The jointly written report, The Most for Our Money: Taxpayer Friendly Solutions for the Nation’s Transportation Challenges discusses seven approaches that would increase travel options, cut congestion and stretch every federal transportation dollar further so that our current system can be maintained. Representatives from the three groups outlined the findings in detail at a briefing on Capitol Hill this morning.

One key tenet of the report is transportation scenario planning. Under this approach, state and local officials would forecast a variety of “what-if” growth and planning scenarios to see how these potential futures would impact transportation. Then, constituents and interested parties would be able to see for themselves how to best leverage their transportation dollars under a number of different outcomes. Many communities — Salt Lake City, Utah; Sacramento, California; and Chicago; among others — have already saved money and developed a bold vision using these strategies.

Another innovative solution stressed in the report is the expanded use of High-Occupancy Toll, or HOT, lanes. These lanes are reserved for buses and high-occupancy vehicles. Single-occupancy vehicles wishing to use the lanes may pay a fluctuating rate that varies based on traffic conditions. Users of the HOT lanes enjoy the direct benefits of an ease in congestion and non-HOT lane users indirectly benefit from more space in their lanes.

Other recommendations include:

• Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), which utilizes a combination of technology, dedicated lanes and existing infrastructure to run faster buses on local streets and highways
• Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), which uses a variety of technologies such as web-based alerts, traffic management and electronic tolling to make better use of existing capacity
• Intercity Buses, which have quickly becomes a popular travel option between population centers
• Teleworking, which encourages employers to make arrangements for remote work, improving productivity and reducing the need for long commutes
• Local Connectivity, which emphasizes improved local traffic networks so that longer-distance routes are less congested and more efficiently used

“Needless to say, the obstacles facing our transportation system are large, especially given the current state of the economy and difficult funding climate,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America. “But by making smart, selective choices about how our vital dollars are spent — fixing what we have first and looking for ways to better utilize the system — we can maintain our current network and better meet changing transportation needs.”

Shirley Ybarra, senior transportation policy analyst at the Reason Foundation and former Virginia secretary of transportation added, “We’re offering innovative ideas, free-market solutions, and simple fixes that will help us get the most for our money.”

Read the full report here.

Photo courtesy of the Vancouver Sun.

America’s reliance on oil, particularly by our thirsty transportation system, comes with numerous costs that do not always show up at the pump, as well as the heavy dependence on foreign sources to sell us most of the oil we need to keep things moving each day.

A diverse group of experts are calling for a new approach that would acknowledge these hidden costs and help pave the way for a more diverse transportation system that could reduce oil consumption, keep us more safe and give us better options for getting around.

The proposed “oil security fee” would be added to gasoline and diesel fuel to reflect the true cost of securing these supplies. Revenues from the fee would go toward increasing mass transit, intelligent transportation systems, telecommuting and other options to provide more choices for how to get around. Allowing Americans to live closer to where they work, play and go to school is also among their menu of 10 smart new policies.

As the “Mobility Choice” coalition put it, “Now is the time to shift forward toward a future where Americans have real, viable transportation options.”

For decades policymakers have favored an oil dependent transportation system through the creation of our world-class interstate highway system, zoning and tax policies that make it easier build housing farther and farther away and a lack of investment in the kind of travel options — buses, light-rail, walking and biking — Americans want. More than four-in-five voters (82 percent) say “the United States would benefit fro expanded and improved transportation,” according to recent polling, and 79 percent of rural voters agree as well.

The coalition also points to the potential of new and emerging technologies that can provide real-time information and increased efficiency. Mobile phones and GPS technology enable drivers to receive up-to-the-minute updates on where to find parking, cutting back on idling and circles around the block, and a coordinated program like this is already underway in San Francisco. The same systems make it easier for bus passengers to know when the next arrival should be expected. (We profiled some of these new systems in a series of case studies on intelligent transportation. – Ed.)

Policies like an additional levy on oil might typically be associated with environmental organizations, and the Natural Resources Defense Council’s federal transportation policy director, Deron Lovaas, is in fact a co-author and contributor. But some other perhaps less-expected people have also signed on, including Gabriel Roth of the libertarian Independent Institute and Kenneth Green of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. They join a number of right-leaning policy thinkers in concluding that an oil fee is among the most efficient and market-friendly methods of cleaning up our air and becoming energy independent.

The coalition also includes a number of national security and foreign affairs thinkers, including Admiral Dennis McGinn, former CIA director R. James Woolsey and former National Security Advisor Robert C. McFarlane. They and others have noted that energy independence is in our national security interests – and it’s past time we act upon that interest.

Although the political climate around both transportation and revenue is volatile and uncertain, this commanding group of experts – and bold proposal – cannot be ignored.

You can find out more about Mobility Choice coalition and read the full report here.

A new report from four leading transportation organizations demonstrates how existing and emerging technologies can squeeze more capacity from over-burdened highways, help commuters avoid traffic delays and expand and improve transportation options, all while saving money and creating jobs.

“Smart Mobility for a 21st Century America” shows why improving efficiency through technology is critical as our population grows and ages, budgets tighten and consumer preferences shift. The report was co-authored by Transportation for America, the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America), the Association for Commuter Transportation (ACT) and the University of Michigan SMART Initiative.

With President Obama’s support for a $50 billion down payment for infrastructure and the real prospect that Congress will move forward on a comprehensive, multi-year transportation bill in the upcoming session, the paper makes the case for investing in technology and innovation to help solve our nation’s most critical transportation problems.

The new report was released today in conjunction with the IBM Smarter Transportation Virtual Forum, which brought together experts from across the public sector, private industry and academia to discuss urban mobility and the growing need for technology solutions to the nation’s transportation, economic and environmental challenges.

“We have a unique opportunity to shape the direction of transportation policy for years to come, which is why this report is so important,” said Transportation for America Director James Corless. “We can harness technology and tap America’s creative potential to get a better bang for our buck and ensure the transportation options Americans rely on are available and affordable in the coming decades.”

“As public agencies are being asked to do more with less, investing in smart technology is critical for improving system efficiency, optimizing the public’s return on investment, and creating a more connected transportation network,” said ITS America President and CEO Scott Belcher. “Congress and President Obama have the opportunity next year to put the U.S. back on the road to global competitiveness and economic prosperity by investing in a more intelligent 21st century transportation system.”

Studies have shown that intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and other smart technologies are cost effective and quick to deploy, with solutions like synchronized and adaptive traffic signals yielding a $40 return in time and fuel savings for every $1 invested while also reducing CO2 emissions up to 22 percent and travel delays by 25 percent or more. The Government Accountability Office found the benefit-cost ratio of a nationwide real-time traffic information system to be 25 to 1, with a $1.2 billion investment returning more than $30 billion in safety, mobility and environmental benefits.

In addition, researchers from the London School of Economics and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation found that investing in ITS creates a network effect throughout the economy and stimulates job creation across multiple sectors, including green jobs, high-tech, automotive, information technology, electronics, and other industries.

While improvements to vehicles and cleaner fuels are the most talked-about technological innovations, many smart technologies are being deployed today to improve system efficiency and reduce travel delays, provide more convenient access to transportation alternatives, and even customize routes based on real-time traffic conditions and individual travel preferences to keep people and businesses moving on schedule. The paper groups these innovations into five categories:

• Making transportation systems more efficient and cost-effective
• Providing more travel options and multimodal connectivity
• Providing travelers with real-time, accurate transportation system information
• Making pricing and payments more convenient and efficient
• Avoiding unnecessary trips and time wasted in traffic

“It is critical for the future of our nation’s transportation policy to foster projects and programs that collect and disseminate information to the public in a timely and easily accessible fashion,” said Brian Shaw, President of ACT. “The result is a transportation system that is safer and provides more options for system users.”

“Investing in next generation transportation infrastructure makes sense. It connects and optimizes new transportation technologies, services, modes, and design, offering Americans more livability, sustainability, and hip factor for less money. It also lays the foundation for leadership, major business opportunity, and green job creation in the emerging global New Mobility industry,” said Sue Zielinski, Managing Director of SMART at the University of Michigan.

The report contains a series of case studies that demonstrate how these technologies have already been applied to real-world transportation challenges. The report also offers policy recommendations as Congress and the Obama Administration consider a comprehensive transportation bill. These include providing incentives and dedicated funding for states and regions to adopt smart technology solutions to make system more efficient, offering competitive grants to stimulate innovation, and having the federal government play a role in disseminating the latest research and best practices.

You can download the full report and read it cover to cover now, but we will be publishing the case studies as a series here on the blog over the next 2 weeks if you’d like to read about these innovations in smaller bite-sized chunks. Look for the first story later today.

Business and transportation industry leaders today joined Transportation for America for a briefing on Capitol Hill to underscore the potential of a reformed, multi-year transportation bill to boost the economy and create lasting jobs across the country.

Business leaders from Siemens, IBM and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which represents more than 300 major companies in the Silicon Valley including Yahoo!, Microsoft and AT&T, highlighted the power of new and innovative policies to revolutionize the transportation sector, make our country more economically competitive for the 21st century and provide working Americans the affordable options they need to get to their jobs every day.

“Our annual CEO survey identified traffic congestion as one of the top concerns for businesses in the Silicon Valley,” said Carl Guardino, President and CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. “Public transportation is a lifeline for our nation’s workforce. Allowing the cuts to service we have seen around the country to continue will only worsen congestion for commuters and increase the challenge of attracting the talent that our cutting-edge businesses depend on.”

The panelists highlighted the need for major reform to our national transportation system and investments in smart technologies that will make our country a leader in innovation. Whether in reducing congestion, improving road safety or increasing service and efficiency in public transportation networks, these investments can help communities solve problems and create jobs.

“Siemens is optimistic that the combination of political will, public interest, and unprecedented funding will lead to an integrated and comprehensive transportation system throughout the U.S.,” said Diederick Van Dillen, Mid Atlantic Regional Manager for the Siemens Corporation. “The movement of people and goods is what keeps cities and regions competitive, and less time spent in traffic leads to enhanced quality of life for Americans.”

Our current transportation program is based largely on policies enacted in the 1950’s. These policies helped our nation successfully build a world class highway system that now connects communities across the country. The next federal transportation bill offers a chance to stand on the shoulders of that success and focus our transportation program on using smarter approaches to solve the problems of the 21st century.

“IBM is committed to working with all stake holders in the broad transportation ecosystem – policy makers, transportation operators, agencies and academics – to make new innovations and technology a reality for smart transportation systems and to better serve society’s needs in the 21st century,” said Mike Kearney, Business Development Executive, IBM Research Division.

“Across the country major employers are working hard to support investments in public transportation because they know it is essential to reducing congestion, and creating efficiency in the movement of people and goods and most importantly to reduce our dependence on oil by giving people options other than driving everywhere,” said Tom Murphy, Former Mayor of Pittsburgh and a Senior Fellow at the Urban Land Institute. “Whether it is local chambers of commerce or companies like Google, and Yahoo!, businesses on the cutting edge of the new economy are telling us that the next transportation bill must remove the impediments at the federal level that suppress and slow down investment in public transit and safe, complete streets.”

“We have an unprecedented opportunity to build for the future and create communities that will thrive for generations to come,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America. “We must embrace the power of innovation in our transportation program and seize this chance to grow our economy, create jobs and wean our nation off dangerous sources of oil. Only a truly reformed long-term transportation program will allow us to seize this moment. We cannot allow it to slip away.”

Transportation for America will continue to work with business leaders around the country as the transportation authorization bill makes its way through Congress.

Perhaps you’ve seen the IBM commercials touting the fact that for the first time in history, the majority of humanity lives in cities — and solving the challenges facing our growing cities will be more urgent than ever before. One of the 21 programs of IBM’s “Smarter Planet” initiative focuses on traffic, congestion and what’s known as Intelligent Transportation Systems. (Others include cities, buildings and infrastructure.)

Last week, a forum sponsored by IBM as part of their Smarter Planet series that focused on improving transportation systems through technology yielded important lessons from some of our European counterparts.

Two speakers – Dr. Leo Kroon of Netherlands Railway and Gunnar Soderholm of Stockholm, Sweden – were among the highlights of “A Smarter Transportation System for the 21st Century,” held on Capitol Hill last Thursday.

Kroon described the importance of rail in his “tiny country,” whose 16 million people make it extremely dense. According to Kroon, rail market share between some Dutch cities reaches 50 percent, an amount that would be unheard of in the United States. And rather than force anyone onto the train, Kroon says the Netherlands Railways “seduces” them instead, through continued technological improvement that makes travel convenient and a commitment to reliability and affordability.

For instance, Netherlands Railway has introduced a SmartCard system and is improving its monitoring systems to pinpoint its flow of passengers and accommodate them as efficiently as possible.

The report out of Stockholm was even more compelling.

Gunnar Soderholm, head of the city’s Environmental and Health division, explained how a congestion charging scheme went from “biggest political suicide ever in Sweden” to embraced by even the most right-wing parties. The policy itself was made easier to implement than other cities because Stockholm proper is composed of several islands, with easy boundaries around the central business district.

After implementing the policy – in which drivers are charged for bringing autos into the business district during peak hours – the conventional wisdom was that people would need to see numbers showing its impact. According to Soderholm, no numbers were needed. Everyone could see the difference. “It was free flow all the time,” he said. Stockholm saw a 20 percent reduction in traffic, a 30-50 percent reduction in travel time and a 10-14 percent reduction in carbon emissions. Many more Stockholm residents are combining auto use with more walking and bicycling. Revenues from the charge are directed toward transportation infrastructure.

Stockholm is aiming to be fossil fuel free by 2050.

Innovations are also underway here at home. Judge Quentin Kopp, a decades-long transit advocate and former chairman of the California High Speed Rail Authority, explained how his home state has pledged to match dollar-for-dollar every piece of stimulus funding for high-speed rail. Kopp has been on the frontlines of the cause from the beginning, battling with former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson over a commission and, just two years ago, helping to shepherd narrow passage of a statewide ballot measure to fund high speed rail in the State.

Congressman Earl Blumenauer, a Portland Democrat, concluded with a window into how innovation and technology can guide efforts on the Hill. The big question: how does Congress pay for the next transportation bill? Blumenauer is an advocate of a vehicle-miles-traveled-tax and has pushed legislation to allow pilot projects across the country.

There remains great potential to both learn from our friends abroad and build upon successes here at home.

(Graphic below from Smarter Planet’s Transportation page.)

T4 America is currently focused on making sure that a share of revenues generated by the climate bill will be directed into cleaner transportation choices, but there’s been some question about exactly which strategies and investments will be the best bet for getting the cuts we need to meet our ambitious targets.

Building on the 2008 release of Growing Cooler, which showed how increases in driving and population would wipe out gains in fuel mileage technology, Moving Cooler makes the case that we need to look beyond the idea that newer, more efficient cars or low-carbon fuels will be enough on their own to achieve the big reductions we’ll need to meet our targets. What other strategies can we employ to get there from here?

The report looks at “bundles” of different techniques for reducing emissions from transportation — like road pricing, intelligent transportation systems, increased public transportation, pay-as-you-drive insurance, and making walking and biking safer and more convenient, to name a few — and finds that we could cut transportation emissions by as much as 47 percent if we employed all the tools examined in Moving Cooler.

Implementing some of these strategies would help cut emissions, but also provide Americans with numerous other benefits.

Offering more good options for living and getting around while using less oil will reduce our individual and national vulnerability to disruptions in either the oil supply or the climate. Giving more people the opportunity to drive less to accomplish daily tasks is essential to any long-lasting strategy. The best message from this report is that we can increase personal choice and freedom without imposing unnecessary hardships.

Growing Cooler showed that people living in more efficient, less automobile dependent environments drive about a third less, on average. Meeting the growing demand for more housing and travel choices would reduce driving and become a significant factor in fighting climate change.

Moving Cooler shows how a combination of public investment and market forces can unleash the private sector to help reduce our carbon footprint and reduce oil dependency by giving people the types of transportation choices they are increasingly looking for.

When filmmakers envision the future of our transportation system, they often seem to come up with one enduring image — millions of layers of flying cars breezing effortlessly through impossibly dense cities, surrounded by mile-high skyscrapers.

There’s a good chance the future may not look quite so, well, futuristic. But that doesn’t mean that advanced computer technology — namely, wireless networks known as Intelligent Transportation Systems that feed through our transportation infrastructure — won’t have a huge role to play in helping move people and goods safer, more efficiently, and with less pollution in the 21st Century.

As this recent article from the New York Times makes clear, Intelligent Transportation Systems, or ITS, are becoming increasingly valuable tools for governments looking to better manage transportation networks without increasing capacity, and important investment opportunities for private companies who help develop these systems.

We can’t just pave our way out of congestion, but better technology can help us better utilize the system that we have now and maximize capacity — without always having to resort to costly new infrastructure.

When applied to our roads, bridges, transit systems, and rails, ITS can be as simple as the tolling booths that photograph license plates to allow drivers to pass straight through tolls and pay at a later date, or as complex as computer sensors installed on railroad tracks to better monitor and navigate the movement of freight.

I.B.M. has become involved in the effort to build these systems, particularly through the growing use of congestion pricing (which we’ll talk more about later on in this post), and even has this handy video — which you can watch below the fold — on its “Smarter Planet” website, in which we can see benefits of monitoring travel patterns and using computerized models to improve efficiency.

As the researcher featured in the video says, we have a limited amount of space in our towns and cities, and can’t just solve our transportation problems by building more or bigger roads. Our country has taken drastic steps forward in utilizing greater technology and wireless communications as a means of improving our economy in hundreds of ways, and it’s time we learn how to better use this technology to make our transportation system work better.

To give you a better idea of some of the things we’re talking about, here are just a few examples of the technology that city, state and federal governments are starting to implement to make our networks of roads, transit systems, rail lines, sidewalks, and bike paths safer and more efficient for all users:

• Floating Cellular Data: Without building any new infrastructure, we can link location data from cell phones in cars to a central network in order get a complex and precise reading of how traffic is flowing, helping us use quantitative analysis to of travel patterns to better manage congestion.

• Congestion Pricing: Though it hasn’t yet been implemented yet in the United States, congestion pricing — the process of using an electronic toll collector to charge drivers if they enter a highly congested areas in urban centers — has helped cities like London and Stockholm incentivize transit use and decrease overall levels of traffic.

• Transit Signal Priority: Computer systems installed at traffic-signal controlled intersections can give us new ways to make public transportation more efficient without creating more congestion by giving traffic signal priority to transit vehicles.

To get a more thorough (albeit not exactly user-friendly) look at some of the ITS research and projects being funded at the federal level, check out the U.S. Department of Transportation’s website on the subject.