The US Department of Transportation is a Federal Agency that normally flies under the radar of the Sunday news shows and the front page, but not lately. With airline disruptions, pipeline leaks, and the Ohio train derailment, the DOT has been front and center.
With all this attention on the agency regulating hazardous materials and steel drums, how many of us know how the agency was started? Here’s a brief history.
From its inception, the US government wrestled with its role in developing transportation Infrastructure and transportation policy.
- The law that established a cabinet-level Department of Transportation did not pass Congress until ninety-two years after the first such legislation had been introduced.
Lyndon Johnson called it “the most important transportation legislation of our lifetime…one of the essential building blocks in our preparation for the future….”
Passage of the Department of Transportation enabling act in 1966 fulfilled a dream at least as old as that of Thomas Jefferson’s Treasury secretary, Albert Gallatin. Gallatin recommended in 1808 that the federal government subsidize such internal improvements as the National Road.
Just before he left office in June 1965, Najeeb Halaby, administrator of the independent Federal Aviation Agency (as it was then called), proposed the idea of a cabinet-level Department of Transportation to Johnson administration planners.
On March 6, 1966, President Johnson sent Congress a bill to establish a Department.
- The new agency would manage transportation programs, resolve transportation problems, and develop national transportation policies and programs.
- The department would accomplish this mission under the leadership of a secretary, an undersecretary, and four staff assistant secretaries.
- The Department would include the Federal Aviation Agency, the Bureau of Public Roads, the Coast Guard, and the Panama Canal.
On April 1, 1967, the Department opened for business, celebrating the “Pageant of Transportation” five and a half months after Johnson had signed the enabling legislation. Alan S. Boyd, named by Johnson as its first secretary, guaranteed that the new department would “make transportation more efficient, more economical, more expeditious and more socially responsible.”
By April 1, this newest cabinet-level department was suddenly the fourth largest, with a blueprint of organization, an order providing for essential authorizations, and several leading officials on the job. It brought under one roof more than thirty transportation agencies and functions scattered throughout the government. Most had been with the Federal Aviation Agency, the Coast Guard, and the Bureau of Public Roads.
Why it matters: Now that you’ve read all of this, the next time the DOT comes up in Trivial Pursuit, you just might win!