Breaking Down the Blueprint: Economic Competitiveness, Efficiency, and Opportunity, Pt. 2
June 17, 2009By Andrew Bielak
| The T4 America Blueprint has six overarching national objectives to provide a new vision and guide our federal transportation policy. If our transportation system is in need of a clear purpose, these six objectives are like the rudder that will steer the ship. To ensure that we can meet these objectives and measure our progress, we created 10 performance targets — clear, quantifiable goals for the next 20 years that are tied directly to the six national objectives. |
How can the proposals in our Blueprint help strengthen the economy and create jobs? As we noted in the last post in this series, making our economy more competitive, increasing workforce development opportunities, and improving the efficiency of our transportation system represents one of our six national objectives that must guide our national transportation program.
As a quick refresher: while many of our 10 performances targets line up with this objective, there are two that we believe are particularly important:
- Reduce delay per capita by 10 percent by 2030
- Lower congestion costs by reducing traffic crashes by 50 percent by 2030.
Meeting these goals won’t be easy — it requires us to rethink how we approach our transportation investments, to create an integrated system that balances investments in highways, public transportation, rail, and walking and biking, and to use state-of-the art technology to manage our existing transportation infrastructure.
To see what programs and policies in our Blueprint will help us reach this objectives, keep on reading below the fold.
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Breaking Down the Blueprint: Economic Competitiveness, Efficiency, and Opportunity
June 11, 2009By Andrew Bielak
| The T4 America Blueprint has six overarching national objectives to provide a new vision and guide our federal transportation policy. If our transportation system is in need of a clear purpose, these six objectives are like the rudder that will steer the ship. To ensure that we can meet these objectives and measure our progress, we created 10 performance targets — clear, quantifiable goals for the next 20 years that are tied directly to the six national objectives. |
When President Dwight Eisenhower laid the groundwork for the interstate highway system in 1956, he understood that an efficient, interconnected, well-functioning transportation system is absolutely essential to building a strong national economy.
A successful transportation system ensures that we arrive to work on time, moves goods quickly and efficiently, and employs millions of Americans in well-paying jobs. With our nation facing some of the greatest challenges in recent history, it’s particularly important that we make the right investments now to promote long-term economic growth for the future.
For this reason, one of our six national transportation objectives is to improve economic competitiveness, transportation system efficiency, and workforce development opportunities.
As we’ve discussed in this ongoing series breaking down the blueprint, our six objectives are tied to 10 performance targets — which should be met by 2030 — to help guide our program into the 21st century. While laying the groundwork for a more efficient and competitive economy through better infrastructure is a complex, multi-faceted goal intertwined with our whole transportation system, we believe that two of our performance targets are particularly relevant to this objective:
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Breaking Down the Blueprint: Energy Efficiency and Energy Security, Pt. 2
June 5, 2009By Andrew Bielak
| The T4 America Blueprint has six overarching national objectives to provide a new vision and guide our federal transportation policy. If our transportation system is in need of a clear purpose, these six objectives are like the rudder that will steer the ship. To ensure that we can meet these objectives and measure our progress, we created 10 performance targets — clear, quantifiable goals for the next 20 years that are tied directly to the six national objectives. |
In our previous post breaking down the T4 America Blueprint, we discussed our national objective of creating an energy efficient transportation system that boosts our economy and helps America use less oil. Today, we’re going to look at this issue from a slightly different angle, by explaining how we plan to achieve this goal — and measure our success — through strong, accountable reforms.
It may seem obvious that our federal transportation program should encourage less fuel use. Unfortunately, our existing policies do the exact opposite.
Instead of giving Americans options like public transportation, high-speed rail, and walking and biking, federal policy still has a heavy bias towards new road construction, promoting more driving — even as Americans continue to drive less and use transit in record numbers. And while research shows that transferring even a moderate portion of our goods movement from trucks to rail would have a huge impact on our overall fuel use (not to mention congestion), recent federal transportation bills have done nothing to incentivize this smart and essential shift in our freight policy.
To jumpstart the needed transition to an energy-efficient transportation system and a secure economy, Transportation for America has created a road map to reform that includes strong, clear policies and programs that we recommend Congress adopt in the next transportation bill. Continue reading below the fold to learn more about some of the specific policies and programs we’re proposing to lead this transition:
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Breaking Down the Blueprint: Energy Efficiency and Energy Security
June 3, 2009By Andrew Bielak
| The T4 America Blueprint has six overarching national objectives to provide a new vision and guide our federal transportation policy. If our transportation system is in need of a clear purpose, these six objectives are like the rudder that will steer the ship. To ensure that we can meet these objectives and measure our progress, we created 10 performance targets — clear, quantifiable goals for the next 20 years that are tied directly to the six national objectives. |
In November 2008, President Obama described America’s dependence on oil as resembling a “shock and trance” cycle. Our growing demand for foreign oil, he said, creates skyrocketing energy prices, leading to dramatic calls for energy independence and sudden cutbacks in our consumption that quickly dissipate once the price of oil drops — beginning the cycle all over again.
Transportation for America believes that the push to make our country less dependent on oil begins with a smarter, cleaner transportation system, and for this reason we’ve made one our top national transportation objectives to promote energy efficiency and achieve energy security.
While we’ll talk later this week about the programs in our Blueprint that help us reduce our dependence on oil, we wanted to explain today why we have this national objective, why our transportation system has such deep effects on our country’s energy consumption, and what performance targets are linked to this goal. As you’ll recall from the previous posts in this series, our 10 performance targets are measurable goals that will help us ensure that we achieve our objectives. While nearly all of these performance targets are important to create a more energy-secure economy, we are including two here that are particularly critical as we look towards this goal:
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Breaking Down the Blueprint: Climate Stability and Environmental Protection
May 29, 2009By Stephen Lee Davis
| The T4 America Blueprint has six overarching national objectives to provide a new vision and guide our federal transportation policy. If our transportation system is in need of a clear purpose, these six objectives are like the rudder that will steer the ship. To ensure that we can meet these objectives and measure our progress, we created 10 performance targets — clear, quantifiable goals for the next 20 years that are tied directly to the six national objectives. |
Ed. note: This is a continuing series of posts breaking down the six objectives in our Route to Reform Blueprint. While we’re trying to explain the Blueprint in simpler terms, it’s a document full of complicated policies geared at Congress and these posts are fairly detailed.
On Wednesday, we looked at the second of our six National Transportation Objectives and two corresponding performance targets. This second objective describes our goal of building a transportation system that protects our communities from pollution, preserves our environment, and helps us protect our climate.
As a refresher:
As we’ve noted in our previous post, transportation comprises 30 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions. Simply put, to address climate change and global warming, we’re going to have to cut carbon emissions from the transportation sector across the board.
We can begin by creating cleaner fuels and using more efficient cars, buses, and trains. In this respect, this week’s announcement by the Obama administration of increased efficiency standards is an important step. But if we expect to reach the widely accepted goal of an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050, we can’t just drive cars that don’t emit as much pollution or get better mileage. We need a transportation policy that helps us drive less, that provides better and cleaner options, that makes it easy for us to walk to the store, and that allows us to live closer to our schools and jobs.
Reducing emissions and pollution from our transportation system is also an important step in making Americans healthier. Today, low-income people are subject to an undue share of the negative effects of our transportation policy; oftentimes, the less money you make the more at-risk you are for asthma and numerous other ailments tied to the quality of our air and water. Transportation for America not only is making environmental protection a goal of our Blueprint, but is also calling for policies that promote environmental justice and help protect at-risk populations.
While the programs throughout the entire Blueprint are geared towards meeting this objective of climate stability and environmental protection, we’re including a few examples of our policies and priorities here to give you a general sense of how we plan to achieve this goal.
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Breaking Down the Blueprint: Climate Stability and Environmental Protection
May 27, 2009By Andrew Bielak
We continue our series on the Transportation for America Blueprint this week with a look at the second of six core objectives we believe Congress must embrace in the next transportation bill — environmental protection, climate stability, and environmental justice.
As we’ve discussed here before, our Blueprint has six overarching national objectives, which we believe should provide a vision for the future and a guide for our federal transportation policy. One of the biggest criticisms leveled at our country’s transportation spending is that there are no clear goals for what the money should accomplish. Therefore, T4 America is looking to define a clear purpose for our system — and these six objectives are like the rudder to steer the ship.
To ensure that we can meet these objectives and measure our progress, we created 10 performance targets — clear, quantifiable goals for the next 20 years that are tied directly to the six national objectives. (You can see the two that most directly link in with this objective at the top of this post.)
Our country needs a transportation system that keeps our air clean, helps us fight climate change, and protects all Americans — no matter who they are or where they live — from dangerous environmental pollution. Unfortunately, our existing policies — which subsidize sprawling development and foster dependence on automobiles — have made protecting our environment and our communities an increasingly challenging task.
Thirty percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States comes from transportation, which produces more CO2 than any other country’s entire economy, save China. And while policymakers in Congress have mandated increased fuel efficiency for automakers in order to help reduce emissions, the sheer growth in the number of miles Americans drive — and lack of other viable transportation options — threatens to overwhelm these benefits.
As we described in our previous post on public health and safety, pollution from automobiles and other sources can have devastating effects on people’s health, particularly in the poorer or impoverished communities that often bear the brunt of these negative impacts.
In order to guide our transportation program and help create a safer, cleaner, and healthier system, Transportation for America believes in that we should strive to meet these two performance measures:
- Reduce transportation-generated carbon dioxide levels by 40%.
- Achieve zero percent exposure to at-risk levels of air pollution.
To achieve these goals, we’re going to need some real reforms, direct accountability, and a strong commitment to a 21st transportation system. This commitment must include the construction of the second half of our transportation network — including public transportation, bike and pedestrians paths, and high-speed rail — a stronger linkage between transportation and land use policies, and repairs and maintenance on our existing infrastructure to help Americans save time, money and fuel. Investing in the transportation systems that emit less pollution while moving people more efficiently will help us reach these ambitious targets.
To get a better idea of how we plan to enact these reforms, check back later this week when we dive into the specific policies and proposals that T4 America is supporting — and see how an improved transportation system can protect our environment, fight climate change, and foster healthy, clean, pollution-free communities.
Breaking Down the Blueprint: Improving public health and safety with a 21st Century transportation program
May 22, 2009By Andrew Bielak
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Earlier this week, we talked with you about Transportation for America’s national objective for a healthier, safer transportation system, and showed you the performance targets needed to measure our progress towards these goals.
Today, we’d like to talk about just how we hope to reach these goals through some of the policies and reforms that we propose in our Blueprint.
As some of you probably know, trying to understand federal transportation, and the programs, funding mechanisms, and institutional structures behind it, is no day at the beach — these policy details are complex, confusing, and sometimes, pretty boring. In an effort to create a more coherent national vision for our transportation system, T4 America has drafted a simple and clear set of targets and programs in our Blueprint, which we believe can serve as a more accessible guide for the future of transportation policy.
While the programs throughout the entire Blueprint encourage and incentivize investment in safer roads for all users, more walkable, bikeable communities, and cleaner air, we thought we’d focus here on a couple policies and priorities that exemplify our commitment to improving safety and public health.
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Breaking Down the Blueprint: T4’s Objective for Improved Public Health and Safety
May 20, 2009By Stephen Lee Davis
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When we think about our daily commutes to work, walks to the grocery store, or bus rides our kids take to school, there are few things more important than making sure these activities keep us healthy and safe.
After all, the numbers related to these issues are simply staggering — more than 37,000 people killed on our roads in 2008, between $40 and $60 billion in annual health care costs from negative air quality associated with transportation, more than 16 percent of children, and 66 percent of adults, considered overweight or obese due in large part due to a lack of physical activity.
Transportation for America believes that a renewed transportation system must Ensure Safety for All Transportation Users and Improve Public Health Outcomes — a goal that will require some critical changes in the way we approach transportation policy. For that reason, we’ve made it one of six top-line objectives in our Blueprint.
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Breaking Down the Blueprint: Introducing an ongoing series on T4 America’s Route to Reform
May 19, 2009By Andrew Bielak
Last week, the Transportation for America campaign took a huge step by releasing The Route to Reform: Blueprint for a 21st Century Transportation Policy, a comprehensive, detailed set of recommendations for Congress and the Obama administration as they lay the groundwork for the upcoming transportation bill.
Since then, we’ve held a big event on Capitol Hill to highlight our proposals, influenced an important new bill being proposed in the Senate, and continued to pressure Congress to follow the Blueprint’s recommendations and craft a transformational, 21st century transportation bill.
Of course, all the work we’re doing to promote this document is probably making you ask one critical question about the Blueprint — just what does it say? While we’ve posted the Blueprint in its entirety on our website, we don’t expect everyone to comb through all 100 pages or memorize each and every idea we have for building a better system.
For that reason, we’ll be unpacking the Blueprint in the coming weeks in a continuing series of posts highlighting the vision, objectives, and program recommendations that T4 America has drafted to guide Congress as it works on the legislation to steer transportation policy in the United States. Whether you consider yourself a die hard transportation nut, or just someone who is sick of getting stuck in stop-and-go traffic each morning on the way to work, these blog posts can help you understand the key reforms that underline our vision for a brighter future.
We’ll start tomorrow morning by going over the first — and arguably, one of the most important — of our six broad objectives: the need to make our transportation system safe for everyone and beneficial for public health.
Check back tomorrow, and in the coming weeks, to get a clear sense of our solutions for creating a safer, more accessible, cheaper, and cleaner transportation system.
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- Obama’s 2011 budget gives a lift to livability and transportation
February 2, 2010 - President Obama hails high-speed rail as “the infrastructure of tomorrow”
January 28, 2010 - High speed rail grantees awarded, was your state included?
January 28, 2010 - Building America’s Future brings bipartisanship to rebuilding the country
January 21, 2010 - Cleaner buses can create jobs, improve the environment
January 14, 2010
- Obama’s 2011 budget gives a lift to livability and transportation
The United States of Transit Cutbacks
Driving is down and transit ridership is at record highs. Yet transit agencies across the country are considering layoffs, service cuts and fare hikes. Find out more and learn what you can do to help at t4america.org/transitcuts
Transportation: In your eyes
Send us your transportation-related photos.
