Transportation chief examines foreign port infrastructure

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta is one of only four members of the original Bush Cabinet to stay on for the second term. The lone Democrat and a former House member from California, Mineta is pushing President Bush's plans to reform Amtrak and to pass a highway bill. In an interview with National Journal last month, Mineta spoke about his priorities, including Amtrak, waterways, ports, research and development, and safety. Edited excerpts follow.

On second-term priorities: First of all, I'd like to get the surface transportation bill completed, get that through the House and Senate. I'd like to see Amtrak reform [through Congress]. The other thing that I'm working on right now is called "SEA-21." We had "TEA-21," as it relates to surface transportation. We had "AIR-21," as it relates to aviation. One of the things I talked about when I first got here was the need for some maritime and inland-waterway legislation or policy.

On water transportation: If you look at our country [he draws a map] -- and I'm not a cartographer here -- along the West Coast, we have [Interstate] 5. On the East Coast, we have I-95. Right up the middle, we have the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Ohio, and the Tennessee, a lot of the inland waterways. One of the things I envision is this whole issue of short-sea shipping.... Traveling I-95 from Maine to Florida, or I-5 from Washington to California, [they're] just loaded with trucks. The question is, given that there's going to be a 50 percent increase in freight traffic, those highways are not going to be able to sustain that kind of traffic, so to give additional capacity to the whole traffic system, we want to be able to use the waterways as highways. It's sort of interesting, because here in the Midwest [pointing to his map], if you just take wheat as an example, to transport it by truck, it's something like 30 cents a bushel. By rail, it's something like 15 cents a bushel. And by barge, you can get it down to something like 9 cents. So there are all kinds of benefits that come from utilizing all forms of transportation, especially ... what can be transported by barge.

In any event, we have developed a policy statement and legislative framework for something called SEA-21. It involves the building and the expanding of the locks and dams along the Mississippi. It means dredging in terms of ports, and utilizing the capability of the ports on the East Coast and the West Coast. Look at California's port complex of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Of all the containers that come into the United States today, 40 percent come in through L.A./Long Beach.

On ports in Asia: Now, having just come back from a trip to Asia, where we were in Japan, India, Thailand, and Hong Kong, it's amazing to see what they have done in terms of infrastructure. We were at a port in Hong Kong, at the Hutchison Whampoa port terminal, and here's an area where they can berth 24 ships. We were up there looking all over this place, and you can see containers moving around. It's just amazing. You don't see anybody. These things are all moving around, automated.

They know this container has to go to that ship because it's going to Inchon [in South Korea]; this container next to it, it has to go to that ship because it's going to go to Savannah, [Ga.,] and that bunch over there is going to L.A./Long Beach. And then when you get inside the control room, you see these [people] sitting at computers -- men and women. They've got outlines of ships and pictures of all the stacks of containers on board the ship. And, of course, the bottom one is going to be the last port of call, so they are able to stack up the containers in the ship. By the same token, as they put [the cargo] in, they have to be able to balance the ship so it's not top-heavy -- or it sinks along the way. But it's just amazing to watch what they're capable of doing, and the advanced stage of their operational capability.

Hong Kong handles something like 18 million containers a year, and Singapore is close on its heels, with 17 million. It's just amazing what they're doing, so we've just got to be able to continue [improving our] ports to economically stay ahead of the game.

On his next life: When I visited [Singapore] and saw this one crane operator remotely controlling six cranes out there with his hand, I thought that in my next life, I wanted to be a crane operator in the port of Oakland. They work five hours a day, four days a week, and anything over that is overtime. So these folks are making $250,000, $260,000, just as the standard.

On Amtrak: Right now, I'm not sure that, given all the other business the House and Senate have to do, we'll be able to complete legislation this year. As much as I want it done, I'm not sure it's going to be completed during calendar year '05.

In the absence of comprehensive Amtrak reform legislation, it may be that we have to sort of take that reform legislation and try to divide it into sections and say, "Well, maybe part of this can be done on the appropriations bill, part of it can be done through the action of Amtrak [managers], and part of it can be done by the Amtrak board of directors." To the extent that the Amtrak board of directors does something, and the appropriations committees do something on an appropriations bill, then the balance is going to have to be done by the transportation committees, which is going to be a tall order to see something completed, let's say, by the end of this year.

On research and development: One of the things I've been working on all through the first term, extending into the second, is to make sure this department is a cohesive operation. The department has always had the reputation of being a stovepiped agency. You have the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Transit Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, all of these various modes -- the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration -- they're stovepiped. One of the things I've always wondered is, why we don't have more cross-section activities going on between the various modes.

So one of the things we did recently was to create the Research and Innovative Technology Administration. For the first time, RITA is going to be able to look at the R&D programs of all of these stovepiped groups and say, "Are you sharing your R&D across the board?" As an example, if the FAA is doing some research program on concrete stability for runways, why can't the Federal Highway Administration be piggybacking on that R&D as it relates to the life of a highway?

On aviation safety: Safety, of course, is our No. 1 job here in the department. The accident rate for maybe about 20 years had been just about flat, but we also knew, by the same token, that the number of operations was going to be increasing in the outyears; so naturally, if you have this kind of accident rate that hasn't changed in 20 or 25 years, and you've got an increasing number of operations, all this means is, you're going to have an increased number of accidents. So [a Mineta-led commission in 1997] said, "By 2007, we want to reduce the accident rate by 80 percent."

We are on schedule right now. First of all, we haven't had any accident with a fatality in commercial aviation in three and a half years. Second, the accident rate is the lowest it has ever been in history since Orville and Wilbur started flying. It's really fallen.

On highway safety: On the highway, the number of traffic deaths was over 43,000 a year for a long time. In 2004, we were under 43,000 -- 42,800. For the first time, we've seen a dip. The accident fatality rate has gone down. We think that's attributable to the highway safety program that [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chief Jeffrey Runge] has instituted, where he's had a multiple-pronged program on education, enforcement, and engineering. Right now, we're at the highest use of safety belts. Nationally, it's a little over 80 percent. Safety belts have contributed a great deal to the lower number of deaths.

Our biggest concern right now is motorcycles. I think what's happening is, there's an increased number of motorcycles being purchased. We've had a tremendous increase in motorcycles, and also in fatalities involving motorcycles. I remember, in 1991, I had included in [the highway bill] a mandatory helmet law. We got it passed in the 1991 law, but by 1995 or 1996, it was repealed.

On being a Democrat in the Bush administration: As the lone Democrat in a Republican administration, for me this has just been a magnificent experience. I get chided more for being a Californian in a sea of Texans than being a D in an R administration. But on the other hand, I've learned how to wear boots.