New infrastructure, new options needed to keep US moving by Jim Oberstar Appearing in Duluth News Tribune on 2007-10-21. One hundred years ago, a traveler visiting the Twin Ports could take a train to Duluth. At the train station, he could hop on a trolley and head down to the waterfront where he could catch a ship to Chicago or any of the other Great Lakes ports. At that time, Duluth was a hub for all means of transportation, from sailing ships to passenger trains to the new high-tech automobile. As we consider what it will take to meet the transportation needs of America in the 21st century, we could learn a lesson by looking back to the beginning of the last century. As cars and trucks became more powerful, the older, slower and less convenient modes of transportation were replaced with the Interstate Highway System. But since the completion of the interstate in the mid-1990s, we have not significantly expanded the capacity of our nation’s transportation system. In 1960, there were 74 million cars and 2 million trucks on the nation’s highways; today there are more than235 million cars and trucks. Congestion in urban areas is slowing economies and making goods and services more expensive. The economic cost of congestion is $78 billion a year in wasted time and fuel. This, in effect, is a congestion tax we all are paying in the form of more expensive goods and services. The demands of our economy are so great that no single means of transportation can handle it alone. It’s time to restructure the way America moves people and products in our marketplace. First, we need to make our current infrastructure work better. Continued investment in, and expansion of, our Interstate Highway System will move more vehicles with new methods and technologies. Intelligent transportation management, redesign of outdated and functionally obsolete interchanges, and extra lanes for increased traffic can do a great deal to ease congestion. Unfortunately, this will not be enough. Expanding public transit by adding more buses, light rail, and commuter rail can take millions of cars off the road each year. In the Twin Cities alone, public transportation eliminates 5.3 million hours of traffic congestion each year and saves the state’s economy $96 million. Congestion in urban areas eventually impacts all of Minnesota. If goods from farms, forests, mines and mills take longer to move, costs go up, and jobs are lost. Buses and commuter rail can reduce our dependence on foreign oil. If, nationwide, we could shift just 10 percent of the trips we take by car each day to some form of public transportation, we would save the equivalent of all the oil we import from Saudi Arabia in a single year: 550 million barrels a year. We need more options for moving freight on our roads, rails and even by water. Right now it takes a cargo container arriving in Los Angeles40 hours to move 1,800 miles by train to Chicago. It then takes another 36 hours to move that same container the next 7 miles through the Chicago rail yards. We must address chokepoints like this across the freight rail system that have not been significantly upgraded in decades. An exciting new development for the movement of goods is short sea shipping. This year, the House of Representatives passed my legislation to fund low-interest loans to help shipping companies build an entire new class of cargo ships. These new, high-tech, energy-efficient vessels will be able to transport cargo that once went by rail on the nation’s three saltwater coasts and the fourth coast, the Great Lakes. The key is to have all of these new types of transportation fit together, seamlessly, in an integrated system that allows goods and services to flow to the cheapest, most efficient mode of transportation. Cargo containers may begin on a train then transfer to truck for final delivery in an urban area. Or they may be loaded to a new cargo vessel in Duluth that will take them to New York. Intermodalism will be the new policy for the future, providing businesses and individuals with more transportation options. In the future, as in the past, Duluth residents may board the train for other destinations. Pulling out of the station, they will pass a busy sea port where goods are being loaded on ships bound for destinations all over the world. The train will roll past a great freeway carrying goods and people all the way to Texas. They will be using a transportation system that reflects the greatness of America’s innovative spirit. U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar is a Democrat who represents Northeastern Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District and is House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman. He wrote this for the News Tribune.

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