John Hennessy III,
P.E.
SMART GROWTH AMERICA
In 2015, communities passed a total of 82 Complete Streets policies. These laws, resolutions, agency policies, and planning and design documents establish a process for selecting, funding, planning, designing, and building transportation projects that allow safe access for everyone, regardless of age, ability, income or ethnicity, and no matter how they travel.
Dennis Slater is President and Secretary of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM). He oversees operation of all Association programs, which focus on core service areas of market information and equipment statistics, public policy representation, product safety and technical support, and trade shows.
“…Equipment manufacturers build the machines that make America. They build the machines that harvest crops and feed America and feed the world. Originally this was something that we just explained to our members, and we decided it’s not good enough. You have to also ask your members, you have to explain to their employees so they get involved in this and understand that their jobs depend on policies that support their jobs…This year, especially, we’ve gone out there now to the candidates that are running to say “what’s your manufacturing platform? What are your solutions for infrastructure?”’
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AMERICAN COUNCIL OF ENGINEERING COMPANIES (ACEC)
UPTON: We are always looking to advance our work every chance we get, and the FAST Act presented an opportunity to get a number of important provisions into law. Grid security and strengthening our energy infrastructure remain an important component of our energy portfolio moving forward. The FAST Act contained several provisions to ensure that our energy infrastructure, including the electric grid, is more resilient to 21st-century risks, such as physical attacks, cyberattacks and extreme weather.
View this complete post...TRIP
While the modest funding increase and certainty provided by the FAST Act are a step in the right direction, the funding falls far short of the level of needed to improve conditions and meet the nation’s mobility needs and fails to deliver a sustainable, long-term source of revenue for the federal Highway Trust Fund.
Michael P. Melaniphy is president and chief executive officer of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) and president of the American Public Transportation Foundation. Melaniphy’s entire career has been in public transportation, with more than 30 years of both public and private sector leadership experience.
“As a kid growing up you had a binary choice: you were either a bus kid or you were a car kid. You were one of the two. And you look at today’s environment and it’s a multi-modal environment. We have evolved as a society to understand that now it’s about mobility choices…So as we look at what are the best utilizations of our scarce resources in a community, people are looking at the full assortment of choices, and as we look at the unbelievable growth that’s going to come in the population set of this nation we’ve found that paving our way to a solution is not the best choice.”
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Richard Harnish is the Executive Director of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association (MHSRA), a member-supported non-profit organization advocating for fast, frequent and dependable trains linking the entire Midwest.
Here in Illinois we’ve been seeing a lot more interest in doing true high speed rail and we think we’re close to an important next step there. And I was out in Sacramento two months ago and touched the first car shell for that line. That’s something that most people don’t know: those trains really are under construction, and the stations are under construction. So we’re very close to a major tipping point.
View this complete post...AMERICAN ACTION FORUM
Written by Emil H. Frankel
n its re-affirmation of a continuing federal role in surface transportation, FAST Act is an important statute. However, this legislation continues a trend toward a growing dependence on general funds for these programs and stagnation in the general level of federal funding for surface transportation. The inevitable result is a growing burden on states and localities to address the needs of an aging, deteriorating, and often-congested national surface transportation network.
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
METROPOLITAN POLICY PROGRAM
With the recent passage of a new five-year, $305 billion surface transportation bill—Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act—Congress finally brokered a long-term agreement to address the nation’s infrastructure challenges. While the bill pumps needed spending into a range of highway, rail, and transit projects, albeit through some budgetary gimmicks, its most lasting achievement may center on freight.
Rod Diridon, Sr., served as executive director of the Mineta Transportation Institute from 1995, four years after the Institute’s creation, until 2014 when he moved to Emeritus status. Mr. Diridon has chaired more than 100 international, national, state and local programs, most related to transit and the environment.
“The minimum gas prices around the world are more than double, sometimes triple, the United States…Now the public in America wants a gas tax increase: the polls show it. The polls show that if the gas tax increase will be used for transportation and infrastructure improvements, then the public supports it sometimes as high as 80%…But the U.S. can’t do it because Congress doesn’t have the courage.”
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“I do believe with a new Congress and a new administration, whatever the configuration of that is…I think we have a chance to get a blue-ribbon, six-month commission to propose ways to make significant investments in the American infrastructure. And I think that would lead to doing something like all of the G20 countries have done, and that’s a long-term infrastructure revitalization program…I think with Presidential and Congressional leadership looking at one of the most significant long-range problems facing this country, I think we have a chance to start anew. If we had such a commission I would love to be part of it or chair it, and I would do it as a labor of love.”
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