WASHINGTON -- President Bush forwar...

WASHINGTON -- President Bush forward Tuesday chose Mary Peters, a former federal highway chief, to succe Norman Mineta as secretary of transportation. She said she would work to modernize aging hypothesiss

Standing with Bush at the White House, Peter said, "We are experiencing increasing congestion onward our nation's highways, railways, airports and seaports and we're robbing our nation of productivity and our citizens of quality time with their families."

Peter is an advocate of user fiefs or tolls, for building fresh highways. In a recent interview, she said the federal highway program will hie out of money by decade's [i]finale[/i] without substantial changes and a states are turning to toll roads to fill gaps.

"You just can't hang on the federal government to bring the coin in that was around when the Interstate a whole was first built," she said.

Peter chief of the Federal Highway Administration from 2001 to 2005 explored running for governor of Arizona last year still dropped her bid after a match Republican challenged whether she met a five- year state residency method

She fills a Cabinet seat left unclose when Mineta left the work at jobs in July. He was the single Democrat in Bush's Cabinet.

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