While House Transportation Committee Chair James Oberstar talks about spending a lot of money, the Senate transportation chair, John D. Rockefeller IV, has a different agenda: he wants to reduce people’s driving. He thinks the next transportation reauthorization bill should include goals of reducing per-capita driving, reducing transportation-related greenhouse emissions by 40 percent, and reduce the amount of freight carried on highways by 20 percent. (His actual goal is to increase non-highway freight by 10 percent, but since slightly less than a third of freight goes by highway, that works out to a 20 percent reduction in highway shipping.)
The Antiplanner has a few problems with these goals. First, several states, including Oregon and Washington, have set goals of reducing per-capita driving, but none have succeeded. Per-capita driving has declined only when gas prices dramatically increased (a 40-cent-per-gallon increase in gas taxes wouldn’t be enough) or incomes dramatically fell due to a recession.
