The Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Transportation Policy Project (NTPP) is bringing new voices to the transportation debate and creating a dynamic and enduring framework for the next reauthorization bill and beyond. With billions of dollars on the line, our diverse group of members believes we need to rethink old assumptions and move beyond the status quo. The project is co-chaired by four distinguished public servants:

• Slade Gorton, former United States Senator of Washington
• Sherwood Boehlert, former US Congressman of New York               
• Martin Olav Sabo, former US Congressman of Minnesota
• Mark Warner, former Virginia Governor

The Project will focus attention on appropriate priorities for national infrastructure funding and develop politically viable policies for transportation that surmount partisan and regional conflicts. The NTPP’s new vision of transportation policy focuses on national economic, environmental, and energy security goals. More specifically, it will address:

• The links between transportation, energy security, and global warming.
• The changing nature of metropolitan mobility and inter–regional connectivity.
• The institutional and operational changes necessary to maximize the national economic, social, environmental, and security returns of investment in transportation.

In recent years a cohesive and compelling national transportation policy has become difficult to discern. Federal surface transportation policy no longer rests on a clear, compelling, and widely supported concept of national interest. However, transportation policy and investment are intimately related to national economic growth and competitiveness. An aging and deteriorating transportation infrastructure, growing congestion, declining operational efficiency, and serious bottlenecks threaten the connectivity and mobility that are essential to economic productivity, quality of life, and national security.

In addition, even though the transportation sector is nearly entirely dependent on oil, energy diversification and security with respect to transportation has gone largely unaddressed. Important issues, such as the overall efficiency, optimization and sustainability of the transportation system, the use of alternative fuels, and fuel economy standards have gained little attention in recent transportation funding and policy decisions.

Through a combination of idea exchange, issue identification, leadership and research, the NTPP will produce a set of policy recommendations to be part of current and future transportation policy debates, in time for the Congressional surface transportation bill reauthorization in 2009.