AASHTO BLR

Description / Abstract: FOREWORD: 2009 will be a pivotal year for the future of America. The 111th Congress and the new Administration will be called upon to craft legislation that will put in place the surface transportation programs essential to the nation's economic recovery and quality of life. This will take place against a backdrop in which the American public is rightly demanding new accountability and reform in the use of their transportation dollars.

Many issues must be addressed in the coming legislative debate:

• Investing in highway and transit infrastructure to stimulate economic recovery;

• Sustaining the solvency to the Federal Highway Trust Fund;

• Redressing dramatically higher costs of highway and transit construction;

• Addressing the transportation impacts on global climate change;

• Reconstruction needs of an aging transportation system;

• Reducing congestion on highways;

• Increasing capacity for highways and public transportation; and

• Maintaining international competitiveness.

This comprehensive assessment of the nation's surface transportation needs provides a definitive base of information to assist in making critical decisions. It is based upon the forecasting models used by the Federal Highway Administration, and supplemented with additional research to incorporate areas not fully addressed by those models. The result is the most comprehensive analysis of the nation's transportation investment needs now possible.