Beginning Again: A Metropolitan Transportation Vision for the 21st Century

In this testimony before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Puentes provides an overview of critical metropolitan transportation challenges. In so doing, he makes the case that our metropolitan transportation challenges are really our national transportation challenges since perhaps more than any other area of domestic policy, transportation is highly spatially concentrated and not distributed evenly across the American landscape.

Therefore, in addition to the federal government providing bold leadership and articulating a comprehensive national vision for the movement of people and goods, Puentes calls on the federal government to empower major metropolitan areas by giving them direct transportation funding and the flexibility to make unbiased decisions between different modes of transportation. The federal government can then maximize performance by committing itself (and the recipients of federal funds) to an evidence-based, outcome driven and performance measured way of doing business.

This hearing was the first in a series exploring themes in transportation policy and practice, the needs of our national surface transportation system, and the next authorization of our surface transportation laws.