'Borrowing Against The Future': Jake Auchincloss Urges Funding Shift For Roadway Infrastructure

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During a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) questioned witnesses about roadway infrastructure spending and planning.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you, Chairman. I appreciate the testimony from our witnesses. Ms. Osborne, I particularly

00:09appreciate your work and your testimony. You've noted that while today we are spending more

00:13money overall on our roads, the money is not necessarily going towards repair. In many

00:17cases, as you note, states are spending as much on expansion as they are on repair. And

00:22you rightly point out, and I want to emphasize, that, quote, every new lane mile of road costs

00:26approximately $24,000 per year to preserve in a state of good repair. By expanding roads,

00:33we are borrowing against the future. As Congress begins considering the next surface transportation

00:38reauthorization, how should we reprioritize formula funding to ensure that we are maximizing

00:42our existing roads and not expanding and inducing more vehicular traffic?

00:48Thank you for that question. To be clear, the $24,000 per lane mile is a number that

00:55we came up with from Federal Highways in 2019. So that's probably awfully low. And the liability

01:03of building things has likely become more expensive. This committee actually led the

01:09way in addressing this policy-wise in the last reauthorization. There was bipartisan

01:17language added to your bill originally that said that an agency could build new infrastructure

01:28or expand infrastructure if they had a plan to maintain it throughout its useful life

01:33while improving the overall condition of their system. It's something that is just good governance

01:43and common sense. Unfortunately, the Senate and the White House did not follow your excellent

01:48lead. And I would love to see that language come back in.

01:51There's a lot from the INVEST Act that I would like to see come back in, for sure. You've

01:55also noted that our current funding system does not prioritize access, whether that is

01:59access to economic opportunity, health care, family. The current formula incentivizes states

02:09to simply use more fuel, not to actually design a transportation system that connects people

02:12with the places they need to go. How should we think about reevaluating that formula to

02:17prioritize access to jobs and services instead of simply inducing more vehicular miles traveled?

02:23Yes, this is something I'm very excited about, and I really think it could be transformative

02:30in speaking to the user experience and to access to economic opportunity. For those

02:36that are not familiar with multimodal access, it is measuring the destinations people can

02:41reach when they travel. The way we measure the success of the transportation system right

02:46now is based on a proxy that was the best thing we could do in the 1950s, which is to

02:51look at the speed of vehicles within an observed section, assuming that if we sped up vehicles

02:57within that observed section that people would arrive where they were going more quickly.

03:02As it turns out, what we do often to speed up that travel actually extends the distance.

03:08Think about roadways where you have no left turn all the way down and you have to go out

03:11of your way to take that left turn. We can measure that trip now. Virginia has really

03:16led the way in this, and in doing so I think really improved people's experience.

03:20And I'm glad you brought up Virginia. Let's go one level deeper in granularity to describe

03:25what it is that Virginia has done to quantify access to jobs and services within sort of

03:32a catchment area to help policymakers understand how effective their mobility policy is.

03:40They evaluate all new capacity projects on several items, including access to jobs and

03:45access to essential services. They measure those differently because a job trip is expected

03:49and okay if it is a little bit longer, and certainly does not, it is not treated the

03:55same way as, for example, a trip to the grocery. A 30-minute trip to a job is an acceptable

04:00amount of time. A 30-minute trip to a grocery is a public policy problem.

04:04So is it modality agnostic in the sense that they say, regardless of how you get there?

04:08It is not only modally agnostic, it actually brings in distance and land use decisions.

04:14So if you move the things people need closer to homes or affordable housing, closer to

04:19those things, you can get an access increase as well.

04:24And what types of places score higher on this metric? Is it single-family zoned, highway-centric,

04:30car-centric planning, or is it walkable mixed-use downtowns?

04:35On access to non-work necessities, definitely more walkable mixed-use traditional communities.

'Borrowing Against The Future': Jake Auchincloss Urges Funding Shift For Roadway Infrastructure

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