<b>Mayors Say Critical Transportation Investments Under TEA-21 Must Be Made In Metro Areas For Health Of U.S. Economy</b>
For Release Tuesday, October 27, 1998
Mayors Say Critical Transportation Investments Under TEA-21 Must Be Made In Metro Areas For Health Of U.S. Economy
A new study by The United States Conference of Mayors demonstrates that sustained national economic growth can only be possible through continued investment in the transportation infrastructure of U.S. metropolitan areas. This new study released today by Conference President Salt Lake City Mayor Deedee Corradini and New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial makes it clear that metro areas must continue to be the object of national and state infrastructure investment to sustain U.S. global competitiveness.
The Conference of Mayors requested the new report from DRI, a unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies, to assess the relationship between metro area transportation infrastructure and the national economy. Mayors plan to use the report to ensure that metro-city and county areas receive their fair share of funding under "TEA-21."
As the debate on the new massive 6-year, $217 billion federal highway and mass transit bill (known as TEA-21) shifts from Washington to statehouses, the report identifies the dramatic role of metro areas in state economies and demonstrates that most state economies are driven by metro economies. In fact, in ten states metro areas account for more than 90% of economic output. There are only ten states where the metro area share of gross state product is less than 50%.
With TEA-21 now public law, mayors and other local officials are gearing up to work with their governors and state legislatures to ensure that U.S. metro areas receive an equitable share of funding to make transportation improvements, thus assuring the continued productive capacity of these regions. The new report shows that most transportation services activity in the United States-an estimated 86 %-occurs within metro area cities and counties.
Mayors said that the report documents what they've always intuitively known but never been able to prove until now. Conference President Corradini, in releasing the report, said: "The report supports our contention that metro areas are the engines that drive our national economy. This nation can't afford to shortchange future infrastructure investment in metro areas and thereby risk interruption of the unparalleled economic growth America has experienced over the last six years."
In the sometimes divisive debate when TEA-21 passed in the 105th Congress, most arguments centered around the formula distributions giving money to states for transportation purposes. With this battle over, cities are now organizing to fight within each state for a fair share of TEA-21 funds going to local governments. New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, who is also a Conference of Mayors trustee, pointed out that no specific formula in the TEA-21 bill defines how much federal dollars must go to metro areas. "Every mayor in America is going to have to work hard to make the case to their statehouses that our national growth will falter unless we make the appropriate local transportation investments. TEA-21 provides states with the flexibility so that local needs can be financed."
Among the new report's specific findings are:
- For their size, metro areas have a larger concentration of transportation activity than non-metro areas. The metro area percentages of transportation services employment and output both exceed metro area shares of population and land area, highlighting the geographic concentration of transportation infrastructure within urban and suburban areas.
- According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, $525 billion of merchandise exports was shipped from metro areas in 1996, accounting for over 84% of total United States goods exports.
- Over 3.1 million transportation workers were employed in metro areas last year, or 86% of national transportation employment.
- The total value of transportation services produced in metro areas in 1997 was $338 billion, more than 87% of national transportation output.
- Over 85% of workers in transportation-intensive industries are employed in metro areas. Employment in many of the industries within this category is almost entirely located within metro areas, including computer processing and software (97%), publishing and printing (89%), and research and consulting services (94%). These industries require access to extensive local transportation networks and good connections to regional and international transportation networks.
In March, an earlier report prepared by DRI showed that 86% of the nation's economic growth from 1992 to 1997 was directly traceable to metro economies. This report published first-ever data on Gross Metropolitan Product, data that is analogous to Gross Domestic Product and Gross State Product. With this data it is now possible to understand the contribution of metro areas to the nation's overall production of goods and services. In this regard, the report showed that city-county metro areas accounted for 83% of the Gross Domestic Product in 1997. It also showed that if city-county metro areas were ranked as nations, forty-seven of the world's largest one hundred economies would be U.S. metro areas.
The United States Conference of Mayors is the premier bi-partisan organization of cities with population of 30,000 or more. DRI is a prominent international economic forecasting and consulting organization headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts.
CONTACT: Dave Gatton, (202) 861-6780 or Kevin McCarty, (202) 861-6711
The United States Conference of Mayors
J. Thomas Cochran, Executive Director
1620 Eye Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006
Telephone (202) 293-7330, FAX (202) 293-2352
Copyright © 1996, US Conference of Mayors, All rights reserved.
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