Transportation

A 30-Year Plan for U.S. Transportation Summed Up by One Word: Choice

With Beyond Traffic, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx pivots U.S. policy away from cars and toward multimodal options.
US DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx. REUTERS/Larry Downing

On Monday the U.S. Secretary of Transportation rode in a driverless car to a tech campus serviced by private bus transit in an area of the country targeted for high-speed rail. He fielded questions about pedestrian safety and delivery drones and gave answers about bicycle lanes and vertical development. To the extent that he discussed cars and roads, it was to remind the audience just how much worse traffic is going to get in the years to come.

Such was the clever scene for Anthony Foxx to unveil a public draft of Beyond Traffic—the DOT's much-hyped, 30-year vision of U.S. transportation policy that promises to nudge the country off its 20th-century, highway-first course.