Kansas City News Blog

It's going to take more than a great big stimulus package and a giant dose of optimism to dig the country out of our transit and infrastructure challenges. So says a new report from the University of Kansas Transportation Research Institute released last week.

"Humankind confronts interrelated crises of energy and transportation in a rapidly changing world where we must deal with spiking petroleum prices, decaying bridges, growing congestion in all modes, an aging and inattentive driver population, a shortage of adequately trained transportation engineers, and the diverse ramifications of global climate change."

And that's just the introduction.

The report was compiled by a group of KU and other state experts, like Deb Miller, Kansas Secretary of Transportation and chair of the national Transportation Research Board. (Miller is  a hot commodity on the think-tank panel circuit, too)

The reports' findings aren't necessarily surprising. But it's depressing to see all the statistics line up, describing an American landscape where we're all confined to individual metal boxes, driving inefficient cars on unsafe bridges and congested freeways while texting on our cell phone and spewing more than our fair share of greenhouse gases.

Just a few of the disconcerting numbers include:

-- 87 percent of all passenger trips in the U.S. are made in private vehicles.

-- The automotive fuel efficiency of new U.S. vehicles significantly trails that of other industrialized countries. The average fuel economy of new vehicles in the European Union clocks in at 37.2 MPG, Japan at 46.3 MPG and the U.S. at a lowly 24.1 MPG.

-- Americans spend more than $100,000 per minute to purchase foreign oil.

-- The U.S. transportation sector accounts for 16.5 percent of total world oil use.

-- In 2005, transportation accounted for 33 percent of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions -- the single largest contributor to total emissions of all end-use sectors.

-- The state of Kansas would need to invest an additional $1.5 billion annually over projected revenues to meet estimated transportation needs over the next 20 years.

-- The cumulative national shortfall for transportation funding, in relation to America's projected needs, is estimated at $1 trillion through 2015.

-- As of 2007, about 12 percent of Kansas bridges were found to be "structurally deficient."

-- Talking on a cell phone while driving increases the accident risk for younger adults by 200-700 percent. In a KU study now underway, 90 percent of teen drivers say they text and drive.

-- In 2006, there were 468 fatalities on Kansas roads. Nearly 20 percent of the drivers and passengers involved were more than 65 years old. Kansas' population age 65 and older is expected to grow by almost 50 percent by 2030.

This being a week of new beginnings, the report pleads with the 44th president to make transportation a critical priority and outlines some bold "Options for Action." While the numbers are dire, some of the report's recommendations are surprisingly aggresive, like taxes on greenhouse gas emissions. 

Carbon taxes advocated by coal-loving Kansans? Maybe change is coming.