33 1 motion or that of any party, enter an order which will 2 give effect to the provisions of this section. 3 4 (d) With respect to any function, power, or duty trans ferred by this Act and exercised hereafter, reference in any 5 other Federal law to any department or agency, officer or 6 office so transferred or functions of which are so transferred 7 shall be deemed to mean the Secretary. 9 SEC. 13. If any provision of this Act or the application 10 thereof to any person or circumstances is held invalid, the 11 remainder of this Act, and the application of such provision 12 to other persons or circumstances shall not be affected 13 thereby. 15 SEC. 14. The Secretary is directed to submit to the 16 Congress within two years from the effective date of this 17 Act, a codification of all laws that contain the powers, duties, 18 and functions transferred to and vested in the Secretary of the Department by this Act. 19 20 21 223 EFFECTIVE DATE SEC. 15. The President and the Secretary are authorized to nominate and appoint any of the officers provided for in 23 sections 3 and 5 of this Act, as provided in such sections, at 24 any time after the date of enactment of this Act. Such 34 1 officers shall be compensated from the date they first take 2 office, in accordance with sections 5 and 10 of this Act. 3 Such compensation and related expenses of their offices shall 4 be paid from funds available for the functions to be trans5 ferred to the Department pursuant to this Act. All other 6 provisions of this Act shall take effect ninety days after the 7 Secretary first takes office, or on such prior date after en8 actment of this Act as the President shall prescribe and 9 publish in the Federal Register. (The message of the President of the United States follows:) A PROPOSAL FOR A CABINET-LEVEL DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION CONSOLIDATING VARIOUS EXISTING TRANSPORTATION AGENCIES MARCH 2, 1966.-Referred to the Committee on the Whole House on the State of the Union and ordered to be printed. To the Congress of the United States: Two centuries ago the American Nation came into being. Thirteen sparsely populated colonies, strung out along the Atlantic seaboard for 1,300 miles, joined their separate wills in a common endeavor. Three bonds united them. There was the cultural bond of a single language. There was the moral bond of a thirst for liberty and democratic government. There was the physical bond of a few roads and rivers, by which the citizens of the colonies engaged in peaceful commerce. Two centuries later the language is the same. The thirst for liberty and democracy endures. The physical bond-that tenuous skein of rough trails and primitive roads has become a powerful network on which the prosperity and convenience of our society depend. In a nation that spans a continent, transportation is the web of THE GROWTH OF OUR TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM It is not necessary to look back to the 1760's to chronicle the astonishing growth of American transportation. Twenty years ago there were 31 million motor vehicles in the United States. Today there are 90 million. By 1975 there will be nearly 120 million. Twenty years ago there were 1.5 million miles of paved roads and streets in the United States. Today this figure has almost doubled. Twenty years ago there were 38,000 private and commercial aircraft. Today there are more than 97,000. Twenty years ago commercial airlines flew 209 million miles. Last year they flew 1 billion miles. Twenty-five years ago American transportation moved 619 billion ton-miles of cargo. In 1964, 1.5 trillion ton-miles were moved. The manufacturing of transportation equipment has kept pace. It has tripled since 1947. Last year $4.5 billion was spent for new transportation plant and equipment. Transportation is one of America's largest employers. There are737,000 railroad employees; 270,000 local and interurban workers; 230,000 in air transport; and almost a million men and women in motor transport and storage. Together with pipeline and water transportation employees, the total number of men and women who earn their livelihoods by moving people and goods is well over 21⁄2 million. The Federal Government supports or regulates almost every means of transportation. Last year alone, more than $5 billion in Federal funds were invested in transportation-in highway construction, in river and harbor development, in airway operation and airport construction, in maritime subsidies. The Government owns 1,500 of the Nation's 2,500 oceangoing cargo vessels. Our transportation system-the descendant of the horse-drawn coaches and sailing ships of colonial times-accounts for $1 in every $6 in the American economy. In 1965, that amounted to $120 billion-a sum greater than the gross national product of this Nation in 1940. SHORTCOMINGS OF OUR SYSTEM Vital as it is, mammoth and complex as it has become, the American transportation system is not good enough. It is not good enough when it offers nearly a mile of street or road. for every square mile of land-and yet provides no relief from timeconsuming, frustrating, and wasteful congestion. It is not good enough when it produces sleek and efficient jet aircraft-and yet cannot move passengers to and from airports in the time it takes those aircraft to fly hundreds of miles. It is not good enough when it builds superhighways for supercharged automobiles and yet cannot find a way to prevent 50,000 highway deaths this year. It is not good enough when public and private investors pour $15 million into a large, high-speed ship-only to watch it remain idle in port for days before it is loaded. It is not good enough when it lays out new freeways to serve new cities and suburbs and carelessly scars the irreplaceable countryside. It is not good enough when it adheres to custom for its own sakeand ignores opportunities to serve our people more economically and efficiently. It is not good enough if it responds to the needs of an earlier America and does not help us expand our trade and distribute the fruits of our land throughout the world. WHY WE HAVE FALLEN SHORT Our transportation system has not emerged from a single drawing board, on which the needs and capacities of our economy were all charted. It could not have done so, for it grew along with the country itself-now restlessly expanding, now consolidating, as opportunity grew bright or dim. Thus investment and service innovations responded to special needs. Research and development were sporadic, sometimes inconsistent, and largely oriented toward the promotion of a particular means of transportation. As a result, America today lacks a coordinated transportation system that permits travelers and goods to move conveniently and efficiently from one means of transportation to another, using the best characteristics of each. Both people and goods are compelled to conform to the system as it is, despite the inconvenience and expense of— aging and often obsolete transportation plant and equipment; networks chiefly designed to serve a rural society; services long outstripped by our growing economy and population, by changes in land use, by new concepts in industrial plant location, warehousing, and distribution; the failure to take full advantage of new technologies developed elsewhere in the economy; and programs and policies which impede private initiative and dull incentives for innovation. The result is waste-of human and economic resources and of the taxpayer's dollar. We have abided this waste too long. We must not permit it to continue. We have too much at stake in the quality and economy of our transportation system. If the growth of our transport industries merely keeps pace with our current national economic growth, the demand for transportation will more than double in the next 20 years. But even that is too conservative an estimate. Passenger transportation is growing much faster than our gross national productreflecting the desires of an affluent people with ever-increasing incomes. PRIVATE AND PUBLIC RESPONSIBILITY The United States is the only major nation in the world that relies primarily upon privately owned and operated transportation. That national policy has served us well. It must be continued. But private ownership has been made feasible only by the use of publicly granted authority and the investment of public resources |