By Rep. John Mica (R-FL)
March 5, 2009
The Hill
Transportation and Infrastructure Special Report
With September’s deadline to enact a new national transportation reauthorization bill approaching, Congress must develop new guidelines and policies if we hope to be successful in developing and financing America’s infrastructure over the next six years and beyond.
Unfortunately, our nation lacks a strategic transportation plan that encompasses all modes of transportation. With past reauthorizations, piecemeal projects and shortsighted policies have been cobbled together, resulting in an ineffective patchwork of transportation systems independent of one another.
Rather than continuing to follow this inadequate approach, imagine having a comprehensive and coordinated national transportation plan that includes all modes of transportation.
Imagine defining how our Interstate system, for example, will expand and better connect with our ports, airports and regional public transportation systems. Developing a national strategy such as this should be a top priority in this important legislative reauthorization.
As Congress works to reauthorize our nation’s transportation policy, another one of my top priorities will be adopting what I refer to as the 437-Day Plan.
Four hundred and thirty-seven days is the amount of time of the I-35W bridge replacement construction in Minneapolis following the old bridge’s tragic collapse on Aug. 1, 2007. The new crossing was actually finished almost 100 days early.
Under current rules and regulations, other projects comparable to the reconstruction of the I-35W bridge would take seven to eight years.
As we learned during the debate on the recent stimulus legislation, a major problem encountered in finding transportation and infrastructure projects ready for immediate funding was that so many projects are mired in red tape, paperwork and bureaucratic process delays that keep them from going forward expeditiously.
I stood on the new bridge in Minneapolis just several weeks prior to its opening with other members of Congress and declared that we can and must do better in shortening the time to process highway and infrastructure projects across our country.
As National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commissioner Tom Skancke testified before the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in 2008, if you “add one federal dollar to a project, it adds 14 years to the delivery time.”
We cannot afford to continue such a wasteful trend.
Looking to the 437-day contract time for the Minnesota bridge project as a model, we can expedite other projects around the nation, saving valuable time and precious resources.
While we must recognize legitimate environmental concerns, particularly on new projects, many approvals could be accelerated with concurrent, rather than consecutive, processing. Certainly, some of the lengthy impediments to approval could be reduced without interfering with due process.
With limited financial resources and the increased cost of major infrastructure projects, adopting a so-called 437-Day approach to processing projects can bring new infrastructure online under budget and ahead of schedule.