Post Tagged with: "U.S. Department of Transportation"

Wall Street Journal’s Interview with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood

March 4, 2009 at 2:05 pm

(Source:  Wall Street Journal)

Rupert Murdoch is on my drivewayPresident Obama and Vice President Biden spoke with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood Tuesday at Transportation Department headquarters, where they announced the first batch of stimulus funds getting distributed. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. LaHood talked about spending stimulus money wisely, his opposition to an increase in the gasoline tax, new fuel emission standards and more. Below are edited excerpts from the interview.

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The Wall Street Journal: What’s being done to ensure that the $48 billion going to transportation projects in the stimulus bill is spent wisely?

Mr. LaHood: Our people are in touch daily with these DOT secretaries. We generally, having worked with them for years and years and years, know what is fundable. It really falls under two categories. Projects that were started and then stopped because they ran out of money, and something that’s been sitting on a shelf in a DOT office because they didn’t have the money to fund it. Some of these, like the one we announced today (a road repaving project in suburban Maryland), have been in process…These are projects that these folks have known about and have been talking about for some time. This isn’t something brand new that’s been sprung up on them…I don’t think you’re going to see something weird pop up…It’s pretty traditional stuff. It really is.

WSJ: Are you concerned when you hear squabbles between mayors and governors over how to spend the stimulus money?

Mr. LaHood: [Cities] are concerned that 70% of the money is going to the states and they’re only going to get 30%…These disputes, look it, they’re going to take place….In the end, I’m not going to be able to change the idea that 70% of this is going to the states and 30% are going to them. I tried to make a case for them. But the way it’s designed here…it is what it is.

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Untangling Transportation Funding – Brookings Institution’s paper on Vehicle Mileage Taxation

February 26, 2009 at 3:24 pm

(Source :  Thanks to Robert Puentes @ The Brookings Institution for sharing this article)

FEBRUARY 26, 2009 —  As the recent kerfuffle between the Transportation secretary, the White House, and a key congressional leader demonstrate, issues around funding and finance dominate the discussion about surface transportation in the U.S. today.

Already, we have had not one—but two—national commissions on the topic, and the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently added transportation financing to its annual list of high-risk areas suggested for oversight by the current Congress.

Why the high anxiety? 

Put simply: the money flowing out of the federal transportation trust fund (often referred to as the “highway” trust fund) is greater than the money flowing into it. This past September Washington was forced to shift $8 billion from the general fund to cover a shortfall in the transportation account. Estimates for how short the fund will be this summer hover around $9 billion.

Despite the sharp, and perhaps simplistic, rhetoric of late, the origins of the shortfall are the result of multiple trends converging.

For one, the federal gas tax—generating nearly 90 percent of the federal transportation revenue—has not been raised in nearly 20 years, not even to keep pace with inflation. So, as the rate effectively declines, so does the purchasing power of the trust fund. The current 18.4 cent per gallon tax in the U.S. is far less than in European competitor nations.

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DOT will take back seat to White House advisers on climate — LaHood

February 25, 2009 at 2:47 pm

(Source: ClimateWire via NYTimes)

The Transportation Department will follow the lead of the White House’s top climate and environmental officials when it comes to meeting President Obama’s global warming agenda, DOT Secretary Ray LaHood said today.

LaHood told a group of state transportation officials that while he has already taken part in a number of meetings to discuss climate change legislation with Obama, DOT would likely take a back seat in the climate debate.

“We’ve really taken all of our cues from Carol Browner,” he said, referring to the White House coordinator for energy and climate issues.

LaHood said Browner and U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson would most likely do the heavy lifting when it comes to meeting Obama’s climate goals. DOT is “in the room, we’re at the table, but we probably have less of a role than perhaps some of these other agencies do,” he said at the Washington forum.

DOT instead will focus on finalizing new corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards for the auto industry.

LaHood said his agency was working to finish the rulemaking for model year 2011 by this April’s deadline. “We’re going to move that out the door,” he said. “We’re going with what the president asked us to do with respect to CAFE standards.”

Under the proposed rulemaking issued by DOT last year, carmakers would have to raise their fuel economy by 25 percent by 2015. The proposal would push automakers more than halfway to the minimum goal set by Congress of an average of 35 mpg by 2020.

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