Truck Driver Magazine polls its readers on the quality of roads state by state. Year after year, Pennsylvania ranks in the bottom 3 states. This has to stop. I love my state but not its roads. Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, New York, and New Jersey have better roads. Why? We need to learn from other states what we can do to improve!

I will work to initiate a study of our neighboring states' policies and methods for:

• Setting of road project priorities,
  
• Roadway engineering,
  
• Road construction and maintenance contracting,
  
• Construction oversight,
  
• Construction traffic management,
  
• Road construction and repair materials.

I support expanding, and improving the efficiency and cost effectiveness, of mass transit by:

• Expanding SEPTA rail lines all the way to Reading via Norristown and Pottstown.
• Developing circum-urban rail lines to "put the wheel rims on the spokes" of the commuter rail systems of the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh suburbs.
• Creating new rail lines connecting northeastern PA and the Lehigh Valley to North Jersey and New York City.
• Creating light rail lines such as those that have been so successful in New Jersey.
• Preserving and expanding suburban bus lines in a cost-effective way by using smaller busses that are more fuel efficient, cause less air pollution, and don’t run 90 percent empty all the time.
• Establishing local suburban shuttle bus routes connecting senior housing and apartment complexes to shopping centers and professional/medical office complexes.
• Working with existing and new transportation management and planning agencies to make mass transit more efficient, cost-effective, and popular.

I support most of Governor Rendell’s transportation initiative but I do not support leasing or selling the PA Turnpike. I am willing to consider the governor’s plan to put tolls on Interstate 80 in northern PA to raise funds for mass transit and bridges but it seems a bit unfair to the people who live or work in that area.

I support the establishment of dedicated funding sources for SEPTA and the other mass transit systems around the state. The SEPTA funding crisis we go through every two or three years must stop.

Such funding must comply with our state constitution. An amendment to our state constitution may be required to create separate taxing authorities for mass transit. Mass transit must have a dedicated funding source other than state and federal liquid fuel taxes. Gasoline and diesel tax revenues should be used strictly on roads.

I support dredging to deepen the shipping channel in the Delaware River.

I understand why New Jersey does not want to get dumped on with all the dredging spoils; at least half of all the dredging spoils have to be taken on our side of the river one way or another.