Over at Streetsblog, Elana Schor discusses some principles Jay Rockefeller and Frank Lautenberg have set out for new transportation legislation:

  • Reduce national per-capita motor vehicle miles traveled on an annual basis;
  • Cut national motor vehicle-related fatalities in half by 2030;
  • Cut national surface transportation-generated carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030;
  • Reduce surface transportation delays per capita on an annual basis;
  • Get 20 percent more critical surface-transportation assets into a state of good repair by 2030;
  • Increase the total usage of public transit, intercity passenger rail and non-motorized transport on an annual basis.

It’s hard to articulate just how different our transportation policy would be if we took seriously the goal of reducing per capita VMT. And it is a worthy goal. American life should not involve a constrant increase in the amount of time one is forced to be behind the wheel of a car.

Of course, taking that goal seriously implies some pretty big changes. It’s almost impossible to square construction of a lot of new lane miles with an effort to reduce miles driven. More lanes means more driving, and eventually more congestion. And even with a great deal of new investment in transit, it will be difficult to achieve the above goals without some price rationing of demand, either from increases in the market price of oil, or from new taxes and tolls. I’d obviously love to see progress on the latter, since that money could then be used to invest in transportation infrastructure.

Anyway, it’s been nice to see the discussion of a move toward transit equity in funding, but we really ought to spend at least 95% of the money for highways on repair and maintenance, and not on new capacity.