What the Transportation Agenda of the Future Looks Like

"It’s long past time for Congress to throw out its Eisenhower-era transportation policy and replace it with something new, a vision that reflects the reality we inhabit now," declare Robert Puentes and Adie Tomer for Politico's ongoing series of features on transportation.

The main point of Puentes and Tomer's argument is to begin got frame a new national transportation agenda: "If we started to think about transportation as a way to build the kind of country we want in 50 years, we wouldn’t just talk about moving people and goods faster. Instead, we’d lay out our bigger priorities and figure out how transportation can help us achieve them."

As for what those priorities should be, Puentes and Tomer focus on providing access to tradable industries so they can compete in the global marketplace, connecting residents to jobs to make the transportation network a tool for equality of opportunity, and addressing the impacts of transportation as the country’s second-largest polluting sector, both through vehicle technology and land use planning.

The article goes on to lay out a three-pronged strategy for achieving those goals.