STB boss offers rail funding notion

by Wes Vernon
Washington Correspondent
National Corridors Initiative

The new chairman of the Surface Transportation Board (STB) believes policymakers should focus on new ways to facilitate the movement of freight traffic.

Speaking at the National Press Club’s Transportation Table on February 14, Chairman Roger Nober emphasized he was not advocating proposals to open up the Highway Trust Fund to help pay for capital railroad projects. However, he indicated those in policymaking positions who actively oppose the idea should come up with alternative ideas to make freight movement as efficient as possible.

Nober acknowledged that the issue had “pitted railroads and trucking companies against each other for generations.”

He expressed hope that in the T-21 re-authorization, “there is an opportunity to make progress on the subject.” Further, he urged those who care about the issue, “to just step back a little bit and look at policy goals that are broadly shared.”

This he believes, “could lead to [an] outline of a policy consensus on the need for federal programs to facilitate the movement of freight.”

After all, he said, the truckers have expressed as much frustration as the railroads at their inability to get their projects funded. All too often, he said, there has been a failure to make freight concerns a part of the policy planning process.

All of this despite a consensus among the members of Congress and the Administration that there is a need to remove hindrances to “the [timely and swift] movement of freight nationally.”

The STB does not decide the issue of how to fund freight traffic, but does deal with many of the results of whatever decisions are made on Capitol Hill. Congress this year is to consider reauthorization of the giant T-21 transportation bill.

Not surprisingly, when D:F asked Nober if he intends to weigh in with his point of view on this when Congress deliberates the T-21 bill, he responded to knowing laughter, “No, I do not.” Obviously he has no desire to spend his rookie days on the job plunging into a hornet’s nest that he can’t do anything about in the first place. Of course, that would not necessarily deter any one of the lawmakers on key transportation committees on the Hill from asking him about it when he appears to testify on matters related to his agency. This is how the new STB chairman clarified his position at the Transportation Table.

“I think that people who are proposing this [using the Highway Trust Fund for rail] can find common ground, but if they simply come in and say, ‘We want railroads to be funded because trucks pollute too much and cost too much money to run,’ you’re never going to find consensus on the matter with trucking companies saying, ‘Hey, we’re not going to give an inch on taking a dime of our money – railroads are our competitors – and we’re not going to give money to our competitors.’

That takes us back to the same old divided thinking that keeps great projects from going forward, and it is the ultimate frustration that those in the freight constituency feel about their projects not getting funded that perhaps has brought railroads and trucking companies to join together in coalitions to look at ways to improve the flow of freight overall.”

Translating broad policy goals into substantive solutions can be elusive, Nober added. While no advocate of breaking open the Highway Trust Fund for rail, he effectively challenged the policy-makers to come up with a workable alternative solution. He believes confronting the issue is long overdue.

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Used by Permission
Copyright 2003, NCI, Inc.
Reprint from Destination Freedom, Vol. 4, No. 8.