2: REDUCED CONGESTION

Reduce congestion and other impediments to using the Nation’s transportation system.

Other Information:

In May 2006, the Department announced an innovative National Strategy to Reduce Congestion on America’s Transportation Network. This initiative signals a new era of Federal leadership in the transportation sector and, for the first time in DOT’s history, makes congestion reduction a strategic goal. DOT’s National Strategy to Reduce Congestion provides a framework for dramatically improving the performance of America’s transportation system, and introduces new approaches to fund and manage the system in the years ahead. OUTCOMES 1. Reduction in urban congestion 2. Increased transportation capacity resulting from public private transportation partnerships 3. Increased use of integrated Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) networks and new incident management approaches 4. Reduced impediments to the efficient movement of freight over the transportation network, especially at key freight gateways 5. Meet new and growing demands for air transportation services through 2011 and beyond 6. Increased access for all Americans 7. Longer lasting, high performance transportation infrastructure STRATEGIES Whether it takes the form of commuters and trucks stalled in traffic, cargo on the docks at overwhelmed seaports, or airplanes circling crowded airports, congestion is costing America an estimated $200 billion a year. Americans spend 3.7 billion hours and 2.3 billion gallons of fuel each year in traffic jams and waste $9.4 billion as a result of airline delays. Even worse, congestion takes valuable time out of every day – time that could be spent with families, friends, and neighbors. To address this situation, the Department has adopted The National Strategy to Reduce Congestion on America’s Transportation Network. This initiative has made congestion relief a top priority and directed the following actions. First, DOT will focus on our largest metropolitan areas and seek ‘Urban Partnership Agreements’ with as many cities as are willing to participate. These agreements will call for new variable pricing programs designed to spread traffic flows throughout the day and to get more throughput from existing highways. The agreements will also provide for more efficient and responsive bus systems that tailor services specifically for rushhour commuters; speed up the review process for highway projects underway; and seek commitments from major employers in the region to allow more of their employees to adopt flexible schedules and telecommute. All of these measures are designed to improve traffic flow and thus reduce congestion. Second, DOT will encourage more States to find ways to open their transportation infrastructure to private investment opportunities. State budgets are stretched thin, and gasoline taxes are becoming untenable as long-term sources of funding. At the same time, major financial institutions and their clients are expressing their willingness to invest billions of dollars in roads and airports. DOT will begin discussions with local officials and transportation consumers about the growing role that the private sector can and should play in transportation decision-making and investment. Our goal will be to expand the list of States that have flexible laws to permit greater private-sector involvement in transportation projects to meet the growing demand for infrastructure and ultimately to reduce congestion. Third, DOT will focus the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) program to encourage more communities to adopt technologies and practices designed to help drivers avoid backups and cut the traffic tie-ups caused by construction and fender benders. Almost half of all traffic congestion is caused by construction and crash incidents. DOT will invite the country’s technology leaders to join a new Transportation Technology Forum. This forum will bring innovation and energy to build the world’s most technologically sophisticated transportation system. DOT will promote effective traffic incident management approaches such as full service patrols, quick clearance policies, and quick clearance laws. DOT will also encourage the use of improved highway design and construction procedures, innovative quality assurance practices, innovative materials, and asset management practices to reduce onsite repairs, rehabilitation, and reconstruction, thus reducing non-recurring congestion created by construction work zones. These steps will improve the performance of our existing systems by providing additional capacity during peak traffic periods and better traffic management. But there is still a need for large-scale investments in physical infrastructure to address growing demand. These investments must be targeted to areas where they are needed most – including major, multi-State, multi-use trade and travel corridors. Therefore, DOT will embark upon a competitive process to select three to five ‘Corridors of the Future’ projects that have the greatest potential to relieve traffic, based on projected growth patterns. These projects face enormous organizational and funding challenges. We will set ambitious permitting schedules for these projects, identify new financing options to fund them, and fast-track these projects for Federal dollars to get them moving from the drawing board to completion faster than ever before – without sacrificing environmental protections. We will work to expedite completion of the most significant highway capacity projects currently underway that hold the greatest potential for reducing congestion and bottlenecks. To the maximum extent possible, the Department will commit discretionary resources and expertise to support these actions, potentially including the Open Roads Pilot Program funds if appropriated in Fiscal Year 2007. In addition we will utilize existing Federal program authorities such as the authority under SAFETEA-LU that established a Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Commission tasked with finding solutions that not only raise revenue for highway and transit projects, but also reduce the costs of congestion. Fourth, we will deploy even more Departmental resources into Southern California to bring together State, local, and private-sector officials to relieve bottlenecks affecting freight coming from and heading to every corner of the country. We will convene a joint border transportation task force with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to accelerate some of the most significant transportation investments at our borders. We will work with our partners on the Committee on the Marine Transportation System (CMTS) to implement the President’s Ocean Action Plan to improve Federal marine transportation system coordination and policy development. We will engage America’s major companies in a sustained dialogue about the future of our transportation system. Finally, we will take steps to improve aviation capacity by modernizing the aviation system and we will propose new ways to support the Airport and Airway Trust Fund to match funding for aviation services to the demand. DOT will implement the National Strategy to target congestion. We will use our people, our resources, and our expertise to help our partners at the State and local levels use their existing transportation networks better and to add capacity where it makes the most sense, developing better policy choices to reduce congestion. We will fully integrate congestion reduction as a priority in SAFETEA-LU, rulemaking and guidance issued by the Department. RESOURCES The human resources, programs, capital assets, information technology and other resources described in DOT's Annual Performance Budgets are needed to achieve our outcomes for reducing congestion and to execute the strategies presented below. The schedule for executing our Reduced Congestion strategies extends from fiscal year 2006 through fiscal year 2011. EXTERNAL FACTORS Several external factors could significantly affect our ability to reduce congestion. Although it is impossible to predict which of these factors, or which combination of factors, will tip the balance in our ability to produce results, we present those we believe will play an important role in the years covered by this Strategic Plan. GLOBALIZATION Globalization generally refers to the expansion of global linkages, the organization of social life on a global scale, and the growth of a global consciousness. People around the world are more connected to each other than ever before. Information and money flow more quickly than ever. International travel is more frequent and international communication is commonplace. Goods and services produced in one part of the world are increasingly available in all parts of the world. Although these links are not new, they are more pervasive than in the past. As an external factor, globalization reinforces the need for highly efficient connections where the U.S. and international transportation networks meet. Where connections are inefficient congestion develops. As traditional low-cost manufacturing countries increase their standards of living, manufacturing may switch to other parts of the world. These changing trade patterns often lead to congestion because of shifts in the use of U.S. ports and inland distribution systems. As a result, existing ports and intermodal facilities are bypassed, while underutilized ports and systems suddenly need significant expansion. Globalization demands flexibility in the transportation network and flexibility demands investment in infrastructure. Pressures on transportation services and infrastructure from globalization will affect our ability to reduce congestion. THE ECONOMY Cyclical and long-term changes in economic activity have a strong impact on discretionary personal travel and shipment of goods, affecting demand for transportation infrastructure and services. Economic growth spurs new commercial and residential developments, increases travel and trade, creates bottlenecks and strains the capacity of the infrastructure. Conversely, economic stagnation reduces development, travel, and trade. Economic stagnation also shifts demand for transportation from higher cost to lower cost services. Economic growth shifts the pattern of transportation in important ways. As incomes grow, people tend to buy more expensive goods, with a higher value per unit weight. The higher value of these goods means that the time they spend in transit is more costly to the shipper, so the shipper is more willing to pay extra for more expedited forms of transportation. As a result, air freight has been the fastest growing form of freight transportation over the past decade, with trucking close behind. Even in rail transportation, the most rapidly growing cargo has been high-value, expedited intermodal freight. Truck traffic as well has been growing at a faster rate than overall vehicle traffic. Currently, trucks carry 75 percent of the Nation's commerce based on the value of the goods and more than two-thirds of these goods based on weight. An expanding economy with the resultant increase in port, air, rail and truck traffic is an external factor that will challenge the goal of reducing traffic congestion. The increase in high-value cargoes means that transportation costs are a smaller percentage of the overall delivered cost of the product. Consequently, shippers can afford to locate their production at a greater distance from the ultimate consumer, to save on production costs. The result has been the growth of global outsourcing that has characterized the U.S. economy for the past quarter-century. This in turn has had tremendous effects on the transportation system, placing a greater burden on the international supply chain – marine carriers, ports, and intermodal rail – to deliver the goods. The nodal points in this supply chain have become increasingly congested. Economic growth has also changed the nature of demand for passenger travel. As people’s incomes have grown, they have traveled more, but their choice of mode of travel has shifted increasingly to air travel. Air passenger travel is a service with a high income-elasticity of demand – people buy proportionately more of it as their incomes grow. Over the past 20 years, as real incomes have risen by roughly 100 percent, airline passenger-miles have increased by 146 percent, highway passenger travel has grown by 49 percent, and population has grown by 28 percent. Thus, the economy is an external factor that can significantly affect our ability to achieve our goal to reduce congestion in many ways. DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS Demographic trends work against our ability to reduce congestion. Within the next 25 years, the U.S. population is estimated to grow to 364 million, up from 282 million in 2000. Vehicle miles of travel (VMT) is projected to increase by approximately 60 percent from 2000 to 2030 leading to increased congestion as passenger vehicles and trucks compete for space on our roads and highways. Significant increases in the older population – the number of people between the ages of 65 and 84 will increase by 114 percent from 2000 to 2050 – will pose highway congestion challenges as retirees take to the road for recreation and travel. OBSTACLES TO INTERMODALISM Persistent obstacles to efficient intermodal connections in the U.S. such as the high cost of intermodal infrastructure projects, localized opposition to new transportation development, and the stovepipe organizational structure of public transportation agencies impede our ability to improve U.S. connection points to the global transportation network. If this situation persists, the intermodal network will continue to experience erratic service reliability. Intermodal congestion will get worse and capacity constraints will slow the ability of the transportation network to recover from any adverse events – such as Hurricane Katrina. Unless addressed, obstacles to intermodalism could affect our ability to achieve our reduced congestion goal. TECHNOLOGY Deployment of technologies such as vehicle performance diagnostics, automated tolling, driver warnings about weather, road hazards and bottlenecks, vehicle self-help measures, 511 traveler telephone information, and GPS systems including wireless notifications to repair services should reduce dangerous highway breakdowns and help relieve congestion. Widespread deployment of ITS and other related technologies will not only relieve congestion, but also make travel on the highway system more reliable and predictable. In short, transportation technology is a positive external factor that is likely to help reduce congestion.

Objective(s):

2.1.a: Urban Congestion

2.1.b: Private Sector Investment

2.1.c: Information Dissemination and Incident Response

2.1.d: Transportation Corridors

2.1.e: Freight Bottlenecks and Policy Outreach

2.1.f: Funding Framework

2.2: Congestion Research

2.3: Infrastructure Research

2.4: Research for Underserved Areas and Populations

2.5: Reliable Congestion Data

2.6: Transportation Research Capabilities

2.7: Outreach, Training, and Technical Assistance

2.8: Highway Structure Standards, Materials, and Practices

2.9: Aircraft Separation Standards

2.10: Integrated System Management and Operations

2.11: Highway Size and Weight Requirements

2.12: Public Private Partnerships

2.13: Automated Aviation Information Systems

2.14: Port Development

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