[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 100 (Monday, June 19, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8599-S8602]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                NATIONAL HIGHWAY SYSTEM DESIGNATION ACT

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
resume consideration of S. 440, which the clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 440) to amend title 23, United States Code, to 
     provide for the designation of the National Highway System, 
     and for other purposes.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, there are some 20 amendments of which the 
managers have notice. There may be more. I know it is the intention of 
the majority leader and the Democratic leader that we proceed as 
expeditiously as possible to bring this pending matter to a conclusion 
in the Senate. Again, I urge all Senators having an interest to come to 
the floor and take up those matters.
  This legislation is critically important to maintaining the 
transportation planning and construction programs in our several 
States, to providing for the efficient and timely movement of American 
products carried by commercial activities, and to the safety of the 
motoring public.
  As provided in the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation and 
Efficiency Act, known as ISTEA, the Congress must approve the National 
Highway System map by September 30, 1995. With the cooperation of all 
members of the Committee on the Environment and Public Works, we were 
able to expedite this bill such as the Senate has it at this particular 
time, well in advance of the deadline created by ISTEA.
  Now, if Congress does not meet the deadline, $6.5 billion in 
interstate maintenance and National Highway System annual 
apportionments will be withheld from the several States. Therefore, we 
must not permit this penalty to be further imposed on our States.
  In February of this year, I introduced this legislation, along with 
14 of my colleagues, to ensure prompt action on the National Highway 
System. Today, this legislation enjoys the bipartisan support of 26 
Senators.
  The Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Transportation and 
Infrastructure, which I am privileged [[Page S 8600]] to chair, held 
four hearings on the importance of the National Highway System. The 
subcommittee also heard testimony on the impact of various 
transportation mandates, such as metric sign conversion and the use of 
rubberized asphalt. We also examined innovative financing proposals to 
increase State flexibility to maximize the use of highway dollars by 
allowing public funds to leverage nontraditional, private sources of 
funding for infrastructure development.
  This is very definitely the direction in which our Nation must go if 
it wishes to continue to modernize our transportation system.
  The subcommittee's hearings clearly demonstrated that continuing 
Federal investment, with our State partners and new private ventures, 
in our Nation's infrastructure is crucial to improving America's 
mobility and the efficiency of our surface transportation network.
  The National Highway System reaffirms the Federal commitment to this 
limited network of highly traveled roads to provide for the consistency 
of road engineering and safety for commercial and public travel.
  For the benefit of my colleagues who may be asking, ``What is the 
National Highway System?''--a legitimate question--let me take this 
opportunity to offer some historical perspective and a brief 
description about the system.
  We are particularly fortunate today that the manager on the minority 
side is the distinguished Senator from New York, who really has spent 
much of his career in the U.S. Senate on this subject. I look forward 
to hearing his remarks about the historic concepts of this system.
  In the 1950's, President Eisenhower challenged the transportation 
community to provide an effective system of highway connections among 
the 50 States. Thus, the era of the Interstate Highway System was born, 
and for the next 25 years, Federal transportation policy focused on the 
completion of the Interstate Highway System.
  There is a little anecdotal history here that is interesting. My 
understanding of the reading is that Eisenhower, when he was a young 
major in his very late thirties, was instructed by the chief of staff 
of the U.S. Army to determine what would be the best route and, indeed, 
what difficulties might be incurred if a military envoy left one coast 
and traveled all the way to the next. And then Major Eisenhower was 
somewhat appalled by the system and how inadequate that system was to 
transfer military cargo, military troops, equipment, and other systems 
essential to our national defense, and at that time the major was also 
quite knowledgeable of the rapid advancement in Germany, under Nazi 
control in those days, and the Autobahn system.
  So at that time, apparently, he determined at some future date he 
would have a hand in developing a system for the United States which 
would ensure, for the purposes of national security and other purposes, 
an adequate interstate highway system.
  During the debate on ISTEA, the future role of the Federal Government 
in surface transportation was debated at length as the completion of 
the Interstate System neared. The debate questioned the level of 
Federal obligations to the maintenance of the Interstate System and 
other primary routes, the appropriateness of providing greater 
flexibility and responsibility to the States, and the most effective 
means of ensuring the safety of our surface transportation system for 
the traveling public.
  I happen to have been a member of the committee and a member of the 
conference on ISTEA, and the distinguished Senator from New York was 
then the chairman of the Committee on the Environment and Public Works 
of the U.S. Senate and took a very active role in that ISTEA 
conference.
  I concurred in the Senate's view that a National Highway System 
should be established to maintain a minimum level of Federal 
involvement with our State partners. Ensuring the efficient performance 
and consistency of our existing road system between individual States 
remains the foremost Federal responsibility.
  As provided in ISTEA, the National Highway System map consists of 
159,000 miles. Of this amount, 44,000 miles are interstate highways; 
4,500 miles are high priority corridors identified in ISTEA; 15,700 
miles are noninterstate strategic highway network routes; and 1,900 
miles are strategic highway network connectors.
  The remaining 91,000 miles were identified by the Federal Highway 
Administration and the States in cooperation with local governments.
  May I stress, Mr. President, this is not a map concocted by the 
Congress. We are, essentially, about to confirm and ratify the work of 
the Federal Highway Administration in full cooperation with the 
counterpart authorities in each State, and down to the very local 
level. Many Senators have taken an active participation as it relates 
to their particular States.
  The product of this 2-year dialog is the map before us, which must be 
enacted, as I said, by the Congress promptly to meet the September 
deadline.
  The committee-reported bill commends the successful efforts of the 
several States, the Federal Highway Administration, and the local 
authorities in developing the NHS map, and provides authority for this 
process to continue to evolve.
  May I pause to say this is not a static situation. It is a continuing 
situation, Mr. President. As new roads are constructed and State 
transportation priorities change, the States and the Federal Highway 
Administration can continue to make necessary adjustments to the map.
  The National Highway System, as developed by our States, contains 
just 4 percent of America's 4 million miles of public roads. I would 
like to repeat that, Mr. President: The National Highway System, as 
developed by our States, contains just 4 percent of America's 4 million 
miles of public roads. This 4 percent, however, carries over 40 percent 
of all highway traffic and 70 percent of all truck freight traffic.
  Most of the NHS roads are already built, and the system reflects a 
fair distribution of mileage between rural and urban roads.
  I am committed to the National Highway System because it will 
increase economic opportunities to communities not served directly by 
the interstate system. Also, it will provide a direct link with roads 
in Canada and Mexico, uniting the North American commercial links. This 
is particularly appropriate in view of the American free-trade zone 
with a high-performance, continental road network.
  For the first time, the NHS will allow States to focus their 
investments on connecting air, rail, commercial water ports, freight 
facilities, and highways so that the performance of the entire system 
can be maximized. In other words, we combine in this new map all of 
those essential parts to make up the infrastructure for this highway 
system. These intermodal connections will provide our entire 
transportation system with the flexibility needed to cope with the 
changing economic geography for this decade and beyond.
  Reinforcing this economic backbone is the fact that nearly 85 percent 
of the Nation's freight travels at least part of its journey over a 
highway. As American companies rely more and more on just-in-time 
delivery to get raw materials to plants, and as American wholesalers 
and retailers count on rapid delivery to keep their inventories lean, 
the economic importance of an efficient, national transportation 
infrastructure is actually growing every day.
  Mr. President, in February, when this legislation was introduced, I 
also indicated my intention to respond to the concerns raised by our 
State partners and other users of the system to increase the 
flexibility to use Federal highway funds and to reduce Federal 
mandates.
  I am pleased that the bill before the Senate today provides relief 
from costly and burdensome mandates by the following:
  First, repealing the usage requirement for the crumb rubber in hot 
mix asphalt;
  Second, repealing the requirement that States convert transportation 
signs to metric measurements;
  Third, repealing the requirement that States implement management 
system;
  Fourth, repealing the national maximum speed limit; [[Page S 8601]] 
  Fifth, repealing the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage mandate on federally 
funded transportation construction projects. The Chair will note, as of 
the close of business on the preceding day of Senate business, namely, 
Friday, that amendment was taken out of this bill. So it no longer 
applies.
  Sixth, streamlining the transportation enhancement process;
  Seventh, clarifying that transportation conformity requirements apply 
only to Clean Air Act nonattainment areas;
  Eighth, modifying the commercial motor vehicle hours of service 
requirements as applied to the drivers of groundwater drilling rigs.
  In responding to the need to increase State flexibility of highway 
apportionments, the committee bill:
  First, allows for larger transfers from the highway bridge program to 
other accounts;
  Second, expands Federal aid eligibility to public highways connecting 
the NHS to intermodal facilities;
  Third, provides for a soft match which allows private funds, 
materials, and services to be donated and applied to the State matching 
share;
  Fourth, allows States to use advance construction funds for projects 
beyond the ISTEA authorization period;
  Fifth, permits bond costs to be eligible for reimbursement as a cost 
of construction;
  And sixth, allows States to use NHS and congestion mitigation and air 
quality funds for an unlimited period of time on intelligent vehicle 
transportation system projects.
  Mr. President, another section of this legislation responds to the 
Federal need to move forward on a replacement facility for the Woodrow 
Wilson Bridge, located here in the greater metropolitan Washington 
area. The proposal the committee puts forward accomplishes three major 
objectives:
  First, it offers an opportunity for the Federal Government to 
transfer ownership of the bridge to a regional authority established by 
Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, thereby relieving the 
Federal Government of the sole responsibility for this facility.
  Second, it provides a framework that will stimulate additional 
financing to facilitate the construction of the alternative identified 
in the environmental impact statement.
  Third, with less than 10 years of useful life remaining on the 
existing bridge, this approach addresses the need to provide for the 
safety of the traveling public and for the efficient flow of commerce.
  I cannot emphasize too strongly, Mr. President, that particular 
provision as it relates to the Wilson Bridge. I have been down and 
personally inspected it. I talked to the appropriate authorities.
  Mr. Herrity, the distinguished public servant here in northern 
Virginia, has actively written on this subject. I ask unanimous consent 
to have his statement printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, June 11, 1995]

                       Put the Pedal to the Metal

       On the Wilson Bridge Reconstruction of the Woodrow Wilson 
     Bridge is essential not only to our region's economic health 
     but to maintain the sanity of this area's commuters. We don't 
     have time for the usual bureaucratic crawl toward 
     completion--engineering experts say the bridge will be 
     unusable in 10 years.
       An interim proposal has been floated to prolong the 
     bridge's life by closing it to truck traffic in the next two 
     to five years. That, however, would be a disaster in terms of 
     time and money. Ask any Beltway commuter what he or she 
     thinks of diverting 18,000 trucks to the Cabin John Bridge. 
     And all of us would see costs for the delivery of fuel, 
     furniture, groceries etc. go up.
       To build any road or bridge, first you plan and design it, 
     then you find money. Finally, you build it. But we are moving 
     too slowly. In the case of the Wilson Bridge, we must do all 
     three steps quickly--and simultaneously. We don't have the 
     luxury of a common bureaucratic timetable of 15, 20 or even 
     25 years.
       The good news is that we already have taken steps to plan, 
     design and find money for the reconstruction. In 1991, the 
     Interstate Study Commission was established to find ways to 
     raise money from Virginia, Maryland and the District 
     (combined with federal government money) to own, construct, 
     operate and maintain a new Wilson Bridge. Last December this 
     commission recommended the creation of a regional authority 
     to finance the construction. Maryland, Virginia and the 
     District have passed or soon will pass legislation to allow 
     the creation of such an authority, which will require 
     amendments next year. As part of these amendments, the 
     governors of Maryland and Virginia and the mayor of the 
     District must select someone from each of their respective 
     transportation departments to expedite:
       The selection procedures for design engineering.
       The procedures for right-of-way acquisition.
       The bid procedures for expedited construction.
       A coordinated and privatized effort can produce quick 
     results. For example, the privatized Dulles Greenway (the 
     Dulles Toll Road extension to Leesburg) is taking only 24 
     months to construction; it would have taken four to five 
     years through normal bureaucratic channels.
       A committee charged with recommending a bridge plan has 
     selected three design options and soon will narrow its choice 
     to two. Its recommendations will go to the Transportation and 
     Planning Board of the Council of Governments, which will have 
     the final say. At that point, the authority will be activated 
     to get the bridge built.
       We don't need a new bureaucracy for a bridge authority. 
     Instead, the authority should be able to rely on the 
     professional staffs of existing agencies. Then Virginia, 
     Maryland and the District could work toward a common goal: 
     the rapid rebuilding of a link vital to them all, the Woodrow 
     Wilson Bridge.

  Mr. WARNER. I conclude, Mr. President, by saying the goal of the NHS 
is to leave a legacy for the next generation. That legacy is an 
intermodal transportation system, a system that is not fragmented into 
separate parts, but rather one that works to serve the many diverse 
interests of Americans, to serve the growing demands of the competitive 
global marketplace, and to help ensure the safety of the traveling 
public.
  I also feel there are certain national security interests involved in 
having an efficient system. I will address that particular section at 
another time.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, might I express my appreciation to the 
distinguished senior Senator from Virginia for his masterly account of 
the provisions in our bill and for his very thoughtful statement about 
the continuity of this act, S. 440, with the Intermodal Surface 
Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, which had among other purposes 
the declaration that the Dwight D. Eisenhower Interstate and Defense 
Highway System, had been built, finished. It took quite a bit longer 
and a very great deal more than we had expected. But we had done it.
  I would like to make just a slight modification to my friend's 
account because it is relevant. President Eisenhower would tell this 
story, and it is related in his book ``At Ease: Stories I Tell to 
Friends.''
  It is 1919, a young Army lieutenant colonel, soon to revert to his 
peacetime rank of captain, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was given command of a 
serious military exercise. He was to assume that wartime events had 
disabled the railroads. He was to lead a convoy of army trucks across 
the country from Fort Meade, just out on the edge of the District, in 
Maryland, technically, to the Presidio in San Francisco. It took him 2 
months. The convoy averaged less than 7 miles per hour. It proved that 
you could cross the continent by truck if you had to, but not if it was 
a wartime emergency. He wrote in his book:

       To those who have known only concrete and macadam highways 
     of gentle grades and engineered curves, such a trip might 
     seem humdrum. In those days we were not sure it could be 
     accomplished at all. Nothing of the sort had ever been 
     attempted.

  The idea for an interstate system emerged, if I could be just a 
little parochial, out of the 1939 World's Fair in Flushing Meadow, in 
Queens, NY, at the great General Motors Futurama exhibit. I can 
remember sitting there as a child, in one of those gliding contraptions 
that moved around and you saw this great scene of highways, with what 
we would come to call cloverleaf intersections crossing over one 
another, going through mountains. President Roosevelt who, along with 
most others here in Washington, was very much concerned that the 
Depression of the 1930's would resume with the end of World War II, in 
1944 got a national interstate highway system authorized. But it was 
nothing more than that, an authorization. In New York we built the 
first segment as the Thruway, starting immediately in 1946, but the 
system lagged elsewhere.
  When President Eisenhower came to office he very much had that early [[Page S 
8602]] command in mind, and he hit upon the idea with Jim Wright of 
Texas, a young Congressman at that time, to have a gasoline tax and 
dedicate it to the construction of this system. And, by golly, we did 
it. But there came a time when we in fact had done it, built the 
system, and yet a certain inertia, you might say, pushed us on and on, 
and we would just build another segment and yet another.
  We finally came up with a better idea, though, as the chairman has 
indicated--a new national highway system which would supplement the 
Eisenhower interstate system. It would consist of only about 4 percent 
of the Nation's road mileage, but it would carry 40 percent of its 
traffic. And it would be a combined, cooperative effort of State 
governments and the Federal Government at its best.
  In 1991, President Bush very much wanted to have this National 
Highway System, but in fact the Department of Transportation had not 
yet drawn it. We had a big meeting down at the Executive Office 
Building with a map of the country and lots of red lines over it, but 
it did not represent real highways. It just indicated what would be 
someday.
  That someday has come. We will have until the 1st of October--am I 
correct?
  Mr. WARNER. The 30th of September.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes, the 30th, the end of this fiscal year, to 
authorize this system. And this legislation does that. It does it in a 
timely manner, as anticipated. We have funds available. And we have 
very real needs.
  We are not building new highways. We are maintaining and improving 
their capacity. The intermodal system was very explicit on the idea 
that you do not want to add to the mileage of the system, you want to 
make it more efficient. We made very clear our view that a free good--
and these are freeways--will be overconsumed. We made it clear that we 
were not in the least alarmed by the idea of pricing this good, as we 
do in points of congestion like tunnels and bridges.
  We began the legislation--the conference report and the legislation 
itself--with a declaration of policy for the Intermodal Surface 
Transportation Efficiency Act. It said:

       The National Intermodal Transportation System must be 
     operated and maintained with insistent attention to the 
     concepts of innovation, competition, energy efficiency, 
     productivity, growth, and accountability. Practices that 
     resulted in the lengthy and overly-costly construction of the 
     Interstate and Defense Highway System must be confronted and 
     ceased.

  We went so far, Mr. President, as to require that this table of 
principles be printed up and provided to every member of the Department 
of Transportation--and they were. In this system, in the present bill, 
we find continued reference to those principles. We find ourselves 
completing the 4-year work that we were asked to do.
  Note, ``intermodal.'' It is one of the ironies of President, then 
captain, Eisenhower's journey across the country that to assume the 
railroads had been destroyed and you find you could not get from here 
to there in any effective way without them led to an interstate highway 
system which pretty soon had destroyed the railroads. And not 
necessarily a good idea.
  We, of course, made it clear that by intermodal we mean not just 
vehicle transportation. We talk about rail. We talk about air links. We 
talk about sea links. In this particular legislation there is a 
specific provision, ``Sec. 126, Intermodal Facility In New York. [The] 
engineering, design, and construction activities to permit the James A. 
Farley Post Office in New York, New York, to be used as an intermodal 
transportation facility and commercial center.''
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, will my colleague allow me to observe?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Surely.
  Mr. WARNER. He said something about the destruction of the railroads? 
I am not sure the distinguished Senator from New York wanted to 
indicate the interstate highway system destroyed the railroads. I would 
think there was a period of time when there was a decline of passenger 
travel, but the railroads today are very strong in terms of freight 
transportation. And many of the things that Eisenhower was concerned 
about in terms of heavy equipment being moved--I am glad the Senator 
brought it back. It did jog my memory. I, too, went to the World's Fair 
of 1939 with my father. It was a memorable trip. But it was formulating 
in Eisenhower's mind through all those years. This was always in the 
recess of his mind.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. He got it built. General Motors thought it up, you 
might say.
  And the Senator, the chairman, is highly correct. What we have seen 
is not the disappearance of the railroads but their disappearance as a 
principal mode of passenger transportation, save on certain corridors 
where it is efficient. If you were looking for the major reason for 
that--well, probably the airlines did it to continental transport, and 
the automobile. Although we may have overdone it. We had a very 
efficient rail system in Los Angeles, for example, which they closed 
down around 1950 and they wish they could get it back, now that it is 
probably too late.
  In any event, with tribute to my friends once again, the Committee on 
Environment and Public Works brings to this floor a near unanimous 
measure. I have been 19 years in that committee, and I do not think I 
can remember many times in which we have had a party-line vote. We have 
tried to think about the environment. We have tried to think about 
public works in terms of national interests. If we have not always 
succeeded, it is not for lack of trying. Once again, we have done that, 
and very much to be congratulated and thanked at a time when partisan 
issues rise, as they ought--but they rise a little higher even as we 
approach Presidential years. This is a good example of the capacity of 
the Senators between the different parties, different regions, 
different interests to cooperate and produce a fine bill.
  I for my part want to congratulate all those involved. Senator Baucus 
is necessarily absent or he would be saying substantially the same 
things from the point of view of the High Plains even as I speak from 
the point of view of the island of Manhattan.
  Mr. President, with great appreciation for all of the work that the 
Senator from Virginia has done, and with the expectation that we will 
now go forward and get it through the Senate in the same period, I want 
to thank him.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I wish to reciprocate and thank again my 
distinguished colleague from New York. It was simply because he 
certainly handled the ISTEA legislation, and that in many respects gave 
rise to this national evolution of the highway system.
  Mr. President, we are anxious to have Senators come to the floor for 
purposes of amendments. We will accommodate them as they arrive.
  At this time, I see our distinguished colleague from Georgia who 
wishes to address the Senate I believe on a different subject.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. NUNN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, before I speak briefly on another subject, I 
would like to congratulate my friends from Virginia and New York on 
their leadership in this important area, and I think that they have 
indeed worked together very carefully and prudently in the Nation's 
interest. I congratulate them for that.

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