Modal Angst on the D.C. Beltway

The U.S. Department of Transportation pushed a number of new P3 initiatives forward in April. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, in a quarterly meeting with the USDOT Advisory Board, threw his support behind the idea of a “P3 task force,” or a new P3 office within the Department to help shepherd projects through planning and procurement. The Secretary even indicated to the Board that “making sure we’re operational on the P3 side…” would be a top priority.

And speaking of P3 offices, the Department’s own Build America Bureau held its own P3 forum in Washington in April. The Bureau called the forum, which included industry and state/regional transport officials, a “strategic move designed to bridge the gap between federal policy and local execution.”

But perhaps the most interesting new initiative the Department announced last month is Freedom to Drive. The Administration wants to alleviate traffic congestion, and it clearly intends to leverage P3s to do it. The Federal Highway Administration’s announcement of Freedom to Drive even explicitly mentions the SR-400 Express Lanes P3 that broke ground last month (see this edition). The project is a model that the Administration clearly wants to help stamp around the country.

The initial salvo of Freedom to Drive is simple enough. Secretary Duffy is asking all governors to identify the 2-5 worst traffic bottlenecks in their state and then outline actions to address congestion in them. And just in case there was any ambiguity, the letter adds: “[f]ocus solutions on expanding and maximizing roadway capacity for driving.”

Yet Freedom to Drive is also part of a trend across administrations that is less promising for the P3 industry, or American transport development in general. American transport policy is more modally partisan today than it has been in the past. And in a country that takes, on average, around four and a half years to complete an environmental study for an infrastructure project, modally partisan transport policy is especially destabilizing for development. The other party tends to get a say.

Of course, this trend long predates the Freedom to Drive initiative, but the program clearly isn’t shying away from modal partisanship, either. Secretary Duffy’s letter to the governors even explicitly notes that “[y]ou may need to recover roadway capacity from other purposes to support driving.”

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