21st Century Highways

Innovative Solutions to America's Transportation Needs

Wendell Cox, Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D., Alan Pisarski Dec 9, 2005

Dimensions: 10'' x 7.5''

215 pages

The Heritage Foundation

(Washington, DC)

Publication Date: December 2005

Paperback:
ISBN: 0-89195-121-0
Price: $16.95
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Launched in 1956 to build America’s interstate highway system, today’s federal highway program suffers from an identity crisis, according to a new book by the Heritage Foundation and the Maryland Public Policy Institute. In Chapter 9, “Maryland Transportation: Problems and Solutions,” Peter Samuel examines highway transportation and mass transit in Maryland.

In Maryland, public perception of the state’s transportation problems usually centers on the supposed problem of too little money, says Samuel. Instead, “the problem lies with misdirection of tax monies by those with non-transportation agendas and a failure to tap users’ fees and adapt transport programs to the needs and budgets of users.”

The results are undue congestion and subsequent cost; a disproportionate share of mass transit into D.C. rather than to the northern Virginia and Maryland suburbs; and misdirection of public resources to an under-used rail system. Entrepreneurial management can change all this.

Peter Samuel is editor of TOLLROADSnews, adjunct scholar with MPPI, and research fellow with the Reason Public Policy Institute.

Other chapters in 21^st Century Highways:

From Interstates to an Uncharted Future: A Short History of the Modern Federal-Aid Highway Program
The Social Benefits and Costs of the Automobile
Performance-Based Transportation Programs
21^st Century Toll Roads
Private-Sector Participation in Surface Transportation in the United States
Transit’s Limited Capability and Promise
The False Promise of Regional Governance and Regional Planning
Will a Bigger Role for States Improve Transportation Policy Performance?
Maryland Transportation: Problems and Solutions

Peter Samuel is joined by John W. Fischer, Specialist in Transportation for the Congressional Research Service; Joel Schwartz, visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Air Quality in America; Alan Pisarski, independent consultant on transportation policy; Ronald D. Utt, Herbert and Joyce Morgan Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation; Robert W. Poole, Jr., Director of Transportation Studies at the Reason Foundation; Kenneth Orski, Principal of the Urban Mobility Corporation; Shirley J. Ybarra, Principal of the Ybarra Group and former Virginia Secretary of Transportation; Wendell Cox, Senior Fellow at the Heartland Institute and Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation; and Peter Gordon, professor at the University of California’s School of Policy, Planning, and Development.