Letter Calls to Fight the National "Anti-Highway Movement"

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign has received a document which originated in the Nebraska State Highway Commission which labels itself "A call to action to all State Transportation Commissioners or Board members" to combat "a national anti-highway movement designed to

forestall highway construction or divert traditional funding sources to other activities." The letter invites top state transportation officials to discuss the problem of the "anti-highway movement" at AASHTO's annual meeting on November 14 and 15. It concludes by declaring "A new level of

determination has been expressed by members of AASHTO's Boards and Commissioners who now desire to address these disturbing trends with affirmative action. With your consensus in November, we hope to draft resolutions guiding the reauthorization of ISTEA in 1997."

Attached to the letter is a "thesis" entitled "Diversion of Highway Funding," dated September 1, 1994. It begins: "Social and political agendas antithetical to highway expansion pose a clear and present danger to the economies, public safety, and convenience of much of the United States." It

argues that the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and ISTEA are both clear indications "of how effective and pervasive anti-highway forces have become." It goes on to describe growing sentiment within agencies and other interests to pro-actively fight the anti-highway movement and its ability

to influence federal legislation: "Pro-highway interests in affected states represented at the Chicago 1994 Mississippi Valley Conference of State and Highway Transportation Officials sounded the alarm and are now inviting constructive debate on the question: Is it in the public interest to erect

disincentives in Federal legislation to local, intrastate and interstate surface transportation?" The thesis calls transit "not cost effective" and insists that even in high-density areas, transit projects should not be funded out of "traditional highway funding sources." It singles out Major Investment

Analysis regulations, the Clean Water Act and debate over the National Transportation/Highway System as particularly dangerous obstacles to highway expansion.

The documents help confirm what transit and sustainable transportation advocates have believed for the last three years: that State DOTs are actively subverting the legal mandates of the federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, and that the Act is viewed as a dire threat to the

institutional character, practices and policy biases represented in these agencies. The Tri-State Transportation Campaign has drafted a letter to Governor Cuomo (and will produce similar for CT and NJ) insisting that NY representatives at the November AASHTO meeting vocally support the spirit

and goals of the Clean Air Act and ISTEA, and stating that the assumption of an independent policy-making role by unelected bureaucrats is alarming. The Campaign has also written to AASHTO for clarification of that organization's role in organizing activity by state appointed officials and civil

servants which appears to encourage resistance to federal legal mandates. Full text of the documents described here is available on eco-net's "transport" conference (if you don't have an eco-net account but are nonetheless interested in the text, call Jon Orcutt at 212-777-8181).