Obama sees transportation as catalyst for recovery

WASHINGTON – When President-elect Barack Obama says he wants to get the economy moving again, he means it quite literally.

Transportation will play a central role in Obama’s first months in office, not just for policy changes aimed at improving highway, air and rail travel, but as a road toward economic recovery, energy independence and environmental protection.

Solve road congestion, Obama’s reasoning goes, and you put people to work. Use less gasoline and help clean the air. Build better trains and move goods more efficiently. Get people out of their cars and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“We will create millions of jobs,” he said recently, “by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s.”

This expansive approach contrasts with the Bush administration’s policy that transportation – like other government functions – works best when it is in private hands, or at least in a public-private partnership.

“Now is the time to invest in our future and strengthen our core infrastructure,” Obama said in an October letter to a coalition of groups interested in transportation and environmental issues. “With unemployment rising, these investments are even more important.”

Obama’s transition team is working with congressional Democrats on an economic aid bill that could total as much as $500 billion. While details have not been finalized, the bill is expected to include tens of billions of dollars for highway, mass transit, airport, and intercity passenger and freight rail improvements.

But Obama’s transportation goals face potential roadblocks.

The federal program that provides aid to states for highway construction and transit expenses expires on Sept. 30. The current program was funded at $286 billion over five years. Its cost is mainly underwritten by the federal 18.4 cents-per-gallon gas tax, but revenues have failed to keep up with obligations.

And boosting the gas tax carries political risks. The last time it was raised, a backlash against Democrats in the 1994 elections helped Republicans capture control of the House and Senate.

Even without an increase, Obama will have to deal with environmentalists who want to undo a bargain struck during the Reagan administration that funnels roughly 80 percent of gas tax revenue to highway projects and 15 percent to transit. They want to redirect money away from highways to alternatives such as transit and intercity passenger trains.