At a National Press Club event last year, a panel moderator
decided to quiz Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood on his
department’s policy. “Some in the highway-supporters motorist
groups have been concerned by your livability initiative,” he
said. “Is this an effort to make driving more torturous and to
coerce people out of their cars?”
“It is a way to coerce people out of their cars,” answered
LaHood, with a blunt frankness rare for a politician.
These days, the Department of Transportation is sticking
its nose into everyone’s lives. DOT has teamed up with the
Environmental Protection Agency and Housing and Urban Development
to create the Partnership for Sustainable Communities. Their
actual purpose is somewhat foggy and loaded with Orwellian
language — something about creating more “livable” and “healthy”
environments. As transportation goes, that means creating more
“choices” for commuters: the choice to leave your car at home and
take the train, for example. Or ride your bike. Or walk.
It’s an alarming fact that’s eluded even many conservative
commentators: The core of the president’s progressive agenda is
to fundamentally change in the way we move from one point to
another.
American transportation is dominated by the car. According
to a USA Today study, 91% of Americans drive to work.
Another study by Experian Automotive found that an American
household has an average of 2.28 cars in the garage. That’s a
dire crisis for a president who thinks the entire economy should
“go green.” With cap-and-trade having gone rigor mortis in
Congress, the Obama Administration needed easier ways to create
serious environmental change.
Enter the Department of Transportation. Prior to the Obama
presidency, the DOT was of relatively small importance, spending
its time enforcing obscure railroad regulations and trying to get
people to buckle up. The department gained some attention during
the Bush Administration after airline screeners were nationalized
under its authority, but it still took a backseat to most other
cabinet-level federal agencies.
But with the Obama agenda in full swing, the DOT has come
front and center. Joe Biden even called Secretary LaHood “the
star of the Cabinet.” Much of this attention is thanks to
LaHood’s fiery crusades against Toyota, but that’s not the whole
picture. Obama wants a major shift in transportation policy and
LaHood is overseeing it.
As LaHood wrote not long ago, “Today, I want to announce a
sea change. People across America who value bicycling should have
a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end
of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of
non-motorized.”
Perhaps LaHood’s most important responsibility so far has
been the awarding of $1.5 billion in Transportation Investment
Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants. Recipients were
supposed to be transportation projects that “will have a
significant impact on the Nation, a metropolitan area or a
region.” But many of LaHood’s choices seemed like sepia-toned
throwbacks to the Industrial Era. One was a $23 million grant for
a bike path through Philadelphia and southern New Jersey. Many
more went to rail projects. Others were aimed at green bugaboos
and had little to do with transportation at all. One $22.3
million grant went to a business park in Rhode Island that’s home
to several wind power companies.
Fourteen of the TIGER grants were spent on projects that
were “multimodal” — a new buzz word in the Obama age referring
to multiple modes of transportation. In Obama’s America, seen
through a dreamy progressive lens, just as many people travel on
trains and bicycles as in cars. At least LaHood, who bikes on the
weekends, is leading by example.
Another product of the DOT-EPA collaboration was the recent
clampdown in mileage standards. Under the new rules, car
companies must have a fleet average of 35.5 miles a gallon by
2016 — up from an average 27.5 miles per gallon today. It’s a
massive increase with a short amount of time for car companies to
comply. Automakers’ only real solution is to put popular truck
and SUV models — like the 14 mpg Ford F-150 — on the chopping
block and invest more in hybrid cars.
Previously, these regulations have been run through
Congress. But after a Supreme Court ruling gave the executive
branch unilateral authority to enforce the Clean Air Act, the EPA
and DOT can pretty much do whatever they want.
One of LaHood’s allies in Congress, Rep. James Oberstar,
has introduced a bill that would essentially federalize the
nation’s entire transportation network. Called the Surface
Transportation Authorization Act of 2009, the legislation frets
that states have “great discretion to shift [federal
transportation] funds between programs” and bemoans the “lack of
clear Federal priorities and system-wide objectives” for
transportation. In other words, grey-suited managers in
Washington don’t have enough power to dictate transportation
projects.
To solve this problem, the bill has the federal government
gobbling up transportation power from the states and forcing them
to meet certain benchmarks. States are essentially coerced to
make sure their transportation networks are environmentally
friendly and include plenty of rail lines and buses. How bad is
it? The bill actually requires the DOT to create an U.S. Bicycle
Route System similar to our interstate highways. Yes, the
progressive Oberstar actually imagines a day when so many people
will travel by bicycle that we’ll need transcontinental bike
paths. I believe there’s a word for that: “China”.
The Heritage Foundation’s Ronald Utt concludes that the
STAA would “shift substantial numbers of passengers from cars to
public transit and nonmotorized forms of transportation.” The
entire bill would cost an estimated $500 billion over six years,
which would require a 112% increase in the federal gas
tax.
Of that $500 billion, $50 billion is allotted for the
development of America’s very own high-speed rail network.
Currently the Acela line in the northeast is the only HSR in the
whole country, and for good reason. As Utt points out, high-speed
rail is one of the most expensive and least effective methods of
transportation ever devised. The DOT’s own inspector general has
estimated that reducing travel time between New York City and
Boston via Acela by 30 minutes cost the government $14 billion,
while reducing car usage by less than one percent.
This is the vision of the Obama Administration: shifting
from the all-American car to glorified 19th-century technology.
One Republican congressman informed of LaHood’s cycling
priorities recently wondered if the DOT head was on drugs. It
almost seems too absurd to digest.
Then again, when your whole worldview is shaped by the
eschatology of a world hurtling towards an environmental
apocalypse, suddenly reversion and coercion make sense.
