Port Performance

U.S. Representatives Dan Newhouse and Oregon's Kurt Schrader are happy with the passage of the bipartisan H.R. 22, Fixing America's Surface Transportation or FAST, to reauthorize transportation and infrastructure programs. It includes the Port Performance Program.

NEWHOUSE: Which will require the Bureau of Transportation to collect and report Port statistics which then will be published in an annual report. It also establishes a working group to make recommendations to the Bureau of Transportation statistics to determine specific Port metrics and that working group will have at least 22 members making those final decisions.

Representative Newhouse talks about why that's important.

NEWHOUSE: It's a very important step for transparency of Port operations and this metric program will provide an objective baseline of economic data for port operations which will be a critical tool as we work to prevent the kind of economic effects that we had from port slowdowns that we experienced on the West Coast earlier this year.

He says that there has been a really positive response to the performance program.

NEWHOUSE: Actually all interest groups, unions, producers, shippers, the ports have all had good things to contribute to the conversation so I think we're in a really good place right now with the inclusion of the language I just described putting together this working group to come up with the metrics that people will agree give us the right information. I think that that gets us to where we need to be.

And that's Washington Ag Today. I'm Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.