Growing traffic gridlock is driving up logistics costs for businesses, and the $230 billion annual economic toll of highway crashes being paid by American companies in the form of higher health care costs and lost productivity pose an immediate and long-term threat to U.S. global competitiveness, the head of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) told a crowd at a National Press Club event.

ARTBA President and CEO Pete Ruane joined U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue and Laborers’ International Union of North America President Terry O’Sullivan to announce the launch of the Americans for Transportation Mobility (ATM) coalition’s "FasterBetterSafer" campaign. Ruane serves as ATM vice chair.

The campaign will demonstrate to the presidential candidates and policymakers in Washington the groundswell of public support for repairing, rebuilding and revitalizing America’s aging transportation system.

Ruane commended Donohue and O’Sullivan for their leadership and commitment to helping make transportation infrastructure investment a national legislative priority of labor and American businesses.

He noted a recent comment from Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who detailed his country’s plan to invest $570 billion between now and 2015 to build new highways, railways and air runways and add massive new capacity to water ports.

Ruane also cited the massive strategic transportation investment programs already under way in China, India and the European Union that are designed to make them more competitive than the U.S. in world markets.

Ruane posed the question: “What happens when these countries have the modern transportation networks that increase their business productivity, lower their business costs even further, and open up new, efficient access to enormous consumer markets?”

“The state of America’s transportation network needs to be a much greater national priority for the Congress and the next president,” he said.

One of the “FasterBetterSafer” campaign’s most immediate priorities, Ruane said, would be making sure the federal Highway Trust Fund (HTF) is made solvent so all 50 states don’t have a 34% cut in their federal highway funding programs starting October 1. He pointed to bipartisan House and Senate proposals to replenish the HTF that could be acted on this week as part of a bill to extend funding for Federal Aviation Administration programs.