Foreword: In Utah—when the new 14-mile Legacy Parkway north of Salt Lake City opened in late 2008, motorists saw their commute drop from an average of 44 minutes to 14 minutes.

In Maryland and Virginia—expansion of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge from 6 to 12 lanes to relieve a major Interstate system bottleneck is saving drivers and truckers 40 minutes a day.

Expanding the ability of the transportation system to meet the needs of the traveling public is critical to the health of our economy and the quality of life of our citizens. Meeting future needs will require a balanced approach, which preserves what has been built to date, improves system performance, and adds substantial capacity in highways, transit, freight rail and intercity passenger rail. Some advocacy groups, however, want to take the country down a different path. They want to limit new highway capacity, and shift resources away from highways to transit and intercity passenger rail. And they want to see this approach imposed on states from the national level.