Streetsblog San Francisco

Former Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, who served for eight years in George W. Bush's DOT, sat down with Streetsblog Capitol Hill this week to urge that Congress add a dedicated funding stream of $1 billion each year for transportation technology to the next long-term infrastructure bill.

Since leaving office, Peters has transitioned to private consulting work in her home state of Arizona and joined the board of directors at Aldis, a Tennessee-based traffic management company.

Alids' GridSmart program, a panoramic camera that captures vehicles and pedestrians at intersections and helps "smartly" synchronize traffic signals accordingly (see the above video), would stand to gain if Congress heeds Peters' advice and directly funds transportation technology.

Peters acknowledged that her proposal for the next infrastructure bill would help Aldis, but she described the billion-dollar dedicated funding as an opportunity for states and cities to choose their own high-tech solutions for traffic management. "This is a great application," Peters said of the GridSmart, "but there are others out there."

The House's original version of the 2005 transportation bill, which was recently extended for another month amid political wrangling, included $3 billion over five years for technological upgrades, also known as "intelligent transportation." But that money was removed from the legislation during conference talks with the Senate, Peters noted, leaving states without federal help with modernizing their congestion management.

The annual $1 billion fund Peters is backing would be distributed to states by formula, but state DOTs would have to report back to Washington on how effectively their technological investments were meeting specific performance targets. (For more on Peters' support of a federal role in setting transportation standards, see Part I of the Streetsblog interview.)

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Since Washington’s economic recovery debate first began last fall,
advocates for greater infrastructure investment have invoked one phrase
more often than almost any other: "Every $1 billion spent on
transportation creates 47,500 jobs."

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) used that figure in December,
attributing it to the American Association of State Highway and
Transportation Officials (AASHTO). Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) was a little
less specific in March 2008, shortening the claim to "over 40,000 jobs created."

But by the time Democrats were using AASHTO’s estimate, the group had already lowered
its number to 35,000 jobs created, attributing the claim to "analysts."
And it turns out that members of Congress have been using the "over
40,000" range since at least 1997, before years of inflation limited the value of that hypothetical billion dollars.

Former
Transportation Secretary Mary Peters told Streetsblog Capitol Hill
yesterday that she was amazed the outdated "47,500 jobs" number  had
remained an article of faith at the U.S. DOT. In fact, Peters’ chief
economist tried to use the number last year to bolster a bizarre argument against spending stimulus money on infrastructure — before getting taken down by my colleague Ryan Avent.

As
Ryan observed at the time, casting transportation spending as a matter
of economic productivity rather than job creation was a stunningly
out-of-touch move by the Bush administration, and one that ignored the
likelihood of imminent double-digit unemployment.

But
focusing on that aging AASHTO estimate of job creation (also credited
to the Federal Highway Administration) overlooks the fact that a more
updated study of that billion-dollar hypothetical was recently
completed … for transit.

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