The Next Government of the United States by Donald F. Kettl

Author:Donald F. Kettl
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2009-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

PRIVATIZATION: TRANSPORTATION CONGESTION

The first fault line was along government’s boundary with the private sector. In the early 2000s, the nation’s transportation system was becoming increasingly clogged and congested. Air traffic congestion was becoming so bad, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Dave Boyer joked with his readers, that “you’re in no danger of going anywhere else.” In fact, he said, Philadelphia residents will find vacations “much less frustrating if you think of Philly airport as your final destination.” He urged his readers to enjoy “the delightful charade of boarding a plane to nowhere.” In fact, he wrote, there are even padded benches where visitors can “crack open a good book while you await confirmation that you’re not going anywhere.”14

For Boyer and his many fellow summer travelers, the joke was not very funny. Air traffic, especially during the summer construction and thunderstorm season, limped along, with disruptions near key hubs disrupting traffic everywhere. Frustrated fliers sometimes waited hours to board the plane, only to have the flight canceled. Sometimes delays caused them to miss a connection or to arrive at the destination but not be able to get off the plane. In one especially bad episode in August 2007, a computer failure left 17,000 inbound passengers stuck on planes arriving from international destinations, some for as long as eight hours. The snafu occurred because one Ethernet card, an internal component that allows computers to connect to the Internet and that can be purchased for as little as fifteen dollars, had failed. Usually, when such small components go bad, they simply stop working. But this one proved especially devilish, sending out repeated cries for help and creating a data storm that crashed the network. US Customs and Border Protection, which processes 46,000 people an hour through the customs lanes, ground to a halt because without the computers, federal agents could not check incoming passengers against the terrorist watch list. The agency’s contractor spent several hours tracking down the problem, until it finally located the single misbehaving computer circuit.15

These problems are just part of a far larger transportation issue. As former US Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta explained, “Congestion is one of the single largest threats to our economic prosperity and way of life.” All together, planes circling airports, trucks stuck in traffic, and cargo backed up at seaports cost the nation about $200 billion a year. Americans lose 3.7 billion hours a year stuck in traffic. They burn 2.3 billion gallons of fuel going nowhere. “Congestion kills time, wastes fuel, and costs money,” he concluded. “But we don’t have to let traffic delays put our lives on hold any longer.”16

The Department of Transportation (DOT) developed an extensive strategy to reduce the congestion of roads, ports, railroads, and airways. The plan was ambitious, ranging from new technologies for air traffic control and new collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security for reducing delays at border crossings, to congestion pricing (charging more for access to roadways during peak periods) and innovative state partnerships with the private sector.

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