Bob Herbert published an Op-Ed piece in the Saturday, July 11 New York Times entitled “The Human Equation,” in which he takes the Obama administration to task for not being more aggressive in addressing the unemployment crisis in this country.  He says:

“I’d like to see the president go on television and, in a dramatic demonstration of real leadership, announce a plan geared toward increasing employment that is both big and visionary – something on the scale of the Manhattan Project, or the interstate highway program, or the Apollo spaceflight initiative.”

He goes to propose a “Rebuild America” campaign to put people to work rebuilding infrastructure, including roads, schools, electric power grids, and mass transportation. 

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I welcome the opportunity to present testimony on transportation finance and funding issues.  Although I have served on this Board, and am chairing the Governor’s Reform Commission on the Reform of the Connecticut Department of Transportation, and am the Executive Chairman of Pitney Bowes, I am not speaking today on behalf of the Reform Commission or Pitney Bowes.

Before I provide my views and financing and funding strategies, I want to make several preliminary observations: (more…)

On Saturday, September 13, I was listening to a commentary by Geoff Colvin of Fortune magazine.  His topic was the increase in the number of items for which U.S. domestic commercial airlines are charging extra fees.  He particularly noted that U.S. Airways is now charging extra for water, except if it is needed for medication.

Having run businesses that had many different kinds of fees, particularly financial services businesses, and having been a consumer for many decades, I have some observations about what makes fees acceptable, and what causes them to be annoyances to consumers. (more…)

As a person who has been involved in providing advocacy and advisory services as a volunteer for over two decades, I find that public and political decision making relative to transportation shows our elected officials and the public in their least flattering light.

Clearly, we have a crisis in terms of traffic congestion, overburdened existing transportation infrastructure, too many bridges that are structurally deficient and functionally obsolete, and too many preventable safety-related problems.  In the July 28, 2008, USA Today, a federal transportation official was quoted as saying that we need an additional $225 billion in transportation spending to address this crisis.  Moreover, in the July 29 New York Times, an articled reported that the Federal Highway Trust Fund, the main source of federal dollars for road and bridge projects is in such dire financial straits that money may need to be borrowed from a federal mass transit fund. (more…)

Although I sometimes think that the focus on global warming risks focusing too much on one environmental issue, reducing carbon emissions, to the exclusion of others with an extremely high urgency, like environmental pollution that contributes to water-borne diseases in third world countries, or toxic chemicals in soils around the world, there are many opportunities to deal with both environmental pollution and global warming issues.

The biggest opportunity to address both in one strategy is the reduction of carbon from vehicle emissions into the air. Better fuel economy, reduced driving, and reduced emissions improve air quality, reduce traffic congestion, reduce asthma from bad air, and reduce the carbon footprint of driving.

That is one of the reasons we have advocated substituting remote commerce for face-to-face commerce relative to citizen interactions with government and other private sector transactional activity that reduces unnecessary vehicle trips. What are some of the “no-brainers” here?

• Why not eliminate all toll plazas and substitute either E-Z-Pass-type solutions or photos that capture a driver’s license plate number and result in a bill being sent to the driver? The highest emissions come from car engines running at low or idling speeds, as opposed to 55-mile-an-hour travel. Why do we keep toll plazas in place? For example, Ireland, which I visited this past week, is on the way to eliminating them. (more…)

This past week, I spent a lot of time driving in various parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states. I hit horrific traffic problems, which is not surprising to anyone who has spent time in areas like Boston, New York, or Philadelphia.

Two things are worth noting, one of which is a broader point about our society today:

• Traffic congestion is popping up in areas in which we have never experienced it before. For the past 15 years, my family and I have been going down to South Bethany Beach, Delaware for a week’s vacation. This year, for the first time, we experienced horrific traffic delays at odd times at places like the Delaware Memorial Bridge going into Delaware, State Route 113 south of Dover, and even some of the county roads between Route 113 and Bethany Beach. Much of this is a result of continuous over-building of new housing in areas in which the infrastructure is not there to support traffic.
• The bigger issue is that our infrastructure in many places has no flexible capacity. Driving from Peabody, Massachusetts, into Cambridge, Mass. last week, we experienced a horrific delay getting across the Tobin Bridge because of a problem on Storrow Drive that had an effect that radiated across a good part of Boston. (more…)

One of my commitments to readers of this blog is to “see a different game.”  At times, that involves linking seemingly unrelated events and experiences.

Last week, we all watched the tragedy of the Minnesota bridge collapse unfold.  Unfortunately, although there will be a study that will detail the technical reasons the collapse occurred, a study that will be completed months or even more than a year from now, the fundamental reason underlying the collapse is that all accountable levels of government paid insufficient attention to preventive maintenance.

By the way, I reject the notion advanced by some political partisans that, if we were not spending so much in Iraq, money would be available for bridge repair and maintenance.  Neglect of preventive maintenance of our infrastructure has been going on for decades, and it long predated the Iraq war.  Stephen Flynn of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote a book called On the Edge of Disaster which detailed our long-standing neglect of vital infrastructure of all kinds. 

Why do we allow infrastructure neglect to happen?  Our experience here in Connecticut with the Mianus River bridge collapse along I-95 in 1983 tells the story.  Many government officials have defined success in governing by highly visible projects and accomplishments in which there is a great photo-op.  Thus, it is far more tempting to break ground on a new highway or bridge, or to celebrate the purchase of a new rail car or bus than to do the boring, low-visibility, but absolutely essential work required to repair and maintenance existing assets.  Not surprisingly, with this mindset, preventive maintenance is given a far lower priority than increasing capacity by new building activity.

In a seemingly unrelated story that appeared in the New York Post the French actress and environmental activist Julie Delpy was appropriately concerned about a truck idling outside a restaurant at which she was having a meal.  As the story goes, the driver explained that he had to keep the engine running because he was carrying perishable meats that required continuous refrigeration.

The question should have been: why was he there, rather than along a highway which had generators to which his truck could have been hooked up?  The answer again is that governments under-invest in amenities for truckers, such as rest stops which they need to make sure that they are not driving while fatigued, and generators that they can use to keep power flowing to their storage cabins, so they do not have to keep engines running.  Like bridge maintenance, the decision to spend money on truck stops is not the kind of event that gets politicians media coverage because it lacks the elements that get media people interested.  Additionally, few people want truck stops or weigh stations near them.

As a result, truckers end up eating or resting in more crowded residential and commercial areas off the major highways with their engines idling as they are eating or resting.

Likewise, one of the best techniques for reducing traffic congestion is to promote demand reduction strategies, such as increased use of mass transit, car pooling, and van pooling. In our area, rail station parking is a major constraint on rail usage.  In 1985, I got my start in volunteer work trying to get funding for rail station parking expansion, but there are other ways to expand rail station access, including the provision of bicycle storage areas, like Amsterdam does, encouraging smaller vehicle usage to increase available parking capacity, and building satellite parking lots at which rail commuters can park.  Unfortunately, none of these techniques create photo-ops.

Beyond the lack of media visibility many of these transportation programs entail, they also tend to cost money in the current year and hit operating budgets.  Big capital projects, like highway construction, can be financed by bonds and their cost is deferred.  The repayments on the bonds hit current-year budgets, but, very often, these have a smaller current-year impact than a much lower actual expenditure on maintenance or on upgrading a truck stop, or on a program to subsidize mass transit usage increases. 

Because of poorly-conceived balanced budget requirements, constitutional provisions and statutes, many politicians avoid spending money to avoid current-year hits.  They starve transportation departments of the staffing needed for maintenance projects.  They defer current-year maintenance expenses.  They also spend less money on smaller, but very important, transportation enhancement initiatives because they do not produce the political and media “bang for the buck” that larger projects do. 

Strong government leadership would organize stakeholders, define measurable goals for how to spend public money, make the achievement of the metrics the media event, and trust in the intelligence of the voters.  They would also balance the need for current-year budget discipline with investment in the future.  We also need to demand that governments do more life-cycle costing and explain to voters what it should cost to maintain infrastructure assets.  We do not demand enough disciplined thinking from government officials, and, therefore, we get short-term, high-media-intensity actions that do not constitute good government.

If the bridge collapse has any positive consequence, it will be to refocus governments on the need to do the boring, but necessary, current-year expenditures that will make our public infrastructure better and safer.

Like everyone else traveling in the Northeast corridor or in any other big city around the country, I experience unexpected and long delays because of traffic congestion.  We clearly have a crisis in terms of the gap between what we need and what we have.

Recently, I was asked by Governor Jodi Rell to chair an advisory group to make recommendations to improve Connecticut’s Department of Transportation.  I was asked to do so because I have participated in volunteer advisory and advocacy work in transportation for nearly 22 years.

Consistent with my philosophy of taking the road less traveled and seeing a different game, I want to share some observations that you may not see elsewhere as often as you should.

Clearly, we should move more drivers into trains, on to buses, and into van and car pools, but these alternatives have been amply discussed elsewhere, so I will not comment on them here.

If we are going to address the transportation crisis, we have to manage demand on all modes, particularly the roads, as well as supply.  With respect to highway congestion, the demand problem is not primarily a result of overpopulation or a significant increase in the population of automobiles on the road in our region.

There are three root causes to highway congestion: more vehicle trips, more vehicle miles traveled per driver, and more trucks delivering more items, particularly because of a combination of more global sourcing strategies and more remote, long-haul commerce.

This last trend will become more pronounced as we do more shopping over the Internet and we order products from more geographically remote places.  But we can do something about the first two root causes, and, more importantly, the things we can do to reduce congestion are not particularly costly.

First, with technology available today, many more workers should be able to work at home or at satellite offices closer to home or to attend meetings by using video-conferencing technology.  Tele-commuting stumbled in its early days because people trying it may have been too ambitious.  Trying it one or two days a week, instead of every day, might work better, and it will have an immediate effect on rush-hour traffic congestion.  It also is a great morale builder for employees who have personal errands to run near their homes. 

Second, the Internet makes ride-matching much more workable for individuals who want to carpool, but do not know how.  Connecticut has a program through Rideworks, and other parts of the country, like Northern Virginia, have well-developed systems for ride-matching, including areas where passengers can wait safely for their pick-up.

The federal government also provides tax credits for employers to give to employees for using public transportation and ride-sharing.  These are called TransitCheck vouchers.  This is a win-win for employers and employees, since employers also avoid paying Social Security taxes on the amounts employees pay for this alternative transportation, and employees pay with pre-tax dollars.  Too few employers take advantage of this opportunity.

Third, many non-work-related trips that could be eliminated.  Many errands  could be handled over the Internet or via the mail.  Many government transactions done face-to-face today could be done remotely, including the dispensing and payment of traffic tickets, motor vehicle license renewals, and permit and license renewals. 

The most dysfunctional automobile trips in many communities are the ones in which parents take their children to school every day.  In my community, many of us drive children to school for three reasons:  the books are too heavy to carry on foot, the morning start times are keyed to the convenience of the teachers and administrators, not the body clocks of middle and high-school children, and, most importantly, the town does not have sidewalks or bicycle paths convenient and safe for children to get to school. So we miss the opportunity for our increasingly obese population of children to get a chance to walk. 

Safety is a bigger issue in some communities for children to walk to school.  When I was young, I had a short walk to school between 5th and 8th grades, but there were bullies along the way that I had to avoid.  This is an even bigger issue today. 

If automobile trips can’t be eliminated, we should make them more predictable and less stressful. For drivers, the biggest perceived problem, according to many surveys, is not the increasingly long trips, but the increasing unpredictability of trips.  When the train is not a practical option and I am forced to drive from Stamford, Connecticut, to Manhattan or to one of the New York airports during rush hour, I could be looking at a one-hour, two-hour, or even longer trip.  How much time do I allow?  Allowing one hour is too risky, but, more often than not, two hours is too long, and I waste time waiting for the start of a meeting. 

What causes unpredictability?  Waiting times at toll plazas, accidents, construction, stalled cars, fires and building collapses and, in some cities, police blockades are some of the causes.

Some of these root causes are preventable.

Tolls are probably unavoidable if we want to pay for transportation assets, but governments should eliminate toll booths.  Even if a traveler does not purchase an EZ Pass or similar system as an infrequent traveler, having a system for photographing license plates will eliminate the need for non-EZ Pass travelers to have cash in hand and to wait in a cash-dispensing line.  It’s also not particularly good for the environment to have millions of cars idling as they take long periods of time to get through barrier tolls around the country.

Many governments use EZ Pass systems to raise tolls higher than they would otherwise be raised with a cash-based toll system.  Doing this quietly, rather than openly, does not show government in its best light.  We need governments to be forthright about how much revenue they need for transportation and what it will be used for.  Voters are smarter about these issues than politicians give them credit for.

The frequency of accidents can be significantly reduced.  Given the fact that excess alcohol usage and reckless driving by teenagers is a major cause, we should employ everywhere successful strategies for reducing teenage alcohol usage.  As a parent with three children, a 21-year-old and two teenagers, I have mixed feelings about teenage driving.  It makes our life easier since my wife and I are not chauffeurs as much, but our children do not have the experience to anticipate as many oddball driving challenges as we have learned over a lifetime of driving.  Phased-in drivers licenses will help everywhere.

There are chronically reckless drivers, just as there are hardened criminals.  We all experience them, and they create many accidents.  New Jersey has a great program, by which any motorist can report reckless driver behavior by dialing #77.

Construction barricades and highway signage and design cause accidents.  My mother died in an auto accident in Florida in 1994 partly because of a poorly-designed median strip that blocked visibility of oncoming traffic, and because of a poorly designed construction barricade.

If there is a source of delay, the Internet tools for communicating those delays to others should be more user-friendly and should be updated in real time.  The other day, when there was a steam pipe explosion in New York near Grand Central terminal, the media incorrectly reported that Grand Central had been evacuated and closed.  That was incorrect.  Most entrances were closed and subway service was suspended, but commuters could still get on suburban trains.  Metro North failed to communicate accurate information in real time.  My son ended up unnecessarily taking an Amtrak train back up to Connecticut.

I will take another opportunity to talk about why our supply of transportation capacity is deficient, but this is just one set of ideas about how to reduce demand.