[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 11974-11978]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            FAST FREE ALTERNATIVES TO SPEEDY TRANSPORTATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Chocola). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about the 
very significant transportation issues that are facing our country.
  Why, just today those who have read the Washington Post would read 
that Virginia backs off plans for two road projects; how the State is 
abandoning studies to widen Interstate 66 through Arlington and 
building an outer beltway. This is a road that is heavily used and is 
limited to two lanes in each direction in highly congested areas, yet 
they are going to be seeking proposals from companies that might want 
to build a toll road or other type of highway to serve the same needs, 
and they are doing this because Virginia is struggling to pay the bills 
for these roads projects.
  That is something that is not just faced in Virginia, but is faced 
around the country. And right now if they were trying to address these 
needs, where they are looking for other roads, looking at tolls or 
other forms of private financing, they cannot do that on interstate 
roads right now.
  In my view, and what I am going to be talking about today, is a 
proposal that I put forth along with the gentleman from Washington (Mr. 
Smith) for fast, free alternatives to speedy transportation. What I am 
going to be talking about is that we do not want congestion. We do not 
want congestion that is experienced here in Washington, D.C., or like 
is experienced all around the country. And we do not want the tolls 
that we have seen in other areas where you have to slow down and stop 
at a toll booth, where you have to have the tolls that are collected on 
that road paying for all types of projects around the area, some of 
which have nothing to do with transportation. And that is going to be 
the focus of my remarks.
  What is this alternative? This alternative that we are putting forth 
called FAST I think addresses many of the issues that we are facing 
today. If you look at it, part of what we are struggling with is the 
fact that right now we are almost completely reliant on the gas tax as 
a means of funding our roads, and that has been problematic.
  It has been problematic for several reasons: Number one, gas tax does 
not go up with inflation even though the costs of roads do. We have 
higher-mileage cars, which are good things. We want higher-mileage 
cars, but when you have higher-mileage cars that are using less gas for 
every mile driven, there is less gas tax received for every mile driven 
on the road.
  You also have continued exploration of alternative fuel vehicles, 
which again is a good thing. Just a few months ago the President from 
this Chamber put out a challenge for hydrogen-based vehicles. In that 
challenge he said our children's generations would be driving in 
hydrogen-based vehicles. But do you know how much gas they are using in 
hydrogen-based vehicles? Nada. And how much gas tax will we be 
receiving from them? Nothing.
  So we need to be looking and exploring for alternative ways of 
funding the

[[Page 11975]]

important transportation needs that we have. There is also always the 
reluctance of having our energy costs be higher, so we have to be 
looking at ways that we can ultimately have supplements to the gas tax.
  The funding needs are significant. The gap between what we have 
available and what we need is just monumental, and it has been a big 
drag on our economy. In my own State of Minnesota, $1 billion a year by 
some estimates is the shortfall of what we need. So this is above and 
beyond what many or any are really talking about for addressing. We 
have major road projects like just in our area I-94 from St. Cloud to 
the metropolitan area which are not on our 10-year road plan for the 
State of Minnesota. Our major intersection, 35W and 694 in the southern 
portion of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, that project 
could take upwards of $1 billion itself to correct the congestion 
issues in that interchange, and yet that is not provided for in a 10-
year road plan in the State of Minnesota.
  So those are just a couple of examples in a couple of metropolitan 
areas, Washington and Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul area, as examples 
of the many, many needs across this country that are not being met.
  As we think about our competitiveness as a country, we are in a 
global economy. There is no question about it. Part of the advantage 
that we have had is we have had very efficient transportation systems. 
But when we add costs to the system by having this congestion, we 
certainly are hurting our competitiveness.
  We also have, in addition to a shortfall in resources, we have a 
confidence issue. We have people that are not confident that their road 
dollars are going to be spent in the way that they would really like 
them to be spent. We see projects where there is just a phenomenal 
amount of Federal highway gas tax dollars being spent on just one 
project.
  Right here in the Washington area, the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, over 
$1.6 billion in Federal funds alone on one bridge, and when we think 
about that amount of resources going in the one bridge and how many 
other projects that that prevents from being funded, we need to look at 
alternatives.
  Boston Big Dig, the Federal contribution to that is $8.5 billion of 
an overall $14.5 billion price tag so far, and it is still climbing. It 
is because of this that many of the referendums that we have had on gas 
taxes for increases have failed, whether it be in Missouri in August of 
last year, or Washington State in November of last year, or closer to 
home and closer to my opening comments about right here in the 
Washington metro area that in northern Virginia and Hampton Roads in 
November of last year failed.
  So we need to address not just the shortfall, we need to give people 
the confidence again. We need to give people belief that the resources 
that they are devoting and giving to transportation are being spent on 
the transportation projects that they are asking for. And for the most 
part, they are looking, yes, for more options, but in many areas they 
are looking for more concrete, more asphalt, more lanes on our 
congested interstate highway systems.
  If you think about what this is costing economically, traffic 
congestion costs in the United States more than $67 billion annually, 
$67 billion. That is more than we spend federally on roads and other 
transportation investments. So this is something that we are not really 
being smart about this. We are spending $67 billion annually on 
congestion, but we are not spending $67 billion annually here to 
relieve that congestion.
  We also spend more than 3.6 billion hours consumed with delays, 3.6 
billion hours. Just think of what you could be doing with that time. 
Think of how much more time you could be having with your family. Think 
of how much more time that American workers could be working and being 
productive rather than just sitting in traffic. Think of how much more 
time you could do whatever it is you enjoy doing, hunting, fishing, 
being out on the golf course. America deserves to have that time with 
their family, that time at work, or that time doing what they enjoy 
rather than being stuck in traffic.
  And importantly to the environment, 6 billion gallons of fuel are 
wasted in traffic jams every year, 6 billion.

                              {time}  1630

  We have a great concern about being overly reliant on foreign oil, 
overly reliant on these types of energies that we are importing to keep 
our country going. Just think of how less reliant we would be if we 
were not putting 6 billion gallons of fuel into the environment every 
year just because we are stuck in congestion. Just think of how much 
better our environment would be if we were not spending that six 
billion of gasoline on being stuck in traffic.
  There are huge issues here. We look at the average cost of congestion 
for commuters stuck in traffic which is about $1,160 a year per person. 
That brings it down to a very significant cost for most families having 
to pay a lot more just to be stuck in that traffic and now drivers 
waste on average 62 hours per year per person on traffic. So we can 
free up a lot of that time, and in my own State of Minnesota we have 
had amongst the highest increases of congestion of any other 
metropolitan area in the country.
  This is something that is costing us individually dearly in terms of 
time and money. It is costing our economy very significantly in terms 
of time away from employment, time away from other activities and the 
resources that we are investing; and it is costing our environment as 
well. So this is something we need to deal with.
  We here in America view ourselves as the champions of freedom, the 
champions of reaching out to market alternatives, to saying how can we 
embrace our private sector, how can we embrace innovative ideas; and 
certainly our heritage in that regard has inspired many countries and 
many peoples around the world to try to emulate us and is very 
responsible for the expansion of democracy and market-based economies 
around the world.
  Yet in the area of transportation, we are behind. We are not really 
leaders in that regard. We are still in more of a planned-market type 
of approach to how we do it. If we look at the case of Italy, they have 
turned over their national network, the Aus Estrada to a private 
network, to a private sector. Canada has sold off part of its Ontario 
Beltway for private people to run.
  In China, a country that will be a significant economic competitor 
for years to come and in growing ways, they are investing significantly 
in their transportation infrastructure by doing it in a way that 
embraces public-private partnerships, and this is allowing them to put 
massive projects on the ground and really help them be even more 
competitive economically.
  Japan is also considering privatizing their national highway network. 
Australia is doing something very innovative. Every time that there is 
a major project, the Australian Government requires the public highway 
organization to have a private entity bid on that and say can we do it 
better, and those are the types of things that we just have not really 
considered to the same extent here in this country.
  Many States, though, have been innovative in exploring those. Around 
the country, even though it is prohibited, as I said, with outdated 
restrictions on Federal roads, it is allowed on State roads. Some 
States have been very innovative in using these user fees to major 
transportation problems. Riverside Freeway, for example, in Orange 
County, California, $130 million project, four-lane facility in the 
median of one of the most congested 10 miles in the country, it has 
proven to be very successful, a private entity coming forward and doing 
this.
  The Pocahontas Parkway, closer here to Washington, Richmond, 
Virginia, area, $400 million project used to connect two interstates, 
Interstate 95, Interstate 295. This is an $8.8 million four-lane 
connection that really helped relieve congestion in the Richmond area.
  In the Austin-San Antonio area, $3.2 billion project, controlled 
access highway, with capacity for managed lanes.

[[Page 11976]]

  In many of these cases, these are being funded by private entities 
stepping forward and offering to do these projects. There are many ways 
where we can embrace these private entities. The way that I would 
encourage is to consider having either the public utility commission in 
the State or the State highway committee offer to set a rate of an 
acceptable rate of return and to guarantee that rate of return to 
private entities that will step forward and do highway projects that 
are in need; and if they were planning on originally paying for it in 
15 years and the project was very successful and more drivers chose to 
use it and it could be paid off in 12 years, to get the rate of return, 
that is when the fee would fall away.
  If it were not quite as successful in terms of usage as they were 
planning on and it maybe took a couple more years, it would maybe 
continue to have a fee on it for a little bit longer than 15 years; but 
in that way, we would not either have excessive, over-the-top returns 
that are above what should have to be paid for a private entity, and in 
a similar way, we would not have a project that is a bust, that just is 
not paying for itself, that would require and have the private entity 
come back in many cases to try to renegotiate with the State.
  So embracing these types of rate-of-return approaches to encourage 
private entities to step forward would really encourage them to partner 
with us more as it relates to getting our congestion relieved. Right 
now we have a lot of these private entities over there in Iraq and 
Afghanistan building roads, and they would be happy to, I think, 
embrace this type of a market approach here in Minnesota and around the 
country.
  If we look at what the solution is to this, it is to take this same 
type of innovation that we have in other States on State roads, the 
same type of innovation that in ways is being used all across this 
world, to our own interstates. That is what we are searching to do, and 
this is why the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith) and I introduced 
the FAST Act, Freeing Alternative to Speedy Transportation; and this is 
a bipartisan bill. We have Members from both sides of the aisle 
supporting this bill, and it is a bicameral bill. I was very pleased 
that Senator Wayne Allard from Colorado has agreed to introduce this in 
the Senate as well.
  It is really a solution-based approach. It repeals the outdated 
provisions in Federal law that prevent highway expansion with user fees 
and in many ways is a commonsense approach that unites all those that 
have been really arguing over other approaches to solve our congestion 
areas.
  What are some of the restrictions, though, that we place? We take 
away this prohibition, but we do it only assuming that certain 
requirements are met. Those requirements are few, and they are focused 
on restoring that consumer confidence.
  Fees would only be collected voluntarily so no one is forced to be in 
these lanes, and they would only be collected using noncash electronic 
technology. No one wants more toll booths. When we are looking to get 
things moving quicker, we do not want to have to slow down and stop to 
pay a toll, and we do not even want to have to slow down to just run 
through a booth area for electronic recognition. This is something that 
there is proven technology out there where it could be as simple as 
being a tube that goes up in a U-shape over the interstate. It has 
electronic sensors in it and can tell when a car moves into a charge 
lane and that car would have an electronic sensor that a person might 
hang from a rearview mirror or it might be included as part of a 
person's license or somewhere else that would electronically say, yes, 
I recognize that person is in this lane, we will deduct that from their 
account or send a bill for it.
  There is also technology for those that do not have the electronic 
sensor that we would obviously be able to flash a picture of their 
license plates and send them a bill that way, but this can be done 
where people can decide to move in and out of a lane at 50 or 60 miles 
an hour, whatever the posted speed limit is, and do it in a way that we 
do not have to have massive capital expenditures to delineate one lane 
from another. This would facilitate the ability to convert this at the 
period of time when the fees had paid for the road into a lane that no 
longer had a fee on it.
  So that is one key criterion. Voluntary, electronic, no toll booths, 
no tolls.
  Second, is that these fast fees are charged only when drivers use the 
new lanes, and they are charged only on those new lanes. We are talking 
about all existing concrete and pavement, would not add new fees to 
them, but it would only be these existing lanes.
  Finally, once that lane was paid for, that fee would expire.
  These are the criteria that our FAST Act provides to make sure that 
those consumers, those travelers, those commuters that are paying for 
this can have the confidence that their dollars are going to be used 
well.
  If we look at what are some of the benefits of this, there are 
significant benefits. First, of course, less congestion, less all of 
those other costs that we talked about earlier that are really grinding 
down our economy in so many ways, and that is one big thing.
  What this does is it gives a new funding source at a time when 
clearly a new funding source is needed. Also, by being able to empower 
local areas, it helps these roads get built quicker. A similar type of 
approach was used with these types of lanes in the Katy Freeway in 
Houston; and rather than the road getting built in 10 years, it is 
getting built in 4. So we are addressing the problems now when we have 
the need.
  By doing so, we are doing it in a way that reduced the cost because 
when we build something today versus 10 years from now, not only do we 
save the time-value money, but with the appreciating values of lands 
along the rights of way with the escalating costs, this is a much 
cheaper time to be addressing issues that we have today rather than 
bury our heads in the sand and let them just build into the future with 
the escalating costs of the buildup of construction along these roads, 
making the purchase of rights of way and other easements so much more 
expensive.
  This is clearly something that is going to relieve congestion, new 
sources of funding, get those roads built quickly, and importantly, 
right now. As I mentioned with the Wilson bridge or the Boston Big Dig, 
we have major projects that could clearly be funded in this way, 
partially at least, that are absorbing significant shares of our 
transportation resources.
  By addressing many of the projects where this would be appropriate 
using fast lanes, we are going to free up dollars for all of the other 
projects that our cities, that our rural areas have, and have more 
resources to address their very important needs as well.
  I think the other big thing this does is it pushes power out of 
Washington and empowers the States. Right now with many major road 
projects, we are the only game in town. A person has to come to 
Washington to sort of make sure they maybe get an earmark or get a 
little help pushing this forward. We have got a lot of those requests 
and continue to put through a lot of those requests and are happy to 
work in response to those in whatever way we can, but what this does is 
it puts more tools in the tool box of State and local entities or 
private firms to step forward and address an unmet need.
  I think that is why nationally the American Association of State 
Highway and Transportation officials have supported this. This is a 
tool that they should have to address their needs. If a project is not 
met through the normal approach, the State can step forward using this 
type of approach, or as in the case of Houston, as I mentioned earlier, 
Harris County did that project for the Katy Freeway, have the county 
step forward or private entity come knock on the county or State's door 
and say, listen, I see a need here; I would like to fill it.
  Having more people involved, encouraging innovation across the 
country, very similar to what we do with welfare, is what we really 
need to do, unlocking that innovation. More people addressing this very 
significant

[[Page 11977]]

issue is what we are trying to achieve with this FAST Act.
  I would say also that a key part of what we are doing here as well is 
restoring that consumer confidence. We are restoring that consumer 
confidence with the criteria that I talked about earlier, only charge 
on new lanes, only voluntarily, only electronically, used for those new 
lanes, and goes away when it is done. That will restore the confidence 
because we are giving them a true user choice. No one will pay for this 
unless they deem that the amount that they are paying they are getting 
back the return with a value that is worth it.

                              {time}  1645

  And some may say, well, this is only going to be used for the 
wealthy, but that is proven by studies not to be true. The need to get 
to your doctor's appointment on time or pick up your child at an after-
school program or get to an important interview does not happen only in 
one income group or one demographic or another. This is used across the 
section of our society. And in cases where it has been done on State 
roads, that has proven to be the case.
  Also, everybody benefits. Even if you are not using the FAST lanes, 
there are less people driving in the other lanes. So you are freeing up 
that congestion, besides the benefits of spending less as an economy on 
gasoline and putting less gasoline in the air and all the other costs 
that I spoke of earlier that would be relieved. So this is really a 
fundamental question of if you are stuck dead in traffic in the middle 
of the interstate at 10:00 in the morning or 2:00 in the afternoon, or 
any time of day, should you have a choice of being able to move into an 
additional lane and move across that lane and along that lane in a much 
quicker way?
  I believe fundamentally that that is a choice that should be there, 
and this approach ensures that if the market would support a choice 
being there, then multiple people are empowered to make sure that that 
option is provided to our passengers, to our commuters.
  So this is something that is critically important. And if we look 
right now, some of the other issues that this really addresses is it 
really not only embraces the private sector, but it embraces the 
possibilities for transit. There are many ways of embracing transit 
with these lanes. One of those might be that you can use congestion 
pricing. You can vary the level of pricing based on what kind of need 
there is, and that could either be predescribed as to a time of day, a 
different fee, or it could be even variable. You could have an 
electronic sensor that would say what do I need to charge in order to 
make sure I can maintain a set miles per hour along this lane and make 
sure that there is a benefit to being in that lane. Those technologies 
exist, they can be used, and this would be allowed under our bill.
  I think the other thing that that would really facilitate is bus 
rapid transit. Too often folks are saying, well, I do not really want 
to take the bus because the bus is going in the same congested lanes 
that I am going in, and there is really not going to be an advantage to 
that for me. But if you had congestion pricing along these FAST lanes 
that would ensure a more predictable speed, you could also have more 
predictable times on a bus rapid transit that would use this. By having 
your major interstate corridors having these types of lanes available 
to them to work with bus rapid transit, you could provide this, as far 
as transit goes, a very economical transit alternative as well as a 
very flexible transit alternative.
  Transit began with and is still primarily focused on bringing people 
in and out of the center cities, like an accordion. But the world has 
changed. Not all the jobs are downtown, and not everybody lives outside 
of the downtown and the outer areas of the suburbs or the exurbs. A lot 
of time it is between the areas that surround the center cities where 
the transit needs are, and a lot of times that might change from one 
year or one decade to the next. So being locked into a more permanent 
type of transit might not be the most efficient way.
  This embracing of bus rapid transit would be an ideal way for us to 
help with those transit needs, to help provide alternatives and make 
sure that we are addressing the transportation needs of our area.
  People ask, can you use high-occupancy vehicles? You certainly could, 
and you could do this in a way where you just only issued electronic 
sensors to those who are registered car pools or registered van pools. 
But also there is technology available, required, in fact, in most new 
cars, which is being phased in over the next several years to require 
that there be electronic sensors in our cars to be able to tell what 
the weight of a person is sitting in the passenger seat so that you can 
adjust the degree to which when an air bag expands, the kind of force 
that uses so that it is reflective of the weight of the passenger.
  These sensors can also tell whether it is an animate or an inanimate 
object, so you cannot just do the sack of potatoes there. You might be 
able to get by with putting Rover, or, in our family, Indy, in the car 
and get away with that, but you cannot get by with just a rock or a 
sack of potatoes.
  If we had that electronic signal that is being sent out to the sensor 
that was being made available for this purpose, we could also have HOV 
lanes that could be electronically monitored.
  So there are countless opportunities in our modern day of high 
technology to really embrace transit alternatives and FAST lane 
alternatives in a similar way, in a very cost-efficient way.
  A couple of the other things our bill provides. Our bill provides for 
the fact that States would not be penalized for embracing these types 
of approaches. The amount of Federal gas tax dollars that they would 
have otherwise received would remain the same. The other thing, though, 
that it encourages is that we look at innovation; that for any highway 
project over $50 million, that the State authority looks at whether or 
not FAST lanes could be used, and it looks at whether or not you could 
embrace public-private partnerships. As we look at the vast needs we 
have and the limited resources we have to meet those needs, those types 
of approaches, I think, are very severely needed.
  So this is something that we certainly need to approach, and it is 
important for so many other reasons. Last night I had an opportunity to 
talk about the significant focus we have on creating jobs. Our economy 
is in tough shape. We have too many people unemployed. A big focus that 
we have to have, and what those unemployed people want, they want a 
job, and we need to create them. This unlocking of this alternative 
innovative way of approaching our transportation needs are not only 
going to help our economy long term, by having a better transportation 
infrastructure, it will not only help us be far more competitive on the 
world stage, but they are also going to create jobs in the making of 
those highways. The Joint Economic Committee has said that $1 billion 
of transportation spending would create 42,000 jobs.
  In a hearing we had before the Joint Economic Committee, Bob Poole of 
the Reason Foundation said that this could bridge the gap between many 
of the alternatives we are looking at; that it could result in tens of 
billions of dollars of projects if we did this right and provided other 
alternative help for our private entities and our public entities that 
I will talk about in a second. He identified that there was a $43 
billion need in just the top eight metropolitan areas that these types 
of projects could help finance. Now, $43 billion is a significant 
amount of money, but it is also a significant amount of jobs. That 
could be upwards toward a couple million jobs that this would be 
creating. That is even more than what the jobs and tax relief bill we 
passed in this House last week would create.
  So this is very important not only in ending our congestion, but in 
also getting this economy going again and getting people employed. And, 
again, as we are proposing it, the costs will be next to nothing to the 
Federal Government, because these projects can be funded, in many 
cases, by the fees that would be generated, the FAST fees that

[[Page 11978]]

would be generated on these FAST lanes, and then you would be able to 
bond them. And by doing that, you are not going to be using revenues 
from the Federal Government, from the State governments, or the local 
governments. You may need to have planning dollars to get it going and 
get it started, but this is something where the fees will be covering 
the costs in paying for it in a way that does not otherwise strap the 
resources of any of those bodies.
  It is because of the attractiveness of this that so many people back 
in my own State of Minnesota have supported this. It has really brought 
together those that are fighting over many other transportation issues, 
like gas tax, in Minnesota. It has brought together clearly the 
Minnesota Transportation Alliance, which is supportive of this. They 
are looking to have more transportation options, more investment in our 
transportation, more lanes, more roads, as well as opening up 
alternatives like bus rapid transit, as I spoke of. But it is also 
supported by our chamber in Minnesota. They know how important this is 
to our economy. They know how important it is to our competitiveness. 
They know how important this is to jobs, and so they are supporting it. 
It is being supported by the Taxpayers League in Minnesota because they 
understand that this is a true user choice; that people only pay when, 
in fact, they are getting a return that is worth it.
  I am very pleased that our own Governor, Tim Pawlenty, and his 
Lieutenant Governor, and Transportation Commissioner Carol Molnaw have 
also stepped forward and endorsed this. It has gotten great support on 
a bipartisan basis in Minnesota, just as it is a bipartisan bill here. 
And I think we need to build on that to make sure that we continue to 
build that support nationally, which I am expecting will happen.
  It is a big concern here, because we are admitting that we do not 
have all the answers here in Washington; that we want to embrace those 
local and State and private entities that can help us with this. 
Admitting that is sometimes difficult, but it is critically and 
fundamentally important.
  One other thing that we need to do, though, to make this whole 
equation work is that we need to look at how can we help finance these 
projects. Right now public entities with the ability to issue municipal 
type bonds that are tax-free have an advantage over private entities. 
Having private activity bonds and expanding the use of those is 
something that we need to encourage. So I will soon be introducing a 
bill that encourages that as well; that picks up on an idea that the 
prior Senator Chafee had to put forward private activity bonds which 
give these private entities, when they are doing the public work of 
expanding transportation corridors, the same tax benefit that would 
otherwise be available only to public entities. In many of these 
public-private partnerships that I talked about earlier, that is what 
is being used.
  We just came from a hearing where we heard the administration's 
proposals on SAFETEA, and I am very pleased to see that they included 
private activity bonds as part of their proposal. I applaud them on 
that and will look to maybe see if we cannot even expand it beyond what 
they have done.
  I also applaud them for continuing programs like the TIFIA program, 
the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, that 
helps provide financing components that make it easier for public-
private entities to step forward and be involved in this. I also 
applaud them for inching towards the type of loosening up of the 
outdated restrictions that are currently in law. And as I spoke with 
Secretary Mineta and Administrator Peters, I encouraged them and was 
pleased with their response that they were willing to work to take a 
couple of further steps along the path of what we are talking about 
here in FAST to move in that direction.

                              {time}  1700

  I would just conclude by saying that this is not new. Prior to 
President Eisenhower stepping forward with the bold new program to 
build an interstate highway system for national security purposes, the 
idea of using user fees was the predominant idea for how we funded and 
expanded our core transportation corridors. Since that time, we have 
gotten our interstate system largely built. I believe for many it was 
an expectation when that was started half a century ago that we would 
return to that after the interstate was built. I think we need to.
  This is an innovative approach, a new source of transportation 
resources to help bridge that gulf between what we need and what we 
have available to invest in our significant transportation needs. It 
does it in a way that empowers the States, empowers public-private 
partnerships, empowers local areas, yet assures the confidence of the 
consumers that they are going to get something that is a return for 
what they are giving in, that they can be assured that the resources 
they are devoting to transportation are in fact going to be addressing 
needs that they see, needs that they want to be addressed.
  I would just encourage all my fellow Members to consider joining with 
us in pushing for the passage of the FAST Act, Freeing Alternatives for 
Speedy Transportation. Let us end congestion. Let us encourage local 
control. Let us restore consumer confidence. Let us not have 
congestion. Let us not have more tolls, but let us let people get to 
where they want to get to fast, along fast lanes, and get this economy 
moving again fast.

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