The Life and Death of the Highway Trust Fund
| The University of Maryland Urban Studies and Planning Program and the National Center for Smart Growth’s 2015 Brown Bag Webinar Series continues with |
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The Life and Death of the Highway Trust Fund Presentation by: Wednesday, May 13
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| Preinkert Field House – Conference Room 1112V University of Maryland College Park |
| The current federal program for funding surface transportation infrastructure in the United States is broken. This situation has created a state of perpetual uncertainty surrounding federal transportation funding. Lewis’s presentation details the circumstances that have led the U.S. transportation program to its current funding situation and explores how other nations have created sustainable mechanisms for ensuring adequate national-level investment in surface transportation systems. The Life and Death of the Highway Trust Fund is the result of an 18-month effort to evaluate the current political, economic, and legal forces behind the U.S. Highway Trust Fund (HTF), including an examination of peer countries and their lessons on providing long-term sustainable funding for transportation investment.
PAUL LEWIS is the Director of Policy and Finance at the Eno Center for Transportation where he is responsible for overseeing policy research and forum products. He has been a co-author on several Eno papers, including The Life and Death of the Highway Trust Fund and Getting to the Route of It: the Role of Governance in Regional Transit. He has worked at Eno since August 2011 applying his background to help tackle policy issues in transportation at the federal, state, and local levels. Prior to joining Eno, Lewis worked as a contract researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Through work at Eno and MIT, Lewis worked directly on projects and research papers that involve highways, railroads, transit, and aviation, covering movement of both passengers and freight. Lewis’s bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Ohio Northern University and master’s in Transportation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. |
Opportunity Collaborative Set to Release Baltimore Regional Plan for Sustainable Development
The Regional Plan for Sustainable Development (RPSD) represents the first ever comprehensive regional plan to bring together workforce development, transportation and housing. The Opportunity Collaborative is a consortium that includes local governments, state agencies, universities and nonprofit organizations. The co-chairs of the Collaborative are William H. Cole IV, president and CEO of the Baltimore Development Corporation, and Scot T. Spencer, of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
The RPSD is the culmination of three years of work and will help the Baltimore region coordinate investments in housing, transportation and workforce development to reduce disparities and connect all of the region’s citizens to a prosperous future. The outcomes of the plan will lower transportation costs for families, create cleaner and safer communities and increase educational and employment opportunities throughout the region.
Please join other regional leaders on Monday, June 8 in Baltimore as the Opportunity Collaborative launches the first joint and sustained effort by the governments and significant non-governmental organizations in the region to collectively address regional planning issues.
You can learn more and register to attend the launch here.
Learn more about the NCSG’s participation in the Opportunity Collaborative here.