This week, Congress will begin reconsideration of six-year legislation that steers our nation’s surface transportation programs.
This past month, the bipartisan leadership of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee introduced our legislation to address this nation’s crippling transportation congestion and get our people and commerce flowing again.
When you live in Vermont, you must endure a long, hard winter. To keep spirits up, a Vermonter will look for signs of spring, sometimes in the most unlikely places. One leading indicator of brighter days ahead is a phenomenon known as the frost heave. As temperatures rise, highways begin to buckle, producing humps in the road that rattle your teeth and mangle your shocks. Highway workers post bright orange signs to warn drivers of upcoming frost heaves. To a Vermonter, these signs are like the first flowers in bloom.
President Bush’s fiscal 2006 budget plan recommends eliminating all federal funding for Amtrak, which in fiscal 2005 totaled approximately $1.2 billion. Implementation of this plan would likely have the effect of sending the Amtrak system into bankruptcy — where it could face liquidation.
It only takes a major winter storm to highlight the importance of transportation to the daily lives of Americans and how easily its disruption can have a negative effect on the economy.
In 1970, the amount of U.S. trade in goods totaled $83 billion. Today, that figure has grown to $2.29 trillion — nearly a 28-fold increase in 35 years. Over the same period, the U.S. population has grown by 40 percent and the number of registered vehicles has increased by 100 percent, yet our road capacity has increased by only 6 percent.
