The Honorable Jerrold Nadler

Ranking Member

Panel on 21^st Century Freight Transportation

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

“Overview of the United States’ Freight Transportation System”

April 24, 2013

Mr. Chairman, let me begin by thanking Chairman Shuster and Ranking Member Rahall for convening this Panel to examine freight transportation in the United States.  I can think of no greater policy challenge facing this Committee than addressing the needs of the nation’s intermodal freight network.  Mr. Chairman, we greatly look forward to working with you to develop freight policy and funding recommendations for consideration by the Full Committee.

Facilitating interstate commerce is a fundamental role of the Federal Government, and one of the essential responsibilities of this Committee.  This Panel will enable us to focus on how best to strengthen the freight network – across all modes of transportation – to meet current and future goods movement demands, whether it be grain shipments on the Mississippi or two-day Amazon.com deliveries to a New York apartment.     

The safe and efficient movement of freight is critical to the nation’s economy and global competitiveness.  Our economic competitors are rapidly upgrading their transportation networks to meet the needs of the global economy.  Unfortunately, we have not, and our transportation systems cannot efficiently meet the changing demands of the 21^st Century economy.

This Panel has a real opportunity to address how we as a nation and a Congress prioritize our efforts to strengthen our economy.  With regard to freight transportation, this requires that we look beyond just highways.  We need to consider the critical roles that our ports, inland waterways, intracoastal waterways, airports, and freight railroads play in the movement of freight and commerce.  Planning and prioritizing freight investments for the future requires an integrative and strategic assessment.  This Panel is a great starting point for that process.

This Panel must ensure that we have the freight policy, strategy, programs, and funding necessary to meet these changing demands.  Although the Committee has made some progress on freight issues over the years, there is more work to do.

In 2005, the Committee, with my strong support, developed the Projects of National and Regional Significance program, the original intent of which was to address major freight bottlenecks and congestion around the country.  To that end, the SAFETEA-LU program provided dedicated funding and advanced critical freight megaprojects, including: 

• Cross Harbor Freight Movement project (New York, NY);
• CREATE (Chicago, IL);
• Alameda Corridor East (Los Angeles, CA); and
• Heartland Corridor (Virginia, West Virginia, and Ohio).

Although the Projects of National Significance program funded a discrete set of critical freight projects, these types of projects continue to face significant hurdles to funding under federal-aid highway programs.  In 2008, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found a series of continuing barriers to funding freight projects, including:

• freight projects face competition for public funds and community support in the planning process;
• a lack of coordination among government entities and private sector stakeholders in advancing freight projects; and
• limited or restricted availability of public funds available for freight transportation projects.

In 2012, Congress took some steps to begin addressing the needs of goods movement in the context of our current surface transportation programs, but many of the same barriers GAO identified in 2008 continue to exist.  The Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21^st Century Act (MAP-21) authorized some incentives to encourage States to develop highway freight plans and strategies and required the Federal Highway Administration to designate a National Freight Network.  

Although MAP-21 recognizes the important federal role in creating a strategic vision for our freight system, there remains much work to do to expand this vision to include all modes of freight transportation – highway, rail, water, and air – and to ensure that the resources are available to implement this vision. 

Unlike SAFETEA-LU, MAP-21 does not provide dedicated funding for national freight projects under the Projects of National Significance program.  In addition, MAP-21 requires that almost all surface transportation funding is provided to States by formula.  Although this state-based system accommodates state and local surface transportation projects well, it is poorly suited to address or fund critical transportation infrastructure projects, such as major freight projects, which provide broadly-disbursed benefits but impose substantial localized costs.  Such projects are critical to the health and welfare of the national economy, but difficult – if not impossible – to fund through traditional state highway formula apportionments. 

Therefore, MAP-21 did not address what are arguably the most challenging aspects of implementing freight policy – what to pay for and how to do it.    How best to fund and finance the freight transportation system over the long term is an overarching and critical question facing this Panel. 

We need the vision, the plan, and the means to address the nation’s goods movement needs and strengthen our economic competitiveness. 

The recommendations of this Panel must lay the foundation for policies and resources to meet the future needs of our intermodal freight network.  We should not be constrained by only looking at the transportation network we have, but rather we should explore and evaluate policies that will develop the network we need for the future.  That is our charge, and working together, we can meet these challenges.

I look forward to hearing from the witnesses, and to working with my colleagues to develop a strategic vision for a modern and competitive freight infrastructure system.

Thank You.

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