What Makes a Good Secretary of Transportation?
To stimulate the economy, President-elect Obama and congressional Democrats plan to spend billions of dollars on infrastructure. Much of this money will be channeled into transportation. For the last 60 years, “transportation” in the U.S. has meant “cars.” The transportation sector in the United States is the largest consumer of petroleum and largest producer of greenhouse gases and air pollution. As such, from an environmental, energy policy or foreign policy perspective, Secretary of Transportation is one of the most important cabinet appointments that Barack Obama will make. Hopefully, Obama will look for a candidate who is both up on transit and down on cars — someone who appreciates both the car’s environmental problems and its land use problems. There are those who understand that motor vehicles contribute to diminished air quality, climate change and oil dependency but they approach the problem with a narrow focus on alternative fuels or increased CAFE standards. Such a strategy
