Oct. 6, 2009

Tell Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood not to Fund MoDOT's Trucks Only Lanes proposal for Highway I-70

As part of this years stimulus package, the federal government is authorizing Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants for certain projects. The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) has submitted an application for $200 million for four Trucks Only Lanes (TOLs) on a sparsely populated section of I-70 inwestern Missouri. MoDOT sees this as the beginning of a larger project of Trucks Only Lanes from Kansas City to St. Louis that could cost at least $6 billion to build.

This proposal is based on projecting past trends of increasing truck traffic. It’s not based on future probabilities. The past trends were based on cheap oil prices, low fuel taxes and fees for heavy trucks (especially in Missouri compared to surrounding states), and significant subsidies to motorized vehicles, including their “externalized economic costs.”  Energy dependence and climate change are global factors that already call for shifting freight movement to the more energy–efficient modes, such as rail. Alternative proposals that could be funded with the $200 million would promote rail travel and urban public transportation.  

Tell United States Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood that we want to invest in the future and not the past. Tell him not to give MoDOT $200 million for Trucks Only Lanes. Write him at:

U.S. Department of Transportation
1200 New Jersey Ave, SE
Washington, DC 20590

Or call him at:

202-366-4000

Or send him an email through the DOT website by clicking here.

Below are more arguments against the proposal to tell Sec. LaHood. If you want to read more detailed information the Missouri Sierra Club's response to the TOL proposal, click here and here.

  • Energy dependence and climate change are global factors that call for shifting more freight movement to the more energy-efficient modes, and rail is at least three times more efficient than trucks. The focus should be increasing the capacity, speed, and reliability of rail instead of building dedicated truck capacity

  • There are serious questions about the safety of the termini of TOLs – where trucks transition to general purpose lanes – and those questions need to be answered

  • It’s premature to do this 30-mile TOL experiment before the four-state CFP corridor study concludes that the four-state TOL corridor makes economic sense

  • The four-state study will be inadequate / flawed as it apparently will not consider the option of increasing rail capacity instead of TOLs

  • TOLs are inconsistent with the concepts likely to be written into the next federal surface transportation bill – concepts like mode neutrality an outcome-based planning and increased inter-modalism

  • Missouri ’s proposed project would double capacity on the stretch of I-70 that least needs additional capacity

  • Even if TOLs are a good idea, are they a good enough idea that the nation – $10+ trillion in debt – can afford to build them?

  • The nation’s infrastructure needs are so great that we can ill afford this quarter-billion dollar experiment