The Surface Transportation Policy Project announced last week that Anne P. Canby, a nationally recognized leader in the field of transportation, will become the President of the organization. From 1993 - 2000, Ms. Canby was the Secretary of the Delaware Department of Transportation (DOT). At the Delaware DOT she presided over dramatic changes, transforming a traditional highway agency into a multimodal mobility provider, boosting public transportation services in the state, and promoting an open, collaborative decision-making process with many new transportation constituencies.

During her career, Ms. Canby has been a Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U. S. Department of Transportation, Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Transportation, and Treasurer of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. Prior to serving as Delaware DOT Secretary, Ms. Canby lead a consulting practice focusing on institutional and management issues with particular emphasis on implementation of ISTEA, the federal transportation reform law passed by Congress in 1991.

Ms. Canby has also served on the boards of numerous transportation organizations, including the Transportation Research Board, AASHTO, and the Northeastern Association of State Transportation Officials (NASTO). She is a member of the Urban Land Institute and the Institute of Transportation Engineers. She has been recognized for her leadership by the American Public Transportation Association, the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations, and the Delaware Chapter of the American Planning Association. She will assume her new position with STPP on April 1.

The STPP coalition released its TEA-21 renewal plan March 10 on Capitol Hill, one of several activities where STPP coalition field partners and others joined together to promote further transportation reforms as Congress prepares to draft legislation reauthorizing the nation’s surface transportation law.

Anne Canby, STPP’s new President, led several Capitol Hill events where Congressional leaders were provided information on the coalition’s renewal plan - “Stay the Course: How to Make TEA-21 Even Better.” To view a copy of the STPP’s “Stay the Course” report, visit http://www.transact.org

During remarks at a morning press conference, Canby described the document as a “path to progress”, explaining that “much more is at stake than just the condition of highways, urban transit and other elements of our transportation systems.” She said that, “this legislation will influence whether our air is cleaner, our communities become more livable, our health is better protected, our anti-discrimination laws more aggressively enforced, and in the wake of 9/11, it will help determine whether our homeland is more secure.”

Canby discussed the opportunity before Congress with TEA-21 renewal. “Clearly a modern, multi-faceted, wide-reaching, environmentally sound and accessible system is within our grasp this year - it is what transportation experts want; it is what the economy needs; and, it is what American families deserve. Now, it’s time for Congress to make it happen,” she said. For a copy of Canby’s full statement, visit http://www.transact.org/news.asp?id=19

STPP Steering Committee Chair Jacky Grimshaw, who joined Canby at the event, praised the many months of work by coalition partners, the public who took part in STPP’s outreach efforts and the more than 600 organizations and others who endorsed the New Transportation Charter. “We have brought new partners to the transportation debate and these are voices that need to be heard,” she said.

Also joining Canby and Grimshaw at the press event were: Charlotte Mayor Patrick McCrory, Marin County Supervisor and MTC Chair Steve Kinsey, Greater Dayton RTA General Manager Minnie Fells Johnson, Reverend Andre Schumake, Director of the Richmond, CA Improvement Association, Peter Neukirck, Former President of the Southeast Business Partnership, Diane Conova, Vice President of Advocacy of the American Heart Association, and Kaid Benfield, Senior Attorney and Director of the Transportation Program with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

In addition to the press conference, Canby and Grimshaw led STPP’s partners and others during briefings before the Senate and House and at other grassroots summit events.

This week, House and Senate budget panels began developing their spending plans for the next fiscal year, FY’04, including decisions concerning future spending that will strongly influence funding levels contained in legislation this year renewing TEA-21. Transportation leaders in both the House and Senate have been pressing Budget Committee members to provide room for increased spending above the current baseline of $31.6 billion for highways and $7.223 billion for transit programs. The budget panels, as well as the Bush Administration, oppose the higher spending levels that key transportation leaders are seeking. Next week, the full House and Senate are expected to consider their respective versions of their ’04 budget resolutions.

More than 50 advocates from 22 key states participated in STPP's Grassroots Summit March 9-11 in Washington DC, representing the 650 member groups of the Alliance for a New Transportation Charter.

STPP also partnered with the Center for Community Change (CCC) to give a workshop on transportation equity, and with the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), which hosted a meeting of National Association of Public Transportation Advocates (NAPTA).

Participants met with the key members of Congress who will be responsible for the reauthorization of TEA-21, and report that the policy platform was well received. They also helped launch the platform at a news conference, briefed Congressional staff with the Senate Banking and House Transportation & Infrastructure Committees, and helped to welcome STPP's new President, Anne Canby.

The grassroots summit was timed to coincide with the National League of Cities legislative conference, which drew 3,000 local elected officials to lobby for a greater local control of federal transportation funding as well as the legislative conference of the American Public Transit Association. The STPP grassroots summit followed just after of the National Bike Summit, which brought together nearly 400 advocates, shop owners, and industry reps from 47 states to lobby Congress on the America Bikes agenda.

Members of two Congressional Subcommittees and transportation experts expressed strong support for the concept of expanding the use of improved inner-city rail transportation as a means to reduce airport congestion and improve commercial airline service at a joint Congressional hearing on February 26.

Hank Dittmar, the President of Reconnecting America, a project working on national policies on intercity travel and transportation integration, testified about the concept of transforming airports into “travel ports”.

“It is a simple concept of connecting our current means of traveling region to region - the air-rail-bus networks - so that each travel mode provides the type of service that it is designed to do best,” said Dittmar, who is a STPP Board Member. “The idea is to turn airport terminals into travel ports where rail, bus, and urban transit would be added to the traditional mix of aviation, parking and rental cars.”

“This kind of system is also more redundant, in the positive sense that travelers are presented with more options when regular service in a single mode is interrupted. A more redundant system is also an investment in economic security to ensure continued movement in the face of natural or man-made disasters,” Dittmar said.

Several witnesses testified before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s subcommittees on Aviation and Railroads that high-speed and improved inter-city passenger rail service are viable alternatives to airplanes in certain short haul markets.

There are six corridors (Boston-New York, NY-Washington, San Francisco- Los Angeles, Los Angeles-San Diego, Los Angeles-Phoenix, and Seattle-Portland) in the United States where airlines fly 50 or more round trip flights daily. There are another 15 corridors where there are more than 15 round trip flights a day. Reducing the demand for high-frequency, short-haul flights will improve airport congestion and would allow scarce airport capacity to be used for more efficient long haul flights was a message often delivered by witnesses and panel members.

STPP’s latest issue of Progress examines governance and the transportation decision-making process. Featuring a state-by-state analysis of metropolitan planning organizations, with specific figures on each Metropolitan Planning Organization’s (MPO) share of STP suballocated funds compared to their share of the total state population, the issue makes the case that MPOs, which serve about 80 percent of the nation’s citizens, should have direct control over more than 6 percent of federal highway dollars.

“We believe that the transportation problems of the 21st century, along with the structure of the new economy and the realities of other critical issues like affordable housing, air quality, and job creation, are increasingly regional in nature,” wrote STPP Board Chair Sarah Campbell in the lead article. “They are best handles by regional entities, made up of locally elected and accountable board members. These entities already exist in the form of Metropolitan Planning Organizations.”

The Brookings Institution kicked off a series of research briefs on transportation reform last week with a report on the metropolitan agenda for TEA-21 reauthorization. The brief outlines a comprehensive policy approach to reauthorization, recommending that Congress preserve the ISTEA and TEA-21 framework and give metropolitan areas more powers and tools, in exchange for enhanced accountability, to get transportation policy right for their regions.

Authored by Bruce Katz and Robert Puentes at the Brookings Institution and STPP Board member Scott Bernstein of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, “TEA-21 Reauthorization: Getting Transportation Right for Metropolitan America” is available at http://www.brookings.edu/es/urban/publications/tea21.htm.