Transportation in America is at a pivot point. With the upcoming authorization of the next federal surface transportation bill—the current bill expires in September 2009—we face a historic opportunity to fundamentally rethink how we plan, fund and build our transportation networks.

ULI’s new report, Transportation for a New Era: Growing More Sustainable Communities lays out recommendations for transportation policy reform.

Congress,the Obama Administration, and others are working diligently to forge a path forward, and many proposals for reform are on the table. The connections between land use, infrastructure, and sustainability are being discussed like never before.

To contribute to this conversation, the Urban Land Institute, through its National Transportation Policy Dialogue program, brought together leading real estate and transportation thinkers and practitioners to consider the links between real estate, development, and transportation. Several recommendations—intended to guide transportation policy and programs at the federal level—were identified:

• Create a national vision for transportation and infrastructure
• Support the metropolitan areas that drive US prosperity
• Recognize the role of land use in linking infrastructure, housing, and sustainability
• Foster and encourage more compact development
• Channel funding through the “three Bs”
• Use base formula funds to maintain the system
• Provide a bonus pool to create incentives for sustainable investment
• Create an Independent American Infrastructure Bank to invest in infrastructure

ULI is grateful for the generous support it received for the ULI National Transportation Policy Dialogue from the Rockefeller Foundation and ULI Trustee James Curtis.