Freight transportation funding is crucial to success of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. I cheered in October when negotiators reached the TPP agreement. I cheered again in November when a House-Senate conference committee began deliberating a six-year transportation bill that held hope for robust provisions for freight.
Looking ahead, both measures could significantly improve the ability of U.S. ports to remain globally competitive. However, to fully realize the TPP’s job creation and economic growth potential, the transportation bill must authorize significant investments in freight-handling infrastructure.
While the TPP creates favorable conditions for the free flow of goods between the U.S. and its trade partners, it doesn’t prepare our crumbling, outdated infrastructure for an increase in freight traffic. The transportation bill, with ample funding for vital freight programs, would do that.
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, deficient highways alone could cost U.S. businesses and households up to $276 billion by 2020. Some of these are important “first and last mile” connections to U.S. seaports, handling $6 billion worth of goods and material daily.
In a 2015 survey of U.S. port executives, one in three said they need at least $100 million in intermodal upgrades to handle projected 2025 freight volumes. Total investment required among all those surveyed exceeds $29 billion. One-third of port directors said congestion at intermodal connectors caused port productivity to drop 25 to 50 percent over the past decade. Reversing that decline is a must.
U.S. merchandise trade with TPP countries totaled more than $1.6 trillion in 2014. It’ll likely increase under the new agreement, with U.S. farmers alone set to capture one-third of an estimated $8.5 billion agriculture trade increase by 2025.
Handling the freight volumes presaged by these projections will be no small task. But it’s one made feasible with a proactive surface transportation bill that contains funding for a national freight program and designates critical resources for freight corridors and intermodal connections.