America reportedly loses $200 billion a year due to freight bottlenecks and delayed deliveries, while about 2.3 billion gallons of fuel is wasted annually by traffic jams. Now a new national initiative aims to ease transportation congestion — on highways, at seaports and in the air.

America’s aging transportation infrastructure can’t keep up with the pace of global commerce, according to John Bowe, president of the Americas for global transportation provider APL and its sister company APL Logistics, last month. If it isn’t overhauled, he warns, consumers and the U.S. economy will pay a steep price.

“If we don’t fix this,” Bowe continues, “supply chains will bog down, consumer prices will go up and the economy will suffer.”

A national initiative announced last month by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta focuses more what’s on the road rather than the road itself, calling congestion among the single largest threats to the economy.

Last month, Mineta announced a national initiative to ease congestion in freight, on the highways and aviation, saying, “Congestion kills time, wastes fuel and costs money.”

Referring to statistics that say America loses $200 billion a year due to freight bottlenecks and delayed deliveries — whether in the form of trucks stalled in traffic, cargo stuck at seaports or airplanes circling over crowded airports — while about 2.3 billion gallons of fuel is wasted annually by traffic jams, the Secretary has offered a 16-page plan, the National Strategy to Reduce Congestion on America’s Transportation Network .

Beyond lost time and fuel, transportation congestion imposes significant additional costs on U.S. businesses, the new Bush administration plan says. “As transportation congestion mounts, the economic benefits generated by trucking, rail and aviation deregulation are increasingly threatened.”

This year alone, the U.S. transportation industry is expected to account for about $1.4 trillion, according to Plunkett Research, Ltd.’s numbers. It accounts for a bit more than 10 percent of America’s economic activity.

The 16-page writ provides a number of trends, one of which consists of the challenges to the supply chain revolution. While the deregulation of the trucking, rail and aviation industries has produced enormous supply chain efficiencies and has led to a reduction in total logistics costs for businesses, according to the report and plan, “growing congestion and unreliability threatens supply chain productivity and ultimately the ability of sellers to deliver products to market.”

According to a Fleet Owner article, the plan “makes only modest recommendations to increase roadway capacity, favoring instead to introduce new tolling schemes that discourage driving during peak hours.”

Yet some business leaders say they’re eager to get started with any plan that could inevitably help to reduce congestion and increase revenues.

“The faster our products can get to our customers, the better,” Ken Bissell, senior communications manager for Dell Tennessee Operations, told the newspaper The Tennessean.

Mineta, who declared congestion a national problem five years ago, has provided a number of propositions in his plan, though, some of which having already begun to stir up controversy.

The most contentious idea offered is “the plan to sale [sic.] or lease to private entities public roads, bridges and other parts of the nation’s infrastructure,” reports Logistics Today.

Some Democratic lawmakers have already criticized the Bush plan’s reliance on privatizing roads and charging tolls to use them, The Associated Press has noted.

Under this plan, the DOT will be willing to offer aid and encouragement to communities willing to join in Urban Partnership Agreements to demonstrate new congestion relief strategies. Other components of Mineta’s plan include: seeking wider deployment of operational technologies and practices to end traffic snarls; identifying up to five major traffic corridors in the nation that need long-term investment, i.e., designating new interstate “Corridors of the Future”; creating a joint border-transportation task force with the Department of Homeland Security; and reducing delays in aviation by eventually redesigning the region’s airspace.

The bottom line is that every person and every business in America has a vested interest in reducing congestion,” said Mineta, who toured the Dell Inc. distribution center in Nashville last month. “We need to coordinate better than in the past and increase the number of existing programs or new technologies in order to do things smarter.”

Saying he understands that some aspects of the plan would generate controversy, Mineta called those who would oppose it, “wedded to the status quo.”

Sources

America’s transportation infrastructure is broken and needs to be fixed now
Logistics Today, May 22, 2006

>National Strategy to Reduce Congestion on America’s Transportation Network
Secretary of Transportation
U.S. Dept. of Transportation, May 2006

Transportation Trends
Plunkett Research Ltd.

Mineta pushes for anti-congestion campaign at NASDAQ
by Terrence Nguyen
FleetOwner, May 23, 2006

Business role urged in congestion fight
by Rachel Stults
The Tennessean, May 18, 2006

The Fed Finally is Facing Up to Congestion
by editorial staff
Logistics Today, May 31, 2006

Transportation secretary touts congestion plan at Dell plant
by Rose French
The Associated Press, May 17, 2006

Additional

National Initiative Aims to Ease Transporation Congestion
by Jed Boal
KSL.com, May 19th, 2006

Transportation chief has plan to unclog traffic
by Adam Sichko
The Columbus Dispatch, May 18, 2006