The U.S. Conference of Mayors Strengthen Metropolitan Economies through Sustainable Transportation Investments
April 6, 2009
Mayors urge President Obama and Congress to redeploy existing resources and commit new resources to accelerate improvements to the transportation infrastructure in cities and their metro areas through these actions in the next surface transportation authorization bill:
Investing in the Engines of America’s Growth
- Allocate federal surface transportation funds based on its economic output and empower mayors to determine investments in their cities and their metropolitan areas.
- Develop new policy to make increased commitments to transportation infrastructure in cities and their metropolitan areas through the creation of a Metropolitan Mobility Program.
- Planning and project selection authority in the Metropolitan Mobility Program would be vested in a transportation agency, authority, or central city designated by mayors and other local elected officials from the metropolitan area.
- Mayors should have the authority to make funding and project decisions of any expenditure of surface transportation resources within a metropolitan area, and with these resources calibrated within the state to the economic output of the metropolitan areas.
- The federal funding share of Metropolitan Mobility projects would be 80 percent of the project cost.
Confronting Energy and Climate Challenges
- Transportation investments need to reflect energy and climate priorities through increased investment in transit and other travel options to curb oil use in the transportation sector.
- Increase the level of resources for high'speed, intercity, and freight rail.
- Federal funding must move past programmatic silos and eliminate the biases embedded in current law that favor some transportation modes over others.
- Ensure that evaluation and matching requirements apply uniformly for transit and highway new capacity investments in metropolitan and non'metropolitan areas.
Building Livable Communities
- Provide incentives for crosscutting functional relationships and planning collaboration through promoting livable communities and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
Smart Transportation Investments
- With all the key transportation programs short of resources, this situation argues for consideration of creative, broader revenue and financing options that will to increase commitments to transportation infrastructure broadly, not just one mode at a time or in a piecemeal fashion.
- Asset management by preserving the core public transportation and highway system.
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