As your Representative in Congress, Lisa will work to:

Establish a concrete transportation plan to move people, improve air quality and reduce regulation.

The last two reauthorizations of our surface transportation programs recognized that highways and freeways were not the only transportation programs worthy of attention and support by the federal government. Those reauthorizations, along with other measures passed over the last few years, have moved the federal government towards a more balanced surface transportation policy that recognizes the potential of transit and high-speed rail to relieving congestion on our roads and highways. We are also moving towards providing greater technical and economic assistance to local governments in an effort to help them resolve their congestion problems.

It is estimated that the economic and environmental costs of traffic congestion in the United States reaches $100 billion per year. While the federal government should rightfully continue to concentrate on highway infrastructure improvements, we should not ignore congestion mitigation approaches that can extend the life of our roads and save us billions in lost productivity costs.

When Congress looks at reauthorizing the current highway program, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21,) I believe it should do two things. First, it must give fast growing states such as Arizona a fairer share of highway dollars by reforming the formula used to allocate highway funding. Second, it should allow the states the flexibility to use their transportation dollars to not just build new roads, but to also fix congestion problems on existing ones.

Download the entire Why Vote for Lisa Atkins document.

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