 8 years because of the complexity added by multiple Federal laws enacted to protect the environment.
We are here today to recommend changes in Federal project review processes that will permit States to move ahead faster to build needed capacity. We feel strongly that we can reduce delays without sacrificing protection and enhancement of the environment.
I have five specific actions Congress could take this year to tackle the biggest causes of delay.
The first is reform of Section 4(f). Section 4(f) of the Department of Transportation Act was intended to ensure that parks and historic sites were not used for transportation projects if there were prudent and feasible alternatives.
Section 4(f) today adds 2 years to the time needed to complete an EIS, and it is the single largest cause of delay in the approval of small projects. We see two possible solutions to that problem. Number one, eliminate the overlap between Section 4(f) and Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act by requiring U.S. DOT agencies to address the impacts of transportation on historic properties only under Section 106, like every other agency of the Federal Government.
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Number two, we could clarify the concept of prudence to restore balance and proportion to Section 4(f). Court decisions and rigid interpretations of Section 4(f) of prudent and feasible language has led to restrictions that make no sense. It has become an absolute prohibition. There is now no distinction between protecting an historic chicken coop or protecting Mount Vernon. These two actions alone could expedite literally hundreds of projects, large and small, over the next several years without sacrificing protection of parks and historic sites.
The second one would be to allow delegation of NEPA authority for small projects. The NEPA process involves three levels of environment documentation: Categorical exclusion, environmental assessment and a full environmental impact statement. Over 90 percent of the projects in the country are cleared with CEs and EAs. Yet many of these projects face lengthy delays that could be avoided by allowing FHWA and FTA to delegate their NEPA authority for small noncontroversial projects to the States.
This subcommittee led the charge in letting us have certification acceptance in the engineering area. I believe it could be just as successfully done in the environmental area, because our sister agencies at the State level have become very sophisticated in helping us make sure we do the right things for the environment.
The third thing I would recommend is reaffirming transportation agencies' lead authority over transportation decisions. We need Congress to reaffirm that transportation project sponsors in the Federal transportation agencies are responsible for defining the purpose and need for transportation projects while at the same time protecting the legitimate role of the resource agencies to provide rigorous and timely review of transportation proposals.
The fourth thing is make streamlining a part of all Federal agencies' missions. I don't know how many times I have tried to explain to people that the things they gripe about that are holding up their project are not in the U.S. DOT legislation, they are in the resource agency legislation. But there is a perception in a lot of quarters that streamlining is only U.S. DOT's job, rather than government-wide policy. Congress should give all Federal agencies a clear and explicit streamlining mission.
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DOT agencies, the DOTs in the States, are doing some excellent things around the country to protect and enhance the environment, but that message is being drowned out. We believe that a way to enhance that message is to establish pilot projects to encourage innovation. Long term we need innovations that could fundamentally transform and improve our entire environmental process. This would require a 180-degree change in culture in some cases to encourage innovation and reward new approaches that do a better job. Environmental pilot projects which engage not only the U.S. DOT but also agencies of the Department of Interior, Environmental Protection Agency, Corps of Engineers and others, should be authorized now to field these different approaches, such as these programmatic agreements that I mentioned that could be incorporated in reauthorization.
With those five issues, if the Congress were to act on those, I believe that we could substantially cut the length of time for some of the smaller projects and it would give us an opportunity to have a better discussion with our resource agency partners on larger projects.
I appreciate the opportunity to share these suggest suggestions. While congestion is a significant and growing problem and it is now showing up in the national magazines, I believe it is solvable, if we act now to assure our future mobility.
At the right time I would be happy to respond to questions.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. I remembered to give my opening statement, but I neglected to ask others. I apologize for that. I understand there are several who would like to make opening statements, beginning with Mr. McGovern. Is he here?
Mr. MCGOVERN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will just ask unanimous consent that my full statement be put in the record. I just wanted to add to the discussion that one of the things that I think we can do to help alleviate transportation is also look at the Tax Code.
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I have been amazed to find out there are more benefits in our Tax Code to help people who drive automobiles to and from work than for people who utilize public transportation or, for that matter, there are more tax benefits for employers to reimburse their employees who drive to work rather than take public transportation. Maybe in your testimony or in the questions, maybe you could address that as a possible incentive to help alleviate congestion.
I think, as Mr. Borski pointed out, it is good news that more and more people are using public transportation, but I think we could even raise those numbers significantly if it were more economically beneficial. We are lucky we have an administration right now, I guess for better or worse, that hasn't ever seen a tax cut it doesn't like. So this is actually a responsible tax incentive that I think we could afford, that could make a real appreciable difference in terms of some of the congestion issues that we are dealing with. So I would hope that maybe during questions or in the testimony that you may address that. I know that is not relevant to what this committee does, but I think it is an important issue to talk about in this debate.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. Mr. Otter.
Mr. OTTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ranking Member Borski, for calling this hearing.
I do have a longer opening statement, but in light of Mr. Carlson's statements already, I would forego some of that. But there are a couple of things in here that I would like to make public during this hearing.
In my home State of Idaho, we are greatly concerned with the level of traffic congestion along U.S. Highway 95. U.S. 95 runs more than 500 miles north to south in my district. It runs through four national forests, three Native American nations, two time zones and two major mountain ranges. It is a vital route for the lumber industry, it is a favorite of the tourists and nature enthusiasts. U.S. Highway 95 is a vital component of our highway system, linking the United States and our NAFTA partners in the north. It was an original part of the Pan American highway system, with some 26,000 square miles from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Tierra del Fuega. In fact, the Idaho component of U.S. Highway 95 was designated a high priority corridor in the Transportation Equity Act of the 21st Century, TEA-21.
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The Idaho Department of Transportation is working aggressively to transform U.S. Highway 95 into a safe, efficient and modern highway. The biggest obstacle to the work improvement in the highway is not the daunting terrain, the mountain ranges, the rivers, the time zones or the Indian nations, but what we must reverse is even more difficult. It is not the unavailability of funds even. Rather, it is a lengthy and costly permitting process that the State must undertake to get these projects under way.
To build a modern highway, permission must be received from the Federal Highway Association, the EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife,and those are only the Federal agencies.
I believe that we in this community must work to move permitting authority as quickly as possible to the States. The States will do what is right. We must streamline the number of Federal agencies that the States must deal with and move to abate certain processes that place the burden of proof on the Federal Government to stop highway projects rather than vice versa. We must take these steps and protect our highway trust funds from the greedy bureaucrats who can put the infrastructure in place that will alleviate the congestion and allow our economy to grow.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. Mr. Matheson.
Mr. MATHESON. Thank you, Chairman Petri, Congressman Borski. I want to thank you and the committee staff for have having this hearing today.
As a freshman member from a rapidly growing area, I can think of no higher priority for this committee to invest its time. Across the country, gridlock is being laid atop congestion, atop overcrowding. Solutions must be found and they must be found quickly. Each year we waste an increasing amount of hours, gasoline and efficiency in traffic, and each year more cars, trucks and buses are added to our roadways.
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The situation, however, is not bleak. In Utah we have just completed what should be the model of future Federal investment in our highways. I am talking about the completion of Interstate 15 through the Salt Lake Valley. After long years of gridlock, traffic jams and driver confusion, today the people of Utah can say, as our Governor has said, the traffic jams are gone.
Not only are the headaches gone for the people of my district, but we have also created a construction model for all future Federal investments in highways to emulate. Using design-built contracting, I-15 opened last week, ahead of schedule and on budget. This project changed an out-of-date, outmoded and undersized road into an example of innovation, safety and efficiency. I-15 is now a 10-lane superhighway with 142 new bridges, three interstate junctions, and the first HOV lanes in Utah's history.
The completion of this project was not easy. There were the usual inconveniences of road reconstruction: Detours, moments of confusion and some frazzled nerves. But a recent poll by one of our local newspapers found that 86 percent of Utahans said that if they had to make the decision to rebuild this again, they would approve to do so. I doubt you will find a major public works project in the country with that kind of approval.
The person responsible for the success of that project is here today on our panel, Tom Warne, the Executive Director of the Utah Department of Transportation. Before being recruited by our Governor, Mr. Warne was Deputy Director of the Arizona Department of Transportation, and I am happy to say Arizona's loss was Utah's gain.
Mr. Warne was charged not only with overseeing a massive State road system and burgeoning mass transit lines, he was given the task of rebuilding our State's main interstate through the hearts of its urban corridor before the beginning of the 2002 Winter Olympics. He has done all of those tasks, and done them better than anyone could have ever believed.
I-15, our Nation's largest design-build freeway, is a national model, and as we make policy about the use of taxpayer money on this committee, I hope the Utah I-15 experience will serve as an example of the right way to complete projects.
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My only regret is that Mr. Warne is leaving his position for greener pastures of the private life and the private sector. Mr. Warne's service to the State of Utah was exemplary. He has done what each of us in public service hopes to do, to make the lives of our citizens and our communities better. For that alone, Mr. Warne deserves all the accolades he is now receiving. I want to offer my thanks for his efforts, and I know the people of Utah feel the same.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. Vice chairman Kennedy.
Mr. KENNEDY. Thank you, Chairman Petri and Ranking Member Borski, for holding these hearings on this very important issue. I am also pleased to have Commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg from the great State of Minnesota here to testify. He and I both share this big concern over congestion.
A recent study has shown that the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, the metro area, including the suburbs that I represent, experienced the second fastest growth in congestion in the country. In fact, the average motorist in the Twin Cities area spends 45 minutes a week stuck in traffic, more than double what they spent in 1992. As I travel throughout Minnesota, I hear over and over again that we must solve the highway congestion problems.
A recent study by the Congestion Study Executive Study for the Minnesota Department of Transportation found that 89 percent of those surveyed stated that relieving congestion should be a priority for the Minnesota State Legislature, and I applaud them for highlighting this issue.
I believe that maintaining our infrastructure is a core constitutional responsibility of government, yet many of our roads really lack the needed repairs and are too congested to tolerate. I also believe that making transportation is not only a priority for our State, but it is a priority for Washington, D.C. We must partner together, and I look forward to partnering with Mr. Tinklenberg as we move forward to try to make congestion something we can talk about the way Utah just talked about their roads in the future. You are doing a good job. I look forward to working with you.
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Mr. PETRI. Thank you. Other opening statements? Mr. Pascrell.
Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Northeastern New Jersey drivers spend 34 hours a year in traffic. In fact, the Star Ledger just recently had the headline, ''34 Hours a Year in Traffic, What Is Driving Us Crazy.'' .
The public is concerned that pretty soon we are going to be macadaming their bedrooms. There is no place for us to move and build new roads. We miss the whole point of ISTEA if we choose to circumvent the very basis of what I believe is very significant legislation, and that is intermodal transportation.
We have got to get people out of cars, and there is no two ways about it. So whether you are talking about Utah or whether you are talking about New Jersey is immaterial. I think we are facing a situation here of people losing 6 or 7 hundred bucks a year on fuel, and I think I am being very conservative, being stuck in traffic. I often think about these folks finally getting home at night. It is no longer a rush hour, it is rush hours, 3 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon, which brings you into the early evening.
What you feel like, guys and gals who finally are getting home, either to cook supper or meet their mates or families, you are not there, you are not home in the best of attitudes and best of circumstances.
I think the quality of life issues in living communities is much more important than we think. This has an effect on families, it has an effect on the quality of life within our own homes and within our own neighborhoods. So we need to address this, we need to be smart about getting people to work in the morning.
There are too many people going to work with no one else in the cars. We throw band-aids at the problem, but I don't believe we are committed philosophically to putting the money into mass transportation, jitney buses, intermodal transportation, that is necessary. Until we have a change in our philosophical bent, we are not going to effectively change how many people or how many hours folks are stuck in traffic. We are not only talking about the environment, we are not only talking about how much gas is being used, I am talking about people's psyche. If we think this has no effect on what happens when you get to work, the road rage you have to go through, or when you finally get home and your family has to put up with you and listening to all the experiences that you have had out on the road? I mean, some of it is comical, some of it is serious. I think we need to address this.
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I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for putting us together today.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. Mr. Isakson?
Mr. ISAKSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very much for calling the hearing. I appreciate very much the panelists being here from AASHTO and the various States and areas in transportation. There is perhaps nothing that the Congress of the United States does on an annual basis that has more of an impact on the daily lives of Americans than its partnership in transportation and construction of roads and other forms of transportation for our citizens.
I represent the poster child for urban sprawl, which is the Metropolitan Atlanta Area. We have been the theme child for most major publications and most major newspapers. We are in our third year of a moratorium now not because of our noncompliance on clean air, but because of lawsuits by the environmental community after we had EPA approval and Federal DOT approval. I will address that in one second.
I subscribe to the belief of the previous speaker with regard to intermodal. As one that was involved in the real estate industry for 32 years, if you study the Southeast and the Southwest, its growth patterns in the booming years we have enjoyed and will continue to enjoy do not totally lend themselves to the type of mass transit that was built in the Northeast and the Midwest urban centers some 40 or 50 years ago, because lot sizes are bigger, developments are more spread out, and you just can't get the rail to them.
It is very important that we have a comprehensive plan in transportation that includes commuter rail, passenger rail, light rail and a multimodal facility to make it easy for people to go from one mode to the other to get to their ultimate destination. If we are unable to do that in the major urban centers in the Southeast and Southwest, then we will never put a substantial dent in the transportation problem.
But there is a second issue which I hope during the questioning, particularly the commissioners of transportation or the representative from AASHTO, might address. We all have a tremendous regard for the environment and the movement that America has made to ensure that we have the cleanest air possible, that we have positive planning, we have mitigation on wetlands and all the other things that are essential.
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However, if we fail to streamline our permitting process and if we fail to have this starting and stopping of construction, we will never meet our surface transportation needs, which are just as important for accessibility to bus or light rail or passenger rail as any other component of transportation planning.
So I hope to the extent possible in questioning, and I am able to do it, I will certainly ask the question during that time, I hope we will talk about the ways we can prudently improve the streamlining of the approval process once the regional planning agencies have adopted their plan and it is in place to ensure that our transportation infrastructure construction can be continuous and ongoing, to prohibit the starting and stopping that has been experienced in so many major urban cities.
Once again I conclude by saying there is probably nothing that we do in the Congress that on a daily basis affects the American people more than our partnership in surface transportation improvements in the United States of America, and I am delighted the chairman has chosen to focus on that issue today.
Thank you, sir.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. Ms. Berkley.
Ms. BERKLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this very important hearing. A recent study by the Surface Transportation Policy Project cited the Las Vegas area as the second worst in the country for traffic congestion and lack of mass transit alternatives to avoid the congestion. Las Vegas area commuters spend an average of 36 percent of their travel time stuck in traffic. The average Las Vegas motorist spent 21 hours in traffic in 1999. These delays cost each person $370 in increased fuel expenses. As we all know, time is a precious commodity. My constituents are spending hours of their time sitting in traffic. This time would be so much better spent with their children and their families.
The increase in traffic has been driven by the city's explosive population growth. Approximately 5,000 people move into the Las Vegas Valley every month, and for every 1,000 people that move into the area, 752 more vehicles use the city's streets. This influx of people and their vehicles are placing a tremendous burden on the transportation systems of my community. The systems simply cannot keep up with this growth.
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I have been working with the transportation officials in Nevada to improve the transportation infrastructure in the Las Vegas area. In addition to road construction, which is vitally important, the development of mass transit alternatives is imperative. Currently, the Regional Transportation Commission is working on two mass transit projects, a fixed guideway rail system and a rubber tire light system. I commend these efforts and will continue to help in the development, but more simply must be done.
It is my hope that the information shared by the panelists today will lead to real solutions to the problems of traffic congestion which, of course, is exacerbated in my community because of the incredible growth, but in listening to all of my colleagues make their opening statements, I appreciate the fact that this is a problem that is endemic throughout the United States.
I welcome your comments and your solutions as well.
Thank you.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. Other opening statements? Representative Hayes.
Mr. HAYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me briefly identify myself with my colleague from southeastern United States— he is from Georgia, I am from North Carolina. In the past we have had many competing interests that have sometimes worked against each other to solve problems. There is no reason that we cannot work together for the common goals of efficiency, effectiveness. We can protect the environment, we can keep our vibrant economy growing. I look forward to doing that.
Mr. Chairman, I appreciate you putting this hearing together so we can discuss those issues that are common to us all and reach solutions that will provide the answers that we need.
Thank you very much.
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Mr. PETRI. Thank you. Other opening statements? Mr. Larsen.
Mr. LARSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Ranking Member Borski, for holding the hearing on this important matter.
As we know, this week the entire committee is focusing on one of the most challenging problems our communities face today, and that is congestion. We face congestion in a range of transportation modes, the highways, aviation, rail and in our ports. My district, Mr. Chairman, has the dubious honor of ranking near the top of the list of the worst congestion in the country, in fact, the entire central Puget Sound region.
This year, the Seattle to Everett commute was ranked as having the third worse rush hour in the country. That is the good news, because last year we were ranked second. The bad news is it isn't because we improved, it is because some other folks got worse than we did. So we have still got some ways to go to address congestion in the Northwest.
In addition, the overlay of the listing of the Chinook salmon by the Endangered Species Act has made finding solutions to these congestion problems even more complex, and as a result traffic congestion in the Northwest has been matched only by the congestion we find in the permitting process.
Yesterday at the Rail Subcommittee, we heard from Mr. John Okamoto, with the Washington State Department of Transportation, about a pilot project that Washington State is looking at doing, and I would commend this committee, this subcommittee as well as the full committee, to take a look at Mr. Okamoto's testimony as one possible pilot project to address some of these permitting issues.
Mr. Chairman, I am committed to working with the subcommittee to find creative ways to reduce highway congestion and believe today's hearing is an excellent start. I want to commend you and Mr. Borski both for holding it, and thank you very much for the opportunity to provide an opening statement.
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Mr. PETRI. Thank you. Other opening statements? Mr. Brown.
Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to come and participate in this important hearing today.
I am from South Carolina, and I represent about 150 miles of the companies from Kiawah and Seabrook all the way up to Myrtle Beach. We are impacted not by the population living there, but by the influx of the tourists coming in. That is a particular challenge.
I am almost reminded, I went the other day to the Pentagon where some 24,000 people work, it was built in 13 months back in 1941 before all the technology was available. But yet it takes more than that time just to permit a road. I certainly would hope that somehow or another this conference and this hearing this morning would try to bring some resolve to all the problems that I heard some of the other members mention about the permitting process. We have to find some kind of common connect, working with the environment.
One of the solutions we had down in the Myrtle Beach area, we bought a 12,000-acre island to litigate some of the wetlands used and develop some of the roads around Myrtle Beach. I am hoping we can find some resolve and recognize we are all environmentally sensitive. We are not trying to destroy the environment, but we have to cure the problem. If we can build a Pentagon in 13 months, certainly we can solve some of the problems we have in our road system today in a much more expedient time.
Another thing I would like to mention is we look at the mass transit. I know in South Carolina we have two competing systems with two sets of railroads. It looks like to me it is time now to find some resolve that we could start sharing the rails between the different competing major rail corporations. So I hope that somehow we could find some resolve of that.
Thank you very much for sparing your time today to come.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. Other opening statements.
If not, we will turn to Tom Warne from Utah. Sir.
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Mr. WARNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Tom Warne. I am the Executive Director of the Utah Department of Transportation. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
This morning I am going to describe the experiences in Utah that demonstrate how good things can happen when State and Federal agencies reach consensus in completing crucial transportation projects, but also how, without consensus, they can go terribly wrong.
As Representative Matheson has shared with the subcommittee this morning, last week Utah celebrated the opening of the I-15 reconstruction project, which at $1.59 billion is the largest single highway project ever to be engaged in this business of building highways in this country. It was completed in only 4 years, and I am pleased to report that the project has been a unqualified success, finishing ahead of schedule and under budget, with an excellent product quality.
The project is staggering by any dimension in the business of building highways; 17 miles, 10 lanes, 142 bridges, realigning three major interchanges, nine single point urban interchanges, and new access to downtown Salt Lake City. Traditional methods would have required 20 separate contracts and 8 to 10 years to complete this project.
In 1995, when Salt Lake City was announced host the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, it became clear that building this project in traditional fashion was just not going to be the solution. Having it under construction and half completed during the Olympic Games was just unacceptable. So design-build, a process that has been proven in the private sector, was selected in order to deliver this project by the completion date of October 2001.
We had strong and continual Federal consensus to accelerate this project. Our partnership with the Federal Highway Administration was instrumental in ensuring that this project was completed before the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. We are pleased with this partnership, and this becomes an example of how consensus in the partnership with the Federal agencies can ensure projects being completed on time and ahead of schedule and under budget as the I-15 project was.
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Our partnership with U.S. DOT and the State has been extraordinary in other areas, including the Olympics. During the course of the last 4 or 5 years, we have had the opportunity to accelerate projects in order to have them completed so that we can deliver a transportation system that will be successful for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. Our relationship with the U.S. Department of Transportation and the partnership and consensus we have built with that agency has been instrumental in our preparations for the preparations for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.
However, unlike the I-15 reconstruction project and Olympic-related projects, we have a problem with a particular project called the Legacy Parkway, which has been fraught with challenges and delays. The Legacy Parkway Project is a new parallel roadway north of Salt Lake City, paralleling I-15. It has evolved over 40 years, and today we have an alignment that enjoys strong local support. In fact, 72 percent of the citizens support the project, 100 percent of the local elected officials, our State legislature has allocated $451 million in State funds, there is no Federal money in this project, and in fact our Governor is a strong supporter.
Nevertheless, despite this overwhelming support for a project that not only includes transportation in terms of highway, but also transit and commuter rail, the fact is that we have a problem with consensus. There are disagreements among the Federal agencies as to the project. Those have significantly driven the cost of the project up, and this has been a problem for us.
Unfortunately for the State and for the metropolitan planning organization, we have been caught between these disputes between Federal agencies. On the one hand you have the Federal Highway Administration analyzing the traffic information and the EPA challenging those numbers. We have also witnessed the EPA challenging the Corps of Engineers' determination of wetlands. All the while we as a State agency are basically held hostage, while Federal agencies are fighting among themselves to determine what is the right course of action.
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The fact is we need to find a solution for these disputes that are essentially within the Federal family, because they are causing us to delay projects and preventing us from relieving congestion, which is the point of this hearing.
The I-15 reconstruction project and Olympic-related transportation projects demonstrate that where there is consensus, State and Federal agencies can work together to accelerate key transportation projects to meet travel demand and alleviate congestion. At the same time, Utah's experience with the Legacy Parkway Project demonstrates that it doesn't always happen, even when the need is obvious.
I thank you for this opportunity to testify this morning, and would be pleased to answer questions at the appropriate time.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. To introduce the next panelist, our Dean, Mr. Oberstar.
Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your courtesy in letting me present, it is not often I have this opportunity, our Commissioner, Elwyn Tinklenberg, of the Minnesota Department of Transportation. Commissioner Tinklenberg has spent much of his life as a transportation planner and counselor, adviser to communities, counties and to the State before being appointed to this position by Governor Ventura.
As Commissioner, Mr. Tinklenberg has done something really very special for our State, and maybe for a great many States. He developed a comprehensive plan that is an integrated plan of transportation for the whole State. Rather than looking at a fix here and a fix there, he looked at transportation as an integral means of moving people and goods, similar to our national integrated plan of airports. As part of that plan, he developed a bottleneck solution approach to Minnesota's transportation needs, highlighting key bottleneck areas in the State that needed to be addressed.
He also put the right emphasis on transit, light rail, bus transit in the urbanized corridor in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and a commuter rail corridor between the Twin Cities and one of our largest and fastest growing areas, the Saint Cloud region, and has also initiated studies of other rail corridors.
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He brings to this position an extraordinary grasp of transportation issues and has many times said to the State Legislature, to chambers of commerce in Minnesota, Washington has done its part, Congress has passed TEA-21 and given us an historic opportunity to invest, now it is up to us, instead of asking Washington what have you done for us lately, to say, this is what we can do together.
I am proud to have our Commissioner here. Maybe you don't need to give your testimony any more.
Mr. TINKLENBERG. Mr. Chairman, I will let it go at that.
Mr. Chairman and members, thank you for the opportunity to be here today. My name is Elwyn Tinklenberg. I am the Commissioner of Transportation for the State of Minnesota, and I am honored to have the opportunity to appear before you today representing both the Ventura administration and the AASHTO Board of Directors.
As you are aware, even with the historic increases in transportation funding made available in ISTEA and TEA-21, we are still barely at the levels necessary to maintain our existing infrastructure, improving and expanding the existing infrastructure to meet the needs of population growth, rapidly increasing travel demands, and exploding load demands, carrying costs estimated to be even double the estimated funding levels of today. In Minnesota, our identified funding needs over the next 20 years to maintain current levels of mobility and congestion are three times what will be available under existing funding programs.
Obviously, additional growth in transportation funding will be necessary if we are to maintain into the future the tremendous economic and social advantages our unprecedented degree of mobility has helped us to achieve in the past. But just as obviously, none of us can reasonably expect that all of the capacity improvements necessary to secure our future mobility can be achieved solely through additional construction.
An array of solutions will be necessary. Some of that new capacity will have to be achieved through increased efficiencies in and better management of what we already have. It is estimated, for example, that the application of advanced technologies can improve the throughput of our urban corridors by 15 percent or more, without additional right of way or neighborhood disruption. In the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area of my State, which according to the latest Texas Transportation Institute study now has, as Mr. Kennedy referred to, the second fastest rate of congestion growth in the country, that improved efficiency can mean the difference between mobility and gridlock.
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Recognizing the importance of addressing our Nation's transportation capacity needs through a combined emphasis on both construction and operation, AASHTO President Dean Carlson, working with U.S. DOT and other organizations, has made transportation operations one of his strategic initiatives for his term of President. He has asked me to chair a task force made up of representatives of almost all the modal and program areas of AASHTO to work with U.S. DOT to develop a more common understanding of what operations means and how it can most effectively be applied as a capacity enhancing tool in our systems.
In Minnesota, we are engaged in an aggressive program of applying technology to improving the efficiency and capacity of our system. Some of you may be aware, for example, of our ramp meter program and the shutdown test we conducted on it last fall. The test, led by Cambridge Systematics, produced some important findings. When the meters were off, we experienced a 22 percent increase in travel time, a 14 percent decrease in travel speed, a 25 percent increase in accidents, and, most importantly, a 91 percent decline in the reliability and predictability of travel time on our freeways. In spite of the nuisance of ramp queues, our post-test polling indicated that 80 percent of the residents supported the ramp meter program in either its pre-test or modified form.
In Minnesota we are doing more than just meters, however. Our statewide system of road-weather information sensors helps us improve the efficiency of our maintenance efforts. Our automated bridge deicing systems are dramatically improving the safety of our bridges. Our partnership with the State Patrol and our Traffic Operations Communications Center helps us respond to incidents faster and better prepared. Our portable traffic management systems help reduce congestion and aggravation associated with major events or construction. And there are many others as well; the Intelligent Vehicle Initiative, the Rural Freeway Closure System, Automatic Vehicle Location and Computer Aided Dispatching Systems, Advanced Traveller Information Systems, Commercial Vehicle Informations System Network, all applying technology to the goal of increasing capacity, safety, efficiency and convenience.
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I have included background information on some of these initiatives in the written materials we have provided, and I need to stress that each of them are possible only because of a host of indispensable partners who are working with us. These programs, and many others like them around the country, represent a promising direction in both our ability to focus new technologies on practical real world solutions, and also on how to use those solutions in a more integrated fashion to better manage our transportation systems and better serve our customers.
Together, these initiatives and others like them, along with an aggressive construction program, can help us move toward doing what Secretary Mineta has articulated so well, closing the gap between our transportation demand on our transportation capacity.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. PETRI. Mr. Millar.
Mr. MILLAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too add my thanks to you, Mr. Borski, for sponsoring these hearings today. It is very clear this issue is on the minds of Americans. When the major news magazines begin to have headlines such as U.S. News and World Report did recently, it is very clear this is a topic that must be addressed and must be addressed quickly and forthrightly.
It is interesting, the article states that traffic is making millions of us not only tired, but sick and tired, and that is a dimension to this that I think many of us have not thought about before.
Of course, representing public transportation, we are very pleased that the article speaks about the increases in public transportation ridership, increases that I would argue would not have occurred without the investment strategy that this subcommittee has championed for years; namely, strong investment in public transportation. I believe you are seeing the payoff of the policies that you put in place. I think the article is also clear that this is not about cars versus transit or roads versus rail; this is about giving Americans choices and options, because it is choices and options that ultimately allow people to find their way out of traffic congestion.
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It is interesting to note that less than 25 percent of Americans live in a place where public transportation is good enough to actually be considered an option. So clearly the investment strategy that this subcommittee has adopted about expanding investment in public transportation, expanding investment in the road system and trying to make the whole thing connect in an intermodal way, is a very good strategy and one that we need to follow.
I think it is also interesting that not only is the popular press coming together on this issue, but some of the folks who at least traditionally have been thought of as not particularly in favor of public investment in about anything are starting to see the light on this, too.
Last Sunday's New York Times carried I thought a very interesting column in which William Niskanen, the chairman of the CATO Institute, not a group particularly known for advocating big government spending in anything, is suggesting that government investment sometimes is essential, and he cited four examples, education, public sanitation, and then, interestingly, highways and mass transit, as being four places that the chairman of the CATO Institute believes is an appropriate place for the Federal Government to be investing.
I think that does suggest we can find a way to solve our problems.
Well, congestion, as has been noted, is not simply a matter of highways or airports; it is happening in public transportation systems as well. We are seeing that as the growth in road congestion increases, people are seeking alternatives, and they are turning, as many of us predicted they would, to using public transportation systems. We are seeing those systems in large cities and small cities growing dramatically.
Certainly the oft cited number now that public transportation ridership has grown by some 21 percent over the last 5 years is certainly good news. While much of the attention is focused on the growth that has occurred in big cities, for example, in the series of articles in the Washington Post, for example, about the congestion on the Metro system itself here in Washington, but the same thing is happening in the BART system in the San Francisco Bay area, and, of course, legendary congestion on the New York City subways, and the list goes on and on.
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But it is not just a big city phenomenon. I brought along two examples today that I thought might be of interest in the hearing. First, in State College, Pennsylvania, they have followed an investment in public transportation over the last several years, and they have seen their annual ridership grow from 2 million rides a year just a few years ago to last year, almost 6 million rides in a community of about 70,000 people. They carry about 33,000 riders a day when Penn State University is in session, but fully one-third of those riders are not the students at all, but the people of the community going to their jobs and doing the things that people do on public transportation.
They estimate that some 7,000 additional trips in one corridor in the little community of State College would be taken by car if it were not for this investment, and they also estimate that at least 3,000 parking spaces and all the attendant space that that requires are saved by this investment in public transportation.
Another smaller community, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in their principal corridor have buses moving at a rate of 50 per hour. That is a big city number in a smaller community. It is happening, they have reached basically their capacity of what they could do. If they had more money, they couldn't add more buses. They have basically used up their capacity. So they are looking at bus rapid transit, they are looking at light rail transit, as ideas to move their community along.
So, congestion, while we hear about it in the big cities and suburbs, and indeed it is terrible there, it is not just a big city issue.
Well, as we have said, TEA-21 certainly was a critical step along the path towards providing choice, but more is going to have to be done. We are certainly going to have to look at the Tax Code, as Mr. McGovern has suggested, and we believe that there are at least four things that need to be done right away. We think that these are not only consistent with the need to relieve congestion, but also a lot of attention is now being put on energy issues.
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Last week we wrote to the President and we wrote to the leaders of Congress making several suggestions. First, we were glad that the President's energy policy included full funding of some ideas that originated in this committee, such as fuel cell buses and clean buses and that sort of thing. But we believe that public transportation does and can do a lot more.
Every American chooses to make one simple decision, commute by bus rather than commute by car, saves something like 273 gallons of gasoline. If 1,000 people make that choice, 273,000 gallons of gas gets saved just on that movement alone. So certainly we are encouraging that.
I completely agree with my colleague Commissioner Tinklenberg on the whole issue of intelligent transportation and managing our systems better and more effectively. I believe not only will this make for more effective use of the road system, but better information can really make public transportation where it exists as a better choice for people. As we wrote the President, we have four suggestions to make, and then I will conclude.
First, we need to fully fund the TEA-21 levels for public transportation. While the guaranteed levels are funded, and that is good news, there is an additional $1 billion this committee authorized of general funds that should be made available.
Second, we certainly want to oppose any talk of reduction of the Federal gas tax. That would exacerbate the source of funds, and we know this committee has taken strong positions on that in the past and we support you.
Third, we must certainly equalize the transit and parking commute benefit. In fact, as Mr. McGovern's legislation, which I understand is cosigned by a number of members of this committee, has suggested, it may be necessary even to give a tax credit beyond. You can't simply keep doing what you always did, or you always got what you always have. So we may need to go to tax credits in that regard.
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Fourth, we think there are a number of places in the Tax Code that need to be looked at. We think it is time, for example, to look at the incentives that might bring more private investment into public transportation, so the idea of looking at some of the limits on public and private tax exempt funding.
The list goes on and on. I know I have exceeded my time. I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. Mr. Borski.
Mr. BORSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Millar, let me stay with you. Before you catch your breath, let me continue on. It has been stated many times by yourself and others about the increase in transit ridership over the past 5 years, up some 21 percent. It seems to me that may coincide somewhat with your tenure as the President of APTA. Do you want to take full credit for that?
Mr. MILLAR. Only when it is going up. Should it reverse, I had nothing to do with it, of course.
Mr. BORSKI. Why do you think this is happening?
Mr. MILLAR. I think there are several reasons for it. Certainly the good economy has been part of it. People use public transportation to either spend money or make money. That is primarily what they do. That has been part of it.
Second, I think we have a better quality of service out there. A lot of the investments that this committee has authorized are starting to come on-line. So in fact areas that never had really a viable public transportation system are starting to have that.
Along with that, we are starting to see other areas that are taking an interest. I know Mr. Brown mentioned about the railroads in his area. I also know that there is talk of improving the bus system in the Myrtle Beach area, for example. So areas that heretofore didn't necessarily think about the benefits of public transit are doing it and planning it.
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Certainly the investments this committee has authorized is part of that, but also the States get some credit. State after State has stepped up to the plate and either provided State funds or has authorized local jurisdictions to levy special taxes and provide money.
So I think it is a combination of things. As transit becomes more usable, then people will see it as an option. As things like intelligent transportation give you the information to make a sensible choice, I argue in the future people are going to decide today it is better to drive my car; tomorrow I will take transit, the day after that, you may even walk. Who knows?
But I think it is a combination of things, and we need to do more of it over a longer period of time to have continued success.
Mr. BORSKI. You talked a little bit about the Federal dollars in the system through TEA-21, and obviously that has been of help. Tell us a little bit about capacity, however. I hear a lot of problems in Philadelphia, that the rail cars are jammed, overloaded, can't get a seat, sometimes can't stand up.
How do we balance this? How do we improve the system we have while exceeding systems elsewhere?
Mr. MILLAR. Clearly a number of things are going to have to come to bear here. There has to be recognition that we have to make sure transit available in places where it isn't now.
Second, we have to recognize in those communities for decades and decades, such as Philadelphia, that have invested in public transit, and the public has responded by using it, we are going to have to find a way to increase the core capacity. In some cases, this can be done by the application of modern technology, so that you can get closer train spacing. The BART system in San Francisco is experimenting with that, for example.
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But in many cases we are going to have to recognize we are going to have to build additional rail lines, we are going to have to make additional bus lanes available. We simply are going to have to make use of the capacity of our street system in a lot smarter way than we have. We spend billions and billions of dollars rebuilding our road system. We want to make sure that while our road system is being rebuilt, to get the benefits we expect, we rebuild it in a way that makes it easy to increase capacity of the road by providing additional transit service.
So it is a lot of different things that are going to have to come together, and my hope is with the kind of articles I cited at the beginning of my talk, that maybe we are beginning to come together, that this is not an ideological issue but it is a real public policy problem that we have got to solve.
Mr. BORSKI. Tell us about the price of fuel. We are all obviously very concerned, and most estimates are that the price of a gallon of gasoline is going to continue to rise. What effect do you think that will have on transit and transit riders?
Mr. MILLAR. I think it has the following effect: People know in their own budgets how much they can spend for transportation, and as certainly the price of one of the inputs to that budget goes up and up and up, they are going to look for alternatives. Sometimes that will be a more fuel efficient car, but sometimes it is going to be is there an alternative for this particular trip.
Transit may not be appropriate for every trip people take. If you have to make multiple stops on a shopping trip, a lot of times transit may not work. But for many, many people, taking a bus, taking a rail car to work, for example, making that routine trip is certainly possible.
So I think the fuel costs are also part of what is driving the increase in transit use, and I think it is bringing people's attention to the notion that, frankly, 3 years ago, when I don't know whether anybody remembers, we were talking about the all time cheapest fuel prices, that that was the aberration and the long-term trend is that fuel is going to be more and more expensive.
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Having just returned from London yesterday to come to this hearing, where they were paying between $4 and $5 a gallon, though, America's perception of what expensive fuel is has a long way to go.
Mr. BORSKI. I am sure you are aware the transit agency in Philadelphia has announced their intention to increase fares, make it one of the highest fares in the Nation, as I understand it. I am obviously concerned about the people in Philly and their ability to pay that. But at what point do we need to be concerned with the price of the transit ride versus pushing more people out of the system and back into cars?
Mr. MILLAR. Not a simple answer and one that I promise the Chair I won't go on too long about, but it is one that we really need to talk about.
As we improve our product, it is not unreasonable to expect people to pay more. But the fact of the matter is, a sizable number of people that use public transportation simply don't have the income to pay more. So I think we are going to have to be more clever in our pricing strategies. We will need to make sure that the base fares that most people pay are, in fact, kept as low as possible, but it may be that we have to consider that extra-high-quality services people will pay more and should pay more.
It is not uncommon, as you know, in the Philadelphia area that the people that use the regional rail system pay more than the people that use the local bus system, for example. So I think it is going to take some creativity to make sure that we don't harm those who simply can't afford it but at the same time recognize as we improve the product there will be people who can and are willing to pay additional money for it.
Mr. PETRI. Mr. Kennedy.
Mr. KENNEDY. Thank you very much; and thank you, panel, for your testimony.
My first question will go to Commissioner Tinklenberg. In your testimony you talked about the fact that we need to have three times as much in terms of the funding programs to address the needs. You also talked extensively about how we are using technology to increase the efficiency of our highway and doing a great job at that in Minnesota.
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But when we talk about those two together, I am reminded of California which has one of the highest levels of conservation efforts in the energy side and yet they are still having blackouts. So, yes, we need to continue to do the good things that we are doing from a technological increase, but I am also—I have concerns that we have the funds necessary to do the programs.
I know we have highly dedicated funds here at the Federal level that we fought hard for. I know there are efforts afoot in Minnesota to do that as well, that we need to increase that dedicated funding. But today we are talking about regulations that get in the way. What are some of those areas in Federal policy, either that have been mentioned here in the testimony or other policies, that we need to work together that would help you finish a number of those projects that we talked about?
Mr. TINKLENBERG. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Kennedy, some of them have been mentioned. The streamlining efforts are just terribly important. If I could just give a couple of examples—one, Mr. Kennedy, in your area, Highway 212 that we have been working on for a long time.
Mr. Chairman, when we started buying right-of-way for that project in 1992, we were buying right at a cost of about 5 to $10,000 an acre, depending on where it was. Today, we are spending over $20,000 an acre to buy that same right-of-way. The delay over that 10-year period of time has doubled the cost of the project, and the major part of that is in right-of-way costs. But with that additional cost are those that had escalated in construction.
The delays have real economic consequences, and they deprive the value that the taxpayers have put into these projects. I think that is an area that desperately needs attention.
The other example, Mr. Chairman, that I would like to give is the Stillwater Bridge Project between Wisconsin and Minnesota. That has been in the works for well over a decade, and it is really caught between conflicting Federal policies over nonproliferation of bridges on scenic and—wild and scenic rivers and historic preservation, both worthwhile and good goals but in direct conflict in this situation and no opportunity for resolution.
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So the project hangs in kind of limbo, with everyone understanding that we need to do it, that sooner or later there is going to have to be a new bridge there. The current lift bridge is 70 years old and will not continue forever. We need a new bridge. And yet we are at loggerheads because we cannot get resolution between two conflicting Federal policies.
There needs to be some method of finding a solution and finding a solution in a reasonable period of time that certainly respects the missions of both of those agencies but allows some decision to be made that can move forward and respects the taxpayers' dollars that are being spent. We have spent about $15 million in development costs on that project, and we are nowhere.
These are the kind of issues that really need to be addressed for us to help move some of these projects along. It is what turns a 5-year project into a 15-year project and really increases the costs.
Mr. KENNEDY. I thank you for that response. It really highlighted the need to do long-term planning. Because when you talk about we need three times as much funding as we needed—obviously, if we bought that right-of-way a long time ago and were buying it at prices before development encroached upon the right-of-way, we would have been in much better shape.
My concern is that we are kind of behind the eightball now, and we are trying to catch up. And we also need to look beyond even catching up to see what do we need to do to make sure we are not perpetually in this problem. Is there anything about the way we do our 5-year funding here in the Federal level and the planning we do as part of that that we can be working closer together with the States to make sure that we are not behind the eightball but getting ahead of this issue?
Mr. TINKLENBERG. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Kennedy, one of the things that has been so helpful about that process is what this committee has done in terms of securing the resources that are made available so that they are there for transportation and we can plan on them. That long-term planning on projects is critical to doing all of the preliminary work that needs to be done to get a project ready for construction; and knowing that there is a secure line of funding available for that is just very, very important. So the secure source of funding over a long period of time, that 6-year authorization and then the streamlining initiatives really make it possible for States to do the long-term planning that is necessary for these projects.
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Mr. KENNEDY. I thank you for your response and your testimony.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you.
Mrs. Kelly, any questions?
Mrs. KELLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Millar, I heard you talk about public transportation. I agree with you. I think there is a need for us to help more people get on there. But I think—it has been the experience in the greater New York region that when you make public transportation not only inexpensive but you make it safe and clean, you will immediately attract more ridership; and I think that is very important for us to focus on with this committee.
One of the things I wanted to ask you about, though, is light rail. It seems to be the flavor of the month, and it is one way that I have heard us utilizing current right-of-ways that we actually own. My concern about utilizing and building more light rail is that we might get into a situation where the same thing happens that has happened to us when we demand that people car pool in order to save the air: They drive to a particular place, they get on public transportation or whatever, and they do go into the city. Then they get back and they get into their cars and they drive to do all the little errands that they were going to do anyway, so it doesn't have any effect on the air quality.
I am wondering if we are going to have—I shouldn't say any effect. It had no real effect, and we rescinded the law. I am wondering, with light rail, is there enough right-of-way that you know of that we would be able to utilize, given the present state of the NIMBYism in the United States and the fact that many of the rail right-of-ways have been utilized now into people's backyards, they think they own them?
There is a lot of problems there, but I think maybe there is some potential. Would you be willing to speak to that?
Mr. MILLAR. Yes, ma'am, I appreciate that question.
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And certainly making better use of the Nation's rail facilities and rail rights-of-way is something that we strongly believe can be done. In fact, just a few weeks ago I sat at this very table in front of the Railroad Subcommittee of this committee talking about just those kinds of issues.
Many cities do have rights-of-way that are, in fact, available. However, there is no way for the public to get access to those rights-of-way. The railroads in America are exempt from the same kinds of laws that everyone else is; and, as a result, if a legitimate local planning process is put together and if it identifies a rail corridor and if it identifies a place where there is excess capacity—in other words, that the rail freight needs of the community are being met but there is still additional capacity, if the railroad doesn't wish to talk with you about making that right-of-way available on some basis, there is simply nothing you can do. You can't go to court and sue them. They are exempt from eminent domain laws.
And we believe that the Congress needs to address this. We certainly understand that is private property. We certainly understand the Nation needs good freight rail service. We certainly understand that if we are going to use some of that capacity we are going to need to pay for it. But we need to have a process where the public interest gets adequately considered, and so we would very strongly support legislation in that regard.
Mrs. KELLY. Let me extend this one bit further, because you said what I thought you might say and that is we have median strips that go down our public highways. How do you feel about the utilization of median strips to add light rail?
Mr. MILLAR. Yes. That has occurred in a number of places around the country both for light rail and heavy rail and, in fact, bus improvements. For example, one of the celebrated modern light rail systems in Portland, Oregon, has used highway right-of-way for part of their location. The rapid transit lines in the City of Chicago have for decades been built right in the median strips of some of the freeways. So, yes, we would very much support that.
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I know in Pennsylvania, where I worked for many years before I came down to Washington, the State DOT there, when it was designing a new freeway in the Pittsburgh area, made provision for future public transportation right in the median of the freeway they were building; and certainly those kinds of policies we would strongly support.
I would be happy to make many examples available to the committee where it has been successful.
Mrs. KELLY. Then I suspect you would like us to try to get you some money for that.
Mr. MILLAR. Wouldn't that be nice?
Mrs. KELLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. PETRI. Mr. Isakson, any questions?
Mr. ISAKSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I don't want Mr. Millar to take all the time, but I have two questions. One, to make sure I am right, the use of the term bus or rapid transit, am I correct that bus rapid transit means utilizing designated lanes for buses only to interconnect with rail?
Mr. MILLAR. It could mean that, but it is certainly a much broader concept than that.
Mr. ISAKSON. But it could mean that.
Mr. MILLAR. Could mean that.
Mr. ISAKSON. I understand your examples in Champaign, Urbana and College Station, but both of those are major State universities and two-thirds of the riders don't have a lot of choices. I represent an area where everybody lives in suburbs, got one car—a lot of them got three cars, and they got a lot of choices. And the biggest problem we have, we built 47.2 miles of rapid rail in 30 years with a penny sales tax in metropolitan Atlanta and have a significant bus system to connect and lots of park-and-rides. But because the buses are stuck in the same traffic that the cars are in, people choose to stay in their car and be struck rather than get on the bus and be stuck. Is there an example in the United States where designated lanes for buses has been used to interconnect with rail and it has actually worked, or are we still hoping there will be an example?
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Mr. MILLAR. I want to make sure that I answer you correctly. I am going to give you have a couple of examples. If they are not on point, I will try again, or we can talk further at another time.
For example, in Miami, when the rapid transit line was built in the South Dade area at the end of the line which paralleled a railroad track in subsequent years, some years after they opened the rail line, then with the cooperation of the Florida DOT they built an additional 10 miles. Only this time, instead of extending the rail line, they built it as an exclusive busway. And they did—as I understand it, it is quite successful. They are quite happy with it. In fact, they have proposals to extend it further. So there is a case where the bus is fed directly into the rail.
In my old home town of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, we build things called busways. They are parallel to some railroad tracks, and some of the people do, in fact, then transfer to rail. But it is primarily a movement from the suburbs and from city neighborhoods along the busway to downtown.
In the downtown area then, the city gave us a series of counter flow bus lines, in other words, exclusive lanes that we could then move the buses through the downtown area. So there are two examples of that type of success.
Mr. ISAKSON. I appreciate the example because, after spending a lot of time, I have received some recommendations, talked with some mass transit—former mass transit system directors who are far more open-minded sometimes than current rapid transit operators who have suggested that, because of the tremendous time, as the gentleman from Minnesota testified about our increasing cost of right-of-way, and mitigation problems and all those things, that should we be looking to taking corridors that were planned for rail whenever we could raise the capital to extend it to create designated roadways that connect buses to that mass transit to get it quicker to the suburbs and have a better utilization and less cost of that right-of-way? That sounds like that is like what Miami did in that 10-mile example.
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My biggest concern, and I will end with—this is kind of a statement, but one thing we talk—when we talk about rail we never really talk about the year that what we are talking about is actually going to happen. And I am going to be dead before most of the things we are dreaming about in metropolitan Atlanta, as it relates to where rail is going to go, is going to happen. Yet the growth in congestion, in particularly the Southeast and the Southwest where you have metro sprawl, is going to accelerate far faster than our ability to get rail.
Our hope is your organization and these distinguished gentlemen will think about ways that we can take those corridors, find ways to get the accessibility from either a park-and-ride or from the home, hopefully, past the automobiles to the transit. Because I am afraid if we count totally on this concept of getting the trains to the people, people will outrun us forever. And we have got to find innovative ways to do it.
So I know that is a statement, not a question; and I apologize, Mr. Chairman, but any time we do get a shining example where that can actually start working, let us know down in Atlanta.
Mr. PETRI. All right. Maybe ask the whole panel, or particularly Mr. Carlson, what more we can do to make this concurrent approval process work. Everyone has expressed—not everyone. We have had success in Salt Lake City with one major project and then a frustration with another. So I guess maybe we can learn something from the success, if there is a perceived deadline and people recognized what the solution is, by and large, that they were able to develop a consensus that stuck.
What can we do? We have given them some authority, but can we rely on interagency agreements? Do we have to make another legislative push? Even if we put words on pieces of paper, if it relies on the goodwill of the administrators, essentially, what are the real teeth in it?
And then, of course, in the background you have the courts and all of the delays that can result from acts that people take outside of the bureaucratic approval process directly.
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We are kind of frustrated. We think we are wasting a lot of time and money, and the people who are suffering are sitting on the highways or standing on transit stops waiting to get home or get to work or whatever their trying to do. And we are looking—I guess just a sense of frustration, but we have got to do something.
Mr. CARLSON. I will start up by saying that those five issues that we raised from AASHTO's perspective would be helpful. The legislation that you passed in TEA-21 suggested deadlines, and the problem has been that no agency is willing to step up to the plate and say we are going to impose deadlines. If we don't get your comments by a certain time, we are going to move ahead with the project. That is a difficult issue, and the courts probably would take a hand in that.
On the other hand, a deadline that would expect them to make comments would seem to me to be something that would have some value. Otherwise, I think that the purpose and need for transportation projects should be determined by the U.S. DOT for both transit and highways. I think if that were the case then the commenting agencies would be somewhat restricted in knowing that the purpose and need issue could be addressed and adhered to by the transportation people. We still would have projects where they could—the resource agencies could point out that they should not be done.
Like the other two gentlemen here, I have an example of a project where the Federal Highway Administration issued a record of decision after the entire process. The Corps of Engineers issued a wetlands permit for a project 10 years ago; and an Indian university raised the issue that they hadn't been given proper consideration; and EPA and others, Justice Department, said you can't move the project. We ended up with a catch-22, in the words of the court, because no side would make a decision on allowing us to go forward with the project.
There are horror stories all over; and I think that having some sort of a decision-making ability, some dispute resolution which you also put into section 1309 is the way that we have to eventually go. I don't know of any other way that we can get it done.
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I do think on most minor projects, as we point out in our testimony, that some programmatic delegations to the States, our fish, wildlife and parks area and our health and environment agency would be very happy to help us to do the kind of things that we now have from Federal resource agencies that take so long to get approval on. Also, on those minor projects, 4(f) issues can cost us 2 or 3 years on very minor projects. But where we are on many projects—I hate to use the word—of that nature is just silly.
Mr. PETRI. Any other comments? Yes.
Mr. WARNE. Mr. Chairman, I think if you look at the success of I-15, it was the unqualified partnership between the State and the Federal agencies and the fact that there was a common purpose that drove everyone to success there.
If you look at the ways that you can influence this process—Secretary Carlson has spoken of purpose and need. What we found on the Legacy Project, that you have a Federal Highway Administration with their transportation and traffic experts who have gone through the analysis relating to the purpose and need and the traffic volumes that are going to occur in the area, and you have staff members of the EPA who questioned that traffic analysis who have no expertise in this area.
We find the fact of the 4(f) properties on a project that I have—we have an alignment that crosses the asphalt parking lot of a park just by a couple of feet, and yet we are treating the asphalt corner of the parking lot just as if it were the rest of the park. That is the extent to which the 4(f) process has basically gotten out of control. If you can help influence that.
In addition, I think we are being expected in Utah and I expect it is the expectation of members of this subcommittee that we do things with more innovation, such as design building such as we use in the I-15 project. But there are many systems that we work within that are prohibitive in allowing us to do that, and the 4(f) is a good example.
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But the other things that Secretary Carlson has testified to representing AASHTO are all areas that, with the assistance of this subcommittee and the Congress, would help us to be more private sector focused in terms of how we deliver projects. I expect that is what the citizens of Utah expect of me.
Representative Matheson cited the statistic when we built I-15 for 4 years and it was a huge impact on the community. The fact is, 86 percent of the people said, if we had to do it again, do it the same way. We can't wait 10 years for this project. We can't wait 8 years for this project. We need it now.
Mr. PETRI. Any other comments? Yes.
Mr. MILLAR. I would like to make a comment on that.
Going back to my days in Pittsburgh when we were doing the environmental work on what was then called the Airport Busway Project, today known as the West Busway Project, a $300 million project, not a small project at all, we had a very good partnership with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation; and so I got to observe their process. If you are looking for a process that I thought worked very, very well, theirs was a good process. It was a collaborative process. It was a process where they recognized that sometimes they were going to have to fund positions in other departments in order to have people available to, in fact, do the review on the permits and things that were necessary.
But I also believe, as Mr. Carlson has stated, you can't have the same level of review for big projects and small projects. If we can find a way to streamline noncontroversial small projects, then the resource that we have can be put into the attention of the major projects, which is probably where it should be.
We, too, have the experience where one of our alternatives we are examining was going through a portion of a parking lot in a State park; and the parking lot was treated the same as the obviously more precious, if I can say it that way, portions of the park. So some common-sense things.
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But I would encourage you to take a look at the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the process that they have set up. At least the one experience that I had a lot of detailed involvement with, I thought it worked very well. We did our very complex EIS process in 13 months and moved the project.
Mr. PETRI. Very good.
Well, as you know we are in the midst of staffing up a new administration, and we are all hopeful as we get people in place they may be able to, in the spirit of a new start and goodwill, put in place some better interagency agreements in this area. We are a little frustrated yet because the ''put in'' process takes some time, but we are going to be having further hearings and meetings to try to do what we can to encourage a spirit of constructive cooperation in this area so that we don't either hurt the environment unnecessarily or waste resources unnecessarily. And we are right now, basically, in some cases, doing both.
So with that, I think, Mr. Oberstar, do you have a comment or questions?
Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sorry I had to step out. I thought it was just going to be a brief moment. Then it turned out to be several things.
Commissioner Tinklenberg will be very happy to know that the White House has reconsidered my request for the UM-D women's hockey team, national NCAA champs, to be received by the President. They first said no about 6 weeks ago or so when they wouldn't. Then they had the hockey team who won the hockey championship and now they have had the NCAA men's basketball team and the men's something else and the men's something else.
I called back and said, you folks really don't want to do that, do you? You don't want to leave the women out of this. Oh. I wouldn't want to say anything publicly about this or anything. They called back and said, terrific, it is a great idea. The President will have you in June. I said, the ice is all melted by then.
So I just called the—Commissioner Tinklenberg, who is a graduate of UM-D, University of Minnesota-Duluth, I just called Chancellor Martin and got her out of the board of regents meeting, gave her the news. I think she is still levitating. And I said, go on back to the board of regents meeting and tell them, all right now, listen, there is no other team at the University of Minnesota that is going to be in Washington, so you need to put more investment up here to UM-D.
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All of you had wonderfully enlightening testimony, and I greatly appreciate your making the time to come and be with us today.
Mr. Millar, some weeks ago, when the announcement was made by APTA of the more than 21 percent increase in public transit ridership, in the wonderful good news city by city, the persistent critics of public transit said, oh, well, you know, dismissively, that is the increase in ridership in New York, which accounts for 60 percent of all public transit riders. I would like to give you the opportunity to respond to that here.
Mr. MILLAR. Thank you. I will respond orally, and that is one I would like to respond in writing to so I can make sure I also give the precise figures for the record.
Certainly the New York area has done innovative things and has seen a tremendous growth in the use of their bus system as well as their rail system, and they are to be congratulated for it. But to suggest it is simply the growth in New York that has made the difference when in fact nearly every community, big and small, that has any type of transit has seen a growth rate similar to what I was speaking of, I think it demonstrates that those critics really don't know what they are talking about.
New York, depending on how you measure it, is in the neighborhood of 25 percent or so of the Nation's transit ridership. It is a very heavily, intensively used area. There is no doubt about that. So certainly if transit ridership grows in New York, that helps the national statistics.
On the other hand, for one thing, over the last 20, 25 years, if you were to go back and look at your records, California you didn't used to think of in terms of transit ridership at all. But because of the investments by this committee and the local communities and State, California is a significant part of the national ridership; and they have seen tremendous growth. And the list goes on and on and on. And it has been big cities. It has been small cities.
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I would be very happy to put on the record the precise numbers, but, in general, to answer your question, it is about a quarter in New York; and, yes, it grew, but it grew essentially at the same rate as the rest of the country grew.
Mr. OBERSTAR. I think it would be very helpful for our committee record for a report that summarizes each of the new transit systems that has come on in the last decade.
I have reviewed that material myself and used it in numerous speeches. But every one of the new systems has exceeded the ridership projected, exceeded the growth rate anticipated, and has also been accompanied with substantial private sector investment at points along the ridership, whether it is the Puget Sounder in Seattle or the DART in Dallas-Fort Worth. I won't go on through them and list all of them.
Here in the Washington, D.C., area, Metro has generated in excess of $15 billion of capital investment around the subway stops of its now 104-mile system. That is a huge investment.
Commissioner Tinklenberg, the use of intelligent transportation system technologies has been particularly successful in Minnesota; and in the Twin Cities, inside I-494, the Beltway, you have worked very hard with ITS to increase capacity. How much more capacity do you believe can be squeezed out or rung out of the existing roadways with technology? And then how much capacity needs to be created with additional transit, including completion of the Hiawatha light rail system and the three commuter rail systems that are on the drawing boards? What is the proper mix here? And the bus system, of course.
Mr. TINKLENBERG. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Oberstar, we have estimated that, in line with some of my earlier comments, that about 15 percent of capacity can be added by the utilization of effective technology, the ramp metering program, better traveler information systems, our traffic operations centers with the system of loop detectors and cameras that help us manage the system. But you really reach a point where the increase in demand outpaces any of those kinds of solutions, and then you need the multimodal approach.
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I appreciate very much your earlier comments about trying to find a combination of solutions, both in terms of increased capacity—we clearly have a need within the metropolitan area where our growth in capacity has lagged far behind both population and further still behind travel demand growth. But to catch up with that, in congested urban corridors like 35 W through Minneapolis, where there is no public appetite for expanding the right-of-way and a considerable public opposition to the idea of finding ways to increase the capacity through the utilization of bus shoulder lanes, HOV lanes and the application of light rail commuter rail programs into those corridors, along with all the other technical advancements, is the only way to expand capacity without having to increase those right-of-way demands in those congested corridors, in those fully developed corridors.
We are seeing that as you come closer and closer to being at full capacity, utilizing all of the capacity of the system, any incident on the system has dramatic consequences, whether it is Highway Patrol officer pulling over a vehicle and turning their lights on, the immediate reaction is congestion on the freeway. Incident response becomes a huge congestion-fighting tool because we can clear—the faster we can clear a stalled vehicle or any of those kind of incidents, the faster we can open up the congestion.
So all of those different tools working together are going to be a part of that. But much greater reliance on the integration of transit solutions and higher occupancy vehicle solutions in those corridors is going to be essential as we move forward.
Mr. OBERSTAR. Just one brief moment longer. I would like for the Commissioner to describe the bottleneck program that was developed for the State of Minnesota. I think both what you have just said about the Twin Cities area and the bottleneck approach is a policy that is applicable elsewhere in the United States. This is not just a Minnesota experience. It is a Minnesota experience that can be beneficial to other parts of the United States.
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Mr. TINKLENBERG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Oberstar.
The bottleneck program recognizes that there is a latent capacity in the system that is constrained by key places on the system where there is not throughput capacity to access the balance of the capacity on the system. So identifying those key places where traffic falls down, where there are lane drops, where there are inadequate intersections, and targeting resources to those areas can actually open up capacity on the rest of the system that is being underutilized because of those constraining conditions at the bottlenecks. So we really tried to target investment on those areas where, by creating additional capacity, we can open up and access other capacity on the system.
It has been particularly effective in a couple of instances on some roadways, especially at intersections and, as I mentioned, at lane drops where, by targeting those resources to those areas, we can really have a pretty dramatic effect on the rest of the system. That applies beyond just the State highway system. It has a huge effect on county roads and city streets that are carrying the capacity in those areas because the State system can't handle it. So it is—it really—you start seeing that broader system impact by those targeted and strategic investments.
Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. Mr. Borski, did you have—.
Mr. BORSKI. If I may—I want to ask Mr. Carlson one last question, if I may, but Mr. Millar raised an ugly spectre about the gasoline tax. This is a hearing on congestion. Would you care to comment on some of the bills that have been introduced to reduce, suspend or eliminate some portions of the gasoline tax and what effect that could have on the congestion?
Mr. CARLSON. I hope that the good news is the gas prices in Kansas has dropped about 10 cents in the last week. At our Wichita meeting last weekend, the board of directors of AASHTO passed a resolution that, among other things, says this is not a good thing to do, to cut the tax; and, obviously, that would be our position.
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I think that one of the key issues that we put into that resolution, which I am sure you will be receiving copies of, is that fuel prices are market driven; and the fact that you reduce the gas tax either 4.3 cents or 18.3 cents doesn't mean that the price at the pump that people are going to pay will even noticeably decline. That has been the exact experience in some cases where States lowered the tax rates during the last crunch when this was done. So certainly AASHTO thinks that the issue of continuing to fund our transportation facilities, both transit and highways, are important enough that that is not a good public policy to endeavor.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. So the experience in States was that if you lower or get rid of the gas tax you increase the profits of the oil companies, basically.
Mr. CARLSON. I don't know the other half of it.
Mr. PETRI. It has to go somewhere.
Mr. CARLSON. The price didn't come down. It stayed up.
Mr. PETRI. Very good. Thank you all, gentlemen.
The second panel has been very patient, and we now welcome—I will introduce them as they basically organize the table for them.
Mr. Hal Kassoff, who is Vice President for Highway Programs of Parsons Brinkerhoff Quade and Douglass, speaking on behalf of the American Consulting Engineers Council Transportation Committee; Roy Kienitz, Executive Director of the Surface Transportation Policy Project; Taylor Bowlden, Vice President for Government Affairs, american highway users alliance; Susan Pikrallidas; who is the Vice President for Public Affairs, American Automobile Association; and Michael Replogle, Transportation Specialist, Environmental Defense.
We welcome you. As soon as you are ready we will start with Mr. Kassoff.
STATEMENT OF HAL KASSOFF, VICE PRESIDENT, PARSONS BRINKERHOFF QUADE AND DOUGLASS, AND VICE CHAIR, TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE, THE AMERICAN CONSULTING ENGINEERS COUNCIL; ROY KIENITZ, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SURFACE TRANSPORTATION POLICY PROJECT; TAYLOR R. BOWLDEN, VICE PRESIDENT, AMERICAN HIGHWAY USERS ALLIANCE; SUSAN G. PIKRALLIDAS, VICE PRESIDENT, PUBLIC AFFAIRS, AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION; AND MICHAEL REPLOGLE, TRANSPORTATION DIRECTOR, ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE
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Mr. KASSOFF. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Hal Kassoff, Vice President with Parsons Brinkerhoff, a global engineering firm in business for over a century.
I am representing the Transportation Committee of the American Consulting Engineers Council. ACEC was one of the principal advocates of Section 1309 of TEA-21, the section dealing with environmental streamlining.
Gridlock is a term as applicable to environmental processes as it is to traffic congestion on our highways. The reason Section 1309 has failed to produce results is that basic processes, attitudes and behaviors have not materially changed. Achieving results in this area means changing long-standing cultures. There is no question that Section 1309 needs a booster shot to clarify what Congress intended and to energize the streamlining process. This can be done by congressional action and executive orders that make it clear to both transportation and environmental agencies alike what is expected of them, how it will be measured and reported and the intent to continue to scrutinize results.
Here are the key points in our proposal.
The first thing we need to do is more clearly define expectations.
Then the key is to apply straightforward measures of performance that tell us how well the process is or isn't working.
Starting with the U.S. DOT we need a stronger commitment to resolve issues in a timely way.
It would also help if DOT shifted away from complex and prescriptive requirements toward more concise, flexible and common-sense approaches.
Also, it is important that FHA fulfill its role as lead agency in representing responsible transportation positions before environmental resource agencies.
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Our proposal defines 10 expectations of transportation agencies if streamlining is to become a reality. I will highlight just two of these.
First, proposed projects must be environmentally responsible. This means a willingness by transportation agencies to filter out or modify projects or project alternatives that result in severe environmental impacts that are disproportionate to transportation benefits.
Second is to embrace the philosophies and practices of environmental stewardship. In fact, a number of DOTs have done this.
Environmental stewardship means that an environmental ethic permeates policies, plans, programs and projects. It means that environmental issues are considered on the same plane as transportation issues. It means that transportation projects include affordable and related environmental enhancements, often transcending minimum requirements.
There are also 10 expectations for environmental resource agencies. The essential ones come down to defining a different mindset, a mindset that recognizes the legitimacy of meeting transportation needs and taking a constructive, proactive approach in helping to find solutions. It means applying concurrent instead of sequential processing and reaching early agreements that stick.
Articulating these expectations will have very little effect unless there are ways to hold the parties accountable for fulfilling them. The key is careful, consistent and continuing measures of performance.
We propose two approaches. The first looks at elapsed time between key environmental milestones. The second approach is a new idea. It is a peer review that uses scientific survey research methods to determine how well transportation and environmental agencies fulfill the expectations that have been defined for them. This approach is at the core of our proposal and is critical to transforming process and culture. Participants in the process must have a basis to believe that their performance will be measured and will be reported in a fair and neutral way and that this information will be used to help improve their ability to fulfill what is expected of them.
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Our approach also includes delegation of authority for projects with little or no environmental impact. Under our proposal, delegation will be granted to State environmental resource agencies that demonstrate the desire and ability to earn and maintain that privilege.
Our proposal also includes a decision resolution process. It is called decision resolution rather than dispute resolution simply because so many projects bog down not so much in dispute as in the inability to reach decisions and move on. It establishes a Federal environmental decision facilitator to take actions that will assist in reaching decisions or resolving disputes.
The last two components of our approach involve the need for greater balance and proportionality and for continuing monitoring and oversight.
Balance and proportionality mean the ability to consider context and common sense in meeting the requirements of single-focus, often conflicting environmental statutes.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, continued oversight by this committee is essential. Frankly, if Congress had not followed up the enactment of Section 1309 with an extraordinary focus on environmental streamlining, there would not be any hope of meaningful progress.
We believe that a framework such as the one we have just summarized should be endorsed as national policy through congressional action and appropriate executive orders. The bottom line is that environmental streamlining is essential if we are to address congestion and condition problems on our highways, and we believe it can be done.
Thank you.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you.
Mr. Kienitz.
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Mr. KIENITZ. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Borski.
As you know, my name is Roy Kienitz. I am Executive Director of the Surface Transportation Policy Project. We are a coalition of several hundred groups around the country that works to preserve environmental quality and improve quality of life generally.
Over the past several years, we have conducted several research reports on the subject of congestion, so I am going to talk about that a little bit. As with most of the numbers you will hear today, our analyses uses the basic data that is produced and reported by the Texas Transportation Institute. Overall, our findings are that the effects of congestion can be significantly mitigated in a measurable way by offering citizens more choices of how to travel.
Our most recent study, which was released a few weeks ago, is called Easing the Burden. The research done there led us to two principal conclusions. First, there is no evidence in the data that road construction has been an effective congestion-fighting strategy over the last 18 years covered by the data set produced at TTI. And, second, provision of good transit service can make a real difference in easing the burden of congestion. I will briefly discuss both of these findings.
First, the matter of road construction as a congestion relief measure. Traditionally, transportation agencies respond to congestion by trying to add more space to the road system. The TTI data shows that places that have added the most to their roadway systems have had little success in slowing the growth of congestion, and this is illustrated in my testimony.
For this analysis, we compared the 23 metro areas that have added the most to their road systems in the 1990s to the 23 metro areas that added the least to their road systems over that period. The cities in the high road building group increased road mileage per person by 17 percent over that period, while the cities in the low road building group saw road mileage per person actually fall by 13 percent over that period as population increased faster than road construction.
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In spite of this very major difference in road policy in the two sets of cities, they had essentially equal congestion at the end of that period. In fact, congestion was slightly higher in the places that added most to their roadway systems.
One possible explanation for this outcome is that the rate of road building in even the cities that added capacity most aggressively was still so low as to preclude any measurable benefit. I think this is certainly the position that is taken by many in the road building industry. However, once again, the data doesn't bear that out.
In the 68 metro areas studied by TTI, the total population increase over the 1990s was 11 percent. During that same period, the size of the road network in these places in fact increased by 15 percent. It is often stated that we are not building roads any more, but the fact of the matter is that we are, and we are in fact building roads higher than the level of population growth in almost every city of study.
So why is it ineffective? The reason is a phenomenon called ''induced travel'' whereby adding capacity actually generates additional travel, as people add car trips or switch from other modes of travel. Several recent studies indicate that induced travel uses up anywhere between 30 and 90 percent of a new roadway's capacity over the medium term. As a result, instead of allowing existing drivers to experience shorter travel times, over the long term road building usually results in existing drivers experiencing the same slow travel times but with a lot more company.
Development patterns are obviously a key driver of this. New road capacity makes far-away destinations more attractive for development. In fact, spread-out development is wholly or partially responsible for more than 80 percent of the growth in driving between 1983 and 1990; and that is also shown in my testimony.
I should just note that in the coming debate over environmental streamlining, which we will all have an enormous amount of fun talking about over the next several years, I think it should be noted, in spite of whatever benefits might be accrued from speeding up transportation project delivery, reduction of congestion is unlikely to be one of them.
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I would also concur with some of the statements made earlier that, notwithstanding that fact, we still believe that Federal investment in transportation is an important thing; and we don't support proposals to reduce the gas tax.
The second major finding of our study is that access to transit makes a big difference in how communities are affected by congestion. Although congestion can be the same in two different places, the actual burdens it places on an area can be very different.
We have developed something called a Congestion Burden Index to quantify this effect. According to this Index, Los Angeles still maintains its number one ranking as the place where congestion is the worst and where residents have the fewest options to avoid it. However, San Francisco, which has been ranked second worst in rush hour congestion, also has almost 500,000 citizens who travel to work by means other than driving; and for this reason it drops to 29th for total congestion burden. The Washington, D.C., area ranks third or fourth depending on what measure you use for rush hour congestion, but with 23 percent of workers not driving, its congestion burden places it 31st.
This way of looking at congestion is relatively new for this country, but it is, honestly, the standard practice around the world where the policy environment that people work in is one not of trying to eliminate congestion, because they know that is an impossible task, but rather one of trying to give the maximum number of people possible the choice to say, I don't want to put up with the congestion; I will make another choice.
The transit statistics we have heard about a lot today obviously reinforce this point, that a lot of normal Americans are basically making that choice, as well as saying, if the congestion is bad, I will make a choice not to put up with it.
That concludes my testimony.
21Mr. PETRI. Thank you.
Mr. Bowlden.
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Mr. BOWLDEN. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Borski. I am Taylor Bowlden with the Highway Users.
I want to begin, before he leaves the room, by saying that we, too, will greatly miss having Chris Bertram on this subcommittee. When I am not subject to a 5-minute time limit, I will tell him more about that.
I want to mention two issues today. One is highway bottlenecks. I am very pleased to hear Commissioner Tinklenberg talk about the Minnesota program on bottlenecks. And second is the need to streamline the environmental review process for highways.
To begin, the crux of the congestion problem is too little highway for the number of vehicles trying to use it. Just a few statistics will illustrate the problem.
Since 1970, the population in this country has increased by 32 percent; the number of licensed drivers is up by 64 percent; the number of vehicles is up by 90 percent; and the miles we drive those vehicles is up by 132 percent. But road lane mileage has increased during the same period of time by just 15 percent. It is no wonder that traffic congestion is a source of public frustration today like it never has been before.
And you, Mr. Chairman, cited in your opening statement the TTI statistics of $78 billion cost in terms of time and fuel wasted and 6.8 billion gallons of fuel. An analysis by The Road Information Program says that those same TTI numbers mean that the average motorist the 68 cities studied by TTI loses $625 a year in wasted time and fuel.
The solutions to congestion are many, depending on the particular circumstances, but there is no doubt that the kind of program that Commissioner Tinklenberg discussed, focusing on the worst traffic chokepoints, would produce significant fuel and time savings in addition to other social and environmental benefits.
Cambridge Systematics, a highly respected research firm based in Boston, found that improving traffic flow at the Nation's 167 worst bottlenecks would reduce gasoline and diesel consumption by just under 20 billion gallons over the next 20 years. That is a billion gallons of fuel a year, roughly 1/7th of what TTI says we lose in the 68 cities that they study. And a billion gallons a year in savings is based only on improvements to those worst bottlenecks, so obviously system-wide improvements would produce even greater savings.
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And the fuel savings are just the beginning of the benefits we could realize from reducing those bottlenecks. The same Cambridge Systematics report said we would prevent 290,000 crashes, saving 1,050 lives and 141,000 injuries. We could nearly halve the pollution at those particular sites, slash emissions of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas, by 71 percent at those sites, and we would obviously reduce truck delivery and motorist delays by an average of 19 minutes per trip at the sites. The economic impacts of those improvements is $336 billion in savings, and the average commuter would save $345 a year.
Next let me mention environmental streamlining. If Congress embraces the idea of doing what Minnesota is doing and focusing on traffic bottlenecks, the success of that program could depend largely on our ability to streamline the environmental review process.
Today it takes approximately 12 years for a major highway project to get through the planning, design, environmental review and right-of-way acquisition stages. That is before construction begins.
Typically, 1 to 5 years of that time is spent in completing the environmental reviews. Congress obviously made an attempt to deal with that problem in TEA-21. I think it is fair to say though that the work of the Federal agencies to date has not met the expectations of the members of this committee who crafted that statutory provision.
Given the significant time and expense involved in the reviews, we urge you to renew your effort to streamline the review process. Specifically we would encourage you to consider giving States the opportunity to play a greater role in developing the necessary environmental impact statements. In addition, we think Congress should designate transportation officials as the final arbiter of the transportation need of a project and give those transportation officials the authority to set appropriate and binding deadlines for comment by Federal resource agencies.
Since I am over my time, just one more point. If we were to fix those 167 worse bottlenecks around the Nation, the benefits would increase by $30 billion if the time for completing the project could be reduced by as little as 3 years. Certainly improvements in the environmental review process could speed project delivery by as much as 3 years.
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Thank you again for inviting us to testify, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. Ms. Pikrallidas.
Ms. PIKRALLIDAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Susan Pikrallidas, Vice President of Public Affairs for AAA. I appreciate this opportunity on behalf of AAA to appear before the subcommittee today.
If there is one issue that resonates with the American people, it is congestion and what we can do with it. If there were a magic cureall to serve our congestion woes, it would have been adopted long ago. There is no simple solution, because America is not a simple country. It is vast, diverse, and Americans value their freedom to choose where they live, work and play.
A variety of factors have converged to give us the perfect storm of congestion; a prosperous economy, a growing population, with more people driving more vehicles on a system of roads that has not expanded to keep pace with demand. Congested roads rob people of that precious commodity, time; time spent sitting and waiting in traffic when you need to be at work, when you are trying to make it to a child's soccer game after a day at the office, or simply trying to run a few errands before or after work.
Congestion is a threat to safety and it also aggravates pollution. Congestion affects more than commuters. Our travel and tourism industry and the millions of jobs it supports are put at risk if people cannot travel to their vacation destinations. AAA's annual Memorial Day holiday survey projects 34.2 million Americans are planning to travel 50 miles or more from home this coming weekend. They certainly don't want to spend their precious 3-day holiday stuck in traffic.
If you look at the list of activities Americans tell us they prefer in terms of their travel interests, it demonstrates the breadth of those interests and makes crystal clear the need for a balanced transportation system. Whether it is going to the beach or the lake, visiting relatives, participating in cultural events, exploring historical sites, or fishing, camping or hiking, an efficient, safe system of roads that links those destinations and the vast diverse areas of the country makes possible the ability to access and enjoy our preferred travel destination or activity.
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Mr. Chairman, Americans want mobility. They want a transportation system that facilitates the many different choices they have as to where they choose to live, work and recreate. And if we are honest in addressing the current state of affairs, we must acknowledge that the automobile meets the transportation needs of most Americans. We might wish otherwise.
But to effect a solution to the congestion problem, must we make motorists feel guilty about their chosen mode of transportation? Should public policy be punitive to force Americans to choose other means of transportation? AAA believes the answer to that is no. Rather, we need to facilitate choices in transportation that address Americans' needs.
How can we do this? AAA has several suggestions. One, we need to recognize that the success or failure of our efforts to address congestion begin in our communities and, where appropriate, in our regional decision making bodies.
Number two, a sustained source of funding is a must, and thanks in no small part to the members of this subcommittee, passage of funding guarantees in TEA-21 ensure that Federal gasoline tax dollars are dedicated to our transportation system and we have a steady funding source.
Number three, we must make smarter use of our existing road network to increase efficiency in the system. With ITS systems, in-vehicle and in-road safety devices, improved commercial vehicle operations and advanced emergency assistance, we can improve the safety and efficiency of our transportation network.
Four, improved traffic management systems are essential, such as improved traffic signalization, adding turn lanes at crowded intersections, and promoting options like flex-time, telecommuting and car pools.
Number five, where appropriate, we should explore value-priced roads, where motorists have an option to pay a fee to gain access to alternative road facilities.
Number six, public transportation. We need to encourage it. It is an important part of our overall transportation system. But we need to also recognize that it is not a complete solution, nor will it work in every community.
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Incidentally, AAA is helping to ensure that travelers have good information about public transportation choices available to them, particularly as they travel. For example, AAA's Tour Books provide travellers with information they need to enjoy our Nation's largest cities, including public transportation options, and we are working to improve that information.
Our map of the D.C. area, for example, includes the metrorail map. Our tour book for Manhattan tells travelers that the best driving advice is don't. We have pledged to work with our friends in the public transit community to continually upgrade the quality of the information we provide to our members about public transportation opportunities.
Number seven, we need to encourage other forms of commuting through bicycle paths and pedestrian walkways, but again, we need to recognize that those modes are not for everyone and are unlikely to ever serve more than a fraction of commuters. Finally, yes, we need to add capacity when it makes sense to do so.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, there is no single solution to our congestion problems. We need to attack congestion in a multifaceted way at all levels of government, and we need to do it by working together.
Thank you very much for this opportunity.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. Right on the button. Mr. Replogle.
Mr. REPLOGLE. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. I am speaking on behalf of the Environmental Defense, an organization of 300,000 members that seeks to integrate law, science and economics to find practical solutions to environmental problems.
How we price transportation sends powerful signals to consumers, affecting our travel choices and environmental quality. Motorist user fees have for years covered only a fraction of the direct costs of building and maintaining America's highways.
Throwing more money into road building will not solve congestion, any better than buying bigger pants solves obesity. But new smart pricing incentives can help local officials and State agencies and businesses and citizens cut their way through traffic problems.
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If designed to expand travel choices, these pricing incentives can boost equity of access and increase mobility for all. Traffic growth induced by subsidies for roads and driving in some regions threatens to reverse progress that we have made towards clean air. While clean vehicle technologies have cut pollution per mile, this has been offset by more miles driven and a shift to less efficient and more polluting trucks and SUVs.
For that reason, Congress adopted the transportation conformity requirements in the Clean Air Act to assure consistency between State air quality plans and transportation plans. These have worked well in most areas of the country. In places where there have been conflicts, where the transportation plans have exceeded the air pollution limits set by the State air plans, like in Atlanta, funds have been redirected to projects that are solving air quality and safety problems while interagency conflicts get worked out.
Congress should protect the conformity policies in the future. Our low gasoline taxes by worldwide standards encourage us to drive more, which fuels our congestion problems. H.R. 1815 would make fuel efficiency standards for light trucks equal to that for cars and save our consumers a lot of money and reduce our vulnerability to oil cartel pricing.
Congress should resist calls to sacrifice long-term public health standards by lowering gas taxes or relaxing environmental standards. For most Americans, a free parking space at work has been the sole commuter benefit they have had access to because of our longstanding Federal tax policies. But recent tax reforms are expanding commuter choices. Employers can now offer tax free transit and van pool benefits of up to $65 a month, and that will rise to $100 next year, and also offer cash in lieu of parking as an incentive for people to car pool, walk or bike.
Allowing employees to buy transit passes with pre-tax dollars saves the typical employee on the order of $400 a year and saves their employer something on the withholding as well. When Federal agency employees in the national capital region started receiving employer paid transit benefits starting last October, according to the Federal Transit Administration, it induced 11 percent of those employees who used to drive to work to switch to transit, which took 12,500 cars off the crowded roads in the Washington, DC region.
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At firms in California and Minnesota, a $2 to $3 a day incentive in lieu of free parking is typically luring one out of eight employees who used to drive to work into some other means of getting to work. These kinds of benefits attract and retain employees and help low and moderate wage workers particularly.
Congress should adopt several bills that would help expand the equality of tax treatment for various commuting modes, for parking, for transit, for bicyclists, and also H.R. 906, which would provide a 25 percent tax credit to employers who actually pay for transit benefits, as several States now do.
Another promising option for cutting congestion is automated time-of-day tolls and high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, which let the solo drivers use the under-used capacity in HOV lanes and give a free ride to buses. These help us make the highways work more effectively for everyone and do a much better job of trying to solve congestion than outer beltways, which generally put more jobs out of reach for those without cars, hurt the poor and hurt the environment.
HOT lanes, where they are available, are used by people of all income levels, mainly on those occasional days when people are in a huge rush. When the HOT lane revenues are used to improve transit options and expand travel choices, they increase equity substantially.
Nonstop electronic toll collection, which is now easily available off the shelf, makes it possible to do all of this without any toll booth delays, and new customer friendly image license plate recognition and billing systems allow the system to be open for any user, even if they don't have toll transponders. We are seeing systems now spread from coast to coast.
Congress should encourage States to be adopting these innovative technologies and using other innovative technologies for use-based car insurance and other options. If we put new technologies to work, we can actually reduce our traffic growth over the next 20 years on the order of 20 percent from the current projections using smart pricing and expanded choices.
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Thank you.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you all. Mr. Borski.
Mr. BORSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Kienitz, let me start with you, if I can. A balanced transportation approach which may include adding additional highway and transit capacity would seem to help alleviate traffic congestion. Yet you seem to question that approach because the availability of capacity increases travel demands. Does the same phenomenon apply to transit capacity?
Mr. KIENITZ. Absolutely. It is a basic principle of economics, you make something more available, it becomes more attractive, more people are willing to use it. So the only question is what are you going to put your money into? If you put your money into more road space, it becomes more attractive and more people use it, or you put your money into more transit and more people use it.
There is a funny dichotomy in which when that is done on the highway side, that is called meeting demand, and when it is done on the transit side, it is called, well, the only reason people ride that is because you spent so much money on it. It is essentially the same thing. And where you have seen major investments in rail transit across the country, as Mr. Millar said, is where you have seen the biggest increases in ridership. It is the question of you get what you pay for, so what do you want?
Mr. BORSKI. STP's research findings indicate that providing transportation choice over providing more road space will ease the burden of congestion. Based on your research, at what level of congestion will people decide to choose alternatives to single vehicle occupancy?
Mr. KIENITZ. I think it is certainly the case that the level of congestion we see here in the Washington region has been a significant factor and that really the tremendous growth in the use of Metro and the other rail and bus systems around this area, that certainly has been part of it, although there are other factors as well.
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Making a generalization about that is a little bit hard, because it varies greatly from place to place. The places where you see the biggest effects are the places where the choices already exist. But there are a lot of communities where congestion gets bad where there has been no investment in providing any fraction of the population with choices. People don't have a choice, they have to get in their car, so they do, and the congestion can get pretty bad.
Mr. BORSKI. Mr. Bowlden, let me start this with you on environmental streamlining and programs the other panelists will care to comment. One potential solution being discussed is to move the environmental review process up and consider them in the planning process. Would this work? Would this help? What is your view on it?
Mr. BOWLDEN. Sure. I think that is a good thing to do. I think it happens in large projects today.
The regulations that the Department proposed would have gone a long way to making that happen more routinely.
The problem that many of the States suggested is that going through all the work of identifying potential environmental problems and potential environmental solutions in the planning process seems hardly worthwhile if there is no guarantee that all of that work will be utilized when you get to the NEPA process later on.
So, sure, it makes good sense to do that concomitantly with the planning process, but making sure that it is work that will be utilized later on is probably the important point there.
Mr. KASSOFF. I agree with that statement, but I think the mistake in the Federal regulations was a one size fits all. There are many projects that may be considered today in the planning process, but may not get to the project level where they have to go through NEPA for 5, 6, 7, 8 years. So I think the option ought to be available to bring a project into the planning process if you can get binding commitments that are still valid in NEPA.
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But the option also ought to exist not to do that if a project is really many years away.
Mr. REPLOGLE. I think there is a lot to be gained by integrating the planning and environmental review process, by getting better consideration of alternatives and a more effective involvement of the public and the resource agencies in designing projects around which you can get a better consensus whether this satisfies the purpose and needs.
All too often we have an environmental review process that too tightly constrains study area boundaries and limits consideration of alternative strategies such as smart growth pricing or investment in better public transportation within a corridor.
Making study area boundaries too small often defines the problem such that you can't get at it and solve it. Putting some of the environmental review process into the planning process and allowing some better integration between those can help us look at more comprehensive solutions, as Portland, Oregon, did when considering a western bypass around the region versus investment in the light rail system with the transit-oriented development.
Mr. KIENITZ. I would generally agree with Taylor's comments, although I would have one comment on what Mr. Kassoff had to say. It is tempting to say we should allow each and every State to tailor the regulatory review approach to their particular circumstances. The truth of the matter is that approach was enshrined in regulations that were adopted in 1994 which said you can either pursue a major investment study and early review in an integrated way with NEPA, or you can do it separately with the hope that people would say an integrated approach is a better approach, and the result is that no one did it, and then we came just 5 years later and everyone was complaining about how horrible it was that you couldn't do these things together.
So although I am sympathetic to that approach, the way it has been done in the past hasn't produced any benefits, and I think that is the key for the regulatory process, is not just telling people you can do these things together, but actually creating a really specific road map of how you did together, because it is not an easy thing. There is tremendous technical complication and the time scales are long and the study areas are large, so that the work of the Federal agency is to create a really specific road map of how you go and do it, which shows genuine benefit. I can't see any of the States going in and throwing out 15 years of work to develop their environmental process, even if it is a slow one, based on some assurance from a Federal agency, that don't worry, if you do it the new way, it will be better. What is the evidence for that? I don't have any.
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I think it is that second step we didn't really get to in the regulatory process.
Mr. BORSKI. Thank you.
Mr. PETRI. Thank you. There is one area that we didn't hear, I didn't hear too much in any of your testimony about, related to congestion. We had a previous hearing on sort of the future of transportation in North America and they were at that time—I think Taylor had some of the statistics about the increase in highway use as opposed to highway mileage. But there was an even faster increase, if I remember correctly, in truck use, projected truck use of our highways, because of changes in the system, and expected more movements directly to customers evidently because of people buying on the Web or whatever.
But should we be thinking, when dealing with congestion, of programs or strategies to get trucks onto the railroads, the way we are thinking about strategies to give people tax breaks and things to get people onto the mass transit systems? If we are worrying about congestion, getting a truck off, maybe we should give them a break while we are giving commuters a break.
Can you comment on whether some sort of effort to move more goods by rail or whatever would make sense in dealing with all of this, or is that something we shouldn't be worrying about?
Mr. KASSOFF. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to take a crack at that. We are actually involved in work with the railroads in the Northeast that are cooperating in a very unprecedented way, the two freight railroads and Amtrak. Because of the Northeast, the benefits of moving trucks off the highway onto rail would just be enormous.
You are absolutely right on the rate of truck growth. The rate of truck growth has been nearly triple the rate of passenger vehicle growth over the last 30 years, and the amount of capacity they use up is many times the capacity of an automobile. The impacts that they produce, both physically to the pavement and environmentally, are greater.
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So the study under way now is to look at bottlenecks. It is very similar to Secretary Tinklenberg's approach in Minnesota, but extended from the New York area down south to Washington, D.C., looking at bottlenecks in the rail system, which if they could be relieved would induce a great deal of traffic to divert from trucks to railroads.
Mr. REPLOGLE. I think there is a lot of opportunity to both operate our highways more efficiently by shifting some truck traffic onto rail, and particularly looking for intermodal opportunities. The average distance at which a truck trip switches and includes a rail to truck transfer, or vice versa, 20 or 25 years ago, was about 800 miles. That has fallen to under 400 miles today as a result of improved intermodal infrastructure, increased integration between the rail and the truck industries in America, the shortage of long distance truckers in the labor force, and the rising congestion problems.
I think as we use smarter technologies for logistics management, we can provide additional improvements to help use our short line railroads, for example, more efficiently to help reduce some of these traffic movements, particularly in the congested corridors like I-95 and some of the other high freight and passenger traffic areas.
This is another area where I think we need to be thinking about some new structures to help us look at intermodal freight strategies across State lines and looking also at intermodal passenger technologies and strategies.
We do a poor job of looking, for example, at the whole I-95 corridor as an entity in our transportation and air quality planning process, where we could be shifting some of the travel pressure off of our airports as well, where air freight is growing rapidly, and shift some of that into a well-coordinated truck-rail system.
Mr. BOWLDEN. Mr. Chairman, I think you need to probably hear from a logistics expert to address your question more particularly, and I don't profess to be a logistics expert. So the extent to which tax credits, for instance, might have a significant impact on the number of truck containers being shipped by rail is something I can't answer. It certainly would have some impact.
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I think it is true to say that today trucks are the single largest customer of the rail companies. So we are already doing that in significant amounts today. But could there be more? Sure, I think so.
What you heard at your earlier hearing from Lance Grenzeback at Cambridge Systematics was essentially that our new economy and e-trade particularly is leading us to more truck shipments of smaller quantities, both because manufacturers are looking for just in time deliveries, which tend to mean trucks as opposed to rail, and because consumer demand is looking for specialty goods that get delivered in smaller quantities and right now, or right away, and that comes by truck.
So what he was saying is almost anyway you cut it, we are going to have more trucks on the road as long as the economy continues to grow, and we have to, in terms of our transportation policy, look at that fact. We are going to have more trucks on the road and we have to do something about the capacity to accommodate that truck travel increase.
Ms. PIKRALLIDAS. Mr. Chairman, I would like to associate myself with Mr. Bowlden's remarks on behalf of the AAA.
There is no question that trucks comprise a huge amount of traffic on the Nation's roads. It has seen exponential growth and will continue that exponential growth. Our members are concerned about trucks, not only because they are nervous about sharing the road with them, but they comprise a huge part of the congestion problem. They are part of the traffic flow at rush hour, or hours, as was said earlier.
I think that any attempts or ideas we have, including your idea of trying to offload some of that to rail, increasing that, anything we can do to try to deal with this growth in trucking, trucking traffic, will be helpful, not only to truckers, but also to motorists as well. But there is no getting away from the fact, as Taylor said, that because of e-commerce and a lot of other initiatives going on, trucking traffic is going to increase. We need to deal with it as part of the congestion problem as well as the safety problem.
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Mr. KIENITZ. I will add one final thing. Long haul truck traffic, in ways that are not true regarding a lot of passenger traffic, is enormously price sensitive. In fact, even though we have seen large percentage gains over the medium term in truck traffic, the truth of the matter is that the recent increases in diesel prices have had a huge downward effect on truck traffic in the last year.
The split over the long haul, between what goes on rail and what goes on the trucks is very sensitive to the price of diesel. So you were talking about incentive-based strategies, whether it is tax incentives or investment or some other kind of thing, but the reverse also works, which is there is some kind of difference between how diesel is taxed or priced which could also affect that.
Mr. PETRI. Very good. I guess trains use diesel fuel more efficiently than trucks. They both use diesel fuel. In any event, thank you all very much. This concludes the hearing.
[Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
OVERSIGHT HEARING ON PORT AND MARITIME CONGESTION
Wednesday, May 23, 2001
House of Representatives, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation and Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:00 p.m. in room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John J. Duncan, Jr. [chairman of the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation] presiding.
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Mr. DUNCAN. I want first of all to welcome everyone to the hearing today. Today the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee and the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee meet in joint session to hear testimony on the subject of congestion on the Nation's maritime transportation system.
Chairman LoBiondo and I will be sharing the gavel this afternoon as we hold this hearing that is part of a series of hearings that each subcommittee of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is holding on congestion in all modes of transportation.
I want first of all to thank our full Committee Chairman, Chairman Young, for drawing attention to this very important issue. By holding this series of hearings covering all modes of transportation, we are attempting to make the point that transportation systems are connected and that they all must work efficiently together for the benefit of the Nation's commerce and the people we represent.
Today's hearing highlights the maritime transportation system. The maritime transportation system consists of ports and waterways and all the associated facilities that make them work. It includes 1,000 harbor channels, 238 lock chambers, 25,000 miles of inland, intracoastal and coastal waterways that serve 300 ports. Docks, transfer equipment and storage facilities make up the landside development. Finally, there are the intermodal connectors that join the maritime system with other transportation modes, primarily highway and rail.
The maritime transportation system provides the Nation with an efficient, effective, and environmentally responsible means of moving freight and serves as our doorway to the global market. In addition, it supports national security by allowing for swift mobilization and supply of America's military.
The importance of this transportation system to the national economy is enormous. It moves 95 percent of the U.S. overseas trade. It moves 60 percent of America's grain exports. To support our energy needs, 3.3 billion barrels of oil and petroleum products and 229 million short tons of coal move through the Nation's ports and waterways every year. It supports 110,000 commercial fishing vessels that contribute $111 billion to State economies every year. It supports over 13 million jobs and contributes over $700 billion to the Nation's Gross Domestic Product.
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As trade barriers come down, international trade is expected to grow significantly in the future. The amount of cargo moving through U.S. ports is expected to double by the year 2020, placing increased demand on port infrastructure, as well as the waterways, highways and rail lines to get the freight from its source to its destination.
In referring to this expected increase in freight movement, Secretary of Transportation, Norman Mineta recently stated, ''Existing rail and highway infrastructure cannot handle all of this projected growth. There are obvious limits to how much we can increase the capacity of interstates and rail lines. The waterborne option, in contrast, has underutilized capacity. As vessel and cargo transfers technologies improve and new vessels such as fast freight ferries come into service, waterborne transportation will provide increasingly competitive service.''
Given the fact that water transportation is generally less expensive, less polluting, safer and more fuel efficient than alternative means of travel, we would be wise to make even more use of our maritime transportation system.
Unfortunately, before we can do so, there are some chokepoints within the system that need to be addressed.
For example, many of the locks on our inland waterways system are not large enough to handle modern tows. Breaking apart tows causes congestion and delays, increasing transportation costs.
Aging infrastructure is another concern. With half of our lock chambers older than their design life of 50 years, the system is certainly vulnerable to failure.
There also are chokepoints in our ports, particularly where we transfer goods from ships to trucks or railcars. Again, these chokepoints cause congestion and delay, increasing costs that ultimately have to be passed on to the consumer. So if we don't take care of these problems, who do we end up hurting the poor and the lower income and the working people of this country?
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In addition, many of the Nation's ports are not deep enough to handle the largest of container vessels that are becoming more common in global commerce. Certainly this is something that we need to work on.
To plan for future traffic volumes, larger vessels and rehabilitation of aging facilities will require an investment of resources at all levels of government, and especially in the private sector. I emphasize that these are investments, because the Nation realizes an economic return, a big economic return, in the form of lower transportation costs that make the things we buy cheaper and the things we sell more competitive in the world market.
Unfortunately, for many years, Federal investment in the marine transportation system through the projects of the Army Corps of Engineers have not been sufficient to keep pace with maintenance requirements or optimal construction schedules. We also need to examine the planning and permitting processes for maritime transportation projects so that we can get the benefits of these projects as quickly as possible.
In summary, increased traffic is going to put more demand on the marine transportation system. The infrastructure is old and in some locations cannot accommodate the size of modern container vessels and barge tows. And if chokepoints are addressed, the inland waterways system could absorb increased traffic that otherwise would mean more trucks on our highways and trains on the rail system.
We are very proud in this Committee to have done the TEA-21 legislation in regard to highways. We're very proud to have done the AIR-21 in regard to our aviation system. And now many people believe that we need to do a WATER-21 or take some very, very significant steps in regard to our maritime transportation system in this country, and we hope to lead the way in that regard.
With that, I would like to turn now to my co-chairman for this hearing, my good friend, Mr. LoBiondo.
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Mr. LOBIONDO. Thank you, Congressman Duncan. As part of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's efforts to address congestion efforts this week, I am very pleased to co-chair this hearing with my good friend, Chairman Jim Duncan of Tennessee. Congestion is harming our Nation's economy, from jammed roads, crowded skies, overburdened rails and yes, even waterways and ports, facing the crush of current traffic. While busy ports are good signs for American workers and shippers, congestion threatens to negate the positive aspects of trade and future increases will imperil our ports' ability to help drive the economy forward.
Today we are addressing congestion in our ports. The Coast Guard Authorization Act of 1998 created the Maritime Transportation System National Task Force to assess the adequacy of the Nation's waterways transportation system. The Commandant of the Coast Guard and Maritime Administrator served as co-chairs of the Task Force. The Task Force finished its assessment of U.S. port and waterways capacity in September of 1999 . The Task Force made several recommendations to deal with the great increase in trade expected in the next 20 years. These recommendations involve improved vessel traffic management and great efficiencies in the movement of people and cargo.
Today I'm especially interested in discussing the improvements that the Federal agencies can accomplish now, including one stop shopping for Federal inspection and reporting requirements. Agencies must coordinate and streamline their multiple inspections and procedures before we can have an efficient maritime transportation system.
I'm also interested in hearing the testimony today concerning what we can do to ensure that our ports and waterways can deal effectively with the future expansion of trade. The doubling or tripling of trade expected during the next two decades make it necessary for us to develop new strategies to improve and enhance commerce in our Nation's waterways. Later this year, the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee will conduct hearings on the effectiveness of the Ocean Shipping Reform Act in encouraging international trade, especially U.S. exports. As we streamline our international ocean shipping system to stimulate trade, it is vital that we prepare the Nation's domestic water transportation system, including our ports and inland waterways for the future.
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This hearing is the first step in that direction, and I want to again thank Chairman Duncan for all he is doing to help address this critical issue. Thank you.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Chairman LoBiondo. And I'm told on the minority side they go in order in which the members arrived. Mr. Taylor was here, and Mr. Taylor, we'll come to you next.
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would defer to my ranking member, since he is here. And I may need something out of him this year.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I forget that you're prompt—I come pretty much on time, but the members around here for years have been trying to train me to not be on time, because they're all habitually late, and you're the one of the few who isn't. I've got to unlearn the bad habits they've been trying to teach me for 14 years.
I'm really pleased with the panels and the testimony we're going to receive today on a wide variety of issues that relate to two committees on which I serve, both Water Resources and the Coast Guard and Maritime Subcommittee. Hopefully growing from this small beginning will be a road map on how to anticipate the needs of our ports and waterways 20 years or 30 years hence so we can accommodate what we see as growing needs in a vital sector of our economy.
I believe if we begin now we can do it in a way that doesn't sacrifice the environment. There are people who have expressed concern and frustration, as have I, with some aspects of the Federal planning process as we undertake new projects that relate to transportation and transportation infrastructure. I'm hoping that we can find a way to streamline the process, but not streamline it in a way that negates the necessity to do better by the environment. We should streamline it in a way that goes to what I see as some of the real bureaucratic snafus, having been involved in a number of projects where one or another Federal agency wanders in 18 months after the other agencies have done a tremendous amount of work and then says, oh, wait a minute, we have some real concerns here. They should all be at the table from day one, and this should go forward in a coordinated way.
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There are some who don't want to see any of these projects go forward at all and are happy with the lengthy bureaucratic process. I'm not. So I will state that from the beginning, at the outset, and I hope that is one of the things that we can learn from these panels.
On the other hand, there are those who would use the frustrations with this overly bureaucratic process to attack the underlying environmental laws and protections. They aren't the problem. The problem is the way that these processes often go forward. I just want to stake out from the beginning, that's my prejudice. We need to do better, but we need to do better in a way that's sensitive to the environmental needs, and I'll look forward to hearing members of these panels either confirm that or contest the statement I've made. I'm always open to change, I'm not quite yet perfect.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you very much, Mr. DeFazio. Governor Otter.
Mr. OTTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Duncan and Chairman LoBiondo, it is an honor to be here today and to discuss the importance of reducing the congestion in our harbors and our inland waterways. I look forward to hearing the testimony of the witnesses and look forward to working with the Committee to find a solution to this problem.
My district in Idaho is particularly concerned about the congestion on our waterways. Idaho depends upon the ability to ship grain and other forest products down the Snake River to the sea out through the Columbia. We need a 14 foot channel in the lower Snake River to maintain shipping to the Port of Lewiston. This year's drought, last year's horrendous 880,000 acres of forest fires, with the resulting siltation, is already causing shoaling along parts of the Snake River. If the channel is not dredged soon, the Port of Lewiston may be forced to close down, with the consequent loss of hundreds of jobs in the Port, over 1,500 directly or indirectly connected, and thousands in industries that depend upon Snake River navigation.
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Not to mention the environmental damage that would be done by forcing all of this shipping, all of this tonnage, on the highways.
What has caused the delay in dredging the lower Snake channel? Make no mistake about it, for 14 years as the Lieutenant Governor of Idaho, I watched as Federal agent after Federal agent marched into the State of Idaho and slowed the process of progress. It is primarily a fault of the Federal permitting process run amuck.
Because of the Endangered Species Act considerations, dredging can only be carried out for a short period of time during each year. Over the last two years, we have lost the dredging season because of needless delays in the permitting process for the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is required to issue the Corps of Engineers a work permit before they can proceed. I have been assured by the Corps that they have the statutory authority to do so, and carry out emergency permitting. But I am still appalled by the condition of the channel and that which it has been allowed to deteriorate to.
I believe, Mr. Chairman, that the Corps of Engineers should concentrate on its core competency, building and maintaining navigation and flood control facilities, and get out of the business of enforcing environmental laws. Federal environmental permitting needs to be concentrated into one agency that State and local governments can turn to. I will soon introduce legislation to this effect.
Reforming environmental permitting is an important step that we have to take, but is not the only step. We must also fully fund the Corps of Engineers operations and maintenance and account and unlock the inner waterways and harbor maintenance trust funds for capital improvements. Without the adequate O&M spending, our waterways will become more congested because of the neglect of vital locks and channels. Without adequate capital spending from the trust funds, our inland and maritime transportation system will not have the capacity to support economic growth.
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It is unconstitutional, say even immoral, to collect a tax for a stated purpose and then not spend the taxes for that purpose. Former Chairman Shuster restored honesty to the highway and the airport trust funds. I look forward to working with you, Chairman Duncan, and Chairman Young, to do the same with the Harbor Maintenance and Inland Waterways Trust Funds. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much.
Mr. Taylor.
Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Chairman, I want to give the witnesses a chance.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Menendez?
Mr. MENENDEZ. Well, I want to give the witnesses a chance, too, but I'm going to take a minute, if you don't mind.
[Laughter.]
Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you and my colleague from New Jersey, the Chairman of the Coast Guard Committee, for holding this hearing. It's, I think, incredibly important, as a representative of one of the most active ports in the Nation, the Port of New York and New Jersey, I pay a lot of special attention to the needs of maritime transportation systems. These needs include dredging, which by the way, I certainly hope that we will have a collective support of the Army Corps of Engineers budgets in order to accomplish dredging. I heard the gentleman talk about 14 feet. In the New York Harbor, we need 50 feet.
So dredging is incredibly important to us, and to all of that trade that's being promoted in the Congress. Ninety-five percent of all the Nation's trade comes through ports like the Port of New York and New Jersey, and they come on ships. We need the next generation of ocean-going vessels to be able to be accommodated in our ports. To do that, we need the draft that's necessary.
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Improving marine terminal access to railroads and roads and enhancing intermodal connections. So I view today's hearing as an opportunity to learn about some of our challenges, but also, I hope, some of our opportunities. In a region that is trying to cut air pollution, preserve open space and reduce traffic delays, I certainly look to maritime transportation systems as a potential part of the solution. We're faced with a challenge because congestion threatens our transportation system. Major metropolitan areas like mine are seeing increased freight traffic, especially on trucks, while automobile travel also increases. The growth in our domestic economy has placed more burdens on the system and this increased traffic is occurring even before projections of doubling of our international trade take hold.
So expanding highways along parts of New Jersey is really not much of an option. We need to increase marine transportation and create hub ports along our coast to supplement trucking. I hope it's an option we're going to choose to explore, because it will allow us to accommodate the growth in trade and meet our needs while reducing the congestion created by more trade. And I think it also can help us transport goods in environmentally friendly manners.
Lastly, another area in terms of marine transportation is ferry transportation. In my district, passenger ferry ridership has exploded in trans-Hudson crossings. Passenger ferries are an increasingly essential component of our transportation system and that's why I've worked hard to make certain that the Maritime Administration and the Coast Guard rigorously monitor and enforce our chartering and vessel documentation laws so that American citizens and companies, not foreign corporations, continue to be the owners of domestic passenger ferry boats. I am a little disappointed with the Coast Guard in this regard, and their ability to investigate and enforce U.S. vessel documentation laws properly. I hope that we will find ways in which to do a better job of that.
So I look forward to the testimony, Mr. Chairman, and ask that my full statement be entered into the record.
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Mr. DUNCAN. All full statements will be placed in the record, and thank you very much, Mr. Menendez.
Mr. Horn.
Mr. HORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a very important issue that you're working.
I represent the Port of Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles. There's great competition between all of them, and I'd like to put in the record, Mr. Chairman, now, the submission of Dr. John Kashiwabara, who is Chairman of the Board of Harbor Commissioners at the Port of Long Beach. In the question period, we'll get there. But there are thousands of trucks on the Desmond Bridge and there are thousands of railway cars. This is the major intermodal program and every port in America is going to follow what we've done in the so-called Alameda Corridor.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. And that statement will be placed in the record, without objection.
We're very pleased and honored to have as our first panel Mr. Bruce J. Carlton, Acting Deputy Administrator for the Maritime Administration; Mr. Jeffrey P. High, Director of Waterways Management for the United States Coast Guard; and Mr. Charles M. Hess, who is Chief of the Operations Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Gentlemen, we're honored and very pleased that all of you have taken time out from your very busy schedules to be with us today.
We always proceed with the witnesses in the order they're listed on the call of the hearing. That means that Mr. Carlton, we'll start with you.
STATEMENT OF BRUCE J. CARLTON, ACTING DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR, U.S. MARITIME ADMINISTRATION; JEFFREY P. HIGH, DIRECTOR OF WATERWAYS MANAGEMENT, U.S. COAST GUARD; AND CHARLES M. HESS, CHIEF, OPERATIONS DIVISION, DIRECTORATE OF CIVIL WORKS, UNITED STATES ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS
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Mr. CARLTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's a great pleasure to be here, and I listened very carefully and closely to your opening remarks and the remarks from the members of the Committee on both sides. In many ways, you have already captured a lot, I think, of what we are going to talk about today.
I want to mention at the outset that my colleague, Mr. High, from the Coast Guard, and I have a joint written statement which we have submitted for the record, but we each have very brief oral remarks.
I'm currently the Acting Deputy Administrator at the Maritime Administration, and I'm very pleased to be here to discuss port and maritime congestion issues with the Committee. Although some would say that marine transportation is the invisible mode, it is an essential component of both our Nation's and the global transportation system. The important role our marine transportation system plays in ensuring our economic well-being and our national security cannot be ignored.
As you said and as other members said, more than 95 percent of all the U.S. foreign trade by volume is transported by ship. The items we use in our day to day lives come to us on ocean-going ships. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans believe that they come to us from the Wal-Mart or the K-Mart. Those materials, those items come to us on ships, including about 9 million barrels of oil every day. Last year, over 2 billion tons of foreign and domestic cargo moved through U.S. ports.
The connections between our transportation modes, like ship to rail, have increasingly become choke points for the Nation's transportation system, especially as the level of U.S. foreign trade increases year to year. The smooth flow of cargo to and from ships to rail cars to trucks can be inhibited where truck and rail traffic compete with commuters on crowded highways. Likewise, other bottlenecks, such as inappropriately aligned rail grade crossings, or even a faulty traffic signal, can result in backups that have a significant effect on port congestion.
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Most simply understood is the enormous pressure placed on our transportation system by the enormous growth in our foreign commerce. The continuing growth of container ship size and capacity could also add to rail and highway capacity problems. For example, a single container ship carrying 6,000 20 foot equivalent unit boxes would occupy 40 to 45 miles of highway with trucks lined up end to end. The Department of Transportation has been working on this issue of marine congestion for some time. MARAD and the Coast Guard have been charged with identifying and recommending water based solutions to transportation and planning needs.
As you know, an important part of MARAD's mission is to facilitate the smooth flow of passengers and freight for the benefit of consumers, carriers, shippers, and American labor. The MARAD-sponsored Marine Transportation System National Advisory Council serves as an advisor to the Secretary of Transportation. The members of the council are all non-Federal experts in trade and transportation. I see that some of those members are here today to testify before your Subcommittee.
The council is expected to issue a report to the Secretary containing recommendations which can serve as a planning guide for future system development and legislative initiatives. Similarly, the Coast Guard sponsored Federal interagency committee for the MTS, which complements the National Advisory Committee, has been working to coordinate MTS planning with about 20 other Federal Government agencies responsible for the Nation's marine system.
In the time we have today, I would like to mention just several programs we administer at MARAD that focus on relieving port congestion and marine congestion overall . Our cargo handling cooperative program seeks to increase productivity of marine freight transportation companies through research and development. This is a public-private partnership working to develop innovative cargo handling methods with U.S. companies and U.S. ports. In order to assist the flow of cargo through ports, MARAD has developed two surveys, one on intermodal access to the ports and one on intermodal access to marine terminals. The data from these surveys provide road and rail water access information and highlight the impediments that affect the flow of cargo through our ports and marine terminals.
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We also administer a no-cost public benefit conveyance program that transfers surplus Federal real property to State and public entities for the development and operation of port facilities. The purpose of this program is to create jobs, revitalize local economies and increase maritime capacities wherever possible to meet the Nation's commerce and defense needs. In line with our national security responsibilities, MARAD chairs the steering and working groups of the National Port Readiness Network, which is comprised of nine Federal agencies that have responsibilities for supporting the movement of military forces through American ports. Improvements made on behalf of our armed forces, we believe, have a beneficial spillover effect on commercial cargoes and vice versa.
MARAD's port and cargo security program seeks to reduce criminal exploitation of commercial cargo. Cooperative international seaport security partnerships between the Federal Government and the private sector are used to facilitate international collaboration to decrease drug smuggling and cargo crimes in the commercial port industry.
Congestion in our ports and waterways is not typical dinner table conversation in most American households . That discussion normally revolves around our commuting problems on highways and the heavy loads we all encounter at American airports. Nevertheless, maritime congestion has the potential to cause major national economic disruption if not addressed.
I'm going to close my remarks at this point in the interest of time, and ask Mr. High to join me.
Mr. DUNCAN. All right, thank you very much, Mr. Carlton. Mr. High?
Mr. HIGH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the Subcommittees. It's a pleasure to be here. In fact, this is really great, maybe tonight we'll be talking about this around our dinner tables.
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First I would like to commend the Committee and thank you for putting maritime in this series of hearings. While highway and air congestion have obviously reached critical levels in some locations, congestion problems on the water and in the seaports are not as visible. Although the waterways already have some significant choke points, as was mentioned, if we plan ahead, we should be able to avoid the severe, chronic congestion we're seeing in some of the other modes. And as the Secretary has said, the maritime mode has the capacity in some areas to help address congestion problems in the other modes.
As we saw this morning on the Wilson Bridge, acute congestion can occur as a result of accidents. The same is true of the waterways. Much of what the Coast Guard does is designed to ensure safe and efficient movement of vessel traffic on our Nation's waterways. We want to avoid accidents and the associated congestion that can result.
One of our basic services is aids to navigation, the signage, if you will, of the marine mode. This infrastructure investment is as vital today as it was in 1789 when the Congress established the Lighthouse Service and made maritime aids to navigation one of the first Federal transportation programs. Today there are nearly 100,000 aids to navigation and this number continues to grow.
Our counterpart to snow removal on the highways is domestic ice breaking. Since 1936, the Coast Guard has been helping commercial vessels move through ice covered ports and waterways. As highlighted in the Vice President's recent report on energy, domestic ice breaking is absolutely critical to sustain movement of energy supplies and raw materials during the winter in the Northeast and the Great Lakes.
Our version of the FAA control towers is our Vessel Traffic Services (VTS). These systems provide vessel traffic and navigation information to improve safety and traffic efficiency. A VTS can improve navigation safety by preventing risky operations. A VTS can improve the efficiency of vessel traffic by reducing the potential for delays and optimizing traffic movement. The Coast Guard currently operates 10 Vessel Traffic Services throughout the United States.
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A promising element of our VTS technology is automatic identification systems. AIS-equipped vessels carry a transponder that automatically and continuously broadcasts navigation data including such things as vessel identification, dimensions, position, course speed, navigation status and other like information. AIS information can greatly enhance vessel operator decisions and help us avoid accidents and congestion.
Our vessel traffic management program now employs a new risk management tool called Ports and Waterways Safety Assessments. This facilitated, interactive process considers 20 risk factors, including such things as traffic volume and density. It was designed to help the Coast Guard and port communities identify ports with the greatest need for vessel traffic management improvements. While the Coast Guard has a particular responsibility for vessel traffic management, we are also actively working with many public and private sector partners to address issues related to port and marine transportation congestion. At the national level, the Coast Guard chairs the Interagency Committee on the Marine Transportation System, which includes members, Coast Guard, MARAD, Corps of Engineers, NOAA, EPA, Customs, Highways, Transit, Rail, Agriculture, TRANSCOM, the Military Sealift Command and many others.
At the local level, the Coast Guard has been a major facilitator of Harbor Safety Committees. These local port committees are the best mechanism for local coordination of issues such as port congestion. They have a proven track record in dealing with port safety issues, already exist in most ports, and have a diverse membership that includes most stakeholder groups. In some ports, Harbor Safety Committees provide the only forum where both recreational and commercial operators can interact effectively. This is important in any discussion of congestion.
The Coast Guard provides guidance, resources and risk management tools plus a national web site that acts as an information clearinghouse to help harbor safety committees maximize their efforts. Coast Guard is also working with other members of the Interagency Committee and the Marine Board to develop a set of appropriate measures of waterway capacity. This will help us determine how changes in vessel size and operations or increases in vessel traffic might contribute to congestion and how we might avoid that.
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In conclusion, the Coast Guard is committed to ensuring that the vessel traffic will continue to move in the Nation's waterways safely and efficiently and without congestion. The Coast Guard actively demonstrates this commitment in its day to day waterways management activities as well as by engaging in effective public-private sector partnerships.
Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak with you today.
Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you, Mr. High.
Mr. Hess.
Mr. HESS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the Subcommittee. My name is Charles Hess, and I'm the Chief of the Operations Division within the Civil Works Directorate of the headquarters of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
I'm pleased to be here today to present to you the views of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with respect to the important issue of port congestion and other maritime issues that this Subcommittee has an interest in. Clearly, the Corps has a long history of responding to the needs of our Nation's ports and waterways and it's in that tradition that we want to be here and be part of the solution. With your indulgence, I would like to have my associate, Mr. Holliday, use some exhibits here that I think will help us understand a little bit better what the situation is with respect to the ports and waterways as we see them. In addition, I would ask that the Subcommittee accept my written testimony for the record.
First, the chart that Mr. Holliday has there right now gives you some indication of what we're currently experiencing in terms of the change in the world merchant fleet. It is responding to the boom in global trade and the shift to more and more commodities being moved by containers. I would point out that in this picture you see the vessel to your left, the 1978 vintage, approximately 2,600 TEUs, 20 foot equivalent units. On your right, a picture of a vessel of about a 1998 vintage, 4,600 TEUs. What you've seen there over a period of 20 years' time is essentially almost a doubling, if you would, in terms of vessel size.
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I think more importantly, the thing that I need to point out is that what we don't have on this particular photograph is a picture of one of the newest vessels, vessels that in some cases are approaching 6,000 TEUs, as in the Regina Maerst, which is the largest container ship at this point in time. Vessels which are now being ordered are in the 9,800 TEU range, which should go into operation some time around the year 2004.
Again, what you're seeing there is roughly a doubling of the capacity of these ships in a relatively shortened period of time. So what I would suggest to the Subcommittee is that the rate of change with respect to the size of these vessels is growing almost exponentially.
Clearly, these ships are wider, deeper, faster. But they also are on tight global schedules and demand consistently reliable channels and port access. In this particular chart, we portray the anticipated growth in the number of vessels by ship type. Vessel calls by all ships in the year 2000 numbered 115,000 with 42,000 to the U.S. being container ships, and by the year 2020 we anticipate 261,000 vessel calls, of which 121,000 will be container ships, essentially three times the number of today's container ships. Much bigger ships, much wider ships, and still on extremely tight schedules.
As these ships rapidly grow in size, they may be constrained by channel depths, and they will not be able to realize their maximize loaded draft. The following chart depicts the number of constrained calls by coastal region today, in black, a total of 27,500; the anticipated constrained calls in 2020, with planned deepening projects, which are 34,400; and the impact without the planned projects, which would increase the number of constrained calls to more than double of what today's constrained calls are. The bottom line impact could be considerable ultimate costs to the American consumer with increased number of smaller, inefficient ships crowding our already busy ports.
I understand that there is perhaps some question on why we should be responding to the global situation where the shippers are in fact increasing the size of the vessels and we in fact are then being pressed to increase the size of our port channels and auxiliary and ancillary infrastructure. Clearly there is a significant efficiency to be gained in the size of the vessels. While that certainly enables the shippers to be more profitable in their operations, it also allows goods and commodities to be moved and provided to the American public at reduced costs. Consequently, there's a great interest in allowing the most efficient ships and most effective ships to be utilized at our port infrastructure.
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Moving on, I'd like to go to our last chart here, which talks to our inland waterway infrastructure, which is also, as was pointed out, a very important and integral part of our total maritime infrastructure. Our inland waterways suffer from an aging infrastructure of locks and dams, with 45 percent of our locks currently exceeding their 50 year design life. While I recognize that the design life in and of itself is not necessarily the ultimate test for whether or not a lock facility is effective, clearly those lock facilities that have been utilized and are now reaching the end of their expected life are in essence not compatible with the current types and mode of operation that are acceptable for the throughput that we're looking to achieve in terms of moving commodities through our waterway system.
In the next 10 years, without major rehabilitation and modernization, 73 percent of all existing locks will exceed their design life, as I mentioned. We are currently experiencing lockage delay in these old systems, which amounts to about $276 million in commercial lockage delay costs. That's based on a 1999 study.
As a result of continued constrained funding, there is a backlog of about $8.4 billion for 116 navigation projects to improve the maritime transportation system. This backlog continues to grow and significant benefits are being lost by continuing to stretch the implementation schedules for these projects. For example, in fiscal year 2001, if all the seven inland waterway projects proposed in the budget had been funded at the current engineering optimum schedule, $758 million in lost benefits from transportation savings could have been realized.
As was indicated, the Corps is proactively participating in the Marine Transportation Vision 2020. To that end, we are investing in innovative construction techniques that are more environmentally friendly and cost less. We have also initiated a regional sediment management approach to the management and operation and maintenance of our navigation projects, which seeks to balance economic objectives for safe, reliable navigation systems with our responsibilities for environmental stewardship. This proactive approach will improve opportunities for beneficial use of dredged material and ensure our ability to operate and maintain our waterborne transportation infrastructure.
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Our system is old and needs rehabilitation and modernization. We must invest in the system if our Nation is to continue to be competitive in the global economy. We must be proactive in our investment strategies to ensure uncongested, safe, reliable and environmentally sustainable marine transportation infrastructure.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. That concludes my comments, and I would be glad to take your questions.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Hess.
We've now been joined by the Ranking Member of the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee, Ms. Brown. Do you have a statement you wish to make before we get into questions?
Ms. BROWN. No, Mr. Chairman, I'll just enter my statement into the record.
Mr. DUNCAN. All right, your statement may be made a part of the record.
I'm going to yield my time for the first questions to this panel to Mr. Horn.
Mr. HORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that.
Mr. Hess, I have a few questions here, just to get it on the record. Among the duties of the headquarters oversight of the Corps, the wetlands permit program, could you give us some ways to streamline the process so that the good transportation projects can move forward in a timely manner?
Mr. HESS. Yes, sir, I'd be glad to discuss that with you. One of the things that we have discussed, certainly, with the Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration and we would discuss in terms of other transportation systems is a genuine need to plan together when the projects first come into concept stage for review and analysis, such that if possible, we can actually avoid wetlands in terms of the routing of those projects. That's probably one of the most important aspects of the operation. If we sit down and can collaborate together on the basic planning process, we certainly can impact the ultimate project, maybe even in terms of not requiring a permit, perhaps. So that's one significant reason we talk to the agencies about early effective collaboration.
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Another possibility is how we've worked particularly with the Port of Tacoma. There are provisions in WRDA 2000 which allow the public agencies to contribute funds to help expedite permit activities. The actual process to accomplish that is now being reviewed at the Assistant Secretary's office, and we hope to have that implemented shortly, to allow entities who have important public projects to move forward with respect to permit applications.
Mr. HORN. Mr. Hess, to what mileage do you have a permit for a wetlands permit? Does it have to be within half a mile of the ocean or the rivers or whatever?
Mr. HESS. Well, you have to have a permit for any activity that impacts waters of the U.S. or wetlands that are associated with waters of the U.S.
Mr. HORN. Well, I remember the old line that if it floats a Supreme Court opinion, it's navigable waters.
Mr. HESS. If you're referring to the current opinion with respect to the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County, SWANCC, perhaps. We are working very hard with EPA and have worked hard with them over the last several months, to come up with an approach that recognizes the difference between where we are today and what the Supreme Court said with respect to the migratory bird rule. At this point in time, I know EPA has certainly briefed some of the people who are in policy making positions at their agency. Hopefully here with Army, we will have people in similar positions that are appointed soon, so that we can have those kinds of policy discussions with them and we can move on to orderly resolution of where we go next.
Mr. HORN. Once in a while we're very parochial. And I'm very parochial on the Serretos Wetlands. I'd like you to take a look at that. It's one of the last wetlands in Southern California below the Tehachipee Mountains.
Mr. HESS. I understand.
Mr. HORN. And we certainly want to preserve that. So I'll be calling you.
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Mr. HESS. Okay.
Mr. HORN. Let me ask you now general things here. On the inland waterways system, to what degree can congestion be improved at choke points by the use of traffic management improvements such as scheduling times for passing through locks or changing tows during the high peak usage to spread out the traffic? Sort of what we're faced with in the airlines. Could you give us a little lead on that?
Mr. HESS. One of the things that we have talked with industry about, and in fact have developed and have initiated some process action teams which consist of Corps, industry and Coast Guard and other entities, is to look at ways where we can actually do some better vessel management, if you will, in terms of how we track vessels and how we ensure that vessels moving through locks are queued up in an orderly fashion. Some of the systems that we have in place in terms of tow haulage also help us at many of our locks for a better throughput rate.
So we're constantly trying to look at new mechanisms to track and make sure that the queuing process and the queuing piece associated with vessel movement through locks is done in an effective manner.
Mr. HORN. Well, has the Corps looked at the increase in the coastwise trade as a potential alternative to deepening ports to accommodate the new, larger container ships?
Mr. HESS. We certainly have. I won't say we've looked at it specifically in terms of looking at specific projects that implement that concept. But we are aware that industry is looking at development of ports that act as hub ports and feeder ports. Using coastwise trade to move container vessels on barges has been a hot topic of discussion by various industry groups.
Mr. HORN. Thank you.
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Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much.
Mr. DeFazio.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just want to follow up on the last statement of the witness there about the hub ports and the feeder ports. I'm concerned with the trend that the chart pointed to, as you head toward these 9,800 TEU ships, with the supposition that it provides lower costs to consumers, but of course, there's a total cost here. We not only have the costs of potentially having to dredge a number of harbor channels and turning basins to greater depths and larger sizes, you have the impact on the local transportation infrastructure of these massive floods of containers all at once. I've visited the Alameda Corridor and seen what they're trying to do to deal with these sorts of things. They were pretty backed up a few years ago down there. And that's a concern.
There is a total cost. Maybe all the consumers save, but then the taxpayers are all paying quite a bundle to do it. Could you expand a little bit more on the potential or possibility of moving more toward a hub port feeder kind of system, and have we done any sort of thorough analysis of what costs we would avoid, what the benefits might be and whether this would give the same benefits or nearly the same benefits in terms of transportation costs to consumers for the good but would actually save taxpayers a bundle of money?
Mr. HESS. Well, again, we have not essentially evaluated any particular feeder port or hub system internal to Corps activities. I would suggest that probably that question industry could perhaps respond to better than we could. I know that industry has looked at various hub ports in the New Orleans area. I do know that in Europe, certainly the concept of the hub port system is working and right now, very effectively, in terms of the Rhine River system. Because essentially most of the commodities that come into Amsterdam and Rotterdam are offloaded from ocean vessels and then trans-shipped on a barge system into the middle of Europe. So it has been used effectively. Here again, there's been some discussion about it. But again, it's been discussion at the industry level.
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Mr. DEFAZIO. I'll raise this with the Chairman later, but I think maybe Congress should be directing Federal agencies to coordinate and perhaps, God forbid, plan a little bit here. We got stuck with a totally congested aviation system because the airlines decided to abandon point to point travel because it was more profitable and more convenient for them to operate a hub system. Then they say, oh, my God, look at this, you can't land enough planes in San Francisco to operate a hub in a place which everyone has known since time immemorial is going to be constrained because of weather a very large proportion of the time, and also geographically challenged and constrained.
I would hope that we don't adopt the same laissez faire attitude, which is to let the industry decide where it wants to go and then expect the taxpayers to pick up the tab. I would prefer that we were doing a little more proactive planning on behalf of both the infrastructure and the taxpayers. I'd hope that we can work on that, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. DeFazio.
Governor Otter.
Mr. OTTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Hess, does the Army Corps of Engineers believe in all the rules and regulations that have been promulgated for the wetlands and the EPA, Wetlands Protection Act?
Mr. HESS. Do we believe in all the rules?
Mr. OTTER. The ones you enforce.
Mr. HESS. Well, yes, I believe—
Mr. OTTER. Do you obey them?
Mr. HESS. I think we try to obey them.
Mr. OTTER. The reason I'm bringing this up is recently we had a highway project that was held up in Idaho, a 300 foot highway project that was held up in Idaho, for a considerable amount of time and a considerable amount of money, because of a very small area of wetland that seemed to be more important than our ability to move across.
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Isn't it true, Mr. Hess, that the Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA just resolved a legal dispute over whether or not the Army Corps of Engineers had to obey the EPA's standards, rules and regulations?
Mr. HESS. In terms of jurisdiction or—
Mr. OTTER. In terms of whether or not you actually had to obey the standards as set by the EPA.
Mr. HESS. Well, the one thing I will tell you specifically, because it affects the most recent decision that we just talked about, the SWANCC decision, there's a 1979 Attorney General opinion which basically says that the EPA has the ultimate right to establish what the jurisdiction is in terms of a 404 program. So ultimately, if we have a disagreement with respect to what we think is jurisdictional, the EPA can rule that it is a special case and they can go ahead and, in a sense, take the responsibility for making a jurisdictional call from us.
Mr. OTTER. Is that what happened on the dam operations for the thermal standards?
Mr. HESS. No, I don't believe that's the case. I don't think we're talking about a regulatory issue there in terms of the 404 program.
Mr. OTTER. What I'm referring to is the case, and I wish I could quote it, is the case in where the EPA was ruled to be in fact right over ordering the Army Corps of Engineers to obey their rules and regulations and their standard, and the Army Corps of Engineers hadn't been doing it.
Mr. HESS. And this is talking about the Snake River Dam, sir?
Mr. OTTER. Yes.
Mr. HESS. Yes, I will have to investigate that and provide an answer for the record.
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Mr. OTTER. I guess what my line of questioning goes to more than anything else, Mr. Hess, is that I find, I have found in some of the construction projects that we have up and down, it's hard to go anyplace in Idaho without violating somebody's rule or somebody's regulation, even though it may be necessary for the purposes of transportation in Idaho. It seems like we never know where to go to to surrender.
The Idaho Highway Transportation Agency can go to many different, whether it's the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the National Marine Fisheries, and they all suffer some sort of jurisdiction issue. I think this collaborative program that you've got going is great, very late. Because maybe it will solve some of our problems where if we can get everybody to the table at the same time.
But it seems to me if we have all this wisdom tied up in one or two areas that maybe we could only get those two areas to the table first, get them to agree to the project and go forward with it, rather than these long term delays that not only are costly in terms of the projects themselves, but in terms of costly at the operation. So I'm hopeful that this will become institutionalized, not just a fancy idea that somebody may come up with that's convenient for somebody that may be able to press the point from a certain level of government and say, you guys get together and cooperate. I'd like to see that institutionalized, say even codified, to make you sit down with the other elements of the decision making process, to make sure that they can come together.
The major concern that I mentioned during my opening testimony was over the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to go forward with the process of dredging the Lower Snake River and on out to the Columbia. We're just a matter of maybe months away from stopping all shipping. That will make a lot of people happy, especially those that wanted to take out the dams in the first place, and we were using those four Lower Snake dams as shipping on that.
But let me ask you a question. Would you agree or disagree with these figures, that we can ship one ton of soft white wheat, which we sold to Taiwan out of Idaho last year, 168,000 tons of soft white wheat, we can ship one ton of soft white wheat down the Snake and into the Columbia and into the Port of Vancouver, we can ship it 522 miles on a barge for one gallon of diesel fuel. Would you agree with that?
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Mr. HESS. I think that's pretty close to being accurate.
Mr. OTTER. Would you be surprised if I told you we can ship that same ton of wheat on a railroad car and we'll get it 220 miles with that same gallon of diesel fuel?
Mr. HESS. Two hundred and twenty miles?
Mr. OTTER. Two hundred and twenty miles, less than half the distance. And going back to Mr. Carlton's, or maybe it was Mr. High's testimony, we can get that same ton of wheat on I-84 down the highway, 59 miles with that same one gallon of diesel fuel. Would those figures surprise you?
Mr. HESS. No.
Mr. OTTER. I would like to see the Army Corp of Engineers use those to persuade those who would stop the dredging and those would stop the shipping in our waterways that they are the ones indeed that are going to do more damage to the environment by the use of trucks or rail, no disparagement to either one. But that shipping, other than throwing it, putting a good or a product on water is the cheapest way to get it there.
Mr. HESS. Understood.
Mr. OTTER. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Governor Otter. Ms. Brown.
Ms. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carlton, I have a question. What is the Maritime Administration doing to promote the development of coastwise feeder vessels to alleviate congestion in our Nation's highways and railroads?
Mr. CARLTON. Thank you for that question, Congresswoman.
Ms. BROWN. And while you're answering that, when will the Advisory Council make its recommendation to Secretary Mineta?
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Mr. CARLTON. Let me start with that second point, because the true answer is, I'm not sure. The Advisory Council is meeting on a regular basis. It's a group of 30 organizations. They met three weeks ago, I believe, in New York. I would expect that by the end of this year, early next year, they will have formal recommendations to make to the Secretary on their ideas for improving efficiency and affecting the intermodal system.
With regard to what we are doing to promote coastwise shipping, and this gets also back to the Chairman's question, when you look at the picture of the large container ship arriving at a single port, what the expanded use of coastwise shipping can do is spread that burden of that many containers coming in and going out of a single port at one time, you can spread that between several ports, in large part using shallow draft vessels, such as tug and barge operations, which do not require the great channel depths of the large container ships.
The issue between our ports, which are very competitive, each port is looking for that additional business. But the issue between our ports is which ones are going to handle the large container ships and which ones are going to be pleased to have a role as a spoke in the hub and spoke system, or taking on a niche role. What we are able to offer today is very effective financing arrangements through the Maritime Administration's loan guarantee program, so-called Title XI program, for new construction or reconstruction of coastwise vessels. What we are looking for, though, is the entrepreneurs who will step up and say that there is enough traffic that warrants the construction or reconstruction of vessels to place them into service in coastwise operations and make a profit at it.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Carlton, let me interrupt you here just a minute. We're about to get into a series of, a very lengthy series of votes. So I'll ask that each of you make your answers to these questions as short and to the point as possible, so we can get through as many as we can.
Ms. BROWN. Thank you. I have a follow-up question for Mr. Hess.
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Speaking of competition, I just want you to know, I'm from Florida where we have nine ports and we're competing. The Federal Government is making a decision about ports as to dredging, and which ones get the 50 feet depth. This will decide what ports will get the mega ships.
Do we know how many ports in each of the coasts will need to be able to unload these types of ships?
Mr. HESS. Again, as Mr. Carlton suggested, part of the dilemma here is that we have a very competitive port system. Many of the ports are in competition with one another with respect to who and how the depths should be determined.
Consequently, we are, I won't say at the mercy of that dilemma, but we have to engage in that debate on a daily basis about which ports are ready, which ports have adequate financing to provide the infrastructure and which ports in fact have the ability to be dredged and have an acceptable capability to accept dredged material, which is another major issue in terms of where we can dredge and what we can do with that material.
So it's not an easy answer.
Ms. BROWN. I understand, and I have nine in Florida that's ready to go. So my question to you is, is there any plan on how many we're going to have on the east coast and how many we're going to have on the west coast?
Mr. HESS. There are no plans, of what I know, in terms of preferential treatment for any particular port. Again, we're looking at each individual port to see whether or not the perceived benefits and costs are reasonable, and whether the environmental and economic conditions would warrant the construction and deepening of a port in that particular location.
Ms. BROWN. Thank you. I have some follow-up questions for him, I'll do it in the record.
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Mr. High, did you want to respond?
Mr. HIGH. I'm sorry, this is my first time, excuse me if I don't understand the protocol. But the question you asked is similar to what Congressman DeFazio asked. I would let you know that we together, as an interagency, are working with groups like the Marine Board, part of the National Academy of Sciences, Transportation Research Board, and understand that there is an issue here. Groups like the Marine Board, from the outside, can take a look. We were very careful in our MTS report to not do a centralized planning. That's not the way our Government works.
But we can identify what the alternatives are, what the pros and cons might be. And what we've got to do is kind of put our resources together and that's what we're trying to do, trying to find ways to pocket some of our research money, little though it is, to look at those very kinds of things. I would suggest that even beyond, we've got to figure out what's the next technology beyond containers. Because I think that there's something great down the line. We may find fast ships, like what's coming out of Philadelphia, that requires ships that are faster and don't have as much draft. So we understand that issue, and we're trying to figure out a way to go after it.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. Ms. Brown?
Mr. BROWN. Mr. Chairman, I think my question has probably been answer, but I'll try to rephrase it just another way.
Mr. Hess, I'm from Charleston, South Carolina. We have a port there, and we also have a bridge that's 145 feet, the height is restricted on some size ships. I am concerned that if you all have any input in the size of the ships to be sure that the ports can accommodate. I know that the lady from Florida was concerned about it, we are, too, is how big and how wide and how tall these ships are going to be, and what ports are eventually going to accommodate them, and how much will the taxpayers have to subsidize the port facilities in order to be sure we have ample facilities to take care of the size of those ships.
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Is there some ultimate maximum size that they're going to be dealing with so that we'll have a range we can live with? We're talking about replacing that bridge now with a 186 foot structure, and I assume that comes under your purview and you signed off on it. But you haven't furnished any money. We're expecting the taxpayers of South Carolina, I guess, most of it, to pick up the additional cost. When is the return on investment going to be sufficient?
Mr. HESS. That's an excellent question. Here again, between the Corps and the Coast Guard, we certainly coordinate on bridge height. In this particular instance, again, I think as we discussed earlier, the size of the vessels is being driven by the global industry. The shippers are going to these vessels because they are much more efficient and effective for them to operate, and they are in essence pressing us to develop the infrastructure to accommodate the vessels, not the reverse.
So here again, you may have questions about why we are moving in this direction. Well, the answer is because, if we don't move in this direction, other countries will and these shippers will go to other places, to Halifax, to offshore locations. Then we will be receiving a transshipment type operation from other vessels. And they will be smaller vessels and more inefficient. Here again there's a question about whether or not that's appropriate for our economics.
So I don't know if that fully addresses your question, but again, the industry and the shipping commodity market is actually driving the size of the vessels. There is no way to preclude them from moving up to bigger sizes. Right now I think we're looking at 12,000 TEUs, probably the largest that I've heard about thus far.
Mr. HIGH. I understand the 9,800 TEU ship that you mentioned earlier has a design air draft height of 165 feet, which makes it a considerable problem. Los Angeles Long Beach has a bridge of 155 feet, they've got exactly the same issue. It is a problem that we've got to get our arms around. I appreciate the point.
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Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. Mr. Taylor.
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank all you gentlemen for being here.
Mr. Hess, following the gentleman from Idaho's questions, and it is well know that it is cheaper to move something by water than by land, you use less fuel. I think it's also safe to say that when fuel was fairly cheap, in the past couple of years, that people were tempted to use a truck because it was faster, and with cheap fuel, it didn't really matter. Now with expensive fuels, we are going to see an increase, it's happened before, it's going to happen this time.
Having said that, would someone please explain to me the wisdom of the President proposing and the majority in Congress voting to cut the Corps' budget by 17 percent, and your maintenance and operation budget by 14 percent? Is there some breakthrough in dredging that's occurred, or some breakthrough in building locks that's going to let us do as good a job as we're doing now for less money?
And while I've got you, Mr. Carlton—
[Laughter.]
Mr. TAYLOR. The last maritime initiative this Congress passed was in 1993. It was called the National Shipbuilding Initiative, and for the first time we took a little bit of DOD money and used it as loan guarantees for the Title XI program. That resulted in about $6 billion worth of American shipbuilding taking place.
I'm happy to say about half of that took place in Mississippi. And more importantly for us defense nuts, it means that that industrial base we're going to need to build the next generation of carriers, destroyers, cruisers, that we can keep the industrial base intact that builds ships, while the Navy is not ordering many ships.
Again, would you like to explain to me the wisdom of doing away, or zero funding this very good program that has produced $6 billion worth of shipbuilding, to the best of my knowledge, for about $250 million worth of taxpayers' money, because of the force multiplier of the loan guarantees? Since you two guys are the spokesmen for the Administration, I am waiting with bated breath for your reply. I'm sure a lot of people in this room would like to hear your wisdom, too.
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Mr. CARLTON. We tossed a coin and I lost.
Mr. Taylor, your question is a serious question, and I don't mean to flip in my response. The Administration has proffered budget numbers to the Congress and there are, certainly we have heard many voices coming from the Congress complaining rather loudly about the proposals for the Title 11 loan guarantee program. As a spokesperson today for the Administration's budget, I can only say that that program has been identified as one of any number of corporate subsidy programs which the Administration wishes to diminish or eliminate in size and impact on financial markets.
We certainly have heard strong voices coming from the Congress saying that they disagree with that point of view. The Administration is seeking to achieve large tax cuts, increases in education and other priority spending and tax policy issues, which are before you today. At the end of the day, we will see how the political process and the process of determining fiscal policy ultimately works out. But those are the stated reasons, and I'm here to explain them.
Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Carlton, in 1939 the United States military identified a need for front hinges to landing craft. The only folks in the world who had them were the Japanese. Now, wouldn't we have been real smart as a Nation to order our front hinge landing craft from the Japanese in 1939? I mean, that's about as smart as this proposal.
Mr. Hess, how about you?
Mr. HESS. Sir, here again, I think the Administration has indicated its priorities in terms of what their budget proposals are. We have had lengthy discussions with the Administration and representatives at OMB with respect to Corps programs. And here again, I would suggest that in terms of priorities, the Corps programs are not in the Administration priorities, as Mr. Carlton suggested.
So here again, it's up to the Congress to debate, discuss and help the Administration decide what the priorities need to be.
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Mr. TAYLOR. I am going to respect your expertise. If the Corps O&M budget is cut by 14 to 17 percent, what's that really translate to in loss of maintenance? Is it a 14 percent reduction, or is it bigger than that?
Mr. HESS. Well, what you have is, if every year you go by without doing some maintenance, you have almost a ripple effect. In fact, if you don't take care of certain things, the potential for additional problems and deterioration increases, and in fact you perhaps could see some additional maintenance requirements.
Mr. TAYLOR. So you really could see a 20 percent reduction in the ability of our inland waterways?
Mr. HESS. You could see definite deterioration. The dilemma is, you will see unforeseen deterioration and potentially shutdowns when you have a failure.
Mr. DUNCAN. All right, thank you very much. Mr. Simmons.
Mr. SIMMONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The topic is maritime congestion, and this is the third hearing that I've sat in on that deals with congestion. We've also dealt with railway congestion and highway congestion, so I guess it's not a surprise that we're now talking about maritime congestion.
In eastern Connecticut and Connecticut generally, which I represent, we've tried to deal with some of the highway congestion with new road construction, and we have not been successful, because of the process of permitting, the process. We all hear about the process in EPA. The process means to widen a road in Connecticut, it takes about 15 years. The process means to extend an existing road, it takes about 30 years and we're not there yet.
When we recommended some rail transportation improvements, the process made that pretty much impossible, too, and we all know that there are some projects around the country that have been lagging for at least five years.
So that brings us to maritime congestion. Within the last five years, we deployed some high speed ferries into the Long Island Sound. Unfortunately, the ferries created a wake. And their wakes created complaints, and the complaints caused investigations and the process has still not addressed the issue of how we're going to deal with high speed ferry wakes, so those high speed ferry boats aren't operating.
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It's very frustrating to me, I'm sure it's frustrating to others in the room and around the country that we're confronted with these problems. We look at traditional solutions and we don't make much headway because of the process.
So my question to you folks is, especially at a time when international trade is increasing, when the use of our waterways is increasing, when energy costs are going up, what can we do proactively, what can we do in the future to address these issues where dredging and construction don't necessarily provide the solution? On our highways in Connecticut now we have smart highways. We have highways with monitors. We have State troopers watching the traffic. We have DOT people coming out and changing a tire in about three minutes or less. So we're ''smarting'' the highways, because we can't widen them any more.
How do we smarten the waterways?
Mr. HIGH. May I begin that? Sir, one of the subcommittees that we have with our Interagency Committee on Marine Transportation is safety and environment. We've asked each of our subcommittees to go out and tell us what are their top priorities. Among their top three priorities is to get their arms around the permitting process. We have MARAD, Coast Guard, Corps of Engineers, EPA and others with a similar interest or parts of that, we've gone after how do we get at streamlining this process. We've heard that a number of times. So we're trying to take a proactive step.
I would like to be able to say to you today we've already found some answers. But at least we've begun the process.
The other thing that we've got going on in our interagency—
Mr. SIMMONS. I just heard the process word.
Mr. HIGH. Yes, sir, and we're sensitive to that. We have in our deliberations, have developed much better relationships amongst our agencies than we've ever had, I think, before. So that will help us. We can now call each other on the phone and know who's at that other agency that can help us deal with the issue. We've identified this as a problem that our stakeholders have come to us and said, we've got to find a better way. It doesn't mean that we ignore the environmental concerns. It's like Charlie said, we need to make sure that we incorporate them. We're also reaching out to those stakeholders that have those issues and saying, come be with us, this is a public and private sector thing, so our attempt is to try to put everybody together in the room and go solve the problem.
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Mr. HESS. Jeff's point is extremely important. The other thing that we have incorporated is certainly industry participation. Many of the things we've done in regard to lock operations, for example, has been a collaborative dialogue between the Coast Guard, the Corps and the waterway operators to assure that we're implementing best practices at the operation of our locks, so that everybody has a consistent understanding of what's going to happen when they go to lock through at a particular location.
Mr. CARLTON. Congressman, if I can put a capstone on that, I said earlier in my remarks that waterborne transportation and congestion in the rivers and on the coastal highways is not really normal table talk in American homes. I think if we can overcome that, if we can get the American public, American shippers, interested and understanding that we have an enormous amount of still untapped capacity on the rivers and on the coastal ocean highway, we can solve a lot of the transportation problems we're talking about.
Your interest in particular in ferries, we're not going to take millions of cars off the highways, we're not going to take millions of trucks off the highways, we're not going to eliminate the demand for rail capacity. But we can add capacity by putting people, cars and trucks on ferries.
Specifically with regard to your point on the wake problem, I'm not a naval architect, sir, but from my reading, I do know that there are low wake designs that are out there. We need to talk with them, and we'd be happy to talk with your constituents, companies in your neighborhood who are working on introducing ferries to the nearby traffic.
Mr. SIMMONS. I appreciate that. As somebody who's spent most of his life in a coastal community, I always thought waves and wakes were just part of the deal. But I've learned in recent years that waves are okay but wakes aren't. And I guess they're real different, at least that's what the EPA tells me.
Thank you.
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Mr. DUNCAN. All right, thank you.
Mr. HIGH. Mr. Chairman, may I have 10 more seconds?
Mr. DUNCAN. Yes, sir.
Mr. HIGH. One more issue, Congressman Simmons, the Secretary has made this permitting issue an important priority to him in air, highways and on the marine side. So I think that will help us, at least for us, he said go work this. Thank you.
Mr. DUNCAN. All right, thank you very much.
Mr. Hess, in your testimony you state that building inland waterway projects as quickly as you can would result in $738 million in savings. I'm always interested in how people come up with these figures. Can you tell me how you arrived at that figure? And also secondly, related to that, you've got, or the Corps has estimated that there's a backlog, or has told us there's a backlog of 116 navigation improvement projects that will require $8.4 billion to complete. I'm interested, do you consider all of those 116 immediate needs, or some, surely there's some more urgent than others. How do you classify those?
Mr. HESS. Let me address the first issue first, which is on the savings. Essentially for that number, we looked at an average delay time at our lockages, and tried to estimate what we thought the impact would be. I think the number we used was about $300 per hour average delay costs, multiplying that out on the total number of hours of delay and came up with an estimate of what those savings would be if in fact those delays are mitigated by the construction of the new projects.
In regard to the prioritization of the 116 projects, one of the vehicles we used to do that is the Inland Waterway Users Board, essentially a group of the industry shippers and the individuals who in essence benefit the most from what the waterways deliver. Those individuals work with us and with others to help us identify the high priority projects that we should be making our investments in.
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Mr. DUNCAN. All right. Thank you very much.
Mr. High, do you see increasing competition between commercial and recreational users on the Nation's waterways, and how is the Coast Guard addressing that increased competition? Do you see that as a problem now or in the near future?
Mr. HIGH. Mr. Chairman, absolutely. We see an increased competition. There is a tremendous growth in recreational boating, on the Great Lakes, on the inland waters, on the coast, I think that's a very positive thing. And we do see the growth in the commercial trade.
I believe that it's manageable. We have lots of tools we can use for vessel traffic separation. We have better training that we can provide. We're working with the Coast Guard Auxiliary to help in smart boating. We've got a new sense of some of the recreational boaters that are out there, people that are running with Ski-Doos and other things.
Mr. DUNCAN. Excuse me, Mr. High, we're trying to figure out about these votes here.
Mr. HIGH. So is it a problem? Not yet. We need to manage it. It's one of the things we do in my office, in Waterways Management, we see that we need to manage the competing uses of the waterway. We need to make sure that we separate the types of traffic that aren't compatible. But it's certainly an issue that we're focused on and we're looking at.
The other thing is, we want to encourage all the recreational boaters and the commercial folks to come together. As I mentioned in my testimony, the Harbor Safety Committees at the local level is where this will really play out. We're encouraging them to get together and talk about how they can solve their problems. Many times they can work them out.
Mr. DUNCAN. All right, thank you very much.
We have some additional questions. I'll tell you what I'm going to do, I'm going to submit these additional questions so they can be responded to in writing, and go ahead and let you go at this time. Thank you very much. You've been an outstanding panel and we appreciate your contributions.
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Well, fortunately and unfortunately, at least fortunately we were first told we had two fifteen-minute votes and then some more five-minutes votes. We've questioned that and so they say now it's one fifteen-minute vote, but it's now five five-minute votes. So we're going to have to be in recess. All of those votes take slightly longer, unfortunately, than they estimate. So I would say at best, we will be in recess now for about 45 minutes. Thank you very much.
[Recess.]
Mr. DUNCAN. All right, we're going to call the hearing back to order. I've never had a hearing interrupted for this long before, and I apologize to the witnesses and to everyone here. But it couldn't be helped.
We're ready to start now with the second panel, and we certainly appreciate your patience and all of you being here today. The first witness is Mr. Tay Yoshitani, who is the Deputy Executive Director of the American Association of Port Authorities and is with the Port of Oakland, from Oakland, California. We have Mr. Craig E. Phillip, who is with the National Waterways Conference, and he's President and CEO of Ingram Barge Company from Nashville, Tennessee. We have Mr. Tim Burrack, who is here representing the National Corn Growers Association, and Mr. Burrack is from Arlington, Iowa. We have Vice Admiral Herberger, who is here representing the Coastwise Coalition, and he is from Washington. We have Dr. Lester Lave, who is Professor of Economics at Carnegie-Mellon University and who is here with us today from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Gentlemen, we're all very honored and pleased that all of you would take time to be with us today and your full statements will be placed in the record. You may give your statements that you wish to present orally at this time. Mr. Yoshitani, we'll start with you. Thank you very much.
STATEMENT OF TAY YOSHITANI, DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PORT OF OAKLAND, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA; CRAIG E. PHILIP, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL WATERWAYS CONFERENCE, INC.; TIM BURRACK, NATIONAL CORN GROWERS ASSOCIATION; VICE ADMIRAL ALBERT J. HERBERGER, USN, RET., ON BEHALF OF THE COASTWISE COALITION; AND LESTER B. LAVE, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, AND PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING AND PUBLIC POLICY, CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIVERSITY, PITTSBURGH, PA
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Mr. YOSHITANI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am Tay Yoshitani, I'm the Deputy Executive Director for the Port of Oakland. I'm here today representing the American Association of Port Authorities, AAPA.
We were founded in 1912, and the AAPA is an association of more than 150 public port authorities in the western hemisphere. My testimony today, however, reflects the views of the AAPA's United States delegation.
The AAPA port members are public entities, divisions or agents of State and local government mandated by law to serve public purposes. Essentially, we are public agencies charged with developing port facilities and have invested billions of dollars of public and private funds to expedite the transportation of people and cargo. The success of U.S. international trade depends on a viable and safe navigation system, as well as the intermodal infrastructure to handle the movement of cargo into and out of our ports. In fact, in the next 20 years, international trade, of which 95 percent by volume enters through the Nation's ports, is expected to double.
As the world's leading trading nation, the country's economic future depends on the quality of our port infrastructure and also our ability to deliver goods on time and cost effectively. But ports cannot keep up with the burgeoning trade alone. The Federal, State and local governments, along with the private sector, share responsibility for U.S. port development and maintenance. Each has to do its share to keep up with the dramatic increases in international trade.
Let me talk a bit about dredging. One of the critical transportation infrastructure investments for the Nation is maintaining our water highways. Each year, several hundred million yards of sand, gravel and silt must be removed from waterways and harbors to improve navigation safety and allow for waterborne trade. In addition to regular maintenance dredging, improvements in navigation channels are needed to accommodate the larger vessels, which you've heard so much about.
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Key requirements for having these large vessels include suitable terminal facilities, container yards, rail and highway access, as well as deeper channels and berths. There is currently a backlog of $40 billion in construction in active projects. These needs have not been adequately addressed by the Federal budget over the last few years. The fiscal year 2002 request in particular is very troublesome, calling for only $3.9 billion for civil works budget, which is 14 percent less than the prior year.
For deep draft construction projects, the Administration's budget request is a full 23 percent less than last year's appropriate levels. And in the Corps' operation and maintenance account, the budget proposal only requested $666 million for deep draft projects, representing again an 8 percent decrease from the prior year.
In fiscal year 2002, several deep draft navigation improvement projects would not receive adequate funding under the budget proposal, including the New York Harbor, Wilmington, North Carolina, Jacksonville, Houston, Los Angeles, and my own port, the Port of Oakland. I have included in my written testimony an example of issues we are facing at my own port regarding the significant impact that we will feel if adequate funding is not provided to keep our project on schedule. I would be happy to provide more details of that during the question and answer portion.
Without dredging to 50 feet, these ports will not be able to easily accommodate the mega ships that you've heard much about. These large, economical, energy efficient vessels will have to leave cargo back at the docks, wait for high tide or not call at all.
Moving on to navigation safety, investment in navigation safety programs is also critical. Mariners transiting the U.S. waters are often forced to rely on 50 year old navigation charts and tidal predictions produced by NOAA. Accurate charts, real time tide and current information and vessel traffic systems are essential to help ship safety, and to help protect the environment from accidents. Only a few ports have access to this technology.
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AAPA also supports the continued maintenance of established Coast Guard programs which I won't get into because they've been mentioned already. I'd like to talk a little bit about landside access, which has not been mentioned this afternoon. Once ships arrive at a port, modern highway and rail systems are essential to moving goods quickly to and from inland regions. No matter how much ports invest or how productive the ports make their marine terminal facilities, our transportation system cannot operate to maximum efficiency unless cargo can move quickly and cost effectively in and out of ports.
And in order to achieve our international trade and national security objectives, the Federal Surface Transportation Program, TEA-21, must be amended to increase funding for projects that facilitate trade movement.
It is AAPA's position that we should maximize the use of all modes of transportation. An example of groups working together to meet growing demands of future trade growth is the Coastwise Coalition, and I will stop on that, because you have another speaker on that item as well.
I'd like to conclude by pointing out that our transportation system efficiency is an important factor in determining product competitiveness in the world market. Without the infrastructure to support the flow of trade, the resulting gridlock and congestion would have a devastating effect on our economy. During the next decade, as the link to trade and transportation, the Nation's port infrastructure and marine transportation system will require significant Federal and local investment and support to maintain the United States' position as the world's leading trading nation.
Thank you very much for giving the AAPA the opportunity to present our testimony.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Yoshitani.
Next we'll go to Mr. Philip.
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Mr. PHILIP. Thank you and good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. As a fellow Tennessean, I'm delighted to be here this afternoon.
I've been working as a transportation professional for my entire career, more than 15 with Ingram, but I've also held senior positions in the rail and intermodal industries. Congestion is one of the most nettlesome problems that face all transportation enterprises and professionals. I've spent my entire career trying to address and overcome them across all the major freight modes. But I speak to you today in my capacity as Chairman of the National Waterways Conference, a 41 year old organization of inland waterway shippers and carriers, ports and terminals and others working to promote a greater understanding of the widespread public benefits of our Nation's waterway system.
This infrastructure is the foundation of our most economical, energy efficient mode of transportation. We submit that any solution to the Nation's congestion problems must include it.
I didn't think I'd ever be here in Washington quoting from a piece in the Washington Post that I found to be accurate. But much to my surprise, here's what they had to say last week about transportation congestion. Never before in this century, except during the two World Wars, has the country's transportation system been as stressed as it is now. All of us confirm the Post's assessment, of course, each time we drive to work or head to the airport. But what most Americans don't realize, and I hope my testimony will reinforce, is that our inland waterway infrastructure is generally not operating at capacity, and can be relied upon to relieve rail and highway congestion.
To do so requires an increase in the level of investment from the reduced levels in recent years as you heard about in the previous panel. These are needed to eliminate the choke points that do exist and to ensure continued maintenance of the system.
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This system is already efficient. Waterways are the ideal mode for moving large volumes of bulk commodities over long distances, and I know you've heard these numbers many times before. A typical 15 barge tow replaces 870 trucks that would stretch for 35 miles on our interstate system, or more than 2 100-car unit trains extending nearly 3 miles in length. It also means cleaner air, because increased fuel efficiency results in significantly lower emissions, nearly ten times less than if moved by truck, two and a half times by rail.
Fortunately, this system, which has been developed over 200 years since Ben Franklin declared it to be a national priority, is relatively uncongested. The capacity of this system is indeed impressive. As Mr. Hess noted, it numbers more than 25,000 miles and the shallow draft portion alone moved more than 630 million tons of commerce in 1999, valued at an astonishing $74 billion. Generally, barge traffic moves freely, but much of the current infrastructure was developed more than 50 years ago. There are locations where improvements are urgently needed to reduce bottlenecks and enhance overall system efficiency. This is true on the upper Mississippi River, which was opened to navigation in 1939, and locks on several Ohio River tributaries, and on the Gulf Intercostal Waterway of Louisiana.
A half dozen locks are in the process of being replaced or expanded. But the President's budget request would fund this ongoing construction at only 57 percent of the Corps' capability. Looked at anther way, the President's budget appropriates at an anemic rate that will utilize only $61 million of matching funds from the inland waterways trust fund, compared to the more than $100 million in payments made annually by operators on the system.
Today the surplus in the trust fund stands at $400 million. Deferred maintenance is of course an issue, as you heard about already. Here expenditures have been insufficient to ensure that the system will be able to absorb significant additional traffic in the future.
As we look across the Atlantic, Europeans have come to recognize that waterways can reduce rail and highway congestion. As a matter of official European Union policy, governments there have been trying to coax freight traffic off the railroads, off the roads and railways onto waterways, as a means to reduce congestion. This campaign has persuaded numerous shippers to switch to water.
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In conclusion, we have a national opportunity to use our waterway infrastructure to reduce congestion on the other modes. The existing navigation system generally has the capacity to move far more traffic than it does today, despite the presence of a few choke points. The waterway system is in place, no new waterways are planned or needed, and the new projects, which are required, are for replacement or modernization of outmoded facilities. Waterborne transportation must be a vital part of an integrated and intermodal national transportation system. To ensure that our Nation encourages the most efficient use of its total transportation infrastructure, it is imperative that waterways be viewed and funded as one of its vital components, one which offers a viable and environmentally responsible escape valve for some of the congestion facing other modes.
We look forward to working with your Committees toward these goals, and I will be pleased to answer questions at the appropriate time.
Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Philip.
Mr. Burrack.
Mr. BURRACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Tim Burrack, and my brother and I raise corn and soybeans in northeast Iowa. I'm a member of the National Corn Growers Association Production and Stewardship Action Team, and our organization represents 31,000 direct paying members and 300,000 corn checkoff paying members. And I'd like to thank this Committee for the opportunity to testify here today concerning congestion on the inland waterways system.
Mr. Chairman, I want you to know that I represent one segment of the population that's getting choked. And it's a direct throat stranglehold. As a farmer in eastern Iowa, I have two markets for my grain, the Mississippi River export market, which goes to the Port of New Orleans, or the local corn processing plants that turn it into ethanol. And the markets are both directly related. When prices for the corn at the river export grain elevators fall, prices at the processing plants drop as well.
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Congestion on the upper Mississippi and Illinois River is the result of the aging 600 foot locks. To maximize their efficiency, towing companies push 15 barge tows, which are 1,100 foot long. In order to transit the smaller locks, the towboat crews must separate the tow and lock through in two passes. Under ideal conditions, this process takes at least one and a half hours, compared to 40 minutes when you use a 1,200 foot lock.
Throw in the number of variables, weather, darkness, and the locking times increase dramatically. While one tow is locking, any other tow in the vicinity waits. And as you can imagine, these waiting times can grow dramatically, resulting in average delays of hours and during the busy fall season, which is the heaviest transport time, there can be delays up to five days.
Every year, more than 1.25 billion bushels of our Nation's corn and over 300 million bushels of soybeans move on the upper Mississippi and Illinois River. And I can tell you that anything that impacts this 1 billion bushels of corn impacts the entire 10 billion corn industry. Example, last fall the Army Corps of Engineers announced that they were going to fix one of the gates on the 1,200 foot lock at Alton, Illinois, and said that all tows would be locking through the 600 foot auxiliary. They announced that Wednesday morning.
Wednesday afternoon at 4:00 o'clock, my corn bids dropped 8 cents per bushel due to the fact that they said the delays would increase and they passed that delay cost on to me. Now, you translate that 8 cents a bushel over 300 million bushels of corn that were in open positions across the State of Iowa alone and that was $28 million. Later that fall, last fall I had the opportunity to visit with the Army Corps of Engineers and I asked them if that $28 million fixed the gate. They assured me it did.
Lock delays reduce the price for corn. The barge industry indicates it costs between $400 and $500 per hour to operate a tow. Every hour that tow sits and waits to get through a lock, the shipping costs increase, and the inefficiencies cut both ways. Congestion raises the price of corn in New Orleans and reduces the price on my farm. Think of it this way. It's just like you sitting in the back of a taxicab at a red light. The meter is running and you're paying the bill at the rate of $500 an hour.
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The NCGA has commissioned a study from Texas A&M regarding the impact to corn and soybean and wheat growers. It's in our submitted report, where you can see the losses to different parts of the country. If we do not expand our lock system, we will lose $3,364 million a year by the year 2020. However, if the improvements are made, the benefits to growers are $169 million annually.
We know when the price of grain increases, one of two things happens. Grain will go into different, less optimal markets or it will continue to go to the same market but at a much higher cost and a lower grain price. That is why the States like Nebraska and South Dakota experience such adverse impacts from congestion. Corn from western Iowa or Minnesota that would normally be driven to the river is diverted into markets served by the western corn belt, causing the corn prices for growers in Nebraska and South Dakota to drop.
The United States is not the low cost producer of corn. And in the past, our competitive advantage was our transportation system. However, the United States competes with two countries for corn exports, Argentina and China, and two countries for soybean exports, Brazil and Argentina. Unlike the United States, the Argentines have invested $650 million in their river system over the last few years. Now these dividends are paying back to them. China has just completed a major corn transportation network that makes them a more efficient exporter of corn. The system includes rail networks, rail cars, storage depots and a state of the art grain export facility at Dalian, that's capable of loading Panamax vessels. And I have personally traveled to Brazil this February and have seen the major changes in road, rail and river infrastructure that they are building. They have tunnel vision, they have a goal, they understand the importance of infrastructure to develop their agriculture and they are doing it.
In closing, our competitors have found the fortitude to invest in their transportation systems and they're paying off for them. Congestions at our locks and dams on the upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers continue to exist and grow. It gets worse every year. If we would increase by 11 percent our exports, it would triple or quadruple already the time delays that we have. The growing inefficiency chokes our ability to meet demand, it robs America of foreign trade, it costs American jobs, it drives up the cost of energy in the Midwest, and it costs me and farmers millions of dollars in lost crop revenue.
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As producers, we pay a price, whether we have an updated infrastructure, 1,200 foot lock and dam system or not. It's a real need, it's real impact and it impacts us all. The National Academy of Sciences just recently came out with some suggestions that they thought that could alleviate the problem. They said, if we would just give the barge companies time permits or schedule for their arrival at these locks, we could eliminate the delays. Well, this morning on the TV I was watching the Wilson Bridge congestion problem. Evidently you have one here in the city, too.
So I would suggest that we apply the same solution that they've said we should apply to the locks to your Wilson Bridge. All you need to do is schedule the House and their employees to come in at midnight, the Senate and their employees to come in at noon, have the other employees of the Government work around in between those times. Use the same philosophy, the same argument and you will reduce congestion on the Wilson Bridge. No problems.
[Laughter.]
Mr. BURRACK. We need Congress, that's you, to restore funding for the Army Corps of Engineers, for their operation and maintenance, for their navigation study, for future construction. It's up to you to make those decisions. We've waited too long. If we started building today, it would be 15 years before the project is completed, 15 years. When I started talking about this, I didn't need glasses and my hair was brown. And we're not any closer today than we were 15 years ago.
It's time to invest in the upper Mississippi and Illinois River system. Thank you.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Burrack.
Although I know there's a lot of people on this side that would rather have the Senate come in at midnight, and the House come in at noon.
[Laughter.]
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Mr. BURRACK. Mr. Chairman, if I ever have a chance to address the Senate Committee, I will reverse that.
[Laughter.]
Mr. DUNCAN. My mother is originally from Iowa, and I still have relatives in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids. So glad to have you with us. Very fine testimony.
Admiral Herberger.
Admiral HERBERGER. Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to participate in this important hearing.
I'm here on behalf of the Coastwise Coalition, which is a new group representing the full range of stakeholders in expanded waterborne services opportunity, including port and terminal operators, ship owners and operators, shipboard and longshore labor, shipbuilders, and shippers. I would like to highlight key issues that are covered in more detail in our statement submitted to your Committee about challenges facing the domestic transportation.
Our domestic economy continues to grow and international trade expands. Dealing with the congestion that today is already beginning to choke our highway and rail networks and our ports will require bringing back increased waterborne transportation for all cargoes and potentially in many areas for passengers. Only a truly integrated multi-modal transportation system that capitalizes on the respective operating and economic efficiencies of each mode, road, rail and water, can assure American shippers and consumers that their needs for a safe, reliable and economically efficient transportation system will continue to be, and that there needs will continue to be met in the 21st century.
Increasing reliance on waterborne opportunities, where available, provides the best chance for achieving this truly multi-modal transportation system. Tailored options, it may be barges in cross harbor, across river transportation in a local area, or high speed, as you've heard, 40 to 50 knot roll-on/roll-off vessels, combination passenger vehicle vessels that could range up and down the coast. Increasing reliance on waterborne transportation to supplement existing rail and highway systems within each geographic corridor offers numerous benefits for everyone, including those who live or work in those locales that are transversed by these systems that are now being impacted severally in their quality of life and productivity. We're hearing it increasingly.
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In this week's U.S. News and World Report, the cover story is traffic, the impact it's having on Americans. So I think there's an increasing awareness of just what effect gridlock and congestion are having on the country. With fewer infrastructure constraints, the water route may offer the best solution for increasing system capacity and efficiency with the fewest constraints on infrastructure and impact on the environment. Obviously, port congestion and dredging are issues, as well as the aging infrastructure in much of the coastal and inland waterway systems. Yet even there, increased emphasis on water transport can help ease congestion in major hubs and reduce dredging needs in other ports.
Asset efficiency: A benefit of waterborne transportation of any form is that it is almost always less costly on a per unit basis than any other mode. Energy considerations: It has long been recognized that waterborne transportation is among the most energy efficient of the modes. Barge operations are five to ten times more fuel efficient than truck or rail. Self propelled vessels are 50 percent more fuel efficient than other surface modes. Ports will be the key to the success of coastwise shipping. The challenges of the waterborne side today are more commercial than technical. Vessels suited to coastwise trading are being designed and built throughout the world, including in shipyards here in the United States.
On the land side, the problems are the same as the other modes. Investment in port, waterways and all modal infrastructure is critical. As an example, by the year 2020, in a major port such as New York-New Jersey, even with almost 40 percent of incoming containers leaving the port directly by water, the highway infrastructure serving that port area will still require almost one-third more capacity than is available today and increased rail capacity over sixfold. And you know how difficult those challenges would be.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my opening statement, and I would be pleased to answer any questions on this important subject.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Admiral Herberger.
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Professor Lave.
Mr. LAVE. Thank you very much. I was the chair of that National Academy of Sciences committee that Mr. Burrack talked about, and I'd be pleased to address those things in a minute. But first let me get through my statement.
Mr. Co-Chairmen, thank you very much for inviting me. The United States is a nation of unlimited economic potential, but we have limited resources for highways, ports, airports and other transportation infrastructure. Realizing the economic potential within a limited size means that we have to manage our transportation infrastructure more efficiently and effectively. Expanding capacity indefinitely is simply not an option.
When a port or highway or computer network gets crowded, the natural reaction is to expand its capacity. Shouldn't we celebrate our good fortune that some ports, inland waterways and other transportation infrastructure are crowded and use this as a proof that we need to expand their capacity? The answer is often no. Often managing demand makes more sense than trying to expand supply.
Crowding can reduce the throughput of a system, as generally occurs with rush hour traffic. The Wilson Bridge is a good example. The extreme case is gridlock, where cars fail to clear an intersection and so block traffic going in the other direction. Gridlock lowers throughput to zero. A less extreme example, like the Wilson Bridge, is seen on many urban highways. Each freeway lane is capable of carrying traffic at 30 to 60 miles an hour, more than 4,000 cars per lane per hour.
When driving on the Wilson Bridge or the Beltway or the Baltimore-Washington expressway or on freeways in Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York and many other cities, I can tell you that the average speed at rush hour is considerably less than 60 miles an hour. The highway is operating at perhaps 25 percent of capacity. If we manage the congestion on the highway, we could serve four times as many vehicles per hour, getting everybody to their destinations faster.
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Gridlock also occurs in ports and airports, although less frequently than on highways. Congestion also leads to lowering system throughput when ships and aircraft impede the movement of other vessels. The third reason why we need to do some management is that some of the users clogging the system at present don't produce very much private or social value. For example, a tramp freighter delivering a few tons of scrap uses as much or perhaps more port capacity as a huge container ship. It does not serve most customers of the U.S. economy to have the container ship wait for the tramp freighter.
For example, if the port allowed ships to bid for the privilege of getting to the dock without delay, shippers, freight owners and the operators of the container ship would be willing to pay much more than the tramp steamer. At a crowded port, the tramp steamer could wait until there's a gap in traffic or wait until there's little traffic or divert to a less busy port. It makes no sense to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to dredge a port and construct expensive loading facilities, only to raise the cost of handling container ships because they have to wait for less valuable vessels.
There is no shortage of ports that are not crowded, although they may be less convenient or require slightly more expensive ground transportation. For example, civil aircraft are usually diverted from LaGuardia, JFK and Newark to smaller airports that are less crowded.
Having grown up in Los Angeles, I can give you a better reason against expanding capacity. If you look at aerial pictures of central Los Angeles from 1950 to the present, you see that highways have crowded out housing, businesses and all other uses. There's only so much land in central Los Angeles. Expanding highways requires taking that land from other uses, eventually creating an economic and social death valley where nothing survives.
Congestion management can take the form of a port manager giving direct orders to each user or it can use market forces. If the port or airport manager doesn't have sufficient information to handle the situation well, market forces can do a much better job. Using market forces can take the form of, for example, a congestion toll, which charges users for the delays that they impose on other users, or it can allow users to trade service schedules. Using market forces can produce considerable government revenue or it can be revenue neutral. For example, a congestion toll can charge those who want to go first and subsidize those who are wiling to wait.
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Trading service times is akin to trading allowances to emit sulfur dioxide as allowed under the 1990 Clean Air Act. If I can just expand on that a moment, this allowance trading was successful in reducing the cost of sulfur dioxide control by more than two-thirds, and cleaned up the problem much more quickly. There is even a greater potential for savings in relieving congestion on our transportation infrastructure.
For transportation infrastructure experiencing gridlock, where the traffic is so heavy that the system is operating below its designed capacity, congestion management can produce a win-win situation where everybody is better off. When the system is used to give priority to the highest value users, it benefits the economy and those users, although it is a disadvantage to low value users.
To summarize, expanding the transportation infrastructure due to crowding may not be in the public interest, or is not always in the public interest. Before spending on new construction, we need to manage the current congestion to evaluate the need for concrete and steel. Congestion management can solve the problems of gridlock, crowding facilities so much that the service capacity is reduced and of having low value users crows out high value users. The management can take the form of centralized command and control, or better still, it can use market forces. These market forces are generally more efficient and effective in achieving goals.
I commend the Subcommittee for examining whether and when more bricks and mortar are the answers to transportation infrastructure crowding. Thank you very much.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Lave.
Mr. Yoshitani, in your statement you mentioned the need to streamline environmental reviews of marine transportation projects. That's something that we're dealing with or attempting to deal with in all the various subcommittees and parts of this Committee. Can you tell us roughly how long some of these environmental reviews are taking? Do you know of any examples that you could give us? How big of a problem is that?
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Mr. YOSHITANI. Mr. Chairman, I can cite you two examples on extreme ends of the spectrum from my personal experience. When I was the executive director at the Port of Baltimore, the 50 foot channel from the mouth of the Chesapeake to the Port of Baltimore took approximately 20 years. In contrast to that, of course that was a number of years ago, in contrast to that, the port that I work at now, the Port of Oakland, we went to the environmental reviews in about 18 months for a 50 foot project. So there is a large variance in those projects. What we did correctly, what we did right with Oakland was that we brought, and it was mentioned by another party earlier on, that one of the most important factors in accelerating the environmental process is to bring all the stakeholders together at the very beginning and really work together.
In addition to that, however, since you asked the question, we do have one recommendation that we would submit in accelerating the environmental review process, and that is that oftentimes the local sponsor, which is the ports, primarily is in the best position to bring the stakeholders together because we really understand the local issues, the stakeholders, as well as the environmental issues. Unfortunately, the Corps of Engineers does not always agree with us in terms of viewing us as the legitimate best party and therefore, is reluctant to cover the project costs associated with it.
We think that it's something that's vital to the success of any project and that it should be considered as a reimbursable cost.
Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you very much. Obviously, to make a project take 20 years if it could be done in 18 months or 2 years, it would add astronomical amounts to the costs of the final project.
Mr. Philip, everyone today, and you basically have said that water transportation is much more economical, efficient, environmentally sound and so forth. Why then do you think that our water system is so under-utilized, as people also are saying?
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Mr. PHILIP. Well, we're fortunate in many areas of the system to have a system which has a great deal of capacity. This relates to the amount of capacity that you have to add, unlike a road, where you can build one lane at a time. To make a river system or a port useful and operable, you generally have to make it much more available than just for the first tow, the first lane. And we have seen traffic on the inland side of our system growing over the last decade. I think part of the reason is because of the economic incentives the shippers have to look for the lowest cost of transportation.
I think we're going to see that shift accelerate if the cost of energy stays high, because the efficiency of our mode relative to the rail and highway will directly affect the freight rate that I'm required to charge as compared to a rail or highway competitor. That differential will become larger as the cost of energy increases.
Mr. DUNCAN. Can our water system absorb substantial increases in traffic if we don't make major new investments in the system to improve the locks and so forth?
Mr. PHILIP. I think in many areas, in the short run, the answer would be yes. If we were to add traffic tomorrow, many areas of the system would accommodate that traffic. But if we allow the system to continue to deteriorate, if we allow the maintenance backlog that was described by Mr. Hess earlier to grow, then the system will become impaired in terms of its ability to either handle the existing traffic or hopefully to handle the increased traffic which would be the hoped for outcome of our ability on a national basis to manage congestion on all the modes.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Burrack, you seem to have a lot of faith in scheduling. How much of the problem do you think could be solved if we went to some type of a pretty strict scheduling system?
Mr. BURRACK. Five percent.
Mr. DUNCAN. Five percent. So it wouldn't do a whole lot, then.
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Mr. BURRACK. The system doesn't work that way, Mr. Chairman. We need a system that has the capacity to move product when the market demands it. There are certain times of the year the market just says, we don't want your product. There's other times of the year when the market says, we need all you can ship. And unfortunately, we can't ship all they want at certain times.
It's not a perfect world, it's not a perfect system. But that's the way the economics and the demands work. We need a system that can deliver when the demand is there. We don't have that today.
Mr. DUNCAN. Of all the things that you've heard talked about today, wht do you think is the most urgent thing we need to do?
Mr. BURRACK. On the upper Mississippi, and the Illinois River, there's two locks on the Illinois, five on the upper Mississippi that need to be lengthened to 1,200 feet. That's the position of the National Corn Growers and a lot of the other commodity groups. It's just something that we're already 10 years behind on doing, that's what we need to do and that's our position.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. I've got a couple of other questions, but my first time is up. Let me go to Mr. Taylor.
Mr. TAYLOR. I'm curious how loudly, if at all, your associations let your feelings be known about the cuts in the Corps of Engineers budget. I do notice a bit of irony. I had some contractors to the Corps of Engineers who came and saw me with two requests. They wanted the estate tax reduction and they wanted the Corps' budget restored. When I explained to them that one directly led to the other, they were a little non-believing. But where have your organizations followed on that, realizing that you can't have both, that it's one or the other in an environment where we only had an $8 billion surplus last year after you put the trust funds where they belong? Please.
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Mr. BURRACK. Congressman Taylor, I need an export market to build an estate. So I'll go with restoring the Corps budget at this time and worry about my estate in a few years.
Mr. TAYLOR. Admiral, do you want to weigh in?
Admiral HERBERGER. I think the Corps requirements, the requirements for dredging and maintenance, are just so critical, so fundamental. You've heard it time and time again, when we ignore the maintenance of anything it deteriorates to the point where in the end you end up spending more, and in the interim, you're impacted negatively by not doing it. It's sort of a fundamental thing.
With our great waterway system, our coastwise, our ports, the fact that we're neglecting this, we're taking it for granted and thinking that somehow it will take care of itself, when we're on the threshold of increased trade, increased opportunities, it doesn't make sense. And as far as the estate tax, I'm not worrying about that.
Mr. TAYLOR. Can I comment on something before my time is up, and I'd still like to hear what you have to say. Am I overly concerned in thinking that the folks who run this country are thinking like the last generation of Americans? One of the things that Steven Ambrose points out in his books about the World War II veterans, and Tom Brokaw, from the Greatest Generation, about how the guys who saw so much devastation in World War II came home to build the St. Lawrence Seaway, they came home to build the interstate highway system, they were builders, they had seen so much destruction that they really came home and made huge investments in America. And the things we're enjoying now are to a very large extent because of what they did.
Am I incorrect in seeing that this generation really doesn't seem to be reinvesting in America, that we're milking it? And even worse than milking it, we're not even going to maintain what we have? Or do you see things that make you think otherwise?
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Mr. PHILIP. We see elements in the Corps budgets over the last eight years that have suggested that we are disinvesting in a national treasure. Our founding fathers put a stake in the ground and said waterways were a vital national resource. I think we've seen a pullback from that commitment. And for the first time, I think we've seen some organizations in this country who have advocated beginning to unwind the progress that's been made in terms of removing locks and dams. I think that would represent a move in the direction you described, which is a last generation approach.
And to speak to where our organization comes down, the National Waterways Conference has been a vocal and we hope forceful advocate for full funding for the Corps of Engineers construction budget, to at a minimum consume the monies that are contributed by the barge operators every year to the trust fund, and for full funding of their maintenance and rehabilitation budget, so we don't accumulate a deferred maintenance position, as we are presently seeing.
Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Yoshitani?
Mr. YOSHITANI. Thank you very much. I would have to agree with my colleague that there has been a trend for disinvestment and that we need to invest more. From the Port's perspective, we feel that we play a critical role in supporting trade, and that trade certainly plays an important part in our overall diplomatic activities, if you will. So we think that it's important from that perspective, and it's certainly important that we maintain our infrastructure.
Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Chairman, I'm going to have to leave. Mr. DeFazio asked that these questions be submitted for the record to the next panel. May I make that request for him?
Mr. DUNCAN. That's fine. Without objection, that will be so ordered.
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Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Dr. Horn.
Mr. HORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This has been very intriguing testimony.
I'm going to skip around here, just to get a few basics down. Admiral Herberger, how many deep draft ports do you imagine the Nation needs if we were to make full use of coastwise navigation? And how would you define the deep draft ports?
Admiral HERBERGER. Deep draft today is becoming something on the order of 50 feet. And there is no way that we're going to have all the ports that we have today, the ocean ports today, dredged to 50 feet. I think some ports are blessed by geography. A good example in the Northwest, Seattle-Vancouver, where they have deep water without a lot of maintenance dredging. Other areas, such as Long Beach, Los Angeles, where they've wisely built toward the ocean, took the landfill from dredging and other projects and built at berths that have 75 feet alongside. Other areas that traditionally have all of the spoils that come down from upriver rest in the harbor are disadvantaged, like out in Oakland and other areas where they need a lot. New York is another one like that.
I think this country, when I was the Maritime Administrator and I would go overseas, it was constantly asked of me, why can't we have world class ports like Singapore or Rotterdam or Hong Kong. And my quick answer to that was, there's one Singapore, there's one Rotterdam. We have multiple ports on each of our coasts. We have the greatest system of ports. And the greatest amount of cargo that passes through those ports. The problem is, they all will not be megaports for geographic reasons and for other reasons. But if we set up a system, a multi-modal system wherein those big ports can take the larger ships that are coming, they're not going to be all larger ships, and then we use shallower ports as trans-shipment ports, all the ports that are viable, that have navigable waters, with maintenance dredging and with infrastructure ashore properly maintained and built, will be part of a whole system. It's a matter of spreading it out.
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If not, as it was attested to earlier today, the cargo will come into a few ports and those areas are going to be overwhelmed, because you will not be able to build the land infrastructure large enough to have throughput. And it will back up, it will go into gridlock. So it argues for a multi-mode system and the more you can spread it, the more you can use all of the ports and all of the road and rail connections, the better. But it does take some planning, it does take some initiative.
Mr. HORN. Now, the Corps of Engineers has various types of economic formulas, and also in Vicksburg, they can move things around to see if we can save cost, and that's exactly what they've done in the L.A. River. I wonder with Carnegie-Mellon's great facilities and I work with them in another area, and that's computer security, they're without question the university in the country that has the most in computer security. I'm just wondering, have you got a maintenance model of the different types of traffic and intermodality and what do we know from it?
Mr. LAVE. The answer to that is no, but since I have the microphone, just to elaborate a little bit, I think that one of the assertions that's been made repeatedly today is that waterway transportation has less environmental costs than others. I don't know of any study that either supports or denies it. I think it is certainly worthwhile to have a study of that sort. I suspect that the assertions that are made are going to turn out to be true.
But I can't, at least if somebody here can point to a peer reviewed study by somebody that shows that, I'd like to see it. At least on this National Academy of Sciences panel I was on, we didn't know anything about that.
When we're trying to take a look at moving things around, the Congress has imposed on the Corps of Engineers a discipline which is that before any project is approved, there must be a benefit cost analysis. You don't need to do that. You could simply have a Congressional vote on the basis of whatever it is you want. But for 60 years, we've had this sort of discipline. And at least when I think about why it is that the Corps is not getting its money to either build new projects or to do maintenance activities, I wonder if members of Congress, other than people in these two Subcommittees, simply don't believe the analyses that come out of them.
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Mr. HORN. Let me interject, because that clock keeps running to me more than you. Have you analyzed, say, any containerships and how they might be docked up and unloaded in a more effective manner? I went to Singapore for the first time in 1975, just for the fun of it, I counted how many ships were waiting. And they were waiting, and they were waiting. It was 103. You couldn't even find 10 to 20 ships at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Those move rapidly in, get unloaded, load up and get out. And I just wonder what's the efficiency of some of these ports that we might copy.
Mr. LAVE. I think it's clear we have to figure out how to do the whole thing at least cost, getting the ships there, not having them wait to get into the harbor, unloading them quickly. It's the whole system we have to look at, not any one part. The shippers are concerned with what their total shipping cost is, not any one aspect of it.
Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to ask a question of Mr. Philip, who I think had the financial understanding of this. What kind of system should we have, and I know you have some on diesel fuel tax for some of the waterways, what kind of system could we look at in terms of trying to finance all of these ports and the harbor maintenance tax had a little problem in the Supreme Court. We have a lot of customs coming in from these ports. They might well be dedicated directly to some of this.
What's your feeling on that?
Mr. PHILIP. Well, as I mentioned in my response to Congressman Taylor, our first priority has been to see that the monies we're currently contributing to the trust fund get consumed. That was the foundation of the agreement that was struck between Congress and the users of the waterways back in the 1980s. We think that's the first and most important thing that we have to accomplish. Our industry doesn't get involved directly in the expenditure or the receipts of the harbor maintenance trust fund, for example. So that area is really beyond my scope.
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Mr. HORN. Any other thoughts on this, on the funding of some of this infrastructure?
Mr. PHILIP. No, I think the most important thing is to begin to use what's already being added and then we can look beyond that if that's what's needed.
Mr. HORN. I suspect what we've accomplished in Los Angeles Long Beach with the Alameda Corridor that that's going to be copied by every major port in the country in the sense of intermodality that really speeds up the various containers. They have millions go through each year. Do you see that? What are we in for? This is a $2 billion project, and they're within the financing and they're on time.
Mr. YOSHITANI. Mr. Horn, I do believe that many of the other ports who are major ports in the United States are looking exactly at that. I'm sure you're aware that Tacoma and Seattle have their own project which has some similarities called FAST, I think it's the FAST project. We in Oakland are looking at something that is really at a preliminary stage, which would sort of emulate the Alameda Corridor, obviously on a much smaller scale. I think all of the ports have a vested interest in trying to figure out a creative, efficient and cost effective way of getting the cargo from the metropolitan area out to the hinterlands, where from there it would be further dispersed. So I think you're absolutely right. The two ports have set the standards. And I think the others will have to figure out ways to, within their own means.
Mr. HORN. Do you find that the ports have good rapport with the State highway departments? Because we certainly need bridges with a lot of these ports. One in our area that the city put up with, now needs to be improved, the Desmond Bridge. I would think that out of that trust fund on highways, some of those things should go into the harbors to solve the truck lineup and all the rest of it that you see around. We'd obviously like to have the trucks separated from the passengers, because the passengers are scared out of their life when they see these containers coming behind them, on their side and in front of them. So we need a little cooperation from that interstate highway fund.
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Mr. YOSHITANI. I guess there's a couple of questions involved in that. My experience with CALTRAN up in Northern California has been very good. They're very creative, very supportive, and they are very engaged with us in some of the creative projects that we're in discussion with. Earlier on in my testimony, which you were not here for, one of the things that AAPA is strongly advocating is more funds be made available for exactly those kinds of projects which you just articulated.
Mr. HORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Chairman Duncan? Mr. Coble.
Mr. COBLE. I just came from a Judiciary Committee hearing and saw you were still holding worship service. This is of interest to me, and I popped my head in. I have no questions. Good to have the panel here, though.
Mr. DUNCAN. I've got just a couple more questions that I'm interested in. Admiral Herberger, your Coalition says that we need just a small number of deep draft ports and then a coastal system of smaller ports and coastal boats, barges and so forth. How many deep draft ports do you think we need?
Admiral HERBERGER. That's not the Coalition's position. I think what I tried to say is that we're not going to have all our coastal ports be dredged to 50 feet. There will be the large ports just as there are today, medium sized ports, smaller ports. And what we should do is start focusing on the volume of trade that is coming, so that we can coordinate the infrastructure ashore, which I think is going to be showstopper. It won't be the 50 foot draft that will impact as much as whether or not there's enough infrastructure, road connections, rail connections, infrastructure in the port itself, the right size cranes, all of those things that have to be invested. So it's a total system. And we unfortunately keep approaching this problem as, how are we going to take care of the water side, and then over here, how are we going to take care of the land side. It has to be coordinated. In those ports that are able to modernize, those ports that have the harbors dredged, those ports that have the land infrastructure and the good connections, those ports will be the most efficient. And I don't think the Government or anybody else is going to be able to say that X, Y and Z are going to be the mega ports and the others are going to be minor. I think where we are today, there are different sizes, there are different geographic locations and what we need to do is start concentrating on how we can improve that connection.
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Mr. DUNCAN. Are there enough vessels in the fleet at the present time to do this?
Admiral HERBERGER. There are not enough in our U.S. flag coastwise fleet. That is one of the points that we're trying to emphasize, that this is an opportunity to bring in the right kind of vessel, new vessels, whether they be limited draft, whether they be roll-on/roll-off, fast ferries. Propulsion is getting such now that we can bring in faster vessels just like other parts of the world. You see fast ferries in Europe, Japan and other places, carrying people and vehicles very efficiently. As a matter of fact, in the EU and in Japan, their governments are coming up with policies to encourage more waterborne transportation for the very simple reason they want to take it off an already heavily impacted land.
So the vessel end will not be the difficult part. The most difficult part will be whether or not we can build up that land side infrastructure to marry up where there's navigable water for the total system.
Mr. DUNCAN. Dr. Lave, Mr. Burrack said that only about 5 percent of the problem we're talking about here today, this congestion problem, could be handled by proper scheduling or traffic management. Do you agree with that, that that's just a very small part of the problem?
Mr. LAVE. I respectfully disagree. And the basis for my disagreement is that if we take a look at the locks on the upper Mississippi River, you will see that from day to day, the waits behind those locks vary tremendously. It's not that during the entire fall that everything always waits a day or two to get through. There are days when there's nothing that goes through and there are days that are heavily traveled.
So it's not that the system is already used to capacity and you have to expand it. I absolutely agree that when the system is used to capacity, then that certainly is a signal that you have to expand it. But when you see that there's a lot of congestion on some days and none on other days, then my conclusion is that's a case for congestion management rather than expanding capacity.
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Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you.
Mr. Philip, I'm told that some will recommend we address congestion issues by giving value to high value commodities. What do you think about that?
Mr. PHILIP. The products that are carried by barge today are typically not high value in the sense of computer chips or automobiles would be considered. To some extent, that would happen naturally, because the higher value commodity, the shipper would always be making a mobile choice between rail and highway and water, and might be selecting one of the other modes, because water is typically not the fastest mode of transportation. We've never looked carefully at how you would implement such a system.
What Mr. Burrack described was a situation where, in the fall, because of the value of the grain, pulling it out of the upper Midwest, it has to move, which is why so much of it tries to move during the busiest months. And to jump to your question to Dr. Lave, my professional opinion is that we would gain limited amounts of improvement in capacity by trying to implement congestion management strategies.
I think the situation we face today is indicative of why I say that. The Mississippi River north of St. Louis normally opens in early March. And the Mississippi River today, the last week of May, is still not open. We're having the third hundred year flood in a decade in that section of river. It points to the fact that what causes the situation that Dr. Lave describes, in my judgement, as an operator, the fact that the lock is congested today and not congested tomorrow, has everything to do with mother nature and how it impacts our operations, whether it be high water, low water, floods, droughts, fog. And it's the reason that try as I might, I'd like to schedule to my tow to be at the lock at an uncongested time. I'm incapable of doing it.
So this morning I have 8 tows with 15 barges each waiting above St. Louis to charge north. I have five more tows that are en route to get in line. That may seem crazy, that I'm adding to the congestion problem. But I have 250,000 tons of cargo in those barges. And the coal utility in Iowa needs it. A scheduling system isn't going to do anything about that. The refinery needs the feedstock that's in the barges, and a system isn't going to do anything about that.
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So I'm worried about putting our faith in an unworkable or risky scheme or schedules or tolls or tariffs. By the way, that lock I'm waiting below, that's going to take a long time to get through when the river does open, is one of the five Tim mentioned that we think needs to be replaced with a 1,200 foot chamber.
Mr. DUNCAN. Have they given you any idea about how soon you may be able to move that traffic?
Mr. PHILIP. We're hoping that the river will open tomorrow.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Mr. Horn, are you okay?
Okay, I want to thank our panelists very much. We'll now get set up for the third panel. For the third panel, we will welcome Chris Koch, President of the World Shipping Council; Joseph Miniace, President of Pacific Maritime Association; Charles Raymond, President and CEO of CSX lines; James Spinosa, President of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union; and George Cashman, Director of Port Division for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Gentlemen, thank you. Mr. Koch, go ahead, please.
STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER KOCH, PRESIDENT, WORLD SHIPPING COUNCIL; JOSEPH N. MINIACE, PRESIDENT AND CEO, PACIFIC MARITIME ASSOCIATION; CHARLES G. RAYMOND, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CSX LINES, AND CHAIR, MARINE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM NATIONAL ADVISORY COUNCIL; JAMES SPINOSA, PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL LONGSHORE AND WAREHOUSE UNION; AND GEORGE W. CASHMAN, DIRECTOR, PORT DIVISION, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS
Mr. KOCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Chris Koch, I'm President of the World Shipping Council.
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The World Shipping Council is a trade association of over 40 international ocean liner carriers serving America's foreign trade. The Council's members provide approximately 90 percent of the capacity serving U.S. international liner trades.
The dramatic growth of America's foreign commerce is a significant success story. In the last decade, America's international trade in goods grew by more than 90 percent. By the end of 1999, the value of this trade was approximately $1.7 trillion, or almost $1 out of every $5 of U.S. economic activity. International liner cargo grew at an even faster rate as American businesses took advantage of the efficiencies and relatively low costs of intermodal containerization. That dramatic growth in trade produces a lot more cargo going through America's ports and onto its rail and highway systems.
Five years ago, imports and exports of containerized cargo numbered 13.4 million TEUs. Today, that number exceeds 17 million TEUs and is still growing. In order to handle that growth, the liner industry has invested billions of dollars in assets serving America's commerce, including hundreds of ships, over 4 million containers, hundreds of thousands of chassis, marine terminals, information technology equipment, and more. Despite this rapid growth of America's trade volumes, the liner industry has provided and continues to provide ample ship capacity to serve the needs of the trade.
As the volume of trade has grown, more ships and bigger, more efficient ships have been deployed. However, unlike aviation, there's not a significant ship congestion issue in the U.S. harbors like there is in aviation. There is the issue of continuing to assure adequate dredging of U.S. ports that need dredging. In this regard, the World Shipping Council fully supports the AAPA's efforts to ensure that the Federal Government continues this important function.
The issue of congestion, however, really arises once the maritime leg of the transportation is over and the container must move through and out of the marine terminal onto the land side infrastructure of the country's highways and railroads or vice versa. The first constraint is land, which there's not much we can do about it, except to manage the operations in the restricted land as efficiently as possible. The second constraint is the need to fully adopt and implement the use of best technologies and practices in our marine terminals, an issue which Mr. Miniace will deal with in more detail.
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The third constraint is inadequate connections between port and intermodal facilities and the national highway system. I would refer you to the Federal Highway Administration's report on the inadequate roads connecting marine terminals and other freight facilities to the national highway system.
The fourth constraint is improving the connections between ports and railroads. As Congressman Horn mentioned, significant freight can be moved from the highways onto rail if efficient, reliable service can be provided and the Alameda Corridor project is a good example of the kind of innovative project that can make a difference. In this regard, we would encourage the Committee, when it considers what to do with the TEA-21 program, to put freight issues high on the issues that you would want to focus on, because both expanding intermodal connector roads to our freight facilities and ports, as well as using the flexibility that's been bred into the program and maybe made more flexible for the rail projects, like Alameda Corridor, would be appropriate investments.
In sum, there is no simple or single solution to these challenges, nor can a single program or statute address all that needs to be done or considered. But we all have a part in developing the solutions.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Thank you.
Mr. Miniace.
Mr. MINIACE. Good afternoon. My name is Joe Miniace, and I'm the President of the Pacific Maritime Association.
The membership of the Pacific Maritime Association consists of domestic ocean carriers, international ocean carriers and stevedores that operate in California, Oregon and Washington. The principal business of the PMA is to negotiate and administer maritime labor agreements with the ILGWU. I have submitted a written statement for the record, but in my remarks this afternoon, I want to give you a broader look at the essential issues regarding west coast port congestion, which we have a way, I believe, of resolving, without the expenditure of a single Federal dollar.
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The importance of West Coast ports is not in dispute. These ports are the gateway for waterborne commerce with Asia for virtually all of the United States. More than 60 percent of containerized cargo exports from the North Atlantic States and 90 percent from the north central States move by rail to west coast ports. For containerized cargo from Asia, 45 percent of the cargo destined for consumers in the North Atlantic States, and 95 percent for the Central and Mountain States move through these ports.
Despite substantial and continuous infrastructure investments at the ports, congestion is bad and getting worse. There are long lines of trucks trying to gain access to congested marine terminals, resulting in congestion on the freeways and on the roadways. Companies that import and export goods through West Coast ports experience supply chain disruptions and are unable to easily track their cargo movements. We've got to start dealing effectively with that congestion now, because it's projected that trade is going to triple through these ports by the year 2020.
The problem is, these ports do not have much if any available contiguous land remaining to handle the growth. There are, however, opportunities for the West Coast ports to meet the many challenges of future growth and address current congestion problems without, as I said earlier, Federal dollars. Simply utilizing existing technologies on the waterfront will substantially eliminate congestion of marine terminals and the nearby freeways, which will result in reducing pollution, and provide job security for waterfront workers, provide for efficient and extended utilization of the scarce port land and help to meet the demands of the anticipated growth in international trade.
A couple of examples. One would be an appointment system for truckers at marine terminals. A pickup and delivery of containers could be accomplished through an appointment system. The system would make use of existing data imaging technology and optical scanners for i.d. cards for security. The process of check-in would take a matter of seconds, minimizing trucker wait time and reducing terminal highway congestion and pollution while they're sitting in line waiting.
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The second would be terminal data input. That's the addition of a seamless data transfer system at the gate, in the yard and at the ship. Today, information does not flow seamlessly from one system to another without some human intervention. This is equivalent to having you re-key every document that you might find on the internet. It's inefficient, it's prone to error and it's a throwback to another era.
The third is an automated dispatch hall and a dedicated work force. This would eliminate the current practice of each day gathering workers at central locations within the harbor area, providing them with work assignments and then scattering them throughout the harbor area again to go to a particular job. This will result in increased productivity, a reduction in terminal congestion and improved safety conditions.
By the introduction of such existing technologies, we thus have the opportunity and the ability to relieve congestion, avert the very real crisis at our ports if we are willing to act now. In 1960, the ILGWU and the PMA created a partnership to introduce new cargo handling technology to bring containerization and intermodalism to the West Coast ports. We can and must reach a new agreement now to introduce to the West Coast ports the technology of today that is so desperately needed to deal with the serious congestion and growth problem we face.
I believe that through the collective bargaining process we can address our infrastructure need with existing technology which will ensure growth, job security and our future at the ports. Thank you very much.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Thank you.
Mr. Raymond.
Mr. RAYMOND. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and distinguished members of the Subcommittees.
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My name is Chuck Raymond, I am President and Chief Executive Officer of CSX Lines. I chair the Marine Transportation System National Advisory Council.
After graduating from Kings Point in 1965, and serving my three year obligation at sea, I put in 32 years on the land side of Sea Land, and we operated in 120 ports in 80 countries around the world, many of which have been faced with the same types of issues that we're discussing here today. My last responsibility was chief transportation officer and chief operations officer of the company, and we did build facilities in Oman and Hong Kong, South America and in North America, as well as other countries and continents around the world.
Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to present the Council's views on freight and passenger congest as it relates to our Nation's port and marine system. This is a timely and exceptionally important topic for discussion and I'm delighted to be here with you today.
The ultimate goal of the Marine Transportation System National Advisory Council is a fully integrated national intermodal transportation system as we've talked about here today, a system that offers the broadest possible range of safe, reliable and cost-competitive transportation options. Our Nation's marine transport system is an underutilized natural resource that can, if properly managed, solve many of our existing and future congestion problems. With international trade expected to double or triple by the year 2020, improving the efficiency and capacity of our domestic transportation network is essential to the Nation's economic well-being. Encouraging cooperation across the modes, along with maritime stakeholders, including Government, business and labor leaders, to create a truly multi-modal transportation system, is the solution to the impending congestion solution we have talked about.
The demand on our national transportation system is growing so rapidly that we will never be able to build ourselves physically or financially out of the approaching capacity crunch. In the coastal corridors in particular, heavy overload is especially likely this decade. Federal Highway Administration data indicates average annual increases in highway freight miles of 3 to 4 percent, which compound annually. At the same time, trends in ocean shipping are toward larger vessel hull ports. This concentrates cargoes in fewer ports, placing greater strain on port infrastructure, rail and highway systems for the movement of cargo, as Mr. Hess and Admiral Herberger have testified before me.
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Whether or not these major hull ports that we've been talking about become reality, existing infrastructure cannot handle this projected growth in freight movements and there are clearly limits to how much we can increase capacity on interstates and on our rail lines. For example, it's estimated that by 2020, there will be an increase of 11,000 40 foot containers each day on both coasts. While rail may be able to handle an additional 1,000 or so containers absent a viable waterborne option the regaining 10,000 containers will have to be moved by truck. This will mean an additional truck every 270 yards on Interstate I-95 between Boston and Miami.
However, while surface transportation systems are now facing overload, waterborne transportation has under or unused capacity. The expanded use of the marine transportation system has obvious benefits. For example, an ocean-going trailer barge often carries over 400 trailers. In general, waterborne transportation is the most economic of all the modes, and on a ton mile and TEU basis, barging is more than twice as energy efficient as rail and more than 10 times more so than trucking.
Finally, congestion relieved on main corridors will reduce business costs related to transportation delays. Marine transportation is also environmentally friendly. Vessels are less polluting on a per container basis and have far few accidental spills or collisions than surface vehicles.
There are several local marine transportation initiatives being developed that I believe deserve your Committee's and Subcommittees' attention, initiatives designed to use the water option to augment freight movements and deliver goods more efficiently. For example, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has completed a feasibility study for a program to grow port facility output at their already cramped harbor environment. They plan to feed containers to remote locations in New England and the Mid-Atlantic States by barge, thereby alleviating congestion at New Jersey container terminals and highways and on the I-95 corridor.
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The inland network, once fully utilized, will have extensive ramifications, both regionally and globally. Dwell times at terminals will decrease. Instead of the five or six days that it takes today to get a container out of the New Jersey yard by rail or truck, it will take only one or two days by barge. On a broader level, the Port Authority is seeking a cooperative agreement with the Port of Rotterdam, which as has been testified before has extensive experience in moving cargo by water mode.
On the West Coast, there's another example where the Port of Oakland is planning a high speed ferry system to deliver UPS and FedEx packages from the Oakland airport to the San Francisco International Airport. The trip across the Bay takes less time, arrives on schedule and creates significantly less pollution.
The innovative uses of water only underscore what many of us have said today, that the marine transportation system offers us unlimited opportunities for growth, but it needs to be nurtured. ISTEA and TEA-21 correctly provided a national development strategy for our surface transportation system. I respectfully suggest that our marine system requires similar attention.
The national strategy will require resources and the Marine Transportation System National Advisory Council is eager to work with you to develop a plan that will meet our transportation needs and level the modal playing field. Thank you very much.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Thank you.
Mr. Spinosa.
Mr. SPINOSA. Good afternoon, Chairman LoBiondo, Chairman Duncan and members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Thank you for the opportunity to share our views on the subject of seaport congestion. My name is James Spinosa, I proudly serve as President of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, ILWU, representing 60,000 working men and women, including longshore workers on the West Coast, warehouse workers in ports in surrounding areas, and marine division, consisting of tug, barge and ferry workers.
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I have over 40 years of experience in the maritime industry and I hope I have some ideas that will be helpful to the Committee as you grapple with the Nation's transportation congestion problems.
The key to ensuring the unimpeded flow of cargo through West Coast, specifically the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, is to recognize we have a problem. Almost 9 percent of America's gross domestic product, GDP, results from West Coast imports-exports. We simply cannot allow port congestion to threaten this.
Why is this congestion occurring? What can we all do to alleviate it? It has been suggested in some circles that implementation of new technologies is the magic cure-all, the silver bullet, if you will, that will solve all of our congestion problems. There are those who believe that new technologies will produce efficiencies in container throughput of over 50 percent. Unfortunately, this is simply not true.
The real problem with technology integration is the lack of industry standardization. Competing interests and inappropriate technology applications all have contributed to the inability to maximize container throughput. Technology is only one part of the problem. The real port congestion problems stem from the fact that at our largest, most productive ports, we have run out of space. Space has become our single most precious commodity. Rethinking the way we have traditionally done business is the only way we are going to head off even more serious congestion problems in the future.
Port authorities must take a more active role in setting rules and must shift their emphasis from that of property leasing agents to one of port managers. Large retail corporations importing thousands of containers monthly must understand that the practice of warehousing containers on marine terminals must cease. The reason that customers incur demurrage or penalty charges after five days is to encourage them to get their containers off dock. The practice of allowing certain large clients free time cannot be allowed to continue.
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With every single square foot being considered essential space, we are still storing empty chassis, empty containers and non-essential and ancillary equipment in areas that should be solely reserved for containerized cargo. In one major mega terminal in the Port of Los Angeles, over 50 percent of available space is being utilized by non-cargo applications. Container terminals must run on a 7 day, 24 hour schedule, especially concentrating on processing containers out of the yards and onto the streets and freeways during nighttime hours. Presently, upwards of 85 percent of all containerized cargos are being shunted out through terminal gates during the daytime hours. The ILWU has in the past and will continue in the future to provide manpower during off-peak hours, 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. However, the union cannot force customers and shippers to pick up their containers during these optimal times.
It is critical that stakeholders recognize this, understand it, and begin to shift their operations to off-peak container retrieval. How we utilize our existing port container terminals is very important. In the past, we were able to manage existing port lands without having to consider space constraints. This is a problem that must be thoroughly understood. Take into account the evolution of events that led up to it. The solution lies in an holistic approach where all the stakeholders, employers, labor, shippers, truckers, port authorities and customers come together, dissect the problem and create workable solutions.
Infrastructure needs must be identified and implemented. The relationship between the stakeholders, both public and private, must be recognized. Two primary problems face West Coast ports, dredging and traffic congestion. Dredging of vital waterways such as the Columbia River must occur to accommodate larger vessels now under construction. The survival of San Francisco Bay depends on its ability to handle these newer and larger vessels.
The Oakland Bay Bridge delays are legendary. The Seattle-Tacoma area of Washington State enjoys the third worst traffic in America. Illustrative of these infrastructure quagmires is the Port of Long Beach. For over 10 years, Long Beach has been pleading for improvements to the one single freeway that acts as both the only artery into and out of the port, as well as the only citizen access into Long Beach. The 710 freeway, known as the Long Beach Freeway, is a small, six-lane artery, three lanes each way that has not been significantly improved for decades. Yet the Port of Long Beach has seen truck traffic double and triple every couple of years. The result is a freeway choked with traffic between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., unable to accommodate residents and visitors because of the unbelievable bumper to bumper five mile truck congestion.
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Those of us here today understand the need for successful import policy. Yet we must also take into account the citizens and the residents whose homes and neighborhoods have been negatively impacted. Illustrating the holistic supply chain concept, the off-peak nighttime pickup of containers would go a long way to help solve this. Infrastructure could be addressed by this and other solutions. And most certainly, the implementation of technology alone is not the answer.
In conclusion, in 1960, the introduction of containerization was agreed to by the ILWU through collective bargaining. The mechanization and modernization agreement, also known as the M&M agreement, between the ILWU and the PMA, was an historic pact between labor and management that led to a true evolution in cargo handling, positively impacting economies worldwide. The union is committed to dialogue with stakeholders in order to answer the challenges facing us throughout the new millennium.
I would like to thank you for inviting me to testify today, and the ILWU stands ready to work with the Committee to address congestion problems in our seaports, and I'm prepared to answer any questions the Committee may have. Thank you.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Thank you.
Mr. Cashman.
Mr. CASHMAN. Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, my name is George Cashman and I am the Director of the Port Division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. It's a pleasure to appear before you today.
I'm here on behalf of General President James P. Hoffa and the Teamster drivers of the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, New York, New Jersey, Seattle, Vancouver and three ports in Florida. I'm also here on behalf of over 40,000 non-union container haulers who in the near future will be Teamsters members. Tomorrow wouldn't be soon enough.
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Today, I bring to you the perspective of America's port drivers. Each day, drivers wait anywhere from one to six hours just to get inside the port gates. Yesterday, drivers waited over four hours in lines over three miles long to get into the port of Savannah, Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I have pictures of these lines for the Committee which I have provided to you and I would ask to have entered into the record.
These lines are not just in Savannah. During the most recent peak season in the Port of New York and New Jersey, drivers waited four hours to pick up a chassis, only to get in another line to pick up a container. But port drivers are not the cause of port congestion. They should not be held responsible for it. What causes port congestion? Well, the severe lack of roadworthy chassis is a cause. The lack of sufficient port gates and staff to operate them is a cause. The lack of sufficient space in the ports is a cause. The port authorities, terminal operators and steamship lines' refusal to provide extended gate hours and the customers' refusal to keep warehouses open to accept delivery of containers during non-peak times is definitely a cause.
Mr. Chairman, in addition to correcting these problems, port authorities should mandate that port drivers be paid for waiting time. Trucking companies often require customers to pay for waiting time when a driver has to wait at the customer's warehouse because it is not prepared to receive a delivery. If steamship lines were required to pay truck drivers for waiting time at the port, the steamship lines would call on ports during non-peak times and thus avoid vessel bunching.
Port authorities should also extend gate hours and encourage major port customers to open their warehouses for non-peak deliveries. If customers refuse to cooperate, surcharges could be added to containers that are transported during peak times. Port authorities should also increase the number of gates for drivers to enter and exit the terminals, and provide an adequate number of trained clerks to process drivers through these gates. In addition, port authorities and terminal operators should use off-dock container yards. When a container is unloaded from a ship, it could be placed immediately on a chassis and moved through expedited gates to a designated off-dock facility.
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Finally, and I can't emphasize this enough, the steamship lines should be required to properly maintain their chassis. The steamship lines' practice in some ports are sending chassis to off-dock facilities for repair and maintenance, another cost cutting measure, must be stopped. In other ports, terminal operators understaff maintenance and repair facilities. The off-dock repair facilities are not using trained and experienced labor, and as a result, the chassis are not roadworthy.
Moreover, when the chassis return from the off-dock facilities, they are not inspected. It's a matter of public safety, Mr. Chairman. The DOT, the Coast Guard, highway patrols and port authorities should work together to enforce chassis maintenance and repair regulations against the shipping lines within the port, instead of waiting outside the gates to bust the drivers.
Mr. Chairman, I would be remiss in my obligation to the drivers of our ports if I did not mention the substandard working conditions which they are forced to endure. Port drivers earn poverty level wages, $7.50 to $8.50 an hour. They do not receive any health or retirement benefits. Every year, drivers are forced to work hundreds of hours without pay. And despite the protective regulations which prohibit these practices, drivers are saddled with overweight and often improperly labeled containers loaded with hazardous substances. As the facts show, port drivers are the least able to bear the costs associated with port congestion. It is only because they are the least organized work force in this industry that they have been made to bear these costs for so long.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters will no longer tolerate these conditions. All men and women working in the ports of the United States should be paid for waiting time. They should receive a living wage, and they should receive health care and retirement benefits. Most importantly, just as you and I, they too should enjoy the privilege of a safe working environment.
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Mr. Chairman, it is fashionable to advocate high-tech computerization as the solution to port congestion. We at the Teamsters Union believe, however, the solution lies with proper staffing, availability of roadworthy chassis and off-port container yards. If steamship lines and terminal operators were required to pay truck drivers for waiting time, these problems could be solved tomorrow.
Mr. Chairman, thank you again for the opportunity to address these important issues.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Thank you, Mr. Cashman.
To our panel, thank you very much. Some very interesting statements were made.
I have a number of questions. Mr. Cashman, what do you think about Mr. Miniace's suggestion about an appointment system as far as feasibility and that working?
Mr. CASHMAN. Well, I don't agree with it. I think that the appointment system would work if we were open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, certainly that would ease some of the congestion. But there seems to be reluctance on the part of the ports and the shipping lines to open these ports 24 hours a day. I think you will see long lines just like you're experiencing today.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Mr. Miniace, what's your comment about what seems to be at least a part of the solution for extended hours and the apparent lack of utilization of hours past normal working times, as Mr. Cashman and Mr. Spinosa have said?
Mr. MINIACE. I think those are actually pretty valid points, that the extended hours could actually be a big help. And what has been said and what has been written in the statements that I've read is that all the parties have to be unanimous, I guess, in putting together a system that would work fairly for everybody.
So that is a piece of the problem and a piece of the puzzle that could solve the problem.
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Mr. LOBIONDO. How do we move toward that solution?
Mr. MINIACE. I believe we move by simply sitting and talking and actually, we've started to do a little bit of that on the West Coast already, through the University of California Long Beach. We have a system, a town hall forum that has been started. These issues have been brought up. Shippers are a key piece of that, warehouses are a key piece of it, truckers are a key piece of it, the terminals are a key piece of it, and the union workers are a key piece of it. So we all have to give something there in order to make it work, absolutely, 100 percent.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Well, it sounds as if there's a least general agreement that this is a direction, a positive movement. I understand about consensus from all interested parties needing to be there, but I would strongly encourage that we look in this direction. Because as we try to understand it from a Federal standpoint, we know that the free marketplace works best. But gridlock is going to overtake us here soon, you will see suggestions coming probably from Transportation and Infrastructure, maybe the entire Congress, on ways to go this way.
I know Mr. Young, the Chairman of the full Committee, is very interested in seeing movement for relief of congestion in all areas, whether it be surface transportation, maritime or aviation. So I would strongly encourage that.
Mr. Cashman, the chassis situation, who has oversight over that safety now?
Mr. CASHMAN. I didn't hear you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. LOBIONDO. The chassis situation that you referred to, who has oversight? Does DOT have oversight over that now?
Mr. CASHMAN. Well, they do once it exits the port. But there isn't anybody enforcing them to comply while they're on the ports. So it's enforcement after the fact.
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Mr. LOBIONDO. So if there's a safety problem with a chassis that's used with a container on it, it happens after it leaves the port?
Mr. CASHMAN. It happens on the roadway.
Mr. LOBIONDO. And then whose responsibility is that?
Mr. CASHMAN. It then becomes the driver's. Once it's been handed off to the driver, the driver is responsible for the chassis. There lies the problem. They're being fined, for the chassis that they have no control over. They don't have a choice. They wait four or five hours to get in the port, in some cases, an hour to get out of the port. By the time they move the vehicle along the highway, and haven't really had time to check it properly, because of the congestion they're pushing them out as quickly as they can, they suffer the cost of those violations themselves.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Is there a predominant lease operator or company owned when it comes to port drivers? Are they primarily lease operators?
Mr. CASHMAN. No, not to my knowledge. There are many, many independent owner operators who own a vehicle, in some cases there are some companies in the ports. But not many. But it's primarily independent owner operators and they're earning, as I said earlier in my statement, $7, $8, $9 an hour.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Who typically do they contract with, a shipper?
Mr. CASHMAN. They contract with a broker or a trucking company.
Mr. LOBIONDO. On a flat, per-load basis?
Mr. CASHMAN. Right. It's a flat, per-load basis. In some cases, Mr. Chairman, $40 or $50 a load, after waiting three or four hours for the load.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Mr. Spinosa, you commented about the idea of utilization of more hours in the day. Do you have any other suggestions for maritime terminal management change that would have the largest impact on improving the efficiency of the ports beyond the hours of operation?
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Mr. SPINOSA. I think that the port is a very complicated place in today's world. Obviously, extended hours would just be a great help, and I talked to that. I'd just like to give you an example of what that means in turnaround time or possible turnaround times for truckers and companies waiting for their freight.
The average amount of moves between 8:00 and 5:00 at the gate systems in the ports, and I'll take the port of L.A. and Long Beach, averages around 2,400 moves in that day shift. That's almost a truck every two minutes going in and out of the facilities. That's in the peak time. That's in hours that we find ourselves most congested on the highways, and we're still doing turnaround times around 2,400, trying to beat the volumes there.
Extended gate, and moving into second shifts and third shifts that are available, if we had the cooperation with companies keeping the warehouses open, we would be able to double that amount of volume, if not triple it, in our ports. Which means that we would be able to meet the demand that our companies and those out there that are waiting for their cargoes to come to their doorsteps will be met, could be met. We're talking about doubling and tripling the volume of containers coming through our ports, but we're still utilizing one shift, primarily, to get the cargo on and off the port.
Now, when you move to extended shifts, we have to understand that that is a key operative word, in my opinion, on working the waterfront and keeping it moving and keeping the arteries open. Vessels working one, two and three shifts have to have space available for them on the terminals to put their cargo. Congestion on the terminals is almost as bad and at times worse than congestion outside the terminal.
So extended shifts, proper control, traffic control, and the continued meetings with management and all those that are involved in this expediting of these cargoes has to be on a continual basis so that we can plan the rail, we can plan the vessels and we can plan yard operations to meet the demand. Once we can get the arteries open outside the facilities, I think that will be a big move forward in meeting our demand. As we've worked through the PMA for the last couple of years trying to address these problems, we haven't had much success in getting them to help us or help the industry move forward in keeping those companies, getting their warehouses open so we can relieve the problem.
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The problem is pointed in-house at the terminal level. It's much more than there. It is major there, the congestion is there, the growth is there. It's like putting 10 pounds in a 5 pound bag. It just doesn't work unless you can unclog the arteries and keep everything moving. Otherwise what happens in terminal life is you wind up double and triple handling the same containers you get to a container that has to be delivered because of the volume of space that's available.
So it takes traffic control, it takes coordination and I think we have a lot of work to do in those areas to continue to move forward. We support dialogue around those lines.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Are you involved with current dialogue with PMA?
Mr. SPINOSA. Yes. In 1999, we entered into an agreement that we would address the industry's needs. We have now put two committees together on both sides, we have a committee. We've had half a dozen meetings talking about technology, talking about all the various problems within our industry. We support that dialogue. We will continue to move forward along those lines.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Mr. Miniace, who else is involved besides the Longshoremen? Are the Teamsters involved in that dialogue as well?
Mr. MINIACE. No, sir, the dialogue that he's speaking of is an agreement that we made in the 1999 negotiations with the talk of the PMA and the Longshoremen over our own issues.
Mr. LOBIONDO. I've got a lot more questions. Mr. Filner, I'll turn to you.
Mr. FILNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this hearing. It's an important subject to our whole economy. I thank the gentlemen for your testimony. I learned quite a bit. I know it's been a long day, but there's no truth to rumor that we decided to test the 24 hour operation by keeping you here that length of time.
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[Laughter.]
Mr. FILNER. When I was listening to the first three statements, it was hard for me to think that there was actually somebody working at any of the places you're involved with. There were no people mentioned. There was a lot of talk about automation. In fact, one of your suggestions sounded as if, heaven forbid, that anybody should congregate, more than one person at a place, where they can talk to each other. You want them all at their own homes and calling in so nobody will ever talk to one another, I guess.
But there are people involved here. And as I heard the testimony, Mr. Spinosa and Mr. Cashman representing the Longshoremen and the Teamsters, it seems to me very common sense suggestions for dealing with some very real problems. I'd like to ask you about them, but they seem very common sense to me. If you've got a space problem, you know, open up for more time and move the stuff that you store and you're allowing to have on your docks free, I mean, you've got space. There's congestion, open up more time and you alleviate that. The first thing to do in a problem like energy is conserve. Here you've got some common sense ideas. It sounds like to me we should just do them.
By the way, I'm not sure I want to help you do that, because I represent San Diego, California. We're trying to build a real port there, and we'll soon have direct rail connections, I hope, to the East. But as long as you say congestion in Long Beach and L.A., I have an argument to move people to San Diego. So I'm not sure I want to help you solve it.
But could you comment, any of the first three, Mr. Miniace, or any of you? I mean, you commented on the 24 hour a day thing, you said there was some merit to that. But there was a whole series of things. It looked to me very common sense as to whether the port gates are staffed, whether there's the gate hours, vessel bunching, container stacking, they're all very practical things, that if we did them, if I didn't have space in my house and somebody was storing stuff on my porch, I'd say get rid of it, then I'd have some space.
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Could you comment on those things?
Mr. LOBIONDO. Excuse me, I'm going to interrupt for just a moment. We've been alerted that probably in a few minutes, we're going to have a series of five votes that are called.
Mr. FILNER. This will be my last question.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Okay. I don't want to stymie the questions, I just want to alert the panelists that we're in for some votes being called, which is likely to result in probably an hour's worth of votes.
Mr. FILNER. I suspect we should wrap up the hearing with these questions.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Okay, so if you can kind of keep your answers condensed, it would be appreciated. Thank you.
Mr. FILNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MINIACE. Yes, sir, I will try to answer your question. There are a lot of practical solutions. There's a lot of practical solutions not only made today but also some that are not in our back yard, and one of which is, I stated that technology is the cornerstone. I believe technology is the cornerstone to those solutions. And when you look at—
Mr. FILNER. If you trained your guys more adequately, I mean, if you have the standardized technology, why isn't that the first thing you think of instead of the last thing? That's what I just can't figure out from your testimony.
Mr. MINIACE. Actually, that is one of the things that is in my testimony that we do have to increase training. We would like to have a standardized work force for people who know their job on a regular basis, on an everyday basis. But when you look at the ports, if you would—
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Mr. FILNER. I didn't say standardized work force, boy, that's amazing, the terminology. I said standardized technology use. You want to standardize the people. Why can't you have the people do some work creatively and standardize their methodology? You can be more efficient there, rather than standardize the work force.
Mr. MINIACE. Our cargo flow to our terminals is about one-third of what the cargo flow is through the terminals of Hong Kong and Singapore. So with our land that we have today, we do not have a land problem if we utilize the technology that is in fact being utilized at ports around the world. When we do that, then the cargoes will flow in a more efficient manner, we will have less congestion on the terminal, and the truckers will not be waiting in the long lines that people have been talking about.
In fact, the turn time in Hong Kong is 30 to 45 minutes for a driver, which we, if we could accomplish here, then the driver is not sitting in those lines, they would be making the turns and be able to make a living wage which I sympathize with, by the way.
Mr. FILNER. In Hong Kong, what are the hours there?
Mr. MINIACE. They're 24-7.
Mr. RAYMOND. They are 24 hours a day, sir.
Mr. FILNER. Thank you. There might be an answer there.
Thank you.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Ms. Brown?
Ms. BROWN. Thank you. I have a couple of quick questions. Mr. Miniace, do the agent terminal operators charge demurrage or penalty charges after five days in order to give an incentive for shippers to pick up their cargoes? How does this compare with the charges in the West Coast ports?
Mr. MINIACE. I'm sorry, I do not know what the demurrage charges are in the Asian ports.
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Mr. RAYMOND. Perhaps I can address that, Congresswoman. We operate at the world's largest terminal, in Hong Kong, the largest building in the world, in Hong Kong. It's over 9 million square feet, it operates 365 days a year, and there are severe penalties for not taking the cargo when it comes off the vessel.
Ms. BROWN. I don't understand, why don't we charge?
Mr. RAYMOND. Hong Kong is a port that's grown tremendously over the last 20 years, as you know, I'm sure. It's very congested, but very efficient. The free market system works very effectively here in the U.S. Customers put leverage on the ocean carrier to give them more free time. The ocean carrier then turns to the port operator or the port authority and gets more free time and then the boxes sit on the facility for five or six days or more.
Ms. BROWN. I'm trying to find out why they're sitting there. We don't have an incentive for the shippers to move it?
Mr. RAYMOND. Generally not.
Ms. BROWN. I'm confused. Maybe somebody else can answer that question for me.
Mr. FILNER. Ms. Brown, I think we should ask him to make sure he reads the transcript of his answer. He hasn't made any more sense than—I mean, I can't imagine negotiating with you. She asked a question about why the stuff comes back without penalty?
Mr. RAYMOND. Customers use the container, we're talking about the containerized business now, they use the container as storage, which was pointed out, I think, by Mr. Spinosa.
Ms. BROWN. But is that contributing to the congestion problem?
Mr. RAYMOND. Yes, it is. The reason the problem exists is—
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Ms. BROWN. You all will have to help me out. I don't understand.
Mr. RAYMOND. I'd like to try to help you out, Congresswoman. This is an exceptionally competitive industry. When the carriers try to impose a charge on the shipper for free time, or demurrage, it is so competitive that those prices usually don't stick very well. So the carriers who do try to charge it will lose business to those who don't charge it. Because of the competitive nature of the business, it's very difficult to make those prices stick. It's just a matter of the competition that's out there.
Ms. BROWN. Does someone else want to respond?
Mr. SPINOSA. I'll take a shot at this. I think as I said in my statement, what's happened and continues to happen down on the piers is that they are warehousing containers down there. They have done this for many, many years, through the break bulk years and now continues through the containerization period, where some containers can be on a facility from anywhere from 5 days to 14 or 15 days or longer, because of the agreements, the contractual agreements that they have with the shippers and whatever to get their cargoes through their terminals and on their vessels .
So that creates a major problem. As we all try to adjust congestion, we know that a box that's been on the terminal for that period of time probably has to be removed. That's one of the containers that we talked about earlier that may have to be shifted half a dozen times to make a move available to a trucker that's coming in to pick up cargo that has to be delivered today. So yes, it goes on, and it's a major problem. But it's one of the problems, and I would hope that we address that problem.
Ms. BROWN. Let me try to ask this again. Why do the truckers have to wait so long to pick up their loads from the ports, or the railroad or whatever, this intermodal, it's not working? Why is it not working?
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Mr. CASHMAN. The port facilities are understaffed. There are not enough trained checkers and clerks. Just in Savannah, $4 million was spent on a new computerized gate system. The only thing that resulted from that is that they now have five times as many containers sitting in the yard and longer delays. So the computerized system didn't help at all.
We need a common sense approach to this before we put billions of dollars into this legislative proposal. We need to train people, keep these ports open 24 hours a day, stop this competitive race to the bottom in terms of not charging demurrage charges. Allowing the shippers to use these containers as warehouses is contributing greatly to the congestion at the ports. Somebody has to do something about it soon. It will not get better, it will only get worse.
Ms. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Well, we've heard a lot today. I think we'll probably wrap it up at this point.
I think it's probably safe to say that this isn't the end of our trying to look at this issue and help be a facilitator. This is one area that I have a little bit of real world experience with, and I know in my real world days that we gave up doing business at the port because we couldn't afford to have drivers wait. We pulled the plug on it, and it's a supply and demand issue. But there always seemed to be somebody that was willing to come in and wait longer hours and do it.
I know about point to point rates, I know about the tension, I know about chassis, I know about overweight fines. I know about a lot of these interactions. I also know that the best solution is going to come from collective dialogue with people working together. I hope that you can see that we have a real interest in trying to work as facilitators, as members of Congress, with Transportation and Infrastructure, in a bipartisan way that there are suggestions that we can help with that will move this along. I am very interested to hear about it, from Coast Guard and Maritime, and I'm sure from Chairman Duncan, I'm sure from Water Resources, I speak for him as well as Chairman Young and the full Committee, we're likely to take a deep breath on what we've heard here today, what's been submitted here today and I feel quite sure that I'll be talking to Chairman Duncan about revisiting this issue in the near future to see what progress is being made and what additional suggestions and ideas we can help advance through this Committee.
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So your being here today was extremely helpful. We appreciate it very much and if there is nothing else, the Committee stands adjourned. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 5:30 p.m., the subcommittees were adjourned, to reconvene at the call of their respective Chairs.]
AIRPORT RUNWAY CONSTRUCTION CHALLENGES
THURSDAY, MAY 24, 2001
House of Representatives, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Aviation, Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m. in
room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John L. Mica
[chairman of the subcommittee} presiding.
Mr. MICA. The hearing of the House Aviation Subcommittee will come to order.
We delayed for a minute there because we thought we might have an immediate vote, but they are going to do it after one-minutes. So, we are going to proceed with the hearing. The order of business will be first opening statements. I will recognize myself and then we will recognize the other Members as they come to the hearing this morning.
The morning's hearing deals with the question of airport runway construction challenges that we are facing. I would like to proceed this morning a little bit out of the usual order. With all due respect to our FAA Administrator Garvey, we are going to let the airport executives go first this morning to talk about the specific difficulties they may have had with the runway planning, construction and approval process.
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I believe that proceeding in this order will help our subcommittee and also frame today's discussion and provide us with a much more productive hearing. So, I appreciate her assistance in rearranging that order.
Reducing congestion and airline delays is in fact the greatest challenge facing our subcommittee. Our airports and our airways, in fact, are at their limits.
The FAA's airport capacity benchmark report, which was released last month and we heard about before this subcommittee confirms our very worst suspicions that in fact our airports are being called upon to handle more flights than they can possibly accommodate with their existing infrastructure under even the best of weather conditions.
That situation at seven of our nation's most delayed airports will continue to worsen over the next ten years. This subcommittee is engaged in a number of efforts to address the pending crisis that we are all part of.
We recently approved H.R.1407, which will grant airlines limited anti-trust immunity to discuss scheduling for the sole purpose of reducing some of those delays. This legislation will provide immediate, although temporary relief from the delays that we may experience this summer.
Too many of FAA's key ATC, air traffic control, modernization projects are unfortunately years behind schedule. Our subcommittee will continue to monitor FAA's progress on those projects until all of these critical elements that are necessary to make our system work more efficiently and effectively from a technological standpoint are successfully developed and deployed.
AIR-21 created several programs that encouraged the airlines to better utilize existing unused capacity at reliever airports throughout our air traffic system. We will continue to work with the Bush Administration and the Appropriations Committee to implement the programs of AIR-21.
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Our subcommittee is also spearheading efforts to ease passenger frustrations. We have been working with the FAA airports and CNN Airport Network to provide up-to-the-minute airport delay information, which we hope to have in place next month at 1600 gates in 35 major airports.
We have also created a task force of airline consumer service executives to address some of the passenger service issues that we so frequently hear about.
All these, of course, are much needed efforts. However, the only way to solve the long-term problem of congestion and delays is to in fact expand runway capacity at our most heavily used airports.
Due to the complex schedules and extensive hub and spoke operations that we have, a few minutes of delay at even one of these airports can have a disastrous rippling effect across the entire aviation system.
As we have seen on many occasions, capacity problems at even one major airport can spell scheduling disaster nationwide. Unfortunately, we have not built enough runway and we don't have enough runway capacity to keep pace with air travel demand.
Only six of our most congested airports have managed to complete new runway projects over the last ten years. We are all frustrated by the amount of time it takes to build a new runway. It just takes too long, we have found.
The actual construction phase of a new runway can in fact be completed in a relatively short timeframe. However, airports routinely require ten years to navigate the complex maze of rules, regulations and requirements associated with the planning and approval process.
In many of these cases it takes much longer. Eighteen of the top 31 airports have identified new runway projects that they hope to complete by 2010. They will need more than a little luck to meet their current schedules.
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For example, Boston's Logan Airport, their proposed runway has been under environmental review for six years, while the Seattle-Tacoma Airport completed the EIS for its third runway in 1997. An additional analysis, which has been required, has continued to delay construction permits from the federal government.
To satisfy the environmental requirements alone, each of these airports must comply with 28 Federal laws, 12 Executive Orders, and hundreds of Federal regulations. They must coordinate the dozens of Federal, State, and local agencies, including the FAA, EPA, Fish and Wildlife Service, the Park Service, the Corps of Engineers, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, State Historic Preservation offices and State air and water quality agencies, just to name a few.
New runways must often overcome local political opposition. No project will ever be built without reaching a local consensus. Groups opposed to airport expansion unfortunately have used the complicated review process, not to protect the environment, but simply to stall runway construction.
We must find an approach that balances the need to expedite the construction of new runways while also preserving local input and also protecting our environment.
Today's hearing will focus on many of the specific problems encountered when attempting to build new runways. We will also discuss proposals from both the FAA and airports to accelerate the planning and approval process.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today. I am pleased at this juncture to recognize the Ranking Member of our Subcommittee, Mr. Lipinski.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing today on the challenges associated with constructing runways. The congestion that is plaguing our national aviation system is reaching crisis proportions. It is evident that increased demand for air travel is pushing the limits of our aviation infrastructure, including the limits of our air traffic control equipment and our airports' runways.
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Airport runway capacity has not by any means kept pace with the increase in aviation operations. Only a handful of new runways have been build in the past decade. Yet, commercial, passenger and cargo operations have increased dramatically.
There is a shortfall in airport runway capacity today and it will only get worse in the near future. Given the average time of 10 to 15 years that it takes to build a runway today, airports simply are not able to build new runways quickly enough to meet the growing aviation demands of the next decade.
Obviously something needs to be done. Streamlining the Federal environmental review process offers hope for shaving off some of the time that it takes to move a runway construction project closer to reality.
Obviously, Congress does not want to do anything that will weaken or otherwise diminish our nation's environmental laws. Streamlining does not mean weakening or changing the environmental review process. Rather environmental streamlining is aimed at improving the environmental review process by coordinating and prioritizing Federal and State review of airport runway projects.
It does not harm the environment or even the integrity of the environmental review process. Rather, it provides a tremendous benefit by moving critical construction projects forward without unnecessary and bureaucratic delays.
Unfortunately, lengthy and duplicated environmental reviews are only one of the many obstacles faced by airports planning to build new runways. Therefore, environmental streamlining is only part of the solution.
In my opinion, local opposition to airport expansion is the biggest obstacle that airports face. Obviously, quality of life issues in surrounding communities are very important and airports need to make sure that communities are heavily involved in the planning and decision-making process.
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I believe airports are already doing this to a great extent. Unfortunately, there are some groups that will oppose any and all airport improvements regardless of whether or not the airport has adequately addressed quality of life issues. We cannot let this stubborn yet vocal minority delay or worse, block runway projects that are critical to our national aviation system.
There must be something that the FAA or even Congress can do to ensure that runway projects critical to our national aviation system are not hamstrung by local opposition groups that do not have real concerns but are simply aiming to kill the project.
I look forward to hearing from our knowledgeable witnesses here today. I look forward to working with you, Mr. Chairman, on moving some of the challenges to constructing new runways out of the way.
Thank you. I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman. I am pleased to recognize others.
Mr. Hayes.
Mr. HAYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, appreciate your holding this hearing today. It is very important for commerce and for aviation.
I would like to speak to a couple of issues and welcome our panel. Madam Administrator, we appreciate having you here today. Congressman Boswell and I are a flying team. We utilize the air space. It is a little less crowded at Fort Dodge Flight Service than it is at Leesburg.
But flying into Washington National, I would like to make a few comments, Mr. Chairman. Concrete is important. Those in the asphalt business know asphalt is important as well. If we could take the weather from Phoenix and transfer it to San Francisco when the fog rolls in and a few things like that, it would be nice for the congestion problem.
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But reality is that the system has some opportunities and some problems. I took one of my legislative people to National the other night when we had that massive thunderstorm so she could get an idea of what sort of capabilities we have with equipment. But again, how the human element, judgment, coordination and cooperation are involved.
They do a remarkable job of being professionals, the men and women that man the system there. The Chairman took us out to Leesburg several weeks ago where weather coordination is done. So, there are a number of things that we can do.
I would like to see us build more runways, but higher levels of training for our pilots. If we had the level of professionalism all across the country that we have here at national and in other busy areas, we could do things with spacing that would provide more immediate assistance to the congestion problem.
There are only so many holes in the air. So, when we build more runways, we are still creating problems with air space. But through more coordination, more spacing changes, again with safety foremost in our minds, I feel like there are a number of incredible opportunities that can help the flying public in terms of commerce, tourism and everything else.
So, I welcome your visit here today. I would like to identify myself and particularly my copilot, Congressman Boswell, as ones who are vitally interested and involved, from Flight Level 310 to the ground, we will be glad to help you. At 310 and up, we will have to talk to the airlines. But thank you very much for being here. It is a very important hearing.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman.
I now recognize the Ranking Member of the full committee, Mr. Oberstar.
Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a very important hearing. I appreciate your role and that of Mr. Lipinski in marshalling the witnesses and the subject matter and our full committee Chairman for continuing to focus on congestion in transportation.
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The issue of delay in aviation is in its very essence, complex. It is difficult to deal with complexity. It doesn't lend itself readily to a 30-second explanation or a quick fix. Airline scheduling, capacity of runways, capacity of the air traffic control system all are among the principal factors in questions of delays.
The operations of aircraft in the enroute system and the terminal environment also are very complex, subject to sudden and unanticipated changes in weather that result in further delays.
The word ''challenge'' is often a euphemism for quality of life issues that produce opposition to runways, highways, port development, railroads, railroad locomotive engineer safety signals, and horns. All of these are quality of life issues. They do not have to be mutually exclusive, if Congress, the aviation sector, the communities, the States all get together to address the issues together.
Now, there are 18 runways planned at major airports between now and the next ten years. Those 18 runway projects, I totaled them all up, on the drawing boards, add up to 32.96, nearly 33 miles of the golden 50 miles we have been hearing about so much. If we just had these 50 miles of runway, all our problems would be solved, or most of them.
Well, we are three-fifths of the way there. Let's not just point fingers at the United States and wring our hands. Nine countries in the last 15 years, nine countries have had nine new runway projects.
So it is not just the United States that has problems, even in authoritarian countries like China, they have had difficulties, although China for sure doesn't have the Environmental Impact Statement process. They don't have the American Trial Lawyers Association to defend individuals. They just come in, stomp on people and move them out. We are not about to do that.
I am for reforms that will speed up the environmental process involving State and Federal reviews and doing those reviews concurrently rather than consecutively. But I cannot stand for so-called streamlining. That is a thinly disguised cover for limiting rights and circumventing due process.
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The definition of ''streamlining,'' from my experience in the water resources arena, is the path of a particle in a fluid relative to a solid body past which the fluid is moving in a smooth flow without turbulence.
Now, our challenge is to make the process move smoothly and reduce the turbulence. The Federal environmental process, according to the splendid FAA report, and I congratulate Administrator Garvey and the whole FAA staff, is an excellent report. I spent a good deal of time reading virtually all of it or at least highlights of the latter sections of it.
The environmental process takes generally three to four years. That is probably too long, but it is certainly not the major cause of delays. The FAA found that frequently the longest periods of delay were those needed to complete legal and political processes under State and local government authority.
We are not a unilateral government. We are not a totally centralized government. Decisions to build have always been local. The Federal government cannot direct that these projects be undertaken, although there is an incipient move to take such authority away from the City of Chicago, a move that I think would set a very dangerous precedent.
Getting all this local consensus is very difficult, especially when a project will have important effects on the quality of life, on public finance, on local business interests. The review showed, very interestingly, that at least five or more years elapsed between the time the airport begins considering a project and the time when enough local consensus has been achieved for the project to go ahead.
That is not something we are going to be able to deal with. If the people don't want additional runways and airport capacity, that is a local decision. Airports have to take the initiative. Airports have got to get out to the communities and tell them, as in the case of Minneapolis-St.Paul, that this airport has a $12 billion impact on the local economy and the jobs and all the rest.
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If they can't sell that, then we are not going to build that runway and we are not going to expand that capacity. Airport authorities have to look far ahead. I must say, airlines sure haven't. My experience over the years, and I chaired the Aviation subcommittees, if we waited for airlines to make a decision we would never build a runway in America. They want it built today because they need the capacity today. But they don't want to start today to build it ten years from now. They are learning. It is coming along.
I commend AAAE and ACI for their proposals, although two trouble me. One, the proposal that an EIS would not have to evaluate any off-airport alternatives, that would not be a good idea.
We heard in testimony provided by Massport that the Logan Airport runway proposal requires Massport, ''to continue developing regional alternatives to Logan as a condition of building the new runway for Logan.
''Those alternatives mean strengthening the regional New England airport system, high speed rail, and the new runway.''
Second, the AAAE and ACI plan says that under the Clean Air Act, States must develop a State implementation plan. They appear to want to require SIPS to include future projects to enhance airport capacity. That could put airport capacity projects at a higher status over other transportation projects.
I think you will have a hard time substantiating a claim that a highway project will never be more important to a region than an aviation project.
With those caveats and those concerns and a few others that I will express later on, I look forward to the witnesses' testimony.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman.
Are there any other opening statements?
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Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you and Mr. Lipinski for holding this important hearing to examine the challenges that our local communities face in building additional runways.
I am very pleased to see my friend, John Martin, the hardworking Director of the San Francisco International Airport on the witness panel today and also my good friend, Jane Garvey, who does a terrific job as FAA administrator.
I look forward to John's testimony, which I think will bring a unique perspective on the consensus based process that SFO and the surrounding communities re engaged in to find badly needed solutions to increased capacity at our airport in San Francisco.
Recently, this subcommittee and the full committee approved legislation that would grant limited anti-trust immunity to the airlines to discuss scheduling in an effort to reduce delays. I believe if applied properly, this could be an effective tool for the airlines to use to improve their on-time performance and give commuters more predictability.
However, I think we need to examine the current regulatory climate to see if flexibility can be added to a system that will enable airports to meet their community's increased demands and maintain the strong environmental protections that Americans demand, especially in California.
I look forward to hearing about the EIS proposal and the other innovative ideas today that will give this committee and this administration a basis for determining the best way to meet this challenge.
Airport officials, elected officials, environmental, business and community advocates are working together in the Bay Area to find a consensus-based balance to meet this challenge. I think that we have a way of doing it that will lead the country.
I believe this balance can be achieved and that all solutions should be fully examined to find the best way to continue to make SFO a competitive hub and a great international airport that serves one of the most livable communities on the planet.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentle lady.
Ms. Berkley.
Ms. BERKLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Lipinski, for holding this hearing on this important issue affecting nearly every community in our country. Nearly 50 percent of the visitors to the Las Vegas area arrive by air. McCarran Airport served nearly 37 million passengers in the year 2000. If McCarran continues to grow at the current rate, the airport could reach its capacity limit by 2007.
To address capacity limitations at McCarran Airport, the county has started development of a new airport in Ivanpah Valley. According to the current schedule, the expected date of operation is 2011. This timetable leaves a four-year gap between the time that McCarran Airport reaches its capacity limit and the time Ivanpah Airport is ready to handle air traffic.
My State has one major industry: Tourism. In a tourist-based economy and community such as Las Vegas, it is essential that the visitors are able to easily travel to their destination. The Las Vegas tourism industry is flourishing. Last year, the Las Vegas area hosted nearly 36 million visitors.
For each 1,000 new hotel rooms, 350,000 additional passengers fly into the airport and we have 120,000 hotel rooms and another 10,000 coming on line in the next couple of years. If the airport is not able to handle these visitors, southern Nevada's economy will suffer and my constituents will suffer because of that.
Therefore, it is important that the Ivanpah Airport is fully functional before McCarran reaches capacity. The approval process for airport construction, as we all know, is very cumbersome, bureaucratic and unduly lengthy. I support efforts and I am anxious to work with you to create efforts to speed up the regulatory approval process.
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Now, I fancy myself as an environmentalist. People come to the Las Vegas Valley, not only for the tourism, but also for the beautiful desert environment and Lake Meade and our wetlands and Red Rock Canyon. It truly is a beautiful place to visit. So, there has to be a way of creating better airport capacity and more runways while still protecting the environment.
I am looking forward to your testimonies so we can discuss this and expedite the process while still protecting the environment.
Thank you very much for being here.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentle lady.
Mr. Carson.
Mr. CARSON. In the interest of brevity, Mr. Chairman, could I just submit some remarks for the record?
Mr. MICA. Without objection, your entire statement will be made a part of the record.
Mr. Honda.
Mr. HONDA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I, too, will submit my comments in writing.
Mr. MICA. Without objection, we will also make that part of the record.
There being no further opening statements, we will proceed with our first panel today.
Of course, I think we all know our beloved Administrator, Jane Garvey. We are going to ask that you sit and listen to the other three panelists, along with the members today. We appreciate your giving us that courtesy in taking you out of order today.
We have Mr. John Martin who is the Airport Director of the San Francisco International Airport; Mr. David Krietor is the Aviation Director of the City of Phoenix Aviation Department. We have Ms. Virginia Buckingham. She is the Executive Director and CEO of the Massachusetts Port Authority.
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We appreciate all of our witnesses being with us today. We hope we can strike a balance somewhere between the China approach and the trial lawyer approach. You are going to give us the key to that, hopefully.
Let me recognize first John Martin with the San Francisco International Airport. Welcome, sir. You are recognized.
STATEMENTS OF HON. JANE F. GARVEY, ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION; JOHN L. MARTIN, AIRPORT DIRECTOR, SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT; DAVID KRIETOR, AVIATION DIRECTOR, CITY OF PHOENIX AVIATION DEPARTMENT; AND VIRGINIA BUCKINGHAM, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND CEO, MASSACHUSETTS PORT AUTHORITY
Mr. MARTIN. Thank you. Chairman Mica, Congressman Lipinski, and Members of the Aviation Subcommittee: I am honored to appear before you this morning to testify on the challenges facing airport runway construction projects.
San Francisco International Airport, SFO, has an extraordinary delay problem, one of the worst in the nation. At the same time, SFO has an extraordinary opportunity to undertake a project to reconfigure our runways, thereby virtually eliminating delays and providing capacity into the future.
The program which SFO is pursuing can result in a reduction of human exposure to noise, can produce net environmental gains to the San Francisco Bay. This can be achieved by shifting more noise over the water, away from residential areas and by restoring more acres to the bay than will be taken for the bay fill to build the new runways.
The involvement of airport stakeholders, these are businesses, airlines, environmental agencies, environmentalists, their involvement from the very beginning of the project has helped to ensure we address all concerns and is helping us to identify the best preferred alternative.
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We have also worked very closely with the FAA since the start of the planning efforts. I would like to commend FAA Administrator Jane Garvey and her staff on the new approaches they are implementing to streamline review of environmental documents, and this in spite of the FAA staffing shortages in the environmental review area.
SFO's delay problem results from the airport's 1940s runway design. We have two sets of intersecting parallel runways separated by only 750 feet from centerline to centerline.
In good weather two planes can land simultaneously. However, in bad weather the FAA closes one of our two arrival runways and we are relegated to single file landings. This reduces the airport's effective arrival capacity from 60 landings per hour to only 25 to 30 landings per hour, as recently verified by the FAA's benchmarking study.
Unfortunately, in most hours of the day we have 45 to 50 scheduled landings. And, on average, 35 to 40 percent of the days in San Francisco have fog, clouds, extreme wind conditions which prevent simultaneous aircraft arrivals.
When the capacity is reduced to 25 or 30 landings per hour, the airlines and passengers experience extraordinary delays and almost every San Francisco Bay Area resident has their nightmare story to tell on experiencing those delays.
The Airport Commission is addressing these delays from both a short term and a long-term perspective. In the short term we are working with the FAA to install new technology, which will marginally expand capacity in bad weather and we have worked with the carriers successfully to reduce the number of scheduled flights while maintaining service levels.
But the long-term solution, which is to reconfigure our runways, is the only true solution to our delay problem. We are targeting full environmental approvals for about two years from today. We are more than half way through the environmental and planning process.
In providing runway improvements at SFO, we will face enormous challenges in the following areas: Regulatory requirement, environmental concerns, and financial considerations.
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Chairman Mica, Congressman Lipinski, you have asked us to make specific recommendations today. My recommendations reflect my basic philosophy that in order for airports to continue to expand, the aviation industry must achieve environmental gains, including noise reduction. And we must demonstrate that we are making the most of the limited capacity available at airports.
I think the public is looking to make sure that we squeeze out all the capacity that we in fact have available today.
So, with that philosophy in mind, my basic recommendations are, one, to work to achieve stringent national and international noise standards, new stage four standards, and work toward the quick phase out of the stage two retrofit aircraft.
Two, give airports the regulatory flexibility to address long-term and short-term needs, including trial demand management programs at the most congested airports.
Three, centralize and streamline environmental oversight. As an example of the regulatory approval process that we face, San Francisco will need to obtain the approvals of 32 separate Federal, State, and local agencies before we can proceed with our project and very likely we will need the approval of the voters of the city and county of San Francisco.
Four, provide full funding for AIP for the full term of AIR-21.
Five furnish the FAA with additional staff resources dedicated to expediting complete and full environmental reviews of major airport capacity projects. The lack of FAA staff resources for environmental review is a major issue in addressing the nation's runway needs.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. This concludes my prepared remarks. I would be happy to answer any questions that the subcommittee members may have.
Mr. MICA. Thank you. We will withhold questions until we have heard from all the witnesses.
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We do have a vote. But I think we have time to hear your complete statement, Mr. Krietor. You may proceed. The bell will right, but don't pay any attention. We will stay until you conclude, unless it is more than five minutes.
Mr. KRIETOR. Mr. Chairman, the bell often goes off when you are running airports, so we are used to that.
Chairman Mica and Members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the invitation to testify today on airport runway construction challenges.
I represent the City of Phoenix Aviation Department, which owns and operates a three-airport system, including Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Together these airports handle over one million flight operations per year. Sky Harbor is a large hub airport and serves as the primary commercial airport for the State of Arizona.
In terms of the national air system, Sky Harbor is the ninth busiest passenger airport and the fifth busiest measured in flight operations. It is the only airport in the United States that is the largest station for two major airlines, America West and Southwest Airlines.
The airport is also a critical element of our region's economic development infrastructure, generating employment for 40,000 people and generating a $20 billion annual economic impact. Meeting our region's economic development aspirations is dependent to a great extent on the success of this airport.
With the continued growth in demand comes the need to provide new infrastructure. The need for a third runway at Sky Harbor was first identified in the airport's 1970 master plan. So began a 30-year odyssey.
In September 1989, a decision was made by the city to proceed with the construction of a third runway. The path for the new runway hit several inherent challenges, including the need to rechannel the Salt River and the need to relocate the Arizona Air National Guard Aerial Refueling Wing facilities.
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The delivery of an operational runway required eleven years to complete. The most time-consuming phase for the project involved the Environmental Impact Statement. The EIS was initiated in May 1990, with a draft EIS being issued in June of 1991.
The draft EIS initiated a heavy round of public comments. The city of Tempe, located directly east of Sky Harbor, made voluminous comments to the draft. This was clearly a strategy to extend and/or delay the process to gain political leverage.
The final EIS was not published until November 1993 and it was not until January of 1994 that a record of decision was issued. The City of Tempe then filed suit alleging that the FAA did not do an adequate job in conducting the EIS.
In September of 1994, the City of Phoenix executed an Inter-Governmental Agreement with the City of Tempe regarding noise abatement procedures. The IGA resulted in an amendment to the record of decision in September 1994 and the subsequent dismissal of the lawsuit.
In total, the process required nearly four and a half years to complete before we could begin construction of the runway. As mentioned above, in order to create an environment to allow the airport to grow and expand, the city voluntarily imposed noise mitigation measures that have constrained capacity. These measures are not supported by our airline partners and were reluctantly implemented by the FAA.
But it was the City of Phoenix's opinion that the EIS, because of the litigation, could not be brought to conclusion without these compromises.
With the ever-increasing demand being placed on airports, we don't believe that we can afford a decade or more to achieve operational infrastructure improvements. Although the pavement is now in place to meet airfield capacity demand, our airport has no additional gates to provide our airlines and encourage competition.
Demand for additional terminal facilities will continue for the foreseeable future. The FAA recently released aeronautical forecasts that project Sky Harbor International Airport to rise to the fifth busiest airport in passengers in the United States by the year 2015. To accommodate this increase in the demand the Department has responded by undertaking a major terminal expansion project.
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Initial efforts to begin the environmental review required for expansion already hint at the same problems that we had with our third runway project. FAA guidelines suggest that construction or expansion of passenger handling facilities is either categorically excluded or may in certain cases require an environmental assessment as opposed to a full-blown EIS.
We are not critical of the FAA for moving forward with the EIS. It is actually the safest approach, I think, from their perspective. We do have a very positive working relationship with the agency in our western region.
But the ultimate irony for Phoenix may be that we have the airfield capacity to move from 36 million to 55 million passengers over the next ten years, but do not have the gates to board those passengers, again because of the environmental process that we will need to go through for the terminal.
In conclusion, the City of Phoenix appreciates the attention the Congress has placed on addressing obstacles to airport growth. Our airline delays cannot be alleviated without airports being able to provide necessary infrastructure improvements. Airports need to be able to respond more quickly to the demand for these improvements.
The environmental and associated legal issues with expansion projects cause confusion and uncertainty for airports. Sky Harbor supports AAAE and ACI's expedited airport system enhancement proposal.
We do want to make absolutely clear that we do not oppose reasonable and appropriate levels of environmental review of major airport projects. We recognize that airports do impact their immediate neighbors and that a variety of mitigation measures are necessary and appropriate.
We are fully committed to being a good neighbor while we meet our obligations to the traveling public and the aviation industry.
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Thank you, Chairman Mica.
Mr. MICA. Thank you. We are going to stand in recess until 11 o'clock and we will save the best two witnesses for last, no offense to the first two.
[Recess]
Mr. MICA. I thank you for your attention. Now reconvening let us hear from our last two witnesses on this panel. We are going to hear a little bit about the Boston and Massachusetts saga from Virginia Buckingham who is the Executive Director and CEO of the Massachusetts Port Authority.
Welcome. You are recognized.
Ms. BUCKINGHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee on Aviation. I also want to thank the committee for inviting me back. A lot has happened since I first testified before you just six months ago.
I think the national attention that this committee has given the delay crisis is making construction of new runways a national priority. Last week's vote by your committee in support of the Airline Delay Reduction Act was just the latest example of this committee's leadership on the delay issue.
In February, those of us on the front lines of dealing with flight delays launched a nationwide coalition to press for additional runways at key airports.
First, I would like to point out that the FAA's Airport Capacity Report confirms that this national will never be able to handle a billion passengers a year by 2010 without new runways, as you commented earlier.
Technology improvements increase capacity on average five percent, according to that report, while runways increase capacity 30 to 60 percent. Building new runways is clearly a national transportation imperative. But today I would like to talk very briefly about how Federal laws or regulations get in the way of building more runways.
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Everyone agrees, as others have testified this morning, that a major roadblock is the protracted review process we have today. A number of good ideas have been offered for streamlining that process. I would like to commend Jane Garvey and the FAA for recognizing the problem and moving quickly to solve it.
But it seems to me that the first step of streamlining any process is to make sure that it comes to an end. Massachusetts State law, for example, requires State regulators to issue a decision on projects seven days after the close of public comment.
Nothing comparable in Federal law requires Federal agencies to issue a record of decision within a particular timeframe.
Building more runways also means effectively addressing the environmental and community concerns that generate opposition to airport improvement projects, even projects like Logan's new runway that provide environmental benefits.
When I was here in October, I talked about our efforts to spread Logan's air traffic burden by sending aircraft to other airports in the region. We understand and support the intent of Federal laws that prevent airports from regulating use in order to guarantee access for carriers to particular markets.
But these protections also undermine efforts to rationally distribute air traffic to the advantage of the entire New England region. One possible remedy is for Congress to designate New England's airports as a single airport system. In much the same way that H.R. 1407 allows airlines to collaborate on schedules, this designation would allow New England's airports to work together to prevent airport overcrowding, while still giving carriers access to the market. New England's Governors support such an approach.
Unless we devote as much attention to minimizing the impact of growth as we do to accommodating it, airports will find it difficult to make needed improvements.
Great progress was obviously made when Congress enacted the Aviation Noise and Capacity Act in 1990. Yet for airports like Logan to accommodate growth, planes must continue to grow quieter over time. That is why Massport supports an immediate short-term standard to lower acceptable aircraft noise and supports the more rapid adoption of the new Stage 4 standard now under discussion.
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It is clear that allowing marginally Stage 3 aircraft at environmentally sensitive airports like Logan undermines efforts to build airport improvements like runways.
Air quality is another concern. At Logan it has become important as an issue to our neighbors as noise. Working with State regulators, Massport plans to implement a first-in-the-nation program to assess airlines and other airport tenants from measures to reduce emissions resulting from operations at the airport.
Under our program, smog-producing emissions would be capped as Logan continues to grow. Measures would be taken to reduce NOX emissions at the airport. Engine technology and concerns with jet noise limit the reductions, though, that can be achieved at the airport. So, an innovative initiative was developed to fund pollution-cutting programs that directly address local concerns, yet still allow Logan to operate as the region's economic engine.
This groundbreaking environmental initiative promises environmental relief for those affected by operations at the airport. Yet, we cannot successfully implement innovative measures such as this air quality initiative because Federal regulations get in the way.
On issue after issue, Federal regulations deny airports the flexibility we need to distribute air traffic and mitigate environmental impacts so we can construct the runways we must have.
That is why today, in summary, we are asking this committee for its favorable consideration of three items. Number one, the establishment of definite timeframes for Federal review of airport projects.
Number two, a designation allowing airports in New England to continue distributing air traffic in the most effective way for the region.
Number three; the regulatory flexibility that airports like Boston must have to address the environmental concerns of airport growth in the community.
Thank you.
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Mr. MICA. Thank you.
We are pleased to recognize now, without any interruptions, since we have gone into recess pending a report from our conference, our esteemed Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, Jane Garvey.
Welcome back. You are recognized.
Ms. GARVEY. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Lipinski, and Members of the Committee, it is a pleasure to be here before you this morning.
Again, I want to add my voice to my colleagues' and say that the leadership of this committee and in fact of this Congress has really helped created an unprecedented, and we would say very necessary focus on aviation.
I am pleased to say that in accordance with AIR-21, the FAA has completed and Secretary Mineta recently signed a report that identifies measures that will expedite the environmental review, while maintaining the very high standards of environmental protection that you all have spoken about.
It is important to note that while the report was being developed, we at the FAA looked for ways administratively to streamline the process and to shorten the timeline. With a great deal of support from this committee and from Secretary Mineta, last January we identified six initiatives that we believe will make a difference.
Just quickly to highlight those, the first was to establish EIS teams for major runway projects.
The second was to increase the FAA environmental specialist and environmental attorney resources.
The third was to use consultant resources to perform more of the administrative tasks associated with EISs.
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Four was to shorten the environmental process by using more categorical exclusions and streamlining the EISs and environmental assessments.
Five was to improve the Federal inter-agency coordination and cooperation for environmental reviews and permits.
Six was to issue a best practices guide for EIS management and preparation.
Since January we have all worked very hard in implementing all of those initiatives. We have four teams established, including one for San Francisco and we are working very closely with John Martin and his very competent team. We believe those dedicated resources, focused on a very specific project, will reduce the time it takes for environmental approval.
We want to emphasize that we are committed to establishing EIS teams for any new major runway project. We are also looking at some ongoing EISs that we have in place to see if they would benefit from such a team.
The hiring of five additional environmental specialists for our airport office should be completed in June. We are asking the head of our attorney office to take a look and see if we can reassign some of the attorneys we have as well.
We are developing a reimbursable agreement to permit airports to fund dedicated FAA resources to expedite the EISs. We will be in a position to offer the first reimbursable agreement to an airport this June.
We are also in the process of amending an EIS contract to provide more consultant resources where necessary. We have just about completed the final adjustments to a standard categorical exclusion list. We have done this in very close cooperation with CEQ.
This summer we are going to continue our work at the staff level with CEQ and with EPA in what some have called a ''Back to Basics'' approach to EISs and environmental assessments. Essentially, it is really an effort to take full advantage of the streamlining opportunities embedded in the CEQ regulations. Our target date to complete this work with CEQ and EPA is June 30th of this year.
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As we have heard from the members of the panel today, improved Federal interagency coordination is essential to a more expedited and a more efficient review.
I know that Secretary Mineta has testified before Congress. I know he has spoken to many of you individually about his commitment and my commitment to working with our counterparts at the Federal and State level to eliminate any redundancies and to increase the concurrent coordination.
We are very pleased that we have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Association of State Aviation Officials to help us look at ways that we can coordinate the State and the Federal process. That work is underway now.
Finally, we will have a best practices guide for the FAA staff, for airport sponsors and for consultants. That is going to be on the website very early this summer. We think it will be a very useful tool for all of us.
The six initiatives demonstrate, I hope, that we are not standing still, but we are rather looking to make the environmental review process as efficient as we can and we are doing it within the administrative possibilities that we have.
We have other options that are mentioned and talked about in the Secretary's Report. We think that forms a very good basis for discussion. We look forward to being part of that discussion and will certainly be happy to answer any questions that the committee may have today.
Thank you very much.
Mr. MICA. I did have some questions. The first question is: I didn't hear anything as far as a specific legislative recommendation from you.
Now, most of the items that you covered are administrative initiatives that the department has undertaken. Most of what is done by FAA is done by law and then by rule. Unfortunately, in the department, I think, it is over four years for a rule to be adopted. I think FAA has a little bit better record. Is it 2.8 years?
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Ms. GARVEY. Just about that, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MICA. Some of this isn't going to wait for 2.8 years.
Do you have any specific legislative changes that you would like to recommend today?
Ms. GARVEY. We have included some options in the report, including one that, by the way, I think has been suggested by AAAE as well, the AAAE proposal. That option involves looking at ways that some of the funding can be used for more environmental mitigation. That would take a statutory change, I believe.
I want to just emphasize that we put those under ''other options'' because we really did this report without going through the full legislative review that we would have to do within the administration.
So, we included those for further consideration. There are also two recommendations that AAAE has made for legislative changes that we think we can actually do administratively. The categorical exemption expansion, is one example, that we think we can do administratively, though we would be happy to look at legislation if Congress wants to reinforce it. The second one is funding, reimbursement for our staff. We think we can do that within the administrative framework. So, we think focusing on the increased fundingis possible. We also know that eliminating the Governor's certificate for water and air quality, that would be a legislative change as well.
Mr. MICA. Well, I heard two of our witnesses, at least, and maybe the third indicate they also supported more reg flexibility. We had a request to give airports a trial demand authority, I guess, which would require some reg flex. We had Ms. Buckingham talking about reg flex. I think that is a common theme.
Legislatively, we would probably have to do something that allowed reg flex. Is that not correct?
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Ms. GARVEY. Well, I think particularly speaking of the demand management strategies that Ms. Buckingham spoke about, you are right. We have had a chance to talk about this the last time we were here. These are the demand management strategies. We anticipate publishing a notice in the Federal Register in the middle of June describing some ideas for LaGuardia.
We have had a lot of discussion, both internally and also with the staff about whether or not we can do it within the regulatory framework, whether or not it needs more statutory change. That will be part of what we will be looking at with the Federal Register notice as well.
Mr. MICA. Ms. Buckingham, you mentioned that in Massachusetts you have a definite timeframe, well you recommended a definite timeframe. But you said you had seven days from the point of record, I guess, where a decision must be made. How does that work and is it something again you are recommending that we adopt at the Federal level?
Ms. BUCKINGHAM. We have our State environmental agency, which is called MEPA, the Massachusetts Environmental Protection Agency. We have a concurrent approval process with the Federal process. They are looking at the same environmental documents that we have filed with the FAA.
The difference is that public comment closes for the State in early June. Within seven days of that public comment period closing, the State is required by law to give us a yes or no on the runway project.
What I am suggesting is, and I am not saying a particular timeframe, but the Federal process could benefit from having a timeframe as well. Whether it would encompass the entire EIS process or whether it was once you filed your final EIS, a timeframe under which the answer had to be issued. Either one would be very helpful.
Mr. MICA. FAA has stated here today that they have undertaken a number of initiatives. Some of them were recommended by the panelists, increasing the EIS team assets, some of the environmental assistance being beefed up. All of these require either additional dollars or personnel.
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Madam Administrator, with your current budget and what has been submitted to the Congress, are you able to meet the objectives that you set out here today and also deal with some of the suggestions that have been made by the panelists?
Ms. GARVEY. Well, certainly, Mr. Chairman, the issue of funding and resources is something we are always going to be looking at. But the five additional people we talked about are certainly within the budget that we have.
The reimbursement possibilities with airports which does have models in other agencies, I think, is a great possibility for us to add resources in a way that won't put additional strain on our budget.
Thirdly, looking at how we are deploying the existing staff, we are asking ourselves whether we can for example, reassign lawyers to environmental projects, high priority projects. I think the combination of those three initiatives will give us what we need, but we will be constantly looking at that.
I would like to go back to this one point that Ms. Buckingham made, because I thought it was a very good one. She spoke about the timelines. While you don't see a formal recommendation on that, that is something we are willing to work with the committee on.
At the Federal level, there are additional requirements through CEQ and EPA. We do have to publish it in the Federal Register even after we finish that work. So, perhaps looking at whether a timeline would be appropriate is something that we should be looking at with you.
Mr. MICA. Finally, Mr. Krietor, in Phoenix, I think you described a 30-year sort of saga of trying to build additional runway capacity. I think you mentioned specifically in your testimony Tempe as one community that tried to thwart the process.
Now, again, you know, Mr. Oberstar talked about the China method of rolling over everybody versus the extended litigation process. How could we effectively ensure that rights and people's legitimate objections and concerns are addressed and still move the process forward again without going to an extreme by trying to get to the objective?
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Mr. KRIETOR. Mr. Chairman, I would say that for our runway project there was a broad community consensus that that project was necessary in order to handle the runway growth needs and meet our economic development needs and that the airport worked very, very aggressively with Tempe and all of our neighbors to try to generate support for these projects.
So, we were actually in an environment where there was a broad consensus.
Mr. MICA. What mechanism would prevent another situation? Is it the public need? Would it be implementation of some specific timeframe?
Mr. KRIETOR. Mr. Chairman, I think that would really deal with that issue, to have a time frame in which comments were received, obviously reviewed, but then a decision is made because, I mean, if you look we had one litigant generate five volumes of comments on the EIS that took literally months and months and months to be reviewed and responded to.
Having a way to take their process from a timeframe perspective and limit it, I think, could be very important.
Mr. MICA. Thank you.
Ms. Norton.
Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that you have had this first panel, which consists of a Federal official and officials from the States as well. I am particularly interested in how streamlining takes place. There are those of us who believe in strong, substantive law and have come to realize that you undermine that law when it becomes redundant or bureaucratic.
I chaired a Federal agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. One of the first things I did, the agency already knew how to litigate. It didn't know how to settle cases. It didn't know how to get remedies to people. So, I am very interested in ways to get things done quickly because I believe people throw their hands up. But I can tell you one thing, people are not going to throw their hands up when it comes to our environmental laws.
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So, we have to preserve them. We have to find a way, it seems to me, to come to grips with this crisis in our airports while preserving what is now required. Therefore, I was very interested in the part of your testimony, Ms. Garvey, which spoke to flexibility and without harming the environment.
You talked about streamlining our own Federal EIS process. Of course, there are local and State processes as well.
Let me ask you a question first about our own process. If you look at our own process, you have laws that Congress has passed for good and sufficient reason. Those laws are going to remain.
You have, of course, NEPA, the big one. I am not even going to go through all of this. You have your National Historic Preservation Agencies where you have to consult with State and Federal historic preservation agencies.
You have farmland protection. You have to protect publicly owned park areas and wildlife and waterfowl refuges. The State has to certify that clean water is not impaired. Wetlands must be protected. The list is very long. I am not trying to be exhaustive here. There is the Endangered Species Act. All of these are very controversial and very much beloved in local areas and by the American people.
So, part of what has to be done you have clearly already done. As to the Federal process, before I get to the way Federal, local and State interact, could I ask you if these processes, these States, this consultation, all pursuant to Federal law is done sequentially or is any of it done simultaneously?
Ms. GARVEY. Congresswoman, first of all, I think you have hit at exactly the heart of the matter. When we look at the issue for us there was an overriding question. How can we expedite the environmental review process without sacrificing very important environmental laws?
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In some cases they are done simultaneously. I know that the Secretary has said, ''Let us look for more places that these things can be done simultaneously or concurrently.''
Sometimes they are done sequentially.
Ms. NORTON. Well, Ms. Garvey, let me stop you. I have a hard time as I go down this list coming upon any reason, there may be certain things about NEPA that means that you ought to find out something there and you ought to stop or go there.
But I have a hard time understanding why all of this couldn't take place all at once. I don't know why somebody couldn't be talking to the Historic Preservation people, why somebody couldn't be looking into farmland protection.
I don't understand the governmental ABC approach to regulation. If we don't learn to do it all at one time, then I don't think that any amount of flexibility that you seek will accomplish it.
Can you tell me whether there is any one of these Federal laws that depend upon some other law before you can initiate the appropriate review or consultation?
Ms. GARVEY. NEPA may dictate some of that. I would like to get back to you with a more precise answer. I can tell you very definitively that bringing Federal agencies in very early in the process will help. I don't think we have always done that as well as we should have. You will see that with the new teams that we have in place.
That is one of the first charges. Bring everyone together early on in the process. Have an informal Memorandum of Understanding, if that is what it takes, and let us identify those issues early.
There may be some reviews or consultations that NEPA may actually have to happen in succession. I will get back to you on that. But to the extent that we can, and you will see that with the new approach that we are taking, that that is exactly what we are trying to do.
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Ms. NORTON. If the Chairman would allow, I would like it to be submitted to the Chair and the Ranking Member, but I have a fascination with this notion of how to streamline. I would like to see what a MOU would look like with all of these agencies getting together.
It is not even agencies sometimes. Sometimes it is even within the same agency and doing an MOU, so you would start with NEPA and you would say ''go and let us see who can get back to us first with the answer'' as opposed to ''Okay, we heard from Joe, now let us go and hear from Mary.''
In other words, I think we are partly responsible ourselves for the delay because we are doing things the way we did it in a much simpler time when we didn't have this kind of crisis.
I had a question that follows that about how we deal with State and local regulations and EISs and all the rest of the things they have to do, interfacing them with what we have to do.
First of all, I want to know if much of what the State and local government does is another version of what we have done or are doing. In other words, does much of the State and local regulation in this area pattern itself on the Federal legislation so that the State goes and does what the NEPA has already done and it does it to its satisfaction?
Ms. GARVEY. Let me make three points. Others on the panel will be more expert at it. First of all, in some cases State and Federal laws are very similar and in other cases they are not. So, the State laws do differ.
In some cases airport operators chose to do both reviews concurrently. It may add a little bit of time, but sometimes in the long run it saves time. In some cases, for reasons that are unique to that situation, they may do the environmental reviews sequentially.
We have a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Aviation State Officials to take a look at this and just see if there are ways that we can coordinate the reviews a little bit better or if there are ways that it can be coordinated.
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But it does differ from State to State. California, for example, has very, very stringent State laws. They may even go beyond what the NEPA requirements are. What we do try to do is to make sure that any of the analysis we are doing at the Federal level, if it is something that can be applied at the State level, that we are doing that, so that it is not a duplication.
By the way, we have some examples of the MOUs and I will get those to you by the end of the day.
Ms. NORTON. I would appreciate it. I would like to hear what the State representatives have to say about this. I would like to know whether or not you think that your State could do an MOU with the FAA so that in fact in some circumstances you could accept NEPA or whatever was the Federal evaluation in the particular area, whether you think an MOU would expedite the process for the State as well as the federal government.
Mr. MICA. If you could respond briefly.
Mr. MARTIN. Congresswoman, San Francisco International Airport has entered MOUs, both with the FAA and with a number of State agencies. In pulling all of the agencies together in our stakeholder meetings, at the beginning of our planning process the agencies identified where they have staffing shortages and through the MOUs we provided additional funding so they could do the review on a timely basis. So, our goal is to do all of the reviews simultaneously in order to get through that as quickly as possible.
Mr. KRIETOR. Congresswoman, we use the same approach in Arizona. It is very similar to California.
Ms. NORTON. You use it within the State. Do you use it with the multiple Federal laws, some of which will apply to your State?
Mr. KRIETOR. We signed an agreement with the FAA who is the umbrella agency responsible for the EIS process, but not independently with the other agencies that are involved at the Federal level.
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Ms. BUCKINGHAM. Congresswoman, we have a concurrent process, as I mentioned, but I think it would probably be politically difficult for the State to cede that authority to a Federal agency. I think they would see that as taking away some of their own responsibility.
But the problem we run into is the State regulators are asking us to take certain measures to control the impacts of Logan Airport that may conflict with Federal regulations and laws. What we really need is some flexibility so we can achieve those environmental measures that might make some sense, but currently would not be allowed.
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your indulgence. If I could just clarify, I am not asking the States to cede anything. I am trying to come upon that part of what the State and locality is doing that is redundant or duplicative of what NEPA does, leaving to the State to move ahead on that part of its law that is over and above NEPA or that requires other State and local consultation.
I am not convinced that FAA, if it doesn't have the authority to require States, without ceding anything, to coordinate with it, should, in my judgment, be doing it. If it doesn't have it, then that is the kind of legislative authority I would like to see it have.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentle lady.
I now recognize the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Hayes.
Mr. HAYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Buckingham, this is a ''what if'' question. Do you have a meeting in Boston where people gathered and said, ''Okay, we are going to develop a new, quieter Stage 4 engine? This is the noise level that we find acceptable.''
Do you ever see that happening?
Ms. BUCKINGHAM. We would love to have a meeting like that. Unfortunately, that is not something we in Boston can control ourselves. We are participating in the ICAO negotiations. We are one of the three airports that are members of the panel that is discussing this very issue. But we would be happy to have a meeting, if that is your question.
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Mr. HAYES. Food for thought is if we could set a target that the engine manufacturers could hit and know that people would be satisfied, that would put us a long way towards expediting the process. Also, quieter engines, up to this point, have been more fuel-efficient. So, it is an energy issue.
Mr. Martin, San Francisco, parallel runways 750 feet apart, it is going to be very expensive to develop the technology to allow us, in low visibility conditions, to have simultaneous approaches. The pilots are a little leery about, in a descent mode, they don't want to break off when things don't happen. That is going to be very expensive in terms of cost to the system. It appears to me that the additional capacity that it creates is going to be minimal.
Could you just comment on that whole idea for a minute?
Mr. MARTIN. The precision runway monitoring system we are installing with the FAA will only allow us to have offset approaches on the parallel runways under certain weather conditions, cloud cover down to 1600 feet rather than the 3500 foot limit today. That should give us maybe two or three additional arrivals per hour. It is not that much help.
We hope over time that the pilots become more comfortable with the offset instrument approach procedures and we might be able to handle seven or eight additional arrivals per hour. But you are correct; it is a marginal increase in the number of flights and it doesn't solve our problem.
Mr. HAYES. I appreciate your keeping an eye on that as we move forward. Make sure that we maximize the use of these hard-earned taxpayer dollars.
Madam Administrator, in FAA regulations safety is foremost. We are all in complete and perfect agreement on that. When you build new airports and new runways, it appears to me from the experiences of highway contractors, as well as a pilot, we have some clear zone, for example, regulations that require a very expensive earth moving and sometimes removal of trees.
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Do you think it would be wise for us to sit at the table and examine those regulations again with safety foremost in our minds to see if we couldn't preserve some of those hard-earned dollars to put them in other parts of the system to help relieve this congestion problem?
Ms. GARVEY. Congressman, we are always willing to do that. I will tell you that you are right; the safety issue is paramount. We have tried to work with airports in cases where the expense may seem exorbitant to see if there is some compromise we can reach, but again, never losing sight of the safety. But we will continue to do that and we will be happy to work with you on that.
Mr. HAYES. I think there is some potential there.
On another issue, we have some reliever airports and we have some major hub airports, but we don't have any sort of mass transit where we could utilize the commuter end of the reliever and then coming into the hub for the larger, longer-legged flight.
I would like for this committee to kind of have that in the mix as we look at things. I look at Boston, having spent some time there. You get off at Logan and you get on the ''T'' and you can go about anywhere.
Before we expand the runway at Dulles, I would hope that we could put some money into getting the Metro out there so the utilization would be better. But again, I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you all and would like to continue this dialogue after the meeting is over and make it continuous, because I think there is a lot of potential that doesn't necessarily require huge expenditures of money.
The environmental community is extremely important. But we need to balance common sense. That needs to kind of drive everything, hopefully, that we do here. Clean air, clean water, a positive environmental experience, with the public understanding what we are doing is the way we all end up talking to each other and not about each other so that we can move forward in a responsible way.
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So, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to be here today and I look forward to continuing this process as we go forward.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman.
I recognize at this time the gentle lady from California, Ms. Tauscher.
Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Martin, let me praise you for a bit for working so hard with the team that Administrator Garvey has put out there with the FAA to really, I think, been breaking very new ground by bringing together all of the different disparate groups. I think you are doing a very good job of making sure that you are listening in this process to everyone.
You have done some innovative things, including having some alternative study reviews and outside people providing us with good information on alternatives, the so-called ''no build'' alternative.
Could you just briefly illuminate my colleagues about where we are in some of these things, the Charles River Study, perhaps?
Mr. MARTIN. Congresswoman Tauscher, thank you for those comments. The environmental agencies we are working with and the public in the Bay Area have expressed the desire to make sure we study all available options. For that reason we hired Charles River Associates to study the range of ''no-build'' options to determine whether we could in fact reduce the delays that we are facing today and virtually eliminate the delays.
That study shows that those techniques would not be effective without having severe economic consequences on San Francisco, dramatic reductions in air service, dramatically higher airfares for passengers traveling to and from the Bay Area.
But we think the study was important in demonstrating our commitment to studying all the options. We will continue to carry the ''no-build'' options as part of our environmental review.
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Ms. TAUSCHER. Can you talk a little bit about the public input process and the scope of the outreach process that you have initiated?
Mr. MARTIN. In addition to the stakeholder meetings with all of the interested parties, we have held a number of public hearings already. We have several public hearings scheduled over the summer. We appreciate your leadership and participation in those forums scheduled this summer.
We will go through the ''no-build'' options in some detail with the public and update the public on the environmental studies that are underway. We want to continue to have a transparent process throughout the planning effort.
Ms. TAUSCHER. Administrator Garvey, I want to pick up on what my great colleague from the District of Columbia, Ms. Norton, was talking about.
I am very interested in finding what I call common sense as opposed to, I think, flexibility. But the term ''flexibility'' worries me a little bit because it sounds as if what we have are processes out there that are inflexible. We have to now find ways to make them bend a little bit.
What I would rather have are things that are common sense and practical, that we have best business practices applied to streamlining what we know we want to do. We want to have clean air, clean water and a very strong environment, livable communities and a strong economy and we want to have all those in balance simultaneously.
It is a little schizophrenic, but it is what my constituents want and I will be damned if I am not going to do the best I can to deliver it. I know you are a partner in that.
The lead agency issue, what concerns me is I mean I see this back in California on transportation issues where I have people like Fish and Game and others come in all of a sudden, when we think we have gotten an agreement, and all of a sudden the money that I fought very hard to get here is held up because some conservation area or someone hasn't been satisfied.
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I couldn't find them with a Geiger counter for months beforehand. They may have actually signed off on what we have agreed to do. But then somebody changes their mind. How can we create an accountability chain of lead agencies with streamlined processes so that time is money, so before we put a spade in the ground we have got everything cleared.
How do we do that so that we are not wrapping you around the axle and we actually do the right thing? Can you talk a little about that?
Ms. GARVEY. That is certainly a great question and one we are wrestling through. I think the point that both you and Congresswoman Norton made really gets to the heart of it, which is that folks need to be at the table very early on in the process.
While I am not sure giving, at this point, an absolute, definitive specific amount of time, I know for someone like John, he has to really work through the process and he really needs to figure out what is the best timetable for him at the local level.
But I think if you had involved people early in a project and said, let us agree together, let us do this memorandum of understanding, and agree what our timetable is going to be. So, the timetable will not necessarily be imposed from the Federal level, but agreed to together.
I think what the airports are rightly saying is that they need some predictability and it is predictability that we are looking for. We are not looking for, as you said, something to come up at the end of the process when people have had plenty of time to comment.
So, bringing people together early in the process, laying it out and agreeing together what works and what is a time table that makes sense, to me, is still the best way to go.
In those areas where it has worked best, you have seen that happen even at a regional level. It doesn't have to be in Washington. We have seen some real success stories from good regional administrators from the FAA with his or her counterparts really coming together early on.
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You will see that in the best practices when we get those on the website in June.
Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentlelady.
The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Kirk.
Mr. KIRK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have just two quick questions, one on the importance of corporate and reliever airports in this whole situation. I am concerned, not immediately about new runways and EISs, but about current runways and making sure they have the capability.
Just north of O'Hare is Palwaukee Airport whose main runway is in pretty bad shape. It has kind of become a more urgent issue because the corporate leadership of Boeing has just arrived in our community.
I wonder if you could describe the key role of maintaining reliever airports in making sure that the corporate aviation community which might be experiencing difficult times at O'Hare would come to Palwaukee, but needing to maintain that capability.
Ms. GARVEY. Congressman, we couldn't agree more, particularly as you look at the benchmarks and you look at those places where we are having some real difficulties and some constraints. Using the airports nearby is critical and very, very important.
We are extraordinarily appreciative of this committee and of Congress through AIR-21 giving the additional monies for those small and midsize airports. They are becoming, as you pointed out, increasingly important. We are able, I think, to fund some very important projects like the one you mentioned because of the AIR-21 funding.
So, I think you will see more of that and an increased emphasis on regional and mid-sized airports, because you do have to think of it as a whole system.
Mr. KIRK. Right. I wonder if you could get back to me on the Palwaukee Airport Issue. As we get more corporate aviation out of O'Hare to relieve the situation, I think that is a critical point.
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The other thing issue is: topic A in Chicago is O'Hare.
Ms. GARVEY. Topic A in Washington is O'Hare, I think.
Mr. KIRK. One of the key factoids that we have been dealing with is the claim that additional runways at the Peotone Airfield would take longer than additional runways at O'Hare or that additional runways at O'Hare would take longer.
Has the administration looked at this in the Peotone-O'Hare issue to advise the Congress as to exactly how long new runways at either a brand new facility or at O'Hare would take, so that we would have your view on this?
Ms. GARVEY. Congressman, I don't have an answer for you today. In some ways it is different to make that prediction because we don't know what some of the environmental factors or what some of the issues are this early in the process.
However, we can certainly pull together a sense for you of what has been historically the case with similar situations. We will be happy to do that.
But I do want to say, I really give the aviation community in Chicago credit for stepping forward and saying, we will take a look at the capacity study, reinstitute that. I think that is good. And all of those efforts to go on to really take a look at what capacity is needed in Chicago, I think, are healthy. We want to help in any way we can through technical assistance, which we have committed to do.
Mr. KIRK. Thank you. I know this committee, and especially Congressman Lipinski and I, would very much appreciate your assessment of the timing on that because it would help.
Ms. GARVEY. We will be happy to get back to you.
[The information follows:]
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We can look at what has happened at other locations, but we do not have specific proposals and detailed information to compare for O'Hare versus Peotone. Generally, it takes about 10 years and several hundred million dollars to plan and develop a major new runway at a congested airport. Extensive land acquisition, off-airport noise mitigation, or the relocation of facilities on the airport can add to this. The cost and timing of new airports varies with the amount of traffic that will be served by the opening day configuration. The Northwwest Arkansas Airport opened in 1998 at a cost of $105 million and serves about 0.3 million enplaned passengers annually, while Denver International Airport opened in 1995 at a cost of over $4 billion and serves over 18 million enplaned passengers annually. In general, we would expect new airport construction to be more extensive and take longer than new runway construction to serve a comparable amount of traffic.
Mr. KIRK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman. I recognize the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Pascrell.
Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
If I was a baseball player, which I pretended to be, and my name was Garvey, I would be asking at this point for an extension of your contract.
I know you have a few years left, but you have done, I think, in the past few years what very few before you have accomplished. That is to get people to work with each other. You have had an open ear. I think you have made the agency less bureaucratic, believe it or not, I think. That is the way it has come off to me.
You have really tried to forge some synergistic partnerships, which were never done before. So, I don't know what the feasibility is, but maybe you should ask for an extension of your contract now that you have some time left in this original contract.
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Having said that, I want you to know, we took an interesting trip, Mr. Chairman, talking about runway construction, to the FAA offices and facilities in Atlantic City. I have passed that many times coming from New Jersey and never went in there.
But I was astonished to see the research and development that is going on with regard to not only runway construction, but also many other aspects of safety and facility in terms of our airports throughout this great nation.
I was struck by one thing, Madam Administrator, and that is the small staff that is in this huge facility. It would seem to me, in talking about building runways and talking about reducing congestion and following the law regardless, that that staff may not be adequate to the task of a modern aviation system.
What is your opinion?
Ms. GARVEY. Well, I will tell you, I think they are terrific. I agree with you. We appreciated that visit. They do a wonderful job. I think you always worry about whether or not you should be putting more staff in those areas.
We try to balance so many competing issue--staff for the environmental issues, staff for inspectors, controllers and so forth. So, I think they do very well. They are a very talented group. We will continue to look at it.
I will ask Anne Harlan. I will bet she will have some ideas for me that are probably more consistent with what you are saying about some additional staff. But I think they do very well, as you have pointed out.
Mr. PASCRELL. If we are trying to precipitate the state of the art in many of these areas in terms of guaranteeing as best we can humanly possible safety, we know what the fallout is of delays. Economically we know what the fallout is. We know what the fallout is in terms of further destruction of the environment.
When planes are stacked up around Newark Airport, which they constantly are, we are talking about polluting the environment far beyond what it can accept and we are also talking about putting people in jeopardy that need not be in jeopardy.
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We are talking about the extension on the fuel capacity of each of those airports and how much fuel is being wasted because they are stacked up and flying around. My last flight from Washington to Newark, we circled twice, which isn't a lot of time.
But nonetheless, when you add up around the nation what this is costing us, we need to do something and do it quickly if we want to meet the demand and at the same time uphold the standards which we want in terms of our quality of life.
So, I want to commend the staff at FAA. They are really doing a terrific job.
I read in, interestingly, the Bond Buyer today an article entitled ''On the Hill: Transportation officials asked to drop the environmental gauntlet.''
It seems that whether we are talking about the land, the sea or the air, that the mode in Washington is to circumvent environmental rules as best we can because we have to move quickly to bring people to progress and meet the demands that are out there.
Although we are basically talking about highways here, here is a comparison. We are not comparing apples and oranges. I believe we are on target. The article says, ''To build a modern highway, permission must be received from the Federal Highway Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Army Corps of Engineers, to name a few.''
What is the line between streamlining the environment or streamlining the process, and streamlining and expediting the process? Where is that thin line between not trying to have a further assault on the environment and trying to reduce paperwork and red tape, which we all want. It is easy to talk about, you know, we want it.
But where is that line, in your mind? Because now I am going to ask Mr. Krietor what he thinks is the line because he had an interesting statement about that today and I want clarification on that.
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Ms. GARVEY. I have a feeling I am going to think of a better answer, probably, two hours from now, because I think it is the right question.
In the report we submitted, we tried to find that right balance. We tried to say, look, let us put the dedicated staff on those projects where we think the gains would be the greatest and most needed. Let us put the dedicated EIS teams on those projects. We think that is one way to do it.
We also looked for places where there are duplications. So, some of the comments that we have talked about are about eliminating some of that duplication. But again, this is not shortchanging or eliminating the process. It is eliminating duplication.
A third area we looked at was mentioned a little bit earlier. That is bringing the Federal agencies in early. I am speaking now only about the Federal agencies. You certainly can make the same comparison at the State or local level. But bringing the Federal agencies that have a stake in the action in early and coming to some agreement.
I don't want to underestimate in any way how difficult that is. Getting an early agreement to work together, and getting an early agreement on specific time lines is no small feat because a number of the Federal agencies have, in a sense, competing missions.
I think at some point it really will take the Secretary of Transportation with his counterparts at EPA and other Federal agencies to get those Federal agencies involved in the process early and to agree together on what the time line is going to be.
That can happen at the regional level or in some cases, because it is so extraordinary, happen at the national level.
Mr. PASCRELL. Madam Administrator, you don't accept a growing sentiment here in Washington, whether we are dealing with energy, whether we are dealing with the aviation system, that we need to reduce the amount of public input into these decisions, do you?
Ms. GARVEY. No, we don't, Congressman. Clearly, I believe we are reflecting the Secretary's position as well. We are not trying to shortchange that. We are just trying to eliminate duplication or redundancy.
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Mr. PASCRELL. Mr. Chairman, just one more quick question for Mr. Krietor.
You said on Page 4 of your testimony that airports need to be able to respond more quickly to the demand for airfield and terminal improvements. Then you said that the environmental and associated legal issues with expansion projects cause confusion and uncertainty for airports.
Could you clarify what you mean by that? I know you talked about that. Could you clarify that?
The second question is, would you differ in your answer to what the Administrator said about the environment and number two, public input into these decisions?
Mr. KRIETOR. Congressman, I don't believe that you would find an Airport Director of a major airport, myself included, that would advocate for shortchanging or eliminating these very important laws relative to the environment and the way airports impact the environment.
I don't think that we would ever suggest that we would want to shortchange the ability for public comment into the process. We all aggressively work very hard to assure that we have adequate public comment.
I think what happens is that when the public comment activity moves from legitimate public comment to the opportunity to gain local political leverage that you begin to have challenges.
I think one example of that is simply when you are doing an evaluation of alternatives, perhaps to a terminal project or to a runway project and you are placed in a position where you are evaluating alternatives that will never be realistic or reasonable to implement and you spend an extraordinary amount of time doing that.
But I don't think you would find anybody in our position that would want to change the process.
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Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman.
I am pleased to recognize the gentleman from Tennessee, the former Chair of this subcommittee, Mr. Duncan.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I am not going to ask any questions because I know you want to move on to the second panel and also because I was not able to be here for all of the testimony and hear other questions that perhaps have already been asked.
But I do want to join Mr. Pascrell in commending the work of Administrator Garvey. She has been a real credit to the FAA and a great leader. I appreciate the good work that you have done.
I do want to say that I think almost everyone on both sides of the aisle are united in hoping that something can be done to speed up this process.
I want to work with Chairman Mica and Ranking Member Lipinski and my good friend, Chairman Rogers on the Appropriations Committee and many, many others to see if we can't speed this process up.
In the past, frankly, some people have used the environmental laws not because they care that much about the environment, but because they have either personal or monetary reasons to delay some of these projects.
We have a briefing memo that says the average time is ten years now. But there are also major runways that have taken far longer than that.
I hope that everybody will keep in mind that when you delay these projects for years, whether it is airport or highway or whatever kind of projects we are talking about, it drives the costs up unbelievably.
Those costs ultimately have to be passed on to the consumer or taxpayer or both. Who that ends up hurting is the poor and the lower income and the working people because it drives up prices, it destroys jobs. It doesn't hurt the wealthy, upper-income people, but it hurts the poor and lower income and even middle-income people and it hurts small business.
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So, this is a real crying, national need. There is no good reason why we shouldn't be able to do some of these really urgent projects in two or three or four years instead of ten or twelve or fifteen or even twenty.
Now that I have that off my chest, I will yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman.
I am pleased to recognize our Ranking Member, Mr. Lipinski.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you very much.
San Francisco, Phoenix, Boston, you have all had to comply with countless Federal rules, regulations, State rules and regulations. We have all of those in the State of Illinois, also, obviously.
In the State of Illinois, though, we have another obstacle to building a new airport or building new runways. That is that our Governor has the veto power over and above any environmental concerns, quality of life concerns. He simply has the veto power to say yes or no.
There are a number of other States, although it is certainly a large minority out of the 50, but there are a number of other States that have either the ability of the Governor and the legislature or both of those to veto new runways.
In California, do you have that problem to put up with?
Mr. MARTIN. No, we don't, sir.
Mr. LIPINSKI. You do not?
Mr. MARTIN. No.
Mr. LIPINSKI. You are positive of that?
Mr. MARTIN. The Governor has key appointments to certain commissions that will have to approve our project. But the Governor and legislature do not have a veto or approval authority over the runway project.
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Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you very much.
What about Arizona?
Mr. KRIETOR. Congressman, it would be essentially the same situation as in California. Obviously, the Governor, through her appointment of the director of the State Department of Environmental Quality has a process for input into the process but does not have veto authority.
Mr. LIPINSKI. What about the great State of Massachusetts, or is it a commonwealth?
Ms. BUCKINGHAM. Yes, commonwealth. It is very similar to the other situations. The Governor has the appointments to the State regulators that ultimately will give us permission to go forward or not.
I would point out that in Massachusetts the Governor is one of our only elected allies on this runway project, so his support and now her support is very important to us.
Mr. LIPINSKI. You don't have the same situation we have in Illinois with regards to the Governor and/or the legislature. Thank you very much.
Administrator, I want to compliment you also. I think you have done a superb job. I am just hoping that you fulfill your existing contract. I am not too concerned about you fulfilling the second contract, but I just hope you fulfill this one.
In your FAA Report to Congress on Environmental Review of Airport Improvement Projects, May 8, 2001, on Page 20, probably the second paragraph, it states that ''the consensus at the State level as well as at the local level, can be a constraint. Some States exercise substantial control, tantamount to a veto power over the local airport development. Through State channeling acts or other legal mechanisms.''
And you highlight, ''In Illinois, for example, a channeling act effectively gives the Governor the ability to approve or deny development at O'Hare International Airport.''
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Now, this is in this document. Obviously the FAA felt that it was important and significant to put it in the document. Unfortunately, from my perspective, there is no real comment by the FAA in regards to this other than telling us that it exists.
I think everybody in Illinois knows that it exists. It would have been highly appreciated if the FAA took a particular position with regard to this statement.
Is there anything that you can elaborate at the present time with regards to the FAA, the Department of Transportation, the White House position pertaining to this particular situation in Illinois and O'Hare that you do highlight?
Ms. GARVEY. Congressman, you are right. We did highlight it as a potential obstacle. I think the FAA got some mixed messages from some of the States in that in some cases, the legislation includes more than just runways. From some of those States' perspectives, the legislation may be helpful. That is a little bit of a mixed message. But having said that, we also know that there are places, and you have certainly cited the most obvious one, where legislation could potentially be a difficulty.
So, we would be very willing to work with the committee or work with you or your staff and sort of think that through a little bit more. We would also be willing to work with the Committee to determine whether legislation could be drafted in a way that might deal with those States that still seem to think it is okay for a Governor to have the ability to approve or deny development at an airport.
So, we would be happy to work with you and deal with those cases where there may be a problem.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Do we have list of the States that have this ability?
Ms. GARVEY. We are in the process. In fact, we may even have it back at the office. We were in the process of getting an accurate list from the State aviation directors, because in some cases we just don't even know that a State has it because we don't have to deal with it. Therefore it is not an issue. So, we are getting an updated list and we will get that to you as quickly as we have it. If we have it today, we will get it up to you today.
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[The information follows:]
The following table is from the National Association of State Aviation Officials (NASAO) Annual Report for Fiscal Years 1999 and 2000, and in particular, the column entitles ''Channeling State for AIP Project Approval.''
Mr. LIPINSKI. I think that would be very important. For example, the gentleman sitting next to you, Mr. Martin from San Francisco, we have been told by a number of sources that California had this ability. When we called him up for a comment in regards to it for this hearing, he informed us that California doesn't have it, as he has testified to here today.
There is a bill that is being talked about in the Senate, a bill sponsored by Senator Grassley and Senator Harkin. Perhaps now after Senator Jeffords move today, maybe we will say the Harkin-Grassley bill. But nevertheless, it is the two of those Senators.
I am sure this panel is knowledgeable of it. Do you have any comment in regards to that particular piece of legislation? No? You don't have that problem so you are not going to get into it.
Ms. BUCKINGHAM. Well, let us hope we never get to that point in Massachusetts. I hope we resolve this through the process that we are working through.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Since you don't have the impediment to it that we have in Illinois, don't let them pass it to you.
Well, does the Administrator of the FAA care to venture into these waters or has the Administrator not had the opportunity yet to study this out with her staff and with the Secretary of Transportation?
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Ms. GARVEY. Well, I think it might be the latter, Congressman.
Mr. LIPINSKI. I had a feeling that might be the case, but I didn't want to miss the opportunity to give you an opportunity to wade in on this issue if you had all your ducks in line.
Ms. GARVEY. I would prefer not to.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Just one last thing: Congressman Kirk talked about the situation with regard to Peotone, building a new airport or adding runways at an existing airport.
We would certainly like to have any information that you have on that as quickly as possible, because there have been people who have made that presentation, saying that you could build a new airport in five years and it will take you 15 years to put runways in at another airport.
I don't know where he got his information, but I would like to know what the FAA and the Department of Transportation has to say about that.
I thank all the panelists very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MICA. I thank the Ranking Member.
I am pleased to recognize for, I guess, one last question, Ms. Norton.
Ms. NORTON. I thank the Chairman for his indulgence. I did want to ask Ms. Garvey a last question because there are airports, particularly those located near downtowns and near big cities where all of the really quite wonderful work that the Congress did, I guess it was last year, to enable States to increase airport capacity may not have much effect because they are located in congested areas.
I want to use as a kind of paradigm for that Reagan National Airport. It is very much used and very coveted as a landing spot precisely because it is so close to the Congress and so close to downtown Washington.
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Last year in our bill we approved 24 new slots for this already hugely congested airport on the ground and in the air. It is an airport where pilots tell us they have to be especially careful in landing because of its proximity to populated areas.
Half of the 24, outside of the 1250 perimeter rule, so they come from some distances, I would like to know whether you think Reagan National Airport is one that would be helped by increased runway capacity, whether that is possible, considering where it is located.
Then I would like to know what the impact of the added slots has been on Reagan National Airport, particularly whether there have been any greater frequency of delays, whether this has had no impact, what they are doing to monitor that situation.
Ms. GARVEY. I would like to make a couple of comments, if I could, Congresswoman. First of all, and I think Congressman Hayes referred to this earlier, I think we have the best controllers in the world, I really do. They do an extraordinary job.
The ones in Leesburg and the Washington area, I think, are among the best. So, in terms of the impact to safety, they are monitoring that very carefully. Clearly, they would not allow planes to take off if it was not safe.
Whether or not there has been a direct impact, let me get back to you with some very specific numbers. I have not heard from staff that there have been any particular problems at Washington National.
The issue of a runway or an additional runway, that is something that I have never heard contemplated for Washington National. I think that Jim Wilding is proposing more improvements at Washington Dulles. That is very encouraging. In fact, they are contemplating a runway there.
The idea of having that system, so you can relieve what is a pretty congested airport with another airport like Dulles, was very far-reaching of the Congress long before me.
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Ms. NORTON. Well, I would like you to get back to me on what the increase in delays, if any, have been at National Airport. The reason I asked about another runway there, no one perhaps would have even contemplated that until you got 12 new flights that can come from the West Coast.
I want to know whether you think that National Airport can handle that kind of increase without another runway or an increase in runways and if so, whether you think any runways would be possible at National Airport, given its location.
I appreciate your getting back to the Chairman and to me.
Ms. GARVEY. Thank you, Congresswoman.
[The information follows:]
To date, we have not seen an increase in delays that we can attribute to the change in slot allocation. The situation is complicated because delays are generally lower system-wide, in part because of more favorable weather patterns, and this may be offsetting delays that are due to increased traffic. We are not aware of any plans for new runways at Reagan National Airport and we think that any such development in the foreseeable future is extremely unlikely.
Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HAYES. Would the gentle lady yield for just a moment for a comment?
Ms. NORTON. I would be pleased to yield to the gentleman.
Mr. HAYES. It was an excellent question you had, again from an experience standpoint, whether we had 24, 48, however many slots. It really doesn't make any difference because the professional men and women who man those facilities are going to get them in safely, on time, and efficiently when they can.
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So, it is just a number here. The folks out there are doing a fabulous job of making sure that whatever the number is, so, yes, adding to the number simply gives them the opportunity, if that traffic exists, to increase the capacity of the system. So, I trust them and I am impressed with the way they do that.
Ms. NORTON. Well, if I could respond, half the slots would not have required any increase in runway because they were from near end spots like North Carolina and Tennessee.
I am concerned that half involve long-distance flights of the kind we don't even do at National because we have not even allowed these long-distance flights.
Safety is not my concern. My concern is delays. What I think we are hearing from our constituents is not that I am afraid to get in the air. It is that I can't get in the air or once I am in the air, I can't get home. So, I am interested in the delay notion.
Mr. MICA. We will have to continue this discussion at another hearing.
With the agreement of the minority, we are going to leave the record open for a period of three weeks.
Without objection, it is so ordered.
If you could respond to the requests that have been made, we would appreciate it.
Also, I have my little gremlins that tell me certain things. I understand that FAA did have a number of legislative proposals that were submitted to OMB or other higher agencies within the government and that may have been rejected.
If possible, I would like to see those and maybe even make them part of the record, if, as Administrator, you would cooperate. If it was my former subcommittee, I would just subpoena the records and we would put them in the record. It was a lot easier that way.
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Ms. GARVEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MICA. Thank you. I want to thank each of our panelists for their cooperation and for participating in the hearing today. We will excuse you at this time.
We will call our second panel at this time. Let me introduce this panel as they are seated here. Mr. Todd Hauptli, who is the Senior Vice President, Legislative Affairs, for the American Association of Airport Executives and the Airport Council International of North America; Mr. John Meenan who is the Senior Vice President for Industry Policy for the Air Transport Association of America, Inc.; Mr. Gerald Roper, the President and CEO of Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, representing today the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Mr. David Raymond, President of the American Consulting Engineers Council; Mr. Robert McCord, Vice President of Operations of APAC-Georgia, Ballenger Paving, on behalf of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association; and Mr. Dennis McGrann and he is the Executive Director of the National Organization to Insure a Sound-Controlled Environment.
Welcome all of our panelists. We do have a policy that we will limit you to five minutes in an oral presentation. However, if you have a lengthy statement or document you would like to have made part of the record, upon a request to the Chair, we will submit them and they will be part of the permanent record.
Now, we will recognize Mr. Todd Hauptli, Senior Vice President, Legislative Affairs, American Association of Airport Executives, Airport Council International, North America.
Welcome. You are recognized.
STATEMENTS OF TODD HAUPTLI, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF AIRPORT EXECUTIVES/AIRPORT COUNCIL INTERNATIONAL-NORTH AMERICA; JOHN MEENAN, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, INDUSTRY POLICY, AIR TRANSPORT ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, INC.; GERALD ROPER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CHICAGOLAND CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, ON BEHALF OF THE U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE; DAVID A. RAYMOND, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN CONSULTING ENGINEERS COUNCIL; ROBERT MCCORD, VICE PRESIDENT, OPERATIONS, APAC-GEORGIA, INC., BALLENGER PAVING DIVISION, ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN ROAD AND TRANSPORTATION BUILDERS ASSOCIATION; AND DENNIS MCGRANN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ORGANIZATION TO INSURE A SOUND-CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT (NOISE)
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Mr. HAUPTLI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know the drill, the longer the title, the less important the job.
I wanted to submit both my statement and also another document, our EASE proposal that we have submitted to the Congress previously.
Mr. MICA. Without objection, both of those will be made part of the record. Please proceed.
Mr. HAUPTLI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Mica, Mr. Lipinski, Mr. Duncan, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here.
For the past decade the airports have been discussing with this subcommittee the need for additional capacity in the system. This subcommittee has been at the forefront of that effort, whether it was 1990 with the Passenger Facility Charge and Noise legislation, or in last year's historic AIR-21 legislation, this subcommittee has pushed for more resources for infrastructure investment, heeding the call of the airport community. We appreciate that.
Last year one in four flights were delayed. That is a pretty lousy record. This year, there will be 674 million passengers. Within the decade there will be one billion passengers. That is the equivalent of adding the entire population of the United States on top of an already-crowded, already-delayed, already-congested airport system. We need to do better.
I see Mr. Schaffer in the background. I will use a hockey analogy for him. In hockey, you don't skate toward the puck. You skate toward where the puck is going.
What we need to do is to build for that number, that one billion passengers that we know are out there looming in the horizon. We have to work together to build a consensus around a proposal that accelerates the process to review and approve these runway projects, but we have to do it in a way that does not damage the environmental review process. That is the challenge that collectively we face together.
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Jane Garvey and her team at the FAA and Secretary Mineta deserve a lot of credit for the initiatives that they have undertaken thus far in moving this process forward. They have come up with a series of administrative suggestions and a number of legislative ideas to consider.
We know that the top 20 airports, represents 92 percent of delay in the system. So, we have a confined universe that we really can look at to deal with the overwhelming majority of the problem that is in the system today.
With that in mind, AAAE and ACI-NA have developed a legislative proposal called the EASE initiative, the Expedited Airport System Enhancement Initiative. It has eight components. Mr. Oberstar indicated earlier that he had trouble with at least two of them. I will take a .750 batting average and make $15 or $20 million a year playing baseball.
Our eight proposals are this: One, we would allow airports to provide the FAA the authority to hire additional employees for review of critical airport capacity projects. This is an idea that is in the FAA report. Jane Garvey talked about how she believes they probably have the ability through reimbursable agreements to do this. We think a codification could be helpful in that regard.
We propose to eliminate the Governor's certificate, which is a duplicative requirement in the system today. That also is in the FAA's report. That would require a legislative change.
We propose for the use of broader categorical exclusions. Administrator Garvey discussed that in her talk earlier. That is one that may be able to be handled just through the regulatory and administrative process. But again, that is an area that could be codified.
We call for the creation of a capacity czar or council. You heard the discussion earlier today of the broad, overlapping jurisdiction of the multiplicity of agencies. We believe that increased Federal leadership is necessary. A capacity council or a czar could be that entity to take these disparate governmental bodies and try and expedite the coordination of those.
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I might add that if that proposal which some folks have not embraced yet is not something the committee wants to do, we believe that the CEQ could play an increased role in this effort under existing authority.
We propose to allow for broader use of airport revenue for environmental mitigation.
We also call on all agencies to provide priority processing for critical airport capacity projects.
Our final two, the ones Mr. Oberstar talked about this morning, our declaration of critical national airport capacity projects. This would be at ten or fifteen airports across the country. In those cases, because we argue that there is no reasonable alternative to a runway to adding the needed capacity for the system, those facilities would not have to go through the off-airport alternatives analysis, but instead would get to the starting line quicker in the NEPA process for all of the on-airport alternatives analyses that are part of that process that exist today.
Finally, we would require more realistic State implementation plans, known as SIPs. This has to do with the Clean Air Act non-attainment areas and currently the Clean Air Act prohibits the FAA from approving an airport project if it interferes with a SIP. We believe that the SIPs should be modified to address future growth in the airport.
Those are the provisions of the EASE proposal that we have submitted to the Congress. Again, the overriding goal of the airport community is to try to figure out how to meet that one billion passenger mark that we face in less than a decade, add additional capacity to the system and so it in a way that there is no damage to the environmental process.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MICA. Thank you..
I will recognize now John Meenan with the Air Transport Association of America. Welcome. You are recognized.
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Mr. MEENAN. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I certainly appreciate the opportunity to be here today.
In the interest of time, I think we can all agree that the problem of inadequate airport infrastructure is a worsening problem. It is affecting the quality of the product that our members can produce and it is fueling a lot of what we have heard in the recent past in expressions of concern about the quality of air service.
It has prompted some to call for passenger rights legislation. We are pleased to see that the committee's focus today is really targeted at the cause of the problem rather than the symptoms.
It is the lack of infrastructure that is the core of this difficulty and it is that problem that has to be overcome.
As serious as the consumer concerns are, it also bears noting that they pale in comparison to the threat that inadequate infrastructure poses to our nation's economy at large.
We are rapidly nearing a point of crucial, critical aviation system failure. The current level of delays is costing the United States enormous sums in wasted resources, estimated at almost $16 billion for the period 1997 to 1999.
It threatens in the near term to so impede the efficiency of our system networks to basically render unworkable our principal means of inter city transportation and our just-in-time delivery systems upon which so much of the economy depends. We have to come to grips with this problem quickly and effectively.
What can be done? First, we believe it is imperative to identify our nation's aviation infrastructure shortfall as the major national crisis that it is. Congress should move quickly to define through an appropriate legislative finding the national purpose behind airport development projects at our most significant airports.
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Congress needs to make clear that certain key airport projects are to be given the highest priority in order to foster the maintenance of a safe and efficient interstate commerce system.
Second, from a procedural standpoint, the much talked about idea of environmental streamlining must be made a reality. Consolidation of Federal and State environmental reviews, insistence upon coordination between State and Federal agencies that have review authority with appropriate Federal preemption as necessary, along with the elimination of counterproductive and often mischievous alternative analysis requirements would all serve to make environmental reviews more functional and far less dysfunctional.
Too often, today's system invites a small, vocal and legally facile group to manipulate the process, to halt useful growth, despite the needs and desires of a larger community. We would be pleased to work with you in the development of the specific proposals that would implement these steps.
Now, let me be clear, this is not an argument to ride roughshod over legitimate environmental concerns. We want all the facts to be known and all necessary, meaningful and feasible steps to be taken to deal with those concerns.
We believe, however, that the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Historic Preservation Act and the multiple other Federal and State counterparts to these, and the hundreds of reviews they entail, would be well tempered with the identification of key airport capacity projects as the national priorities they are.
Now, environmental streamlining, of course, would only take us so far in expediting airport infrastructure deployment. Done correctly, it might trim some time off the process, but it is not really going to move us to the point we need to get to.
Recognizing that it can take 10 to 15 years to develop a runway, obviously, more must be done.
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The third element of the solution to our airport infrastructure crisis offers the most challenge. We can declare our national priorities. We can trim our environmental laws to make them function more effectively and make them more coherent.
But how do we develop the political will to make the right decisions for growth in the face of media-savvy, articulate opposition from a vocal, but often very small minority?
Here I can offer only a few conceptual approaches that might, upon further exploration, offer part of the solution. Congress might want to consider a mechanism sharing some of the characteristics of the Congressional Military Base Closing Commission of several years ago to review and set priority projects for our national aviation system.
Federal transportation funding, not simply airport funding, might be utilized to incentivize communities with priority airport infrastructure needs to meet their interstate commerce responsibilities.
Similarly, if necessary, disincentives might be applied to those localities that seek the benefits of air transportation, but chose not to meet those responsibilities.
Recognizing that in the broader community there is often significant support for better airport infrastructure that is drowned out by the vocal minority, steps might be considered to try to give voice to that support and to identify means to factor it appropriately into decision making.
Again, we would be pleased to work with the subcommittee in further developing these ideas.
Now, to conclude, we seek three components to addressing the aviation infrastructure crisis. First, the clear articulation by Congress of its priorities. Second the streamlining of our Federal and State environmental laws. Third, a menu of incentives, disincentives, priority-setting vehicles and public opinion devices, all geared to supplying the economy with the tools, the infrastructure, that it requires to function effectively.
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Thank you very much.
Mr. MICA. Thank you.
I am pleased to recognize Gerald Roper who is President and CEO of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. Welcome. You are recognized.
Mr. ROPER. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Lipinski, thank you for your dedication. Your career has been dedicated to the aviation issues, not only across the nation, but also in Illinois.
I am here testifying on behalf of the U.S. Chamber, the world's largest business federation of more than three million businesses and organizations of every size, sector and region. I am please the Congressman recognized small business, because they are struggling.
I am here today to share the concerns of the businesses and the State and local chambers across the country, all of whom rely on a safe, efficient and sound aviation system.
We salute the role that you have had to continue to play in modernizing and improving our nation's aviation system to ensure the public safety and promote economic growth across America. We applaud your continued efforts to ensure adequate funds and the modernization of our aviation system, thereby removing a major impediment to infrastructure expansion.
In February of this year, the U.S. Chamber convened a national aviation summit, bringing together Members of Congress, the Bush Administration and State and local officials, academics, business executive and the media to discuss the crisis and I underscore the word ''crisis'' of our aviation infrastructure systems.
I participated in this summit on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of the Chicagoland business community.
I am here today to testify about why this issue is critical and the possibilities we currently have to alleviate the capacity problems in our nation's system, a system that is bananas, and I will explain that in a moment.
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Just like energy or technology, the aviation network is a vital component of our nation's critical infrastructure, the infrastructure we much depend on for our prosperity, our global competitiveness and our national security.
It helps us move record numbers of business people and quantities of goods domestically and all over the world at speeds never seen before. It is an indispensable part of the just-in-time logistics chain that has helped make our economy the most efficient in the world.
Today the system which is so important and has served us well is under strain and ready to snap. The skies have become congested. Airports are overcrowded and the air traffic control system, as we have all heard, is outdated.
I don't need to tell you about the extraordinary growth in the airline passengers and airfreight that occurred over the past couple of years. Clearly, the capacity of our airline system has not kept pace with this impressive growth or, I think as Chairman Mica has said, ''It hasn't met market demand.''
In light of the enormous continued growth anticipated this decade, this situation will significantly worsen. According to the FAA, 27 airports in the U.S. are considered seriously congested. If improvements are not made, that number will grow to 31 by the year 2007.
In best cases, it takes 10 to 15 years on the airport building just two, very wide, mile stretch of roads which I won't get into, that part of it, because you have heard more and more about that.
With demand skyrocketing and capacity stagnant, crowded airports and runways are causing delay, canceled flights, long lines and frustrated businesses. These delays are more than just inconvenience. They create a huge drain on our economy and, I think, a quality of life of the business people that are traveling.
Last year the delays cost the airline industry, its passengers and its shippers an estimated $6.5 billion, up from $5.4 billion in 1999.
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For areas like Chicago, whose airport capacity is woefully inadequate to handle demand, this results in real costs in our economy. A recent Deloitte & Touche study showed that aviation delays have cost Chicago businesses an estimated $3 billion last year in expenses and lost time that I say could have been invested back into the economy and the workers of Illinois.
The delays resulting from inadequate capacity at O'Hare have a cascading effect of delays on other parts of the system.
The federal government must join with local governments to streamline the airport construction approval process so we can build the infrastructure we need in time.
The local environmental groups and their anti-growth allies are stifling airport expansion projects in the name of environmental preservation. Anti-growth forces hold airport expansion projects hostage with unreasonable demands including frivolous lawsuits.
We have had one trial lawyer in Illinois who has made a fortune off of this and it is his own 401(k) for the rest of his life.
For example, in Chicago we have tried to deal with these issues to the best of our ability. In fact, Chicago has spent more money on soundproofing programs than any other city in the nation.
These groups fail to see the big picture. They may think they are protecting their communities, but what they are really doing is adding more congestion and gridlock to the entire system. Their battle cry has evolved from NIMBY, Not in My Back Yard) to BANANA, Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.
Airport expansion also sparks local job growth and economic development. Communities that fail to expand airports to meet increased demand will see jobs, opportunities and revenues go elsewhere.
According to a 1998 Booz-Allen & Hamilton report commissioned by our Chamber, the region faces lost growth opportunities of $10 billion annually and more than 100,000 jobs if O'Hare is continued to be constrained.
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The business community supports airport expansion, as does a vast majority of the people out around O'Hare, according to two well-known newspapers, the Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune. We are talking about airport expansion that is environmental responsible and sensitive to the needs of the people who lie in these communities close to the airports.
But what it does not support is a never-ending airport construction approval process that is tipped in the favor of forces that will stop at nothing to prevent airport expansion. There are nine States in the nation, including Illinois, that are hampered by State laws that give final authority over runway construction to the Governor or the State legislature.
This is an unnecessary and bureaucratic obstacle, we believe, and in every other State of the Union it is the local airport authority in concert with the FAA which decides whether or not runways are needed.
So, the recent discussion that has taken place by Senator Harkin and others is something that we believe needs to be seriously, seriously looked at. Our transportation network is the circulatory system of the U.S. economy. And O'Hare has been called the heart.
On behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, we stand ready to work with you to help keep our economy healthy and strong by expanding aviation infrastructure capacity and updating our air traffic control system to eliminate costly delays.
Thank you.
Mr. MICA. Thank you.
I will recognize now Mr. David Raymond, President of the American Consulting Engineers Council. Welcome. You are recognized.
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Mr. RAYMOND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am privileged to be here today on behalf of America's engineering industry. We represent about 6,000 member companies employing more than a quarter million engineers working at airports and other infrastructure throughout the United States.
We applaud the committee for taking up the important topic of streamlining the implementation process in aviation infrastructure.
Our firms have experienced first hand the overly cumbersome procedures and inordinate delays that prevent timely delivery of transportation projects.
Mr. Chairman, we have heard today, and it is true, that it takes an average of eight years, if not more, to plan, design and build a runway. That is after the local governing body decides to proceed with the project.
That length of time should be completely unacceptable in an advanced, industrialized country.
We believe that this period can be significantly shortened, perhaps even by two-thirds. We have identified the major underlying problem leading to this delay as insufficient coordination among the multiple government agencies involved in the implementation of airport projects.
While it would seem that under NEPA that these agencies should already have established uniform procedures and coordination for timely project review, this has not been the case.
The Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, among many other agencies each require separate reviews of separate regulations. Worst of all, in most cases these reviews are sequential, meaning that one review must be completed before the next even begins.
America's engineers, along with virtually all other members of the construction and project development community, urge this committee to design legislation creating a coordinated review process.
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I would note that the previous Congress has already done this for highway and transit projects. Just last year the House-passed version of AIR-21 contained important language in this regard. Another problem we have identified leading to unnecessary delay is the current requirement by FAA for more than one engineering company to perform environmental assessment and engineering design when only one company may be necessary.
This means that a company which prepares an environmental impact statement for a project is prohibited from participating in subsequent engineering work on the project.
Theoretically, this prohibition of the FAA is supposed to prevent a conflict of interest. However, any potential conflict of interest is already dealt with more than adequately in the Federal Acquisition Regulations that govern the project.
The FAA's two-step process in this case serves only to prevent qualified companies from bidding follow-on work and leads to increased delays and additional costs for urgently needed improvements.
Congress is already on record in support of a streamlined, one-step engineering assignment in TEA-21. The language in Section 1205 of TEA-21 could serve as an excellent model for similar reforms in the aviation program.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MICA. Thank you.
I am pleased to recognize at this time Mr. Robert McCord, who is representing the American Road and Transportation Builders Association. Welcome. You are recognized.
Mr. MCCORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Robert McCord. I am Vice President of Operations for Ballenger Paving Division, APAC-Georgia, Inc., located in Taylors, South Carolina. APAC is the largest asphalt and concrete paving contractor in the country.
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I am testifying here today on behalf of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, which is the only national association that exclusively represents the collective interests of all sectors of the United States transportation construction industry.
I have submitted more detailed testimony for the record and would like to highlight just a few of those points for you.
Chairman Mica and Ranking Member Lipinski, a lot has been said about the problems with the current process. I am here to tell you today about a success story. I brought a poster that is the success story over there.
In 1999, I was fortunate enough to be project manager on the reconstruction of Runway 9R27L at Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport. From the first planning to the final cleanup, our team was on site for only four and a half months. Actual reconstruction of the runway only took 33 and a half days.
In that time we removed the equivalent of over 42-lanes miles of concrete pavement, milled the equivalent of over 20 miles, replaced it with an equivalent of 42 miles of concrete pavement and over 25 lane miles of asphalt pavement.
We also trenched and concrete encased over seven miles of conduit. Thirty-six miles of electrical wire were installed and over 1,050 in-pavement light fixtures were placed. We delivered or removed over 22,000 truckloads of materials with 500 to 800 men and women working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We worked over half a million man-hours without a single lost-time injury.
All of this in only 33 and a half days, which included 13 days of rain, at the world's busiest commercial airport without any flight delays attributable to our activity.
I would submit that when you put your mind to doing something, have the right people involved, think innovatively, provide adequate funding and put all the efforts toward advancing the team, anything can be accomplished. It can be done quickly and it can be done right.
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While difficult to legislate or regulate such an approach from Federal, State and local agencies could represent the single greatest step forward to expediting the process of airport construction projects.
The Hartsfield Project also highlighted some of the issues that need to be addressed during runway construction projects. For instance, as the busiest commercial airport in the world, it was clear from the outset that any delays to air traffic would be unacceptable.
As a result, the team converted a taxiway, which is 400 feet south of Runway 9R27L into a temporary runway for use during the reconstruction process.
In order to avoid lengthy security clearance checks for our employees, we placed a security fence around the entire project site, removing it from inside the aircraft operations area.
Finally, we used innovative techniques to place concrete plants and materials on site to stay below the Vortac, the navigational aid used for routing aircraft across the country. While it is clear that we can achieve a lot under the current process, the process can be improved.
ARTBA is a long-time advocate of streamlining the environmental review process. Such a process must include concurrent reviews, strict deadlines and delegation of environmental review to State agencies. We also believe engineering firms should be able to perform both environmental reviews and project design work.
We also urge Congress to use caution when considering proposals to shortcut the Clean Air Act to speed up airport construction. Any action that would provide relief to airport development alone could have a negative impact on development of all other modes of transportation.
In addition, this process is an inherent State process and Federal mandates should be avoided. We also recommend some FAA procedural changes. Under current practice, airports must wait a long period of time to receive funding for expenses incurred during the construction phase that are due to circumstances unforeseen at the time contracts are executed.
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In the past, companies in our industry have agreed to changes to keep the projects moving in the interest of teamwork. In such a situation, however, we should not be forced to shoulder the financial burden of the changes only to be paid several months after the fact. The FAA needs to make funding systems more flexible to uphold their end of the process.
Secondly, the FAA should reconsider its policy on retainage. The FAA currently withholds ten percent retainage, which is far in excess of any other government transportation agency. In fact, there is a national trend toward eliminating retainage altogether. This trend is being encouraged by the Federal Highway Administration, which considers retainage an out-of-date form of doing business.
Third, more attention needs to be focused on long-term planning for future airport expansion when a project is originally constructed. By taking future growth needs into consideration, contingencies can be built into a project, substantially saving time and money during future growth.
Finally, construction projects need to be afforded greater flexibility. The phasing of a project needs to be minimized as much as possible. Starting and stopping construction in several phases impedes the process and increases costs dramatically. It is like stop and go traffic on the interstate. The entire process moves much smoother if everyone keeps moving.
In summary, when there is a political will to get an airport runway built, our industry can do it very quickly. If we were to start the reconstruction of the Atlanta Airport project today, it would be done before the 4th of July.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for listening to ARTBA's views today.
Mr. MICA. Thank you.
We will hear finally from Dennis McGrann. He is with the National Organization to Insure a Sound-Controlled Environment. Welcome, sir. You are recognized.
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Mr. MCGRANN. Chairman Mica, Mr. Lipinski, Members of the Subcommittee, on behalf of the thousands of Americans who live under the flightways of our major commercial aviation corridors and are asked to bear the environmental health and safety consequences associated with them, I thank you for inviting me here today.
Mr. Chairman, I also commend you and the subcommittee for providing a balanced forum for the discussion of these important issues facing our country's infrastructure development.
I am the Executive Director of NOISE, the National Organization to Insure a Sound-Controlled Environment. NOISE is an affiliate of the National League of Cities and for 31 years has been America's preeminent community voice on aviation noise issues.
Contrary to what you may expect, we do not oppose construction of necessary new runways. Our members are communities that are located next to airports. We are cities that depend upon our airport neighbor for jobs, commerce, and our economic vitality.
We recognize the reality of aviation today and that it requires airports to increase capacity. In some cases that may mean adding new runways. I would like to commend ACI and the AAAE for their efforts in advancing discussion with their EASE proposal. There are a number of recommendations in their report that would go a long way toward increasing local support for airport improvements and could help expedite critically needed projects.
Specifically, NOISE commends the organizations for raising the issue of revenue diversion and the suggestion that local entities might be able to raise airport specific revenue to mitigate the related noise and environmental impacts of a critically needed new runway.
The EASE Proposal also suggests allowing airport operators greater leeway in determining the hours of operations for new runways. If airports were allowed to forge early consensus with locally elected leaders on the issue of noise mitigation and possible flight restrictions, we would see less concern from local citizens about the effects of a potential new runway and could realize critically needed infrastructure improvements more quickly.
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While we commend ACI and the AAAE for moving us closer to a solution on the questions of how to decrease runway construction delays, parts of the proposal raise serious environmental health and safety concerns for those who live near proposed new runways.
To put it simply, NOISE and the thousands of citizens we represent across the United States cannot accept the abrogation of any environmental law, regulation or review, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.
NOISE objects to the proposal to create a capacity czar with the authority, and I quote, ''to exempt projects from the environmental and other regulations that are unnecessarily hindering capacity enhancement.''
These environmental regulations were authored by Members of Congress, elected by their constituents to protect them from unanticipated environmental impacts ensuring the health and safety of their neighbors and community.
NOISE takes exception to investing in an unelected bureaucrat with no responsibility to local communities the power to waive these environmental protections when they become too inconvenient.
Second, NOISE cannot support the proposed elimination of alternatives analysis under which a government much determine whether or not reasonable alternatives to a new runway exist. If no such alternative exists, there is no reason to expect that a study could not be completed in a relatively short period of time.
However, if there is a dispute that some comparable alternative may exist, local communities have a right to know what those options are and their potential consequences.
Third, the proposal to exclude airport project additional from the NEPA review process raises major concerns. To repeat, NOISE cannot accept the abrogation of NEPA or any other environmental, health or safety standard for a project as large and as environmental significant as the construction of a new runway.
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Those who live near an airport and under its flight paths, deserve nothing less than a full assessment of the health, safety, and environmental prognosis for their community as a result of major infrastructure improvements.
That said, I would like to revisit some of the constructive suggestions in the EASE proposal, namely those that encourage consultation with local governments on noise mitigation funding and strategies and encourage cooperation with airport operators regarding flight and noise limits that enhance local community support.
As a number of airports around the country, including San Francisco International and Minneapolis-St. Paul have demonstrated, engaging airport neighbors through their democratically elected officials to forge a cooperative rather than confrontational process, will decrease the possibility of litigation and unnecessary construction delay.
One way to foster that relationship between the airports and the communities is to allow the local governments to receive noise mitigation funds directly. Current regulations allow only the airport operator to receive funding and they decide how to spend it in the community.
Wouldn't it be better to emphasize the principles of local control and have local elected officials who are accountable to the voters working with the FAA to make decisions about whether homes or schools to insulate and which property to acquire.
We would respectfully encourage the community to consider the possibility of granting the FAA the authority to accept noise mitigation applications directly from impacted communities.
Collaboration may involve some concession on the part of both airports and the communities, but by including local stakeholders in key decisions on the project, all parties will have a stake in the approval of the plan they collaborated to produce.
If history can be a guide, in 1991, when this committee wrote the Intermodal Surface Transportation Act, [ISTEA], it had the foresight to create impossible, or metropolitan planning organizations. The establishment of the MPOs provide the local communities and stakeholders a seat at the table and an opportunity to participate in the prioritization of local surface transportation projects.
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At the time some suggested the MPO would bring the process to a halt, create gridlock and jeopardize the development of critically needed transportation projects. Despite the gloomy warming of impending chaos, the establishment of the MPOs became recognized as a significant achievement of ISTEA.
Once representatives from local communities were given a stake in the process, they made their contributions to highway planning on behalf of their constituents at the beginning of the process.
NOISE suggests applying the successful MPO model to airport runway construction, using airport planning organizations or APOs to make local communities partners. This will produce a runway that is completed in less time with less controversy.
Local communities are not obstructionists, nor are they obstacles to progress. In fact, most local communities affected by aviation noise also depend on their airport neighbors for their economic viability.
We recognize the reality of aviation today that requires that airports increase capacity. We simply request that the citizens asked to bear the environmental health and safety consequences associated with aviation noise not be excluded from the decision process from major runway expansions.
With that, again, I thank the community for inviting me here today and I would be happy to answer any questions.
Mr. MICA. Thank you. Let me begin the questions by yielding to the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Hayes.
Mr. HAYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. McCord, where is Taylors, South Carolina? I thought I knew my way around down there.
Mr. MCCORD. It is right near Greenville, sort of on the outskirts.
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Mr. HAYES. What do you think would be a fair number for retainage? I know you said you would like to do away with it. As a former highway contractor, I would, too. But there also are some benefits to getting some punch list items done at the last of the project.
What would be a better number on retainage?
Mr. MCCORD. Personally, I would like to see zero. But I know the national average is around three percent right now. But there are many States that are zero and others that are higher.
Mr. HAYES. If we went to zero, somebody would want to take it out of mobilization then.
Mr. MCCORD. Well, you know, most of these contracts require a bond.
Mr. HAYES. Well, dealing with a bonding company, as you know, that is fun on both ends.
Anyway, I really think it is an important point from the engineers, from the business community and also from the environmental community. It can be done with cooperation. There are many things that can be done to meet the needs of the American public, both traveling, working, small business, everybody, if we work together.
This takes me to Mr. McGrann. Let me ask a couple of questions. In your testimony, in one place, it says you cannot accept the abrogation of NEPA for any other environmental health or safety and it goes down a long list of different things.
Then, we looked at another page and it says, to put it simply, the thousands of citizens this represents cannot accept abrogation of any.
Then we go over here and we get to a paragraph that says, ''Collaboration may involve.'' Well, if we can't accept any and we may collaborate, how are we going to bring those two together? The language does not sound very inclusive to me. Expand on that a little bit.
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Mr. MCGRANN. Thank you, Congressman. NOISE would not be able to accept any elimination, removal or any environmental health or safety regulations that currently exist.
That said, it does not preclude, in fact we would encourage collaboration, cooperation with local airplane operators in planning stages and putting together the process under which an airport runway expansion process would proceed.
It has been our experience in airports around the country and the two that I mentioned, both Minneapolis-St.Paul and San Francisco International that in fact where they did invited and there was local participation involved, there was considerable agreement early on in both of those projects that helped the projects move forward.
So, I don't think that they are mutually exclusive. That is to say that collaboration involves eliminating environmental laws. We believe that this collaboration can help move this project forward on a host of issues.
I think if you look, for example, over the report to the committee that was made by the FAA recently, that they suggested that in the time view, the environmental review was roughly three to four years and that the other elements were much longer.
So, we think that that could be expedited with that collaboration.
Mr. HAYES. Okay, so I did hear ''expedite.'' We are moving in the right direction in terms of cooperation. When I say ''any,'' we have environmental laws that are very, very important. Common sense is probably the most important one of all. I don't see anybody being excluded from these discussions. But I would like to hear a different tone of the conversation.
In your mind, and I think you answered it, does streamlining, in other words, making a process more vertical rather than linear, does that give you any heartburn?
Mr. MCGRANN. As long as we don't remove the existing statutory approvals. We would support that. For example, the Administrator testified and in the report to Congress they talked about simultaneous reviews and methodologies underway where you don't have repetitive reviews and that things could be done concurrently, as opposed to sequentially. Our member organizations, in fact, around the United States have supported that and have seen that work. So, we would believe that that is a smart step in the right direction.
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Mr. HAYES. Would you actively pursue, again, from your perspective suggestions and modifications to the procedure which, again, would give us a leg up early on with moving that process forward?
This is kind of a trick question, how many of the thousands of people who live under the airport arrival and departure corridors have built there since the airports were constructed?
Mr. MCGRANN. That certainly has been an issue in a number of communities around the country.
Mr. HAYES. I feel a lot safer under the approach corridor of National than I do driving out here on the Beltway.
Thank you, sir.
Mr. MICA. Thank you.
Ms. Norton.
Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. McGrann, you have a quotation in your testimony to the effect that you object to the creation of a ''capacity czar'' and then you said, ''With the authority'' and then you said you were quoting, ''to exempt projects from environmental and other regulations that are unnecessarily hindering capacity enhancement.''
Where is that quote from? Whose proposal was that?
Mr. MCGRANN. That is from the ACI-AAAE EASE proposal. That is where the quote was lifted from.
Ms. NORTON. Are you representing them?
Mr. HAUPTLI. I am. I could address that issue.
Ms. NORTON. Would you?
Mr. HAUPTLI. Sure. Our former Chairman, Larry Cox of Memphis, when he testified here in October, talked about the possibility of creating a capacity czar. There was a range of options discussed, all the way from sort of the Arnold Schwartzenegger version of exempting projects from certain review processes down sort of a gradation, all the way down to the notion of simply being more of a coordinating body.
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We have put forward in our proposal that continuum for the Congress to select from. So, that is what the representative there is referring to.
Ms. NORTON. Do you consider the Arnold Schwartzenegger proposal to be a realistic alternative in Congress today?
Mr. HAUPTLI. No, Ma'am.
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Raymond, you must have read my mind. I had not read your proposal, but on the basis of the testimony I received, it asked about coordination. Then when you began to testify, I heard the word ''coordination.'' I opened up your testimony and here you have it. I have some questions about what you said.
You indicate that NEPA seems to contemplate that there would be uniform procedures for review established administratively. Which agency do you believe should be establishing these uniform procedures of review?
You say, ''While it would seem,'' just to quote, ''a law that has been on the book for 30 years,'' would establish uniform procedures of review, this has not been the case. Then you give examples of multiple reviews by Federal agencies.
Mr. RAYMOND. I think NEPA contemplated a kind of coordinated review, not what we have today. I believe that at the time of the passage of NEPA if people actually believed that the result would be this extremely lengthy and cumbersome process, there would have been a different view of NEPA and there would have been more provisions added into it.
I believe the people who passed NEPA contemplated a streamlined environmental review.
Ms. NORTON. Now, if that was contemplated in the original NEPA law, who do you think is the logical agency to do that coordination? Since essentially what your comments reveal, if you think there is already the capacity to do that under existing law
Mr. RAYMOND. I believe that the Federal Aviation Agency has a responsibility to make sure that the projects under its purview move ahead in a coordinated way.
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Ms. NORTON. But that would leave us with, every time we pass something, then there would be an agency, perhaps not an expert agency in all of these matters, taking the jurisdiction unto itself. Do you think Congress contemplated that, that for example the Highway Administration would do it for these very same Federal laws, if it were highway projects? And FAA will do it for these various things. Is that what Congress had in mind?
Mr. RAYMOND. I don't know. I can't imagine that, but I don't know. That is a good question.
Ms. NORTON. It is interesting because your testimony suggests that there needs to be a locus that everybody understands to be the locus of review. I wonder if you would get the respect of some of these agencies if an agency, for example, had a once in a blue moon need to do the coordination, step in to do the coordination with no expertise.
For example, on environmental laws, on preservation of farm land and all the rest of it, I don't know if we need legislation to do that or not, but it suggests that there is some confusion about it.
You also mentioned the notion I raised about sequential. A has to go before B. What do you think leads to the sequential mode of operation? Are there necessities that the agencies may see for some sequential approach or is this habit or is this something else I don't see?
Mr. RAYMOND. I think it just developed like weeds in a garden. I believe in some instances there are sequential steps required. Usually those sequential steps are within an organization, within an agency. But this idea that one agency has to wait for the next agency and the next agency has to wait for the next agency and that the management process of this requires sequentially to move through a dozen different agencies, that makes very little sense.
Ms. NORTON. What agency do you think is in the best capacity to determine whether or not sequence is necessary, whether or not everyone ought to start doing her job immediately?
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Mr. RAYMOND. Well, I think in the case of the aviation projects, I think the FAA is in the best position.
Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentle lady.
I recognize ranking Member Lipinski at this time.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. McGrann, you talked about you would like to see community organizations be more involved. I was under the impression, and maybe it is only because of my experience in Chicago, but I was under the impression that community organizations were involved in soundproofing homes, schools, churches, hospitals, et cetera.
Certainly in the Chicago aviation system there is a citizens committee around O'Hare Airport and there was one around Midway Airport also. Those are true citizens that serve on those committees because I have known several on the Midway committee for probably 30 years or so because that is my community.
Are you saying that this does not exist throughout the country?
Mr. MCGRANN. Yes, that is correct, Mr. Lipinski. In fact the O'Hare Noise Compatibility Commission that is made up of communities around Chicago O'Hare, I think would be considered to be something of a model for other communities around the United States of collaboration, cooperation among the parties where you have in this case the operator of the airport and the City of Chicago meeting with its communities around it. I think that is a real example for the rest of the country.
Mr. LIPINSKI. You seem to be more familiar with O'Hare because there is more controversy about the O'Hare situation. But there is also a community organization around Midway, the other Chicago airport, that does exactly the same thing as the O'Hare one does.
Are you familiar with the Grassley-Harkin legislation that has been talked about in the Senate?
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Mr. MCGRANN. No, I am not, sir.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Well, that is a piece of legislation that would take away the power of the Governor to veto the construction of any runways at O'Hare Airport. It has nothing to do with environmental streamlining. That is another subject unto itself.
But it seems to me a national organization such as yours should become aware of that legislation. You should be prepared to take a position on that legislation in the event that it does go forward. A national organization involved in situations such as this certainly should acquaint itself with it.
If you could do that in the next three weeks while the record is still open, I would certainly be very interested in knowing what your organization's position would be.
Mr. MCGRANN. Thank you, Mr. Lipinski. We will do that.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Mr. Hauptli, you talked about and others have talked about, including Administrator Garvey, that the construction of new runways is the most significant way to increase capacity.
Yet, I have noticed that in regard to the Harkin-Grassley legislation, once again, your organization hasn't taken any position at the present time. Is it because the legislation has simply been talked about and it has not been put into legislative language or introduced that your organization, that should be very, very much interested in this, because it affects not only Illinois, but also eight other States.
In Illinois, we are dealing with probably the major linchpin of commercial aviation, O'Hare Airport. Is there any particular reason why your organization has not staked out a position yet on it?
Mr. HAUPTLI. Thank you for the question, Mr. Lipinski. When that legislation is developed, that is certainly something that we will take a look at. As we discussed previously, sometimes as a national organization we tend to be agnostic about particular individual airport projects throughout the country, but are focused primarily on adding additional capacity to the overall system.
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But that legislation is something we will certainly take a look at. We will get back to you on that.
Mr. LIPINSKI. But here we are dealing with a situation where it does impact the nine different States. It does impact an airport that many consider to be the linchpin, the heart of commercial aviation in this country.
Even the FAA, even though they chose not to take any position in regards to this situation, they did highlight it in their last report. So, I think an organization such as yours that is deeply involved in it should be willing to stand up when you have had an opportunity to fully evaluate it.
Mr. HAUPTLI. I will take an IOU on that.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Mr. Meenan, your organization is another one that should be standing up and taking a position in regards to this. You know it as well as I know it.
I will give you the same out as I gave Mr. Hauptli. It hasn't been introduced yet. You have not seen it in legislative language form, so you are not prepared to comment on it. I have already given your answer for you, but if you want to say anything else, go right ahead.
Mr. MEENAN. Mr. Lipinski, you have taken the words right out of my mouth. I appreciate it.
Mr. LIPINSKI. That is what I assumed.
Mr. Roper, I know what your personal feelings are with regard to this situation, having discussed them with you. But what about the Chamber of Commerce that you are here today representing, either the National Chamber of Commerce or the one that you are more affiliated with in the City of Chicago?
Mr. ROPER. Well, the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce has this under review as we speak. Our annual meeting is next Thursday at which point we hope it will be brought up and, of course, voted on. But, as you all know, we see it as our last ray of hope based on what has taken place in Illinois. We have had a Governor who has said that he will look at something, but on the other hand said that he is opposed to runways.
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So, as the question was asked earlier regarding the environmental groups, while they want to collaborate, the answer is no. So, we see that as our ray of hope.
As you all know also, Mayor Daley has shown some movement. But again, I think the movement is that he still has to give that to the Governor, and the Governor has already said publicly ''no.''
So, it is something that our organization plans to take up, vote on and have a positive vote ''yes.'' As far as the U.S. Chamber, there are a lot more organizations that they have to get that out there to. But based on the opening statement that I made on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, I know Tom Donohue is not a bashful person and will be out there advocating on behalf of something.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you. Since one of you build highways and runways and taxiways and the other one lays them out, so you are both strong supporters of ''pour that concrete.'' I am quite sure that you would be happy to go anyplace and pour that concrete any place. So, I won't even both continuing to question you about that stuff.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MICA. Thank you.
Mr. McCord, I was fascinated by your success story. It is remarkable. You could put together a former developer project and execute it that quickly. You cited a very short time frame for construction. What was the permitting timeframe?
Mr. MCCORD. To be honest with you, sir, I am not sure what that permitting timeframe was. I could get that information for you from the airport authority themselves.
Mr. MICA. Kind of when that began and when that ended.
Mr. MCCORD. I think it was around a year or a year and a half, I believe.
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Mr. MICA. I would like that for the record. It shows that if you have the will and you have the permit in hand, the private sector can put a runway in place.
I guess if we could pass a Federal law and pick about six or seven target congested airports and contract with your firm, we would have at least the runway congestion problem temporarily under control.
Mr. MCCORD. Well, the key thing on that whole project was that everybody basically had a vested interest. There wasn't anybody involved that wanted to see it not succeed, I guess that is the best way of putting it.
Mr. MICA. So there were no attempts to stop the project once it got going?
Mr. MCCORD. Not that I am aware of. Somebody had to stand up and take charge. I was not the individual person who stood up and took charge all the time. But I had my group of folks. You had the engineers. You have the FAA that was heavily involved. The airlines were involved. It was all the way around a collaborative effort, the airport authority.
Mr. MICA. One of the problems we have, Mr. McGrann, is that, you know, there are legitimate environmental concerns that must be addressed. There are also the nuisances or folks that have some other agenda. How do you separate legitimate from frivolous?
Mr. MCGRANN. We believe that is a real issue, Mr. Chairman. The shortest response to that would be to say that our experience has been where the local airport operator and the impacted communities and stakeholders got together early on in the process to discuss it and to work together toward the consensus, that our experience has proven and been that that has resolved that.
We don't support unnecessary frivolous delays, litigation to no end. We believe that there is a need for airport expansion and in many cases runways are a critical part of that. We just believe that local collaboration is the way to go.
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Mr. MICA. Mr. Hauptli, some have suggested that the EASE proposal is intended to circumvent the environmental laws and prevent people in adjacent communities or affected jurisdictions from making their voices heard during the review process. How do you respond?
Mr. HAUPTLI. That certainly was not the intent of the legislation, Mr. Mica. The marching orders that we have been operating under from our members from the very beginning was to try and figure out a way of crafting a package that would allow for the expedited review and approval of the process without trampling on environmental rights and any organizations or their abilities to influence the process.
Mr. MICA. Part of the problem we have heard in testimony today indicates that EPA doesn't have some of the resources to make this review process and complete the environmental evaluation.
You have suggested that there be a mechanism to pay for a portion of this. Your attorneys and others that have analyzed this, are they confident that authority doesn't exist under current laws, that we have to change the law to make this happen or do you think the FAA has this authority and it is just a matter of allowing it through change of rule or administrative act?
Mr. HAUPTLI. Well, when we began this process, we were unaware of any existing authority that the FAA would have to do this. In the FAA's report that they have released this week, they cite a 1968 law indicating that they believe they have the authority to enter into reimbursable agreements.
If that is the case and they are able to bring those on line, we would happily stand down legislatively. That law that they cite is 33 years old. We have not had a reimbursable agreement in this area yet.
So, I will leave that to the judgment of the Congress as to whether or not we might need to provide additional legislative codification there.
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Mr. MICA. Thank you.
Mr. Meenan, you had spoken about incentives and disincentives. Can you elaborate?
Mr. MEENAN. We frankly believe that serious thought should be given to looking at total transportation funding for areas that have significant, identified aviation infrastructure needs that are not being met.
Mr. MICA. Would that require change in legislation?
Mr. MEENAN. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I believe it probably would.
Mr. MICA. How would you more equitably distribute those resources?
Mr. MEENAN. It is part of a package of proposals that we envision that would involve a mechanism for identifying those significant priority airport projects and a mechanism for identifying them as priority projects as far as Congress is concerned, giving communities an opportunity to move on them and then providing incentives to get them done. If they don't get moving on them quickly, to provide disincentives to encourage the rethinking of the failure to move on them.
Mr. MICA. Well, we have provided more money through AIP for construction and infrastructure projects. The problem is, sometimes with permits in hand, and it takes a long time to get the permits, we do have some existing under-capacity airports where you can bowl down the concourse and not hit a live passenger during most of the day.
There are restrictions on the use of some of the Federal money for promotion incentives, whatever it takes, to get people to these under-utilized facilities. Are you advocating that we look at changing the use, then, of those funds to some of these other purposes?
Mr. MEENAN. What we are suggesting is that there are a number of under-utilized facilities that are many times overbuilt, but what we need to do is look at the facilities that really have the most critical impact on national system efficiency, identify the projects that will help enhance the capacity at those airports and target money at those airports.
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Mr. MICA. Now, again, in most instances there is money available for most of those airports. The problem is either getting the local folks to make a decision. We have gone from NIMBY to BANANA, as we heard today. There could be, say, a permit in hand and then still further delay the process.
We have money available for most of those infrastructure projects as a result of AIR-21 and Congress being generous with these projects. But we don't have the local will or ability to move forward.
Mr. MEENAN. That is why we would also add the disincentive language to the proposal.
Mr. MICA. What would that be?
Mr. MEENAN. That would be to withdraw transportation monies from communities that have those projects that have been identified as national aviation priority projects, but who persist in not adding the capacity, who don't meet their interstate commerce responsibilities.
That may be the only way. Obviously, it is not the preferred way to get them built, but we structured it as an incentive/disincentive kind of package. But the thing that might move those communities is perhaps on the negative side.
Mr. MICA. Well, I want to thank each of you for your participation. It is my hope that we can solicit from the witnesses that we had here today and other interested parties, certainly from both sides of the aisle, between now and hopefully mid-June, to try to see what we can agree on as far as language. Hopefully we can craft something that does protect the environment, which I think we all have an interest in.
It also moves these projects forward where we can, eliminating duplication, trying to get better coordination between the various levels of government and again looking at the possibility of incentives and disincentives for certain actions.
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We will leave the record open for a period of three weeks for additional comments. I am asking again for the members and industry and public interest parties and organizations to try to get their legislative language to us so we can try to reach a consensus and hopefully move this process forward.
It is not the total answer, but each of these are parts of the puzzle that need to come together to make our airways more flyable, useable, accessible to the public.
With that, there being no further business to come before the subcommittee today, this meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:25 p.m. the subcommittee was adjourned, to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]