Transcript of testimony by Congressman Geoff Davis before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Highways and Transit about the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization (also known as the Highway bill) on April 28, 2009.
Thank you, Chairman DeFazio and Ranking Member Duncan, for the opportunity to testify today. Congressman Driehaus and I are here to discuss the need for a funding mechanism for mega projects of national significance. The Brent Spence Bridge is the interstate highway bridge that crosses the Ohio River between our two districts. It is a nationally significant infrastructure corridor that is critical to America’s economy.
Congress has repeatedly discussed the need to make serious investments in our national infrastructure. The 2009 Highway Bill presents one of the most significant opportunities to fulfill that need.
Through this legislative process, Congress must find a new way to manage mega projects of national significance. As you know funding for these projects is a matter of great concern to Chairman Oberstar and Ranking Member Mica, and I commend them for their vision of developing a rational process whereby projects of national significance will be objectively identified and funded based upon merit.
Despite attempts, Congress has not established a sufficient mechanism for funding mega-projects whose benefits are national, but whose costs are so high they cannot be funded by one or two States. The Brent Spence Bridge project will ultimately cost between $2 and $3 billion to complete. When compared to the more than $417 billion annually that the bridge carries for our economy, the cost is simply justified (SOURCE: Federal Highway Administration). However, Ohio and Kentucky would both have to dedicate their entire highway transportation infrastructure budgets to the exclusion of everything else for more than one year to complete the Brent Spence Bridge project.
Major transportation bottlenecks cause thousands of hours of delay and have a negative impact on individual travelers, commuters, families, truckers, shippers and receivers particularly when the routes they travel are hostage to underfunded infrastructure nodes of national significance.
The Woodrow Wilson Bridge between Maryland and Virginia, just southeast of downtown Washington, D.C., is travelled daily by some in the room today. In 1993, 200,000 vehicles crossed that bridge every day. The Woodrow Wilson Bridge carries Interstates 95 and 495 across the Potomac River. The bridge supports a transportation corridor of national significance connecting the southeastern and northeastern United States. At the time, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimated that the value of the freight trucked across this bridge was equivalent to 1.3 percent of the entire gross domestic product of the United States.
By the mid-1990s the bridge was carrying 250% of the traffic volume for which it was designed. The bridge only had three lanes with five highway lanes worth of traffic trying to squeeze through. The bridge had become a bottleneck with national significance, causing tens of thousands of hours of delay to American travelers and commerce.
Neither Maryland nor Virginia could assume the $2.5 billion cost of this project which was several times the annual Statewide infrastructure budgets for both States. Additionally, there was no federal program to fund projects of national significance. If Congress had not authorized special funding for the Woodrow Wilson Bridge - funding that paid for the majority of the cost of the project - the Woodrow Wilson Bridge may have come close to closure with economic impacts felt far beyond the D.C. metro area.
Congress helped resolve the funding issue and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge project was completed. However, resolution was cobbled together through exception and not cohesive or strategic decision-making and prioritization. The 2009 Highway Bill must include a mechanism for dealing with major infrastructure projects with a national economic impact.
The Brent Spence Bridge connects Kentucky to southwestern Ohio, between my district and Congressman Driehaus’ district in Cincinnati. This is a project I have been working on for nearly five years.
However, the bridge also connects Canada to Florida via I-75 as well as Ohio to the western United States via I-71. It also feeds traffic and freight into Chicago via I-74 and all the way to Alabama via I-65. The Brent Spence Bridge affects commerce in over sixty congressional districts in Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.
The bridge was designed to carry 80,000 vehicles per day. The bridge will soon have to accommodate nearly 200,000 vehicles per day. Indeed, the Brent Spence Bridge is functionally obsolete.
The bridge carries $417 billion in freight annually across the Ohio River for the American economy (SOURCE: Federal Highway Administration). That is roughly equivalent to 3% of the U.S. gross domestic product in 2008. By 2030, the amount of freight is expected to increase to $830 billion, annually. In other words, the Brent Spence Bridge is essential infrastructure to the American economy.
In the next surface transportation authorization bill, we have an opportunity to ensure that the I-71, I-74, and I-75 corridors continue their role in our national transportation system by building a new bridge at their crucial intersection. The achievement of this goal would support or create 83,000 permanent jobs and save businesses and motorists $784 million annually (SOURCE: Ohio Kentucky Indiana Regional Council of Governments).
The Brent Spence Bridge is one example of a transportation mega project that is critical infrastructure to the American economy.
I urge all my colleagues to ensure the 2009 highway bill includes a program for dealing with nationally significant projects.
Thank you for your time and consideration today.
