Keeping it all moving.

• Author: Boulard, Garry
• Position: Reauthorization of Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act - Includes related article on transportation safety

For states, reauthorization of ISTEA is the most important legislation pending in Congress this year. It will determine how states can spend their federal transportation money; and it could hand over to them much of the responsibility for the program.

Jeff Nelligan has advice for state legislators when they get ready to debate how to spend their precious transportation dollars: Prepare for an avalanche.

That, at least, is how it feels to Nelligan, the spokesman for the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, as Congress prepares to reauthorize the historic 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA, or otherwise known by lawmakers as "Iced Tea") by October of this year.

"Just about anyone who is anyone has showed up to testify," Nelligan says of the nearly 20 hearings the committee has conducted so far. "Safety groups, motor carriers, people in the construction trade, the cities, the states, the counties, different state departments of transportation, engineers, environmentalists, the list is endless."

But that endlessness is not without reason, according to those who have followed the life and times of ISTEA. It is probably the biggest and most important states-oriented legislation pending, in Congress this year. The massive measure is worth billions of federal dollars and will ultimately define the transportation projects and realities of every state in the union into the next century.

"ISTEA affects all surface transportation, including transit and railroads," says Kenneth Orski, the president of the Washington-based consulting firm Urban Mobility Inc., and editor of Innovations Brief, a monthly publication that studies transportation issues. "But it inevitably defines how we want to build or maintain our country and encompasses the whole question of transferring power and money from Washington to the states. It is a very big piece of legislation."

It is also virtually certain to be a contentious piece of legislation because everyone has a different vision of what our country's transportation system should look like. ISTEA's underlying goal is to make the country intermodal. That is, to link one form of transportation, say, a rail route, with both a port and a modern highway system. This concept, however, remains murky. Participants in the growing battle contend that it is all a matter of perspective.

"Intermodalism is a term like many others that comes upon the landscape and captures everyone's imagination," says Timothy Joder, the director of the International Program for Port Planning and Development at the University of New Orleans. "Obviously intermodal planning and infrastructure has been going on for years, but we've never really looked at it in an organized fashion."

ISTEA's core is fairly basic and easy to understand: It lays out a scheduled plan and formula for building new roads and highways, repairing old bridges, connecting airports with rail lines and interstates with ports, all in an effort to keep everyone and everything moving and the nation humming.

ISTEA pays for its vision through taxes - federal gasoline and highway taxes that are collected and disbursed, via an admittedly complicated series of spending formulas, to the states where they oftentimes complement and enhance transportation projects.

MANY VISIONS, LOTS OF OPINIONS

But where such money can be spent, on what, and how much, have become questions of importance engaging a cast of thousands. Washington, Jefferson and Adams in their horse-driven carriages bumping along dirt roads could never have imagined things could get this complicated. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, for example, believes the nation's business is the highway business and that massive population shifts to the Western and Southern states demand in return a massive build-up and extension of the country's highways. The U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National League of Cities, on the other hand, worry that too much highway spending will come at the expense of the infrastructure maintenance and repair currently needed...