Skip to main content

Obama Administration urged to focus on real solutions to infrastructure funding

US trucking industry leaders have called on the Obama administration to focus on the real challenges and real solutions to the nation's infrastructure funding woes.
April 29, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
US trucking industry leaders have called on the Obama administration to focus on the real challenges and real solutions to the nation's infrastructure funding woes.

"We expect that in the coming days Secretary Foxx and the Obama administration will present their transportation reauthorisation plan to Congress," said 4626 American Trucking Association (ATA) president and CEO Bill Graves. "While this proposal will be lauded as a great step forward for transportation, that will only be true if the administration offers long-term solutions to our highway and bridge infrastructure shortcomings – and not yet another in a series of quick fixes."

ATA has repeatedly and consistently, called on Congress and the administration to keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent by using user fees to ensure consistent, long-term federal funding.

The ATA is concerned that if reports are correct that the administration's plan will centre on proceeds from the unlikely passage of corporate tax reform and increased use of inefficient tolling and private finance options. Graves said. "A strong, well-funded federal highway program is critical to our nation's economic success and another round of band-aids and hollow promises won't get it done."

ATA also hopes the administration's plan will focus what resources it does have on the right projects for the supply chain and the nation.

"It is critical that the administration's funding blueprint puts resources where they can do the most good," said ATA chairman Phil Byrd. "The administration should carve out a program to fund the needs of freight transportation that focuses on the mode that moves the most goods: trucks. This administration needs to make much needed investments in repairing our existing roads and bridges and looking for ways to add capacity to meet our growing needs."

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • US government announces eighth round of TIGER funding
    February 24, 2016
    US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has announced that US$500 million will be made available for transportation projects across the country under an eighth round of the highly successful Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) competitive grant program. The 2016 TIGER discretionary grants will fund capital investments in surface transportation infrastructure and will be awarded on a competitive basis for projects that will have a significant impact on the nation, a metropoli
  • Stop thinking and act on cooperative infrastructures
    February 2, 2012
    OmniAir's Tim McGuckin looks at why metropolitan transportation networks might be the key to securing the long-term funding of cooperative infrastructure
  • Governments must look beyond short-term spending of public funds
    February 2, 2012
    Phil Pettitt, Chief Executive of innovITS, the UK's ITS Centre of Excellence, argues that governments need to look beyond the short-term when looking to pump-prime economic recovery with public funds. It seems, in the current economic climate, that a 'good' day is one in which no company is announcing job cuts or going into administration. Consumer demand is down and businesses are retrenching, cutting costs and fretting over the consequences of shrinking opportunities and order books. It has not been this
  • IBTTA joins group in support of DRIVE Act tolling provisions
    June 26, 2015
    The International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (IBTTA) has applauded the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee’s introduction of its surface transportation reauthorisation legislation titled the Developing a Reliable and Innovative Vision for the Economy (DRIVE) Act. It has joined twelve other organisations, including the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, American Road & Transportation Builders Association, ITS America and the US Tolling Coalitio