U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx holds town hall event at UI, discusses future of transportation in America
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx visited the University of Idaho Wednesday to speak with students and faculty of the National Institute for Advanced Transportation Technology (NIATT) about the future of transportation and the need for President Obama’s GROW AMERICA Act to improve national transportation.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx sits in the hybrid race car built by the Vandal Hybrid Racing Team, which took eighth place in a recent competition among 40 student groups in New Hampshire.
Foxx said the UI community is a prime example of why transportation matters.
“In 2010 … Moscow received a $1.5 million TIGER grant to help complete the Transit Center and locate it right here on campus,” he said. “So, in many ways, this campus is a center-point for us as we explore how 21st century transportation can be developed, can be implemented and deployed across the country.”
Despite the importance of transportation to a community like Moscow, Foxx said there are disruptive forces working against transportation within the system — one of which is vehicle efficiency.
“We’re at a point now where the efficiency of the system is to such an extent that our revenue curve is actually down when it comes to how the fuel tax is performing, and to the extent on an annual basis, we’re about $15 billion short in our Highway Trust Fund,” Foxx said.
Foxx said Congress has worked to patch the system together and grow it, but the country can’t continue to patch its way into the future.
The second disruptive force he mentioned is technology. Foxx said there is much yet to be discovered about technology’s impact on transportation.
“There’s going to be more automation in either the cockpit or the driver’s seat in the future, and that has a lot consequences – some good, some we have to make good,” he said.
Foxx said the disruptions don’t have to be bad, but people have to think about how these issues will affect the nation and policy choices in the future.
Foxx said the $302 billion, four-year GROW AMERICA Act would fulfill the department’s vision to address the disruptions in a meaningful way and solve current transportation problems.
“It would take us from being $15 billion short on an annual basis in the Highway Trust Fund to a trust fund that actually grows,” Foxx said. “Twenty-two percent more for highways, 70 percent more for transit, bringing the passenger rail into the surface transportation system so we can improve those vital connections between points in the U.S.”
According to the DOT website, the act would focus on repairing and modernizing America’s roads, bridges, railways and aging transit systems, and it would ensure effective competition in the global economy.
When it comes to students and their future in transportation, Foxx said investments into programs like NIATT are vital. He said the impact of such investments could be seen by virtue of what happens in the industry, such as the creation of a new product known as warm-mix asphalt, which he said is being deployed across the country and will save the nation $3 billion over the next five years because it requires less heat as traditional hot-mix asphalt.
Foxx said new and creative minds in transportation are essential to the country.
“(A) new generation of folks does need to come along,” he said. “I think that’s been said by Dr. (Jack) McIver and (Mayor Bill Lambert), we need to have a new generation of thinkers, a new generation of creative minds that are focused on how 21st century transportation is done.”
Many UI Civil Engineering students attended the event and were allowed to ask Foxx questions.
Junior Christie Wendle expressed gratitude for Foxx’s visit.
“I think for me, I’m kind of scared of what the future looks like, and I think he gave us a lot of encouragement and I feel better now about the future that lays ahead,” Wendle said.
Graduate student Bradford Tower said he was pleased Foxx took the time to speak with UI students and faculty, even if some questions were left unanswered.
“I wish a few other questions would have been answered, primarily being we have a lot of great ideas for the future,” Tower said. “But my biggest question was, how are we going to get partisan Congress to agree on something and actually pass some of these great ideas into law?”
Foxx also reminded students they are the future of the U.S., and it’s up to the young people what the future will entail.
“Literally, had it not been for this country, the world wouldn’t move,” Foxx said. And the world has looked at the system we designed over generations with envy, and it’s up to us not to be outdistanced.”
Andrew Jenson can be reached at [email protected]