Now Congress Is on the Right Road : White House transportation policy is oriented too much toward highways

Congress and the White House are headed for a showdown over transportation policies that will shape the way the nation travels into the next century.

Congress may have to force its own broad outlines of policy on the White House. Administration officials are threatening a veto, but both the House bill, which passed Wednesday, and the Senate bill, approved last June, passed by votes large enough to override.

The House and Senate have differences of their own to settle in bills that call for more than $100 billion in highway and transit spending between now and 1999. But they are trifling compared to the basic quarrels both have with the Administration.

Oil imports are rising--a distant, perhaps, but real menace to an already weak economy. There is little or no room left for new roads in most urban areas. Traffic jams threaten the free flow both of commerce and commuters.

Yet against this mounting evidence that mass transit systems are the best hope for mobility in many urban areas, the White House calls for--of all things--too many more highways and too little transit in its transportation proposal.

Melding the Senate and House versions will be difficult. The Senate bill calls for $123 billion in spending, the House bill for $151 billion. They take very different approaches to allocating the funds among the states.

A major division involves a House provision for $5.3 billion in “demonstration” programs. Supporters call them “congressional projects of national significance” and opponents--including the White House--call them pork barrel. In at least some cases the criticism is justified.

One project listed for California, for example, would provide $7.9 million to study widening and double-decking the Santa Ana Freeway between downtown Los Angeles and the Artesia Freeway in Orange County. The California Transportation Department has no such plan on its books.

But in broad outline, both bills are on the mark. Both would increase the share of the transportation budget for transit. Both would allow states to use an undedicated pool of several billions of dollars for transit, bicycle paths or any other form of transportation that best fits local needs.

Both bills have the look of the future, and Congress should persevere until U.S. transportation policy also has the look of the future.