Sufficiently funded port infrastructure is vital to the national economy and way of life, according to the chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
"In the maritime business, you can't afford to think small; you need to think bigger," U.S. Rep James L. Oberstar, D-Minn., said in his address at the 64th annual "Washington People" luncheon on March 23, at the American Association of Port Authorities' Spring Conference.
In fact, Rep. Oberstar said, the present multibillion-dollar expansion of the Panama Canal would not be necessary today if U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt had agreed to initial engineering plans for bigger locks. The current canal expansion, slated for 2014 completion, is now being undertaken by the Panamanian government, Rep. Oberstar said, "because we didn't think big enough 100 years ago."
Bringing big thinking into present priorities, Rep. Oberstar noted that "the current trend toward building bigger and bigger freight container vessels has ports across the country racing to accommodate these massive vessels and attract the intermodal logistics and goods movement jobs they will bring."
Rep. Oberstar, who has continued to lead his committee's efforts toward advancement of a six-year, $450 billion successor to the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users of 2005, told the audience of hundreds of Western Hemisphere port officials and Washington policymakers that appropriate funding for ports and related infrastructure is imperative as well. (The week prior to Rep. Oberstar addressing the AAPA luncheon, President Barack Obama signed into law on March 18 a jobs bill, H.R. 2847, that included extending SAFETEA-LU through Dec. 31.)
"Ports play a critical role in the national transportation system, providing the access and connectivity to the global marketplace which enables American economic competitiveness and prosperity," he said.
"For way too long, our focus has been on the land and our attention diverted from the water... ignoring the ocean as our frontier," Rep. Oberstar said. "It is time for a new understanding of our relationship with the ocean."
The longtime Minnesota congressman's comment seems to mesh with the current mindset of U.S. Department of Transportation leadership. In testimony one day later, on March 24, before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, DOT Deputy Secretary John Porcari testified that the federal "goods movement hierarchy" favors a policy wherein "we want to keep goods movement on water as long as possible, and then on rail as long as possible and truck it for the last miles."
Rep. Oberstar told AAPA luncheon attendees that, while congestion and underinvestment in the surface transportation network has undermined U.S. business competitiveness, it not only is vital that highway and bridge infrastructure be funded but also that measures be taken to ensure funding for maritime infrastructure, including that short-sea shipping be expanded and that this year's Water Resources Development Act advance.
In a March 23 morning session at the AAPA Spring Conference, Larry L. "Butch" Brown Sr., president of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, used the coined word "transeconomy" to indicate the inextricable relationship between sound transportation and a sound economy.
"We believe 'transeconomy' - transportation and economy - revolves around how you move freight and how you move people," said Mr. Brown, who is executive director of the Mississippi Department of Transportation. "If you don't have a good transportation system, you don't have a good economy."
