Many Roads to a New Transportation Policy

Congress and the White House are about to begin discussion of the re-authorization of the nation’s transportation program.  Representative James Oberstar (D-MN) has promised a first version of a bill from his committee within a few weeks that will lay out how nearly half a trillion dollars will be invested in our roads and rail systems, after which a debate will begin that will likely stretch into next year.  As the nation takes on the question of what our highways, streets and transit systems should look like for the next decade, this re-authorization process is a chance to address challenges far broader than the ones that are the traditional focus of the debate.

 

As a nation, we have just begun to understand the connections between transportation and housing, for example, and the recent announcement of a collaboration between the federal departments of transportation and housing and urban development is a promising start.  Transportation’s contribution to global warming is well understood, if still barely addressed in our policy-making.  Housing and environmental advocates should be pressing the federal government to make sure that both of these issues will be part of the debate in the months to come.

 

There are others, however, who are not likely to be at the table and yet whose voices need to be heard. Consider just one example of the role of transportation could play in our nation’s $2 trillion health care program.  Primary, and especially preventive, care is an essential element in any health care reform effort the nation will undertake to reduce costs and improve outcomes, and yet our transportation system presents all kinds of barriers to access.  As we design the roads and transit programs of the future, advocates for health care reform should be pressing for the transportation system to be designed in such a way as to make it easier for poor families and seniors to get to primary care physicians and clinics instead of being forced to overcome the hurdles presented by networks built solely to get commuters to work and goods to market.  There are numerous other cases where these policy arenas can reinforce each other – from reducing asthma for those who live near roads to improving emergency access for those most in need.  It’s not hard to imagine how this integrative approach might occur – bringing health care advocates into the planning process, setting priorities for transportation funding that reflect the impact of potential projects on the health care system, using demonstration programs to test new approaches to the delivery of services – but it is certainly not yet part of the debate.

 

Education policy is another place where the transportation system we are building can help us achieve broader ends.  For example, advocates from right and left have argued that economic and demographic integration of children can be an important tool in improving the educational outcomes of the millions of students served by the country’s half trillion dollars of investment in K-12 schools.  Public school choice programs, whatever their merits, are heavily dependent for effectiveness on the transportation systems that are available to parents, especially in low income communities.  Yet we know education policy makers are rarely if ever part of the process when transit systems are planned and operated, and here too we can easily imagine how we can better link our rail and even road programs to the needs of our kids and their families.  Examples abound of where transportation systems can serve a greater good: the support of magnet schools as a tool for voluntary integration, better access for more teachers to low income, high need schools, or just plain safer transportation for children on buses each day.

 

We need other voices in the debate about transportation – those who care about employment opportunities for inner city residents unable to access suburban jobs, advocates for an increasingly aging population with special needs seeking to live out productive lives, those concerned about the future of the arts in central cities – and yet we have no mechanisms for involving them in the debate.  Now is an opportunity for Congress and the Administration to open up the discussion about this most essential of public responsibilities – and a chance for advocates for social change to make their voices heard.