House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica holds up a list of the 21 previous extensions of the aviation program.

The GOP-led House just approved a six-month extension of the transportation law. After about 45 minutes of debate, the chair called for a voice vote, and no one objected. In this way, a unanimous consent vote might be even easier to pass than a vote under “suspended rules” which require a two-thirds margin, because in this case, all members were not called back to the chamber to vote. The only people voting were the ones in the chamber at the time.

Of course, any member who was determined to oppose the bill could have made sure to be in the chamber. But if every member of the House had been called to vote on the measure, it would have been more likely to have at least one dissenter.

During the debate, members bickered over whether the FAA shutdown was the Democrats’ fault or the Republicans’ fault; whether the stimulus had enough money for infrastructure and whether it was spent well; whether it’s appropriate to cut infrastructure spending. But no one rose to object to a clean extension right now.

I would be remiss if I didn’t reprint, word for word, Oregon Democrat Peter DeFazio’s impassioned – and highly partisan – speech in favor of higher overall spending levels. In the past, he’s often argued for more spending specifically for transit, but it appears he’s altered his message to appeal to the highway people too. Note that he’s asking not just for funding levels higher than the House’s idea of a 30 percent cut, but higher even than this extension, which keeps spending at current levels.

Here’s a video of DeFazio’s speech is here; transcribed below are some highlights.

Unfortunately, at the current levels of investment, we’re not even keeping up with our mid-20th century surface transportation system. Just think, before the interstate highways, what a disconnected country this was! And guess what, we’re headed back there. We are not investing enough to maintain the Eisenhower legacy of the national highway system. We have 150,000 bridges that need replacement or repair; 40 percent of the pavement needs not just resurfacing but underlayment; $70 billion backlog on our aged transit systems. And that’s just to give us an updated and state-of-good-repair 20th-century transportation infrastructure. We need a 21st-century transportation infrastructure, which is going to require more investment.

And for the life of me, I don’t get it on that side of the aisle. You got this guy over there, the Republican leader, Cantor, [saying] “we might take the tax cuts from Obama, those return almost 80 cents on every dollar borrowed, but ugh, that other stuff! Spending money, that’s like stimulus! Building bridges, repairing highways, repairing and rebuilding transit systems, having a new 21st-century system for our planes to navigate more efficiently in the sky, with fewer delays and less fuel consumed: that is bad!” according to Eric Cantor.

But “oh the tax cuts, yeah we’re for tax cuts, we’ll give the people their money back and then they’ll take care of those problems.” We’ll pass the hat to rebuild the bridges and the transit systems. We’ll pass the hat to have a new aviation system for navigation.

Come on! Are we a great nation or not? Are we going to give up? Are we just going to keep pretending?

“Give the money back to the job creators!” I haven’t seen the “job creators” build a national highway system lately.

Eric Cantor's bold new compromise on infrastructure? Just Republican talking points. Photo: John Shinkle / Politico

Is he offering to increase spending levels over the starvation program being proposed by Republicans on the House Transportation Committee? No. Is he proposing to include performance measures, making sure that investments contribute to national transportation priorities? No. Is he baldly trying to eliminate bike/ped funding from the budget? You got it.

Cantor’s “compromise” is already a plank of the Transportation Committee’s plan. Cantor, and Committee Chair John Mica (R-FL) want to “eliminat[e] the requirement that states must set aside 10 percent of federal surface transportation funds for transportation museums, education, and preservation would allow states to devote these monies to high-priority infrastructure projects, without adding to the deficit.”

The pot of money he’s proposing to eliminate is called Transportation Enhancements, and the primary way the federal government supports active transportation. Republicans have been using the “10 percent” figure to drum up indignation over the “misuse” of transportation funds, but it’s important to note that Transportation Enhancements make up 10 percent of the surface transportation program, which is less than a quarter of the entire federal aid highway program. Enhancements actually make up about two percent of all federal highway aid.

That’s two percent for biking and walking, which together make up 12 percent of trips. Larry Ehl of Transportation Issues Daily predicted yesterday that bike/ped funding — even though it represents a tiny proportion of the total transportation tab — would be a stumbling block in extending the current transportation bill. Indeed, it’s a major point of contention in debates over the whole bill.

It’s ridiculous, given that the vast majority of the bill is still for highways. But here comes Eric Cantor, trotting out party-line gimmicks and convincing the media it’s a breakthrough.

Know what would be a real breakthrough, Mr. Cantor? When Congress comes back into session tomorrow, pass a clean extension of SAFETEA-LU without any strings attached or budget cuts required. Then work with the Senate to pass its bipartisan bill, which itself is the product of serious compromise with some of the most conservative members of the Republican party. The bill holds spending at current levels, plus inflation; it agrees with the House on a major expansion of the TIFIA loan program; it includes some performance measures; and it preserves dedicated funding for bike/ped. Now what’s so hard about that?

Grover Norquist wasn't content to just bring us to the brink of default. Photo by Gage Skidmore

A few weeks ago, Ben Smith at Politico mentioned in a short post that the gas tax was expiring September 30. If not extended, all but 4.3 cents of the 18.4-cent federal gas tax would disappear. Extending the gas tax has always been an easy, bipartisan move that happened more or less automatically. (Raising it to a reasonable level is another story entirely.)

When Smith first wrote about the gas tax expiration, it was the first some had heard of the issue. Others were monitoring it cautiously, just in case the Tea Party or other antitax crusaders decided to kick up a stir. But media reports confirm that those forces are preparing for battle.

House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica has proposed a bill based on the current gas tax, and his office has confirmed that he supports keeping it at 18.4 cents. But according to Platts news service, Republican members on key committees are “still deciding what to do about the federal gasoline tax.”

The demigod of the tax-haters, Grover Norquist, has decided to take up the banner, after enough news organizations asked if he was going to. “ATR will be urging people to look at ending the federal gas tax either cold turkey or phasing it out as soon as possible and allowing states to simply go raise their own taxes, rather than send the money to Washington and get it back with strings,” Norquist told Platts in an email.

Even other right-wing small-government types part company with Norquist there. Politico quotes Heritage Foundation and Reason Foundation experts as saying the gas tax “has to” be renewed and that a “cold turkey” end to the gas tax, as Norquist appears to be pondering, would be “chaotic.”

That seems to be fine by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) of “You lie!” fame. (Chaos is sort of his thing.) His local TV network, WJBF, quotes Wilson as questioning the federal gas tax. “Sadly, it has been used in large cities to subside a transportation system, the subway systems of New York, Chicago, San Francisco. We need to look at this carefully. And, I believe the money should be spent where it is raised and that is by the drivers of Georgia and South Carolina.”

Oregon Democrat Peter DeFazio doesn’t put it past the GOP to play politics with the most basic funding mechanism of our already-crumbling transportation system. “The Republicans will use the expiration of the program and the tax… for some sort of leverage or further blackmail,” said DeFazio, the top Democrat on the House Transportation Subcommittee on Highways and Transit. “If the ultra-right prevails, it has already been rumored they would end the gas tax, which would mean no more surface transportation trust fund.”

Gas tax receipts are up this year, according to the FHWA, generating about $22 billion so far in fiscal 2011, compared to a total $32 billion for all of FY 2010, says Platts. Gas taxes make up 90 percent of the balance of the Highway Trust Fund.

Meanwhile, Republican Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Tom Coburn, as well as Reps. Jeff Flake and James Lankford, have introduced separate bills to drastically alter the way gas taxes are collected and distributed. They would rather a system more to the liking of Rep. Wilson, with states keeping their own gas tax money and spending it as they see fit, rather than sending it to Washington and then getting it back.

“Donor” states complain when they don’t get back as much as they sent. Indeed, Wilson’s home state only got back 85 cents on the dollar in 2009. But that money wasn’t primarily going to New York and San Francisco. Alaska was raking in $3.70 for every dollar it shelled out. Montana and North Dakota also took back more than twice what they sent. (That information is from the Heritage Foundation, by the way [PDF].)

Of course, asking states to take on more of the burden for raising transportation revenues might assuage some small-government types, but asking a bunch of cash-strapped states to take this on in the middle of a recession is rough stuff. And it’ll just turn states into the next battleground for tax foes.

The same argument even Democrats use to justify not raising the gas tax is the same argument some will wield in defending the idea of repealing it altogether. Doug Heye, former spokesman for the Republican National Committee, told Politico that gas prices are “really affecting families. If you have to drive 20 miles to work every day, those are real costs.” He predicted that “there will be Republicans who will be resistant” to renewing the tax.

As CNNMoney said at the beginning of its story on the brewing fight, “You may want to consider investing in some good shock absorbers for your car this fall.” (Make that “knobby tires for your bike,” Streetsbloggers.) After all, if gas tax receipts fall, road maintenance – already miserably underfunded – will suffer even more.

San Francisco's Mint Plaza won an EPA Smart Growth award last year. Photo: SF Weekly

Smart Growth America opposes the cut, calling it “shortsighted” and saying it would be “detrimental to economic growth.” According to SGA:

The EPA’s smart growth programs assist communities on a diversity of projects, like creating a range of housing and transportation choices for residents and workers, growing local economies, protecting the environment and public health, and improving local infrastructure. For example, the rural communities of Driggs and Victor in Idaho received a Smart Growth Implementation Assistance award to help identify steps to redevelop their downtown economies. Hundreds of other communities across the country have received similar assistance under the smart growth program, but these economically vital efforts would come to an end under the House legislation.

Four Democrats sent a letter to their House colleagues yesterday asking them to oppose the cuts.

“The program, with its voluntary, market-driven approach, has directly assisted communities across the country, helping them increase economic development, protect the environment and public health, improve their infrastructure, and ensure efficient use of government services,” the letter stated. “The Smart Growth programs face such high demand that they are only able to help 9 percent of current applicants.”

The House has been voting on amendments for the past few days, essentially approving further cuts and rejecting anything that would restore funding.

All budget appropriations are highly speculative as Congress remains in the midst of furious debt ceiling negotiations, which will undoubtedly lead to budget cuts of some kind. In addition, the House almost never passes appropriations bills in time for the new fiscal year, which begins October 1. Sometimes, the best they can do is pass constant extensions of the previous year’s budget.

This year’s budget, passed in April, was a mish-mash of compromises and deals, not a strict interpretation of the appropriations committee’s work. It’s not like Congress has gotten any less fractious and dysfunctional since then, so we’ll just sit back and watch the carnage this time around.

Members of the U.S. High-Speed Rail Association on Capitol Hill with Rep. John Mica (center) on Tuesday. Photo courtesy of USHSR.

At a meeting with members of the U.S. High-Speed Rail Association Tuesday, House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica softened his stance somewhat on his plan to privatize the Northeast Corridor.

He acknowledged that the proposal is “controversial” and said that was why he framed it in a separate bill, apart from the rest of the reauthorization. He said he’s “heard the concerns” about the plan. A member of his staff said that the original plan was being portrayed as transferring Amtrak’s assets away from it, while leaving Amtrak holding the bag on the debt. “Which, when you put it that way, does sound sort of unfair,” the staffer said, indicating that issues like those are being worked out.

Andy Kunz, president and CEO of the U.S. High-Speed Rail Association, said he was glad to see Mica striking a more cooperative tone. “His initial bill and his initial hearing was a little bit ‘This is it; take it or leave it’,” Kunz said. “Now he’s recognizing there needs to be a bit more cooperative action.”

The committee isn’t easing up on everything, though. The staffer also stated that the committee was giving inter-city and passenger rail “a temporary rest” while it focuses exclusively on high-speed rail. “It does not serve the two programs well to be ‘smooshed,’ or put together and consolidated the way they have been and then have most of the projects that receive funding not be high-speed rail in any way, shape, or form.”

In response to the Congressional Research Service’s conclusion that the rail privatization scheme could run into constitutional problems, Mica’s staffer was dismissive, saying CRS merely warned that some courts could find it to be a violation, and they should be careful. (Sounds like a finding of unconstitutionality to me.)

As he often does, Mica spoke of his high-speed rail plans as a way to rescue high-speed rail from the Obama administration’s mismanagement and bungling. He often jokes about the “gift that keeps on giving”: the original $8 billion allocated for high-speed rail, some of which has been returned by gun-shy states and re-allocated.

Mica asserted that the involvement of the private sector is “non-negotiable” – which Amtrak itself would agree with, as it’s already seeking private sector partners. Mica gave Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman credit for being on board. “Boardman sees that you cannot [upgrade the NEC to high speeds] – at least in his lifetime – under the current proposal,” Mica said. He also said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is “willing to negotiate.” But he cast blame on Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), who he said are willing to give “none of the pie” to private investors.

Everyone is still trying to figure out exactly what the “pie” consists of, in any case, and Mica let the USHSR know that he had sent a letter to Joseph Boardman asking for an itemized inventory of all the assets on the NEC and their fair market value. Mica’s staffer says that “knowing what’s there and how leveraged it is and what are the encumbrances” would be a “building block of private sector financing participation.”

Kunz of the U.S. High-Speed Rail Association agreed that Amtrak “needs to show that they’re willing to bend a little bit,” if for no other reason than because “Amtrak needs funding from the federal government every year.”

In an interview with Streetsblog immediately after the Capitol Hill meetings, Kunz said, “Amtrak is just assuming they’re going to control everything and run everything, and that may not be in the interests of the whole country… it’s the country’s rail system. They need to do what’s best for the country, which may not always be what’s best for Amtrak.”

Mica is hoping that transit-oriented development will be a key source of private sector involvement, and, perhaps, revenue. He pointed to successes with TOD in Phoenix and said, “Can you imagine, in the Northeast Corridor, what you could do?”

Mica also said he’s been meeting with Democrats on the larger reauthorization package, and that so far they’ve gotten about 55 or 60 percent of the way through the bill. It’s been lamented that there haven’t been “Big Four” meetings in the House like there have been in the Senate, bringing together top members of both parties from the committee, but those meetings have now started in the various subcommittees. Mica started to say that all that consultation was the explanation for the delay in marking up the bill, but then he said, “We will continue in a slower motion fashion,” he said, “mainly because our leadership controls the floor time.”

He granted that the delay makes sense. “Given the intensity of the current drama on the budget deficit, they probably calculated right,” he said. “To get this to the floor before next Friday seems highly unlikely. But we have a commitment to do it as soon as we get back [from recess]. So you’ll see everything go from slow motion into fast motion as soon as we get back.”

The U.S. High-Speed Rail Association is trying to drum up interest in its new “Republicans 4 Rail” program. They’re trying to get members of Congress, governors, state and local officials, and even some rank-and-file members of the Republican party to sign on.

For now, the pickings are still somewhat slim. Mica counts, although many Democrats see his Northeast Corridor proposal as the “death knell” of passenger rail in the U.S. So does Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), one of few Republican senators representing urban or industrial states. In trying to brainstorm other Senate Republicans who might be interested in joining R4R, Kirk’s staffer and the USHSR came up with a short list indeed: maybe Rob Portman from Ohio; maybe Scott Brown of Massachusetts if he weren’t running for reelection.

The rail lobbyists met with Kirk’s office after the meeting with Mica, but Kirk himself was not able to show up. His staffer talked about the Lincoln Legacy Infrastructure Development Act, also designed to draw private investment to public infrastructure projects.

He also alluded to the House/Senate split around the duration of a reauthorization. He said the constituent calls he gets on the subject are about split, 50-50, on the issue of whether to lock in low spending levels for six years, a la the House bill, or go with a two-year bill at higher spending levels, but offering less ability to plan long-term projects.

Yes, many people spoke to the committee during its series of listening sessions -- but did the committee listen?

As Alice reported last week, Democrats on the committee called the GOP plan a “road to ruin” and “a cruel imitation of a proposal.” They say the low funding levels will cripple the transportation industry and undermine the economic recovery. Clearly, they are concerned that the plan promoted by their own committee contradicts their priorities and values.

But Mica says it’s just a “personal and partisan attack.”

“Nearly every proposal detailed in the preliminary outline was adopted with input gathered during bipartisan hearings and meetings across the country,” Mica said in a statement.

The listening tour the committee embarked upon was impressive, and they heard from scores of stakeholders. But many of those stakeholders pleaded for a higher gas tax or another mechanism to bring in additional revenues, in order to avoid exactly the scenario that Mica’s proposal creates: the starvation of the transportation sector.

Many also advocated for greater performance measures, to ensure that, if the pot is going to be smaller, at least the money is used to its maximum potential. But the House bill does away with several discretionary programs, preferring formulas, and delegates decision-making to the states, rather than set national goals and priorities.

Some stakeholders urged more for transit, Amtrak, walkability, and bicycle programs. Those calls also went unheeded – the bill eliminates any federally guaranteed minimum funding for bike-ped programs, cuts transit funding by 33 percent, and cuts Amtrak’s funding by a quarter.

So, yes, the committee held listening sessions – but did they listen? And are Republicans listening now, as Democrats assail the proposal and pledge to vote it down? Here’s what Mica has to say:

It is disappointing that some have taken such an unproductive approach to such an important matter, even before participating in preparing final draft language to present as a committee.

Even though there may be disagreement at this time, for the sake of our nation we must act in a positive manner to move this legislation forward as soon as possible.

But that’s the thing: the Democrats don’t want to move this legislation forward as soon as possible.

They want a reauthorization, but their vision is diametrically opposed to the one the Republicans laid out. They’re saying the committee, which for years was known as one of the most cooperative in the Congress, has suddenly been sharply divided along partisan lines, with the majority Republicans leaving the Democrats out in the cold on major decisions.

What Mica calls an “unproductive approach” can also be seen as simple dissent, with one party pushing back against what it sees as the excesses and errors of the other. Not to defend partisanship, here, but given the fact that groups from around the country have expressed alarm over Mica’s proposal, is it really so bad that they have representatives in Congress willing to fight for them?

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), chair of the Surface Transportation Subcommittee of the Commerce Committee and a member of the Committee on Environment and Public Works: “Repairing and improving infrastructure is a proven way to create jobs and reinvigorate the economy, yet Republicans want to slash funding, let our roads and bridges fall into a state of further disrepair and take more jobs away from workers. In New Jersey transportation is the lifeblood of our economy and we cannot afford to be stuck in more traffic or let our aging infrastructure degrade any further. I will fight this plan and work in the Senate for a stronger investment so that New Jersey and states across the country can use transportation projects to create jobs, ease commutes, boost the economy and modernize our infrastructure.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) (via Twitter): “Rep. Mica plan to cut infrastructure is job-killing, future-suffocating, pessimistic vision of US as ‘can’t do’ nation.”

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO: “It is astonishing and unconscionable that the House Republican leadership would push a surface transportation re-authorization bill that would gut current infrastructure investment by a third and obliterate over half a million jobs in the next year alone… It defies imagination that the Republican leadership and Chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee would turn their backs on the needs of our country and pretend it is good government.”

Janet Kavinoky, executive director of transportation and infrastructure for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: “It is clear the Committee has been constrained by the House-passed budget as the investment levels are unacceptable. Cuts will destroy – rather than support — existing jobs and will not enable creation of the additional jobs needed to put the 16.3% of unemployed workers in the construction industry back to work.”

Barbara McCann, executive director of the National Complete Streets Coalition: “Representative Mica’s proposal ignores the millions of Americans who are now using the nation’s highways – by foot, bicycle and bus. By failing to include a complete streets provision, the bill would allow states to continue to build multi-lane roads through communities where pedestrians are left to tramp through the grass, bus riders are forced to run across dangerous intersections, and bicycle riders have nowhere to go. In addition, the proposal would eliminate the very modest dedicated funding for bicycling and walking, claiming these are ‘non-highway’ or ‘non-transportation’ activities. In fact, bicycling and walking make up 12 percent of the nation’s trips. Add in those getting on and off public transportation, and it turns out a good portion of the nation’s so-called ‘highway’ travel is make up of people who are not in private automobiles. Unfortunately, safety statistics bear this out: 67 percent of all pedestrian fatalities in the last ten years took place on federal-aid roads.”

Larry Hanley, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union: “Slashing federal transportation spending by a third will cause transit systems to shift what little local operations funding they have to rehabilitate aging vehicles and equipment, triggering the elimination of essential bus routes across the country… In addition, the Mica cuts will cause cash-strapped transit systems to further put off new equipment purchases and deferred maintenance, causing significant safety issues. Heavy duty large buses, which can be replaced every 12 years, are already running 14-16 years. Thirty-five percent of all rail assets of the nation’s seven largest rail transit agencies are already in subpar condition. The Mica bill will push those numbers much higher, to dangerous levels.”

John Robert Smith, president and CEO of Reconnecting America: “As a former elected official myself, I certainly understand the challenges [Mica] faces in moving this legislation forward during tough financial times. But these are exactly the times in which we must invest in our infrastructure – it is the path we will travel to job creation. A 30% cut in the federal investment in public transportation, roads, and bridges is in direct contradiction to the findings of numerous studies that our infrastructure is in dire need of repair and rehabilitation… The Federal Transit Administration estimates that nearly $80 billion is needed to bring [our public transportation] systems into a state of good repair. Yet, under this proposal they will only fall further behind.”

Emil Frankel, director of the National Transportation Policy Center at the Bipartisan Policy Center: “While NTPP has consistently recognized the need for greater investment in the nation’s transportation infrastructure, scarce resources are also a reality in the current fiscal environment, and we have to do better with the resources that we have. Thus, whether the new surface transportation bill is to be a full six years in length or shorter, as some have suggested, it should contain significant and necessary reforms, in order to insure that we are making wise investments with constrained resources… To that end, it is important that the new bill articulate a clear set of national goals for surface transportation policy.”

Joshua Schank, president and CEO of the Eno Transportation Foundation: “This proposal does not articulate a clear set of national goals for surface transportation policy. These goals should be clearly articulated in the full bill when it is released, as this is the most essential thing for the next transportation bill to do. The proposal also fails to emphasize preservation in any specific way. With limited resources available at all levels of government, preservation of existing essential transportation assets should be a priority.”

William Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association: “With high gas prices and a slow economy, now is not the time to implement cuts of more than 30 percent in public transportation funding. This lack of investment in the nation’s public transportation infrastructure will have a chilling effect on our country’s ability to create jobs and provide access to jobs necessary to move the economy forward. One dollar invested in our public transportation infrastructure generates four dollars in economic return. This proposal would severely underfund critical elements of the federal transit program. The funding will not permit public transit agencies to address the costs of getting the existing systems to a state of good repair, which the U.S. DOT has estimated as a one-time cost of $78 billion, let alone meet the growing demand for public transportation services in the United States. It will severely curtail the purchase of new buses and trains, reduce critical maintenance and safety programs, and could cut operating funds for transit systems in small communities and rural areas.”

Here are some early reactions.

Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), chair of the Senate Banking subcommittee with jurisdiction over public transportation: “It used to be that Republicans understood that transportation investment was necessary to spur economic growth and create jobs. Now, I guess they think if we give the rich enough tax breaks they will get off the golf course, get in a bulldozer, and start building roads.”

Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD), chair of the full Senate Banking Committee: “Transit systems are one of the most efficient and reliable forms of transportation… Proposals to cut public transportation funding, as contemplated in the House, won’t just make it harder for Americans to get to a job interview or the grocery store; cuts will also slow job growth at a time when we need it most. Construction workers, mechanics, employees of bus manufacturers and rail car suppliers, and many other hard-working Americans will lose their jobs if these cuts occur.”

Caron Whitaker, campaign director of America Bikes: “The Mica bill is short-sighted; it focuses on cuts rather than return on investment. The bicycling industry supports over a million jobs and brings in over $17 billion in federal, state, and local taxes. That’s a great return for the $700 million federal investment in biking and walking facilities.”

James Corless, director of Transportation for America: “Chairman Mica’s proposal to give states broader latitude needs strong provisions for accountability on national goals, such as economic prosperity, energy independence, equal access to opportunity and environmental stewardship. However, this emphasis on the state level cannot come at the expense of the places that are feeling the brunt of our inadequate investments to this point: local communities in both urban and rural locales. We are particularly concerned at the proposal to eliminate dedicated funding that helps provide more safe options for walking and biking. While Chairman Mica indicated an intent to preserve the historic share of 20 percent for transit, the overall effect is a devastating cut that leaves us well short of the amounted required to meet rising demand for transit service, especially in this time of severe fiscal constraints.”

Deron Lovaas, federal transportation policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council: “Rep. Mica’s bill would take the next exit ramp off the superhighway to a smarter, 21st century transportation system. This is no time to slam the foot of Big Government on the brakes. Instead, we need to go full speed ahead with targeted investments that prepare us for the rest of this century, and beyond.’’

Marcia Hale, president of Building America’s Future: “We appreciate many of the proposed policy reforms that were announced today but we are disappointed by the funding level. We applaud the fact that Chairman Mica recognizes states and cities want certainty when it comes to long-term transportation funding but this proposal shows a significant cut from current funding levels.”

John Horsley, executive director of AASHTO: “Chairman Mica’s bill is the first step in the process to pass a new long-term surface transportation bill that is desperately needed to maintain our national transportation system. This proposed legislation features many reforms that state departments of transportation support including: consolidation of federal transportation programs resulting in greater focus on our core mission; strategies that will accelerate project delivery so states can deliver critical transportation projects faster; tools to leverage transportation funds so states can generate more value from public infrastructure investments; and distribution of nearly all federal highway funding by formula to state DOTs. States will work with Congress to assure that each state receives an equitable share of funding.”

Transportation Committee Democrats pulled no punches at a press conference they held immediately after Mica’s rollout event. We’ll bring you more on what the Democrats said in just a bit.

While Streetsblog couldn’t be at every hearing, some of our dedicated Network bloggers were there to document discussions on state and regional transportation priorities, as expressed to the lawmakers.

Members of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure take comments from leaders in Indianapolis. Photo: Curt Ailes, Urban Indy

Curt Ailes at Urban Indy caught the discussion from Indianapolis on Saturday, and was even able to join a group of citizens that addressed the Congressmen, speaking on behalf of the need for federal support of transit.

Ailes said he was impressed with comments made by John Mica (R-FL), who is Chair of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure:

Mr. Mica was the most inspiring Republican to speak when he talked about not expanding freeway rights of way for expansion projects. He cited a project in Florida that took the center safety lanes and converted them to general traffic lanes and noticed a 25% gain in capacity with no noticeable rise in accidents. He also pointed out at one point that he comes from business and has done the math on mass transit. This is why he supports spending on it.

But as the meeting continued, Ailes found himself disappointed in the decidedly car-centric state panel, which stood in contrast to members of the public, whose comments focused on livability, transit and other forms of alternative transportation:

It became apparent that all these gentlemen chosen to testify were connected with “road interests.” A trucking lobbyist spoke. A road builder spoke. A couple of engineers involved with the I-69 project in SW Indiana also attended. Frankly, the only non-road official was our Mayor Greg Ballard who ironically kicked off his turn to speak by promoting the biking and walking programs that he has pushed over the past few years here in Indianapolis.

The conversation turned pretty dark when Todd Rokita (R-IN) stated that he thought bike and pedestrian projects should not be funded by federal tax dollars.

Ailes cautioned against giving the state greater control over spending, given its regressive priorities as evidenced by the direction of the panel discussion.

On Sunday, Congressmen reconvened in West Chicago and both the Active Transportation Alliance and the Metropolitan Planning Council were there for the action. Like meetings in Columbus and Indianapolis, however, the Active Transportation Alliance reported that the hearing was heavily focused on the usual suspects: roads and airports, though some significant attention was given to rail as well.

While these projects are important, we hope that the national platform will include ways to reward and support smart local land use planning that is more sustainable and includes opportunities for active transportation.

The Active Transportation Alliance said they would be submitting suggestions to the committee which will emphasize the need for bike and pedestrian programs, Safe Routes to School, Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality funding and Transportation Enhancement Programs — an important source of funding for trails.

Rep. Mica invited not only those the panelists but anyone from the general public to make suggestions for the upcoming bill, which he promised will be under discussion when Congress reconvenes.

Also submitting recommendations from Chicagoland was Peter Skosey of the region’s Metropolitan Planning Council. Skosey echoed comments made by a number of panelists throughout the hearings about the lack of strategic investment on the part of state transportation programs. He suggested innovative solutions like the merit-based programs put forward by the Obama Administration:

Today, we spend transportation dollars based on arbitrary formulas divided into isolated silos that fragment road, highway, transit, rail, bike, and pedestrian projects. Instead, we should be making targeted investments that advance coordinated regional goals and a strong national vision that outlines clear priorities for our transportation system. Precisely because there is a limited supply of federal dollars, we must evaluate potential investments based on their ability to reduce hours spent in traffic, curb emissions, and connect affordable homes and jobs, similar to the federal TIGER program.

Transportation Committee field hearings continue today in California.

Three years after the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis killed 13 people, Congress still isn't treating infrastructure investment as an urgent matter. Photo: AP

The lame duck session, which begins Monday, has a long agenda. On the list of have-to’s:

• Coming to some agreement about extending the Bush tax cuts, which expire December 31.
• Passing a continuing resolution, basically a way of not actually passing a budget but avoiding a government shutdown.
• Fixing the Medicare physician payments, which are set to drop at the end of the year.
• Extending unemployment benefits, which are also due to expire (though Republicans are insisting on spending cuts before they’ll approve this, so it could be downgraded from a “have-to” to a “really-should”).

Don’t see the President’s $50 billion infrastructure down payment on there? Don’t expect to. And that continuing resolution means that Congress can get out of passing the FY 2011 appropriations bill for Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies. The bill passed in the House over the summer and was sent to the Senate. In general, no real spending measures will likely get voted on right now.

Aside from finding some stalling mechanism to deal with the four items above, neither party has the stomach for big policy debates right now. The Democrats are demoralized and just want to get out of there as quickly as possible. The Republicans would rather have these fights after January 3, when they have 60 more people on their side of the aisle.

Besides, they’re going to be busy. In addition to saving two million people’s unemployment benefits (a “maybe” for the GOP) and saving tax cuts for the richest two percent (a definite “yes” for the GOP), the House is also holding new member orientations, and the parties will hold leadership elections.

So items like infrastructure and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell have fallen off the agenda. Will the Senate take up the nuclear treaty with Russia? That would be nice, wouldn’t it? To reduce the likelihood of nuclear annihilation and whatnot? Republicans are delaying that too.

Florida GOP representative John Mica supported a long-term transportation bill in 2009, but quickly came out against the President's infrastructure plan this week. Photo: PBS/Blueprint America

While that may look like a lot of road spending compared to rail, transportation reformers see cause for optimism in the use of the word “rebuild” — which implies that the emphasis will be on fixing existing roads instead of constructing sprawl-inducing new highways. The outline also calls for “significant new funding” for the creation of new transit projects, and for ramping up investment in “safety, environmental sustainability, economic competitiveness, and livability.” Those criteria have all been hallmarks of the US DOT’s TIGER program, which distributes competitive grants to local transportation agencies from what has been a relatively small pot of money.

Congress typically authorizes a major transportation spending bill every six years, but political gridlock over the raising the gas tax or securing other funding streams has stalled the reauthorization of the bill since it expired in 2009. In the interim, lawmakers have passed a series of stopgap spending measures to keep the transportation system functioning, even as Jim Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, has lobbied hard for Congress to take up the full bill.

Monday’s proposal represents the first serious effort from the President to tackle America’s transportation policy inertia, which is preventing any significant progress from the highway-oriented status quo. Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, are undoubtedly eager to pass a bill that will show voters they’re doing as much as possible to address high levels of unemployment, which are making a Republican rout of the mid-term elections look increasingly likely.

Predictably, the GOP does not look willing to lend a hand. Republicans have already lined up against Obama’s proposal, and another protracted and nasty fight over a major White House initiative looks likely. Immediately after the announcement, House Minority Leader John Boehner released a statement opposing the plan, and on Tuesday he released another one calling the plan an “exercise in futility.”

Meanwhile, House GOP Whip Eric Cantor called the White House effort “another play called from the same failed Keynesian playbook.”

For a sign of how lockstep the opposition has quickly become, the real bellwether is John Mica, an influential Florida Republican who has supported infrastructure spending in the past. Mica has also heaped scorn on the President’s plan. “I don’t know what planet these people have been living on for the last 18 months,” he told The Hill. “They hijacked the $862 billion so-called stimulus, leaving less than 7 percent in the bill for infrastructure, and they failed to ensure that even this small percentage of funds would be spent expeditiously.”

The contorted argument seems to be that because the stimulus bill didn’t devote enough spending to transportation, or get it out the door fast enough, a bill devoted entirely to transportation spending and focused on a quick jolt of $50 billion doesn’t deserve support.

In the likely event that Republicans take control of the House in the mid-terms, Mica is the GOP representative who would replace Oberstar as chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Containers at the Port of Oakland. Photo: NOAA

The freight sector is lumbering under inefficient and outdated systems that cause pollution, public health problems, safety hazards, and delivery delays. There’s never been a coordinated national approach to solving these problems. And with no deliberate strategy, the default approach is often to build more highways.

As Stephen Davis of Transportation for America writes:

If a port is congested or wants to expand, there’s little available federal money to spend directly on rail or any other mode. Your choices are highways or highways. When a state or port does spend to improve operations, there is no accountability to make sure they’re actually reducing port/freight congestion, moving freight faster, or reducing air pollution in surrounding communities.

Enter the FREIGHT Act. (That’s the Focusing Resources, Economic Investment and Guidance to Help Transportation Act of 2010, with true Capitol Hill acronym panache.) The FREIGHT Act was introduced in the Senate toward the end of July and in the House a week later.

The bill focuses on areas known as "connectors," said Kathryn Phillips of the Environmental Defense Fund. “All the literature and studies say it’s the connector areas, the hubs, where you have the most congestion and environmental impacts.” The bill calls for troubleshooting at these bottlenecks, where products are transferred “from boat to truck to another truck to rail” and everything gets bogged down. Trucks get stuck in traffic; trains sit on the tracks; ships idle at port.

Communities near international ports pay the price. In Riverside, California, traffic gets tied up at 26 at-grade rail crossings 128 times a day when trains pass. Add to that the noise and pollution nearby neighborhoods must contend with.

“We don’t just want to pay for asthma filters for schools,” said Isaac Kos-Read of the Port of Los Angeles. “We want to fix the emissions problem from the ground up.”

Meanwhile, the bridges near the Port of LA are in alarming condition. The Schuyler Heim Bridge is expected to fail in the next major earthquake. The Gerald Desmond Bridge -- which carries 15-25 percent of all cargo containers coming into country, according to Kos-Read -- wears a “diaper” to catch chunks of falling concrete.

The Port of Oakland is struggling with antiquated rail lines over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, said port spokesperson Matt Davis. “Some of the tunnel clearances are not high enough to accept double-stacked containers,” he said. State assistance to fix the problem didn’t come through. Davis is convinced a national approach is needed to address problems like these.

“We’ve seen previous projects of national and regional significance end up in the earmark process, and what you get is some random highway in Ohio,” said Davis. “It’s a hopscotch approach, not looking at it as one coordinated freight corridor.”

Kos-Read agrees. He added that Canada is giving the U.S. an added incentive to pull together to improve the freight sector -- or else “Canada is going to eat our lunch.” Canada has articulated a national freight plan -- and it's marketing itself to Asia as the gateway to “North America’s economic heartland.”

The FREIGHT Act would mandate the creation of a National Freight Transportation Strategic Plan, as well as a permanent Office of Freight Planning and Development within the U.S. Department of Transportation. It would also start a grant program to focus funds where they’re most needed.

The legislation seeks not just to improve efficiency, but also to reduce “air, water, and noise pollution and impacts on ecosystems and communities.” It sets goals for improved outcomes, like improving travel time reliability, cutting 40 percent of carbon emissions, and reducing freight transportation-related fatalities by 10 percent.

How those outcomes are achieved will be up to the new office and the strategic planners to figure out. It stands to reason that some trucking will be replaced with rail, or short-sea shipping, but none of that is prescribed in the bill.

Don’t expect this legislation to follow the normal process of How-a-Bill-Becomes-a-Law. Its introduction in the House is, in part, a product of the slow pace of the massive transportation re-authorization bill, which seems to be proceeding on a glacial time scale. While it stalls, lawmakers are picking off pieces of it to work on.

But Transportation Committee Chair Jim Oberstar (D-MN) is “not fond of doing things piecemeal,” according to committee staffer Jim Berard. “He feels the authorization bill should be a comprehensive approach to surface transportation issues.” So the FREIGHT Act, in the House, is likely to be folded into the larger transportation legislation, and not passed as a stand-alone bill.

It works a little differently in the Senate. The Commerce Committee will take up the FREIGHT Act, while the Environment and Public Works Committee takes up the highways portion of the re-authorization, and other committees bite off their pieces of the transportation pie. Those various committee measures will then form the Senate’s transportation proposal.

However it gets done, port operators, environmental justice advocates, and supporters of transportation reform agree that it needs to get done.

Congressmen
Oberstar and Blumenauer, here speaking together at the 2007 Bike
Summit, were on opposite sides of a dispute about increased funding for
livability programs yesterday. Photo: Bike Portland

The
House of Representatives passed its 2011 appropriations bill for
Transportation and Housing and Urban Development yesterday,
significantly increasing the amount going to both highways and transit
while decreasing spending overall. A fight over $200 million in funds
for the Obama Administration’s new livability initiatives, however,
showed that substantive changes in federal transportation policy will
remain difficult to achieve until Congress tackles the long-term
transportation reauthorization bill. 

First, a refresher on the difference between authorizations and
appropriations. Roughly speaking, authorizations set policy while
appropriations spend money based on those policies. Congress passes a
transportation appropriations bill, like the House did yesterday, every
year, while the transportation authorization is renewed less frequently.
The most recent authorization, SAFETEA-LU, passed in 2005 and was set to expire in 2009. It has been temporarily extended since then while Congress dithers over a new bill. 

According to The Hill,
the House’s $67.4 billion appropriations bill reduces spending overall
by $500 million from last year, and is $1.3 billion less than what the
Obama administration requested. Because major priorities are mainly set
in the federal transportation bill, the appropriations bill rarely
includes large shifts in policy.

On the biggest ticket transportation items, spending increased in
this appropriation. The $45.2 billion set for highways is $4.1 billion
more than last year’s bill provided for, according to The Hill, and $3.9
billion more than the administration asked for. Similarly the $11.3
billion in transit spending would be $500 million more than last year
and $575 million more than requested.

One squabble that broke out pitted some of Congress’s
most prominent proponents of sustainable transportation against each
other and ended with $200 million less for
livability initiatives — money that would have been used to help states
coordinate transportation, land use, and conservation policy. That
funding was proposed by Transportation
Secretary Ray LaHood and Portland Congressman Earl Blumenauer. Fighting
fiercely against it were Congressmen Peter DeFazio and James Oberstar.
As chronicled by the League of American Bicyclists’ Andy Clarke, this wasn’t a fight about substance — all four have been champions for livability, overall — but about process and turf.

Oberstar
chairs the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, while
DeFazio chairs its Highways and Transit Subcommittee. That makes them
authorizers, in charge of writing policy. While the line between
authorizing and appropriating can be fuzzy, DeFazio and
Oberstar don’t want federal transportation policy to be written through
the appropriations process, so they were willing to kill the livability
funding, even if they may have supported it on the merits, in order to prevent a
precedent from being set.

DeFazio’s amendment to strip the
$200 million from the appropriations bill passed, suggesting that even
relatively inexpensive changes to federal transportation policy will
have to wait for the next reauthorization bill.

Other attempts to change established policy by slashing funding were denied.
Congressman Paul Broun, a Georgia Republican, unsuccessfully tried to
forbid any funding at all to go to bike paths, according to Clarke. An amendment from GOP rep Michelle Bachmann to eliminate Amtrak also went nowhere.

Four junior Democrats, Gary Peters, Jim Himes, Peter Welch, and
John Adler, prepared an amendment to cut the bill by over $1 billion –
including a chunk of funding for high-speed rail — but ultimately did
not put it forward after a sustained push by the House leadership made
its passage unlikely, according to Politico. A similar set of spending cuts proposed by Iowa Republican Tom Latham failed by 30 votes.

Federal Transit Administration (FTA) chief Peter Rogoff today mounted a defense of the White House's transit safety plan, assuring some skeptical members of Congress that he does not want to "replicate" inter-city rail safety rules that have taken flak for impeding the development of viable U.S. train networks.

As of last year, D.C.'s Metro had less than one full-time employee working on its safety panel. (Photo: VisitingDC.com)

"[W]e engaged in at least helping the transit industry develop voluntary [safety] standards," Rogoff told the House oversight committee. "As a federal agency, I feel it's our obligation to identify what the safe practices [are]. The only way we can ensure there will be safe practices is to have mandatory standards."

The Obama administration's transit safety proposal [PDF] would seek to impose such mandatory standards for transit safety, requiring local agencies to meet a minimum threshold of compliance or be subject to federal monitoring. The president's budget for fiscal year 2011 would set aside about $30 million to help transit agencies pay for any safety upgrades required by the new federal oversight.

"It is not our goal to replicate the voluminous [Federal Rail Administration] rulebook for transit systems," Rogoff told lawmakers. The FRA's slate of safety standards have required Amtrak's Acela trains to stop short of maximum speeds and Caltrain commuter rail to delay introduction of lighter-weight cars, coming under fire from rail advocates.

But lawmakers' openness to debating the White House safety plan does not mean the FTA can count on passage this year. Leaders of the House transportation committee have indicated they do not aim to take up the transit safety bill as a free-standing measure, instead leaving the issue to the next six-year federal infrastructure bill -- which may not come to a final vote until next spring at the earliest.

The transport panel's senior Republican, Rep. John Mica (FL), is opposed to creating a new federal system to monitor safety but said at today's hearing -- Mica also sits on the oversight committee -- that "I don't mind spending our resources on safety." Rather than ask transit agencies to submit their safety work for FTA approval, Mica said, the Obama administration should spend more money on upgrading older, decaying transit infrastructure.

The challenge of ensuring passenger safety during an era of transit budget crises is particularly acute at D.C.'s Metro, which lacks a dedicated source of revenue other than contributions from its three participating governments (D.C., Virginia, and Maryland) and Congress. Transit officials in the capital are mulling a package of fare hikes and service cuts, as well as a possible gas tax hike, to close a $180 million-plus budget gap for next year.

"I think the safety problems we are seeing now at Metro are symptomatic of a larger problem, particularly on the rail system: years of deferred maintenance and management problems are taking their toll," Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY), chairman of the oversight committee, said in his opening statement.

Yet only a few lawmakers questioned Rogoff on the federal government's role in ensuring transit agencies would receive more money for maintenance of their existing systems. Among them was Rep. Gerry Connolly (D), whose Northern Virginia constituents are frequent users of the D.C. Metro.

"The federal government has to be at the table with operational dollars" if Congress agrees to impose new safety standards, he said, adding that "long before Mr. Rogoff [joined the FTA], the federal government has been retreating from its responsibilities to transit," particularly Metro.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) painted a bleak picture, asking Rogoff to outline the likely result if Congress cannot sign off on the safety proposal.

"It seems like the right hand doesn't know what the head or the left hand is doing," he said.

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) was heard quipping "tough s—t" as he began blocking an extension of transportation law. (Photo: CNN)

Sen.
Susan Collins (R-ME) took to the floor of Congress’ upper chamber this
morning to seek Bunning’s consent for a restoration of federal
transport law and a one-month extension of unemployment benefits, but
the cantankerous Kentuckian would not yield — even to a fellow
Republican.

The shutdown of federal reimbursement for road, bridge,
bike-ped, and transit spending is costing states and localities $183
million per day, according to House transportation committee estimates.

Bunning’s
action has the effect of a classic filibuster, but his official gambit
has been ongoing objection to a vote on extending infrastructure,
unemployment, and several other programs. That one-month stopgap would
cost $10 billion, which Bunning wants to see paid for by taking money
from the White House’s stimulus law.

Yet he has refused
Senate leaders’ offer to vote on his proposal to use stimulus money,
acknowledging that it lacks the votes to pass. In the meantime,
thousands more U.S. DOT employees, including Federal Transit
Administration workers, are facing forced furloughs today.

"The
timing could not be worse for a lot of
reasons," Nevada state DOT director Susan Martinovich said in a
statement released by the American Association of State Highway and
Transportation Officials (AASHTO). "States need every dollar
they can get to improve our aging roads and bridges and put people to
work. … We should be awarding contracts for
spring construction right now, but instead many states are forced to
delay, and in some cases cancel, projects."

Democrats openly
branded Bunning as the face of Senate GOP obstructionism, with several
majority-party lawmakers sending him direct cease-and-desist appeals.

"This
is completely
unacceptable," Senate environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer
(D-CA) wrote in a letter to Bunning. "We can’t have an economic
recovery if people can’t make ends meet and if transportation projects
grind to a halt."

But when Senate Democrats released
a new $150 billion jobs plan yesterday that would retroactively extend
unemployment benefits until 2011, an extension of federal
transportation funding was not part of the package.

The reason for the omission: a re-up of the 2005 transportation law until the end of the year is part of the $15 billion Senate jobs bill
that is still awaiting action in the House, where fiscally hawkish Blue
Dogs and members of the Congressional Black Caucus remain reluctant to
sign off on the legislation.

If the House can muster up the
votes to pass the $15 billion Senate measure this week, the U.S. DOT
would be able to end its furloughs and spending freezes without the
need for Bunning to relent.

Rep. James Clyburn (SC),
the House Democrats’ No. 3 leader, told reporters yesterday that "no
one’s got any problem with … what the [Senate jobs] bill is intended
to do." House Democrats are hesitant to endorse the Senate jobs bill,
Clyburn said, because of its greater emphasis on tax cuts than on
"direct investments." Still, he predicted that House-side questions
about the jobs bill could be resolved by today or tomorrow.

In the interim, however, uncertainty reigns for federal transportation rules.

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) (Photo: CNN)

But
one GOP senator, the notoriously irascible Jim Bunning (KY), objected
to the 30-day extension, which also would ensure continued payment of
federal unemployment benefits. When Democrats pleaded with Bunning to
drop his one-man filibuster effort, Politico heard the retiring Kentuckian offer a terse response: "Tough s–t."

If
an extension cannot be passed before the 2005 transportation law
officially expires at midnight on Sunday, the result would be a
quasi-shutdown of operations at U.S. DOT. A source at the agency told
Streetsblog Capitol Hill that all employees of the Federal Highway
Administration, save for its chief, would be sent home and states would
stop getting reimbursed for their spending on all road projects.

The
Federal Transit Administration would see a freeze of its own, the U.S.
DOT source said, with contract authority to fund local projects sitting
in limbo until Congress acts. Perhaps the most untimely delay would
occur at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA),
where regulators are ramping up their oversight efforts after the Toyota recall debacle.

"[I]t is simply unfair for one senator
to attempt to hold the Senate hostage,” Dick Durbin (D-IL), the upper chamber’s No. 2 leader, said last night in a statement.

Where does that leave Democrats? Working furiously to break through Bunning’s roadblock, even as more House members join transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) in raising objections to the Senate jobs bill that would keep existing federal programs intact until 2011.

Oberstar and about two dozen members of his panel take issue with the Senate jobs bill’s treatment of $932 million in grants
that would be spent this year as part of a 10-month extension of
existing transport law. Giving that money to states using the template
of 2009 earmarks — as the Senate jobs bill proposes — would direct
the majority of the money to four states, leaving 22 states with
nothing.

A letter sent earlier this week by 23 members of the
transportation committee asks for the grant money to be given out on a
"discretionary, competitive" basis. However, Oberstar spokesman Jim
Berard said in an interview that the chairman has offered a compromise
that would allocate the funding based on existing federal
transportation formulas.

Berard said that Oberstar would
prefer to see the $932 million allocated competitively to projects
rather than distributed by formula. But he acknowledged the reasoning
behind the Senate’s argument that applying for the funding would not
facilitate quick job creation. "If we’re not going to make it
competitive," Berard said, "at least let’s make it equitable."

At
the moment, the House appears unlikely to act on the jobs legislation
until at least next week, giving Oberstar and his panel more time to
reach agreement with senators — and heightening the drama of Bunning’s
Senate floor show.

House transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) (Photo: Capitol Chatter)

The bill’s future in the House appears bright, as Democrats in that chamber point to
the urgent need to pass legislation showing their commitment to
stemming the rising tide of unemployment. But members of the House
transportation committee, including chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN),
remain concerned about a little-discussed provision in the Senate jobs
bill that they consider an unfairly biased distribution of
infrastructure funding.

The Senate language in question would extend two grant programs
created by the 2005 federal transport law, often referred to by its
acronym of SAFETEA-LU.

Those programs were the Projects of Regional and National Significance (PRNS),
which allowed lawmakers to steer funds to multi-year proposals that
often had a transit or freight component, and the National Corridor
Infrastructure Improvement Program (NCIIP), which focused largely on earmarks for massive road projects (including Alaska’s infamous Bridge to Nowhere).

Extending
the PRNS and NCIIP grants through the end of 2010 would result in an
estimated $932 million of new funding. The House-passed jobs bill
would free up that money for a merit-based process, with all 50 states
eligible to submit their transport plans, but the Senate-passed jobs
bill would keep that money flowing to its 2009 beneficiaries, according
to Oberstar’s office.

What does that mean in practice? Of the
$932 million, 58 percent would automatically go to four states:
California, Washington, Louisiana, and Illinois. Nine other states
would get between $20 million and $50 million in 2010, and 22 states
would "not receiv[e] a penny," as 23 members of Oberstar’s committee
wrote yesterday in a letter to House Democratic leaders.

Here’s a longer excerpt from that 23-lawmaker letter:

This
transportation funding proposal [in the Senate jobs bill] is unfair to
the taxpayers of 46 states, unresponsive to the whole nation’s
infrastructure and job creation needs, and unacceptable to the House of
Representatives. We request that you work to ensure that any extension
of surface transportation programs maintains the discretionary,
competitive nature of the [two grant] programs, rather than
distributing funds based on fiscal year 2009 earmarks. This is not a
new concept. …

We believe the Department of Transportation is prepared to
quickly distribute these funds to needed projects across the nation,
either by funding worthy applications to the oversubscribed TIGER
program or through existing mechanisms … Such an approach would
ensure broad investment in worthy projects rather than directing large
amounts of funding on a non-competitive basis to a few lucky states.

Eight House members from the North Carolina delegation sent a similar,
bipartisan letter to both House GOP and Democratic leaders, urging them
to make sure that "funds from the two [grant] programs are allocated
equitably and that projects of national significance in all parts of
the country are given a fair opportunity for funding."

The
entire Massachusetts delegation, including Sens. Scott Brown (R) and
John Kerry (D), sent a similarly worded letter of their own to
Democratic leaders in the House and Senate on Monday.

Oberstar
spokesman Jim Berard said in an interview that while the transportation
panel chairman has "consistently been
for shorter extensions" of the 2005 law "rather than longer ones" –
the House jobs bill has one that lasts until September 30 — the Senate
version’s treatment of the PRNS and NCIIP grant programs is a more
significant obstacle to winning his support.

Images: BART

The $462 million eBART extension is funded mostly through bridge tolls and a Contra Costa sales tax measure and will accompany the widening of Highway 4 to six and eight lanes along the corridor from the existing four lanes. 

BART Director Keller asserted eBART would finally be delivering on a BART promise to bring transit to eastern Contra Costa County. Keller said he routinely hears from his constituents that they have been paying taxes for decades and that cities like Antioch were upset that they didn't have the rapid transit that was promised when BART was originally built.

"The perception of taxpayers in my district is 'We've paid for BART, we should get BART," said Keller. eBART will use Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) technology and won't run on the traditional BART lines, a choice that was made for financial reasons. If BART were to build its traditional trains, the extension would cost $1.1 billion.

Expecting to take advantage of the current construction climate, eBART Project Manager Ellen Smith said that BART was hopeful the overall budget would be lower than anticipated, much like the Oakland Airport Connector bid, which came in $60 million under budget.

If all goes as planned, BART expects to break ground on eBART by the summer and would complete the extension by 2015. Ridership estimates are 10,100 per day in the horizon year (though only 5,801 are needed to meet BARTs expansion policy threshold) and 340,000 pounds of CO2 are expected to be removed from the air from reduced traffic.

Brentwood Mayor Taylor said those numbers were fine, as was pedestrian and bicycle access, but the most important thing for his constituents was employment. "One thing that is extremely significant though, particularly out here, is a thing called jobs," he said. BART expects to create 615 temporary direct jobs and 40-80 permanent jobs.

In an area with one of the highest foreclosure rates in the state, the prospect of transit-oriented development built near the stations pleased smart growth and transit advocates TransForm. "It provides the T in TOD – you get the transit nodes in cities that have not thought of those types of development patterns in the past," said TransForm Deputy Director John Hobson. "Now those cities are looking at developing around transit stations in walkable neighborhoods."

BART Director Tom Radulovich, who represents San Francisco and voted against the authorization of the eBART environmental report in April 2009, was concerned that the increased ridership would overburden core capacity.

Radulovich also noted that doing the eBART project without widening Highway 4 was never studied in the EIR and wondered whether eBART was merely window dressing on a highway widening project. "The most sustainable solution was one that wasn't even evaluated in the EIS."

TransForm's Hobson argued that his organization was content with the eBART project because Contra Costa County officials were intent on widening the highway no matter what. He said at least this project would provide transit and stimulate smart growth.

"We don’t feel like doing transit expansions in highway medians is necessarily the best way to do rail stations. We would rather see them more integrated in the community," said Hobson, who added the expansion of Highway 4 was going to happen "one way or another. It has been the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd priorities for E. Contra Costa county for decades."

Representative Garamendi spent most of his day traveling to meetings on transportation policy and in the afternoon visited the Central Contra Costa Crossover project, which began construction in October 2009. The project, funded in part with $13 million in federal stimulus funds, will add two sections of crossover tracks between the Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill stations. When completed in December 2010, the Crossover project will mean riders on the Pittsburg/Bay Point line will have more seating, more frequent trains and better on-time performance during commute hours.

Garamendi, who sits on the House Transportation Committee, said the re-authorization of the transportation act could conceivably happen this summer when the stopgap measure to fund the Highway Trust fund runs out. He supports Chairman James Oberstar (D-MN) in pushing for a dramatically larger funding act that emphasizes urban areas.

On transit operations, he said he recognized the funding woes and operating budget issues at agencies like BART and Tri Delta and said the federal government should do more to alleviate their burden.

Finally, citing the new Siemens light rail plant near Sacramento, Garamendi said the U.S. needed to become a leader in train manufacturing, even using excess capacity in automobile plants where that is feasible.

"It does a great deal of good to build a transportation system, it does us a great deal of good to have new buses on the road, but it will do us much more good if these things are manufactured in America," he said. "These things can be built here."

He also noted that the new relationship at the federal level between the U.S. DOT and HUD was a step in the right direction. "The federal legislation is pushing these kinds of coordinated systems so that you have a housing and a development plan that is consistent with a public transportation plan, moving away from freeway planning to more integrated public transportation planning. All of these policies fit together, climate policy and transportation planning."

CBC Chair Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) (Photo: AP)

Today the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC)
joined the chorus urging President Obama — who joined the Black Caucus
during his time in the Senate –to reconsider the first stimulus’
state-centric approach.

In a letter to Obama, the CBC
suggested several strategies aimed at focusing Democrats’ upcoming jobs
bill on cities, suburbs, and towns where the sting of joblessness is
being felt most keenly. The Black Caucus members wrote:

With
each provision, we would urge you to direct funding through the federal
agencies directly to localities:
county/city/municipality/college/university or nonprofit organization,
rather than through the state, to be quickly disbursed and used by the
most economically depressed communities.

Other items on the CBC’s jobs bill to-do list: expanding the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program, which directly aids local projects, and the Neighborhood Stabilization Fund, a stimulus-funded effort to help productively retool foreclosed homes in the nation’s most recession-ravaged areas.

Washington D.C.’s transit safety oversight agency has less than 1 full-time employee. (Photo: VisitingDC.com)

Rep.
Pete DeFazio (D-OR), chairman of the committee’s transit panel, opened
today’s hearing by citing Federal Transit Administration (FTA) data
that showed nearly 40 percent of state transit safety overseers lacking
the authority to inspect rail tracks.

"There is no substitute for physical inspection of rail lines," DeFazio said. "My concern is if
the FTA is prohibited from inspecting rail transit systems and 40 percent of
states aren’t allowed to perform inspections, then who is ensuring
that these systems are safe?"

Transport
committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) added FTA numbers of his own,
noting that only 15 percent of state safety overseers are allowed to
fine transit agencies that are found to be violating safety standards.

"That’s a pretty dismal record," he said. "Anyone who says the federal government shouldn’t be engaged
here because states are doing such a great job, take a look at these numbers."

Yet
both senior Democrats noted the tension between asking the 26 state
transit safety groups currently in operation to meet minimum training
and oversight standards — as the White House’s proposed legislation
envisions — while the nation’s biggest transit agencies cope with
unmet equipment repair needs that are estimated at upwards of $50 billion.

The transit safety legislation [PDF],
which was transmitted to congressional leaders yesterday, would allow
states to keep their current transit oversight structure as long as
federal regulators find that it meets a minimum safety threshold.
States would receive federal aid to defray the costs of hiring and
training safety inspectors, as well as achieving financial independence
from the transit agencies they monitor.

"We are trying to
give the states every tool we have" to create a nationwide floor for
transit safety, FTA chief Peter Rogoff told lawmakers today. "We also
reserve the right to find the system they have inadequate."

The
FTA was prohibited from setting national transit safety under a 1965
law that was modified in 1991, when Congress created an oversight
system that allowed flexible state standards for light rail and
subways. Some state groups, such as those in New York and
Massachusetts, have maintained independent and active oversight, but
other transit safety entities — Washington D.C.’s, most notably — have been exposed as toothless.

During
today’s hearing, several transportation committee members pressed
Rogoff about the new legislation’s price tag and its merit for state
transit safety groups that are already considered strong overseers.

"To
the extent that states are making meaningful expenditures now, we
believe [the new bill] will be cost-effective," Rogoff said, explaining
that the White House plans to include extra transit safety funds in the
2011 budget that will be released in February.

How would the
administration offset that new transit safety spending? Rogoff did not
go into detail, leading DeFazio to conclude that "we will see what we
see when we see it."

Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) proposed
cutting bicycle and pedestrian funds to cover the cost of the new
safety plan, which met with disapproval from Rogoff and a cutting quip
from Oberstar: "Noble suggestion, but over my dead body."

The
merits of subjecting already healthy state safety overseers to new
federal standards was addressed by Richard Clark, a director at the
California Public Utilities Commission, where more than 20 full-time employees work on transit safety.

Clark
said the proposed legislation "will provide us with much-needed
training, better communication between us and FTA, and support [to
achieve] adequate staffing levels." The bill would not preempt states’
ability to enforce stricter standards than the federal minimum, he
added.

During his testimony, American Public Transportation
Association (APTA) President William Millar threw some cold water on
the administration’s suggestion that transit safety breaches were on
the rise. In fact, passengers are
far safer on subways and light rail (1.362 injuries per 100 million
miles in 2008) than in an auto (82 injuries per 100 million miles in
2007), according to the U.S. DOT.

From Millar’s testimony:

While
it will take many actions to improve transit’s enviable safety record,
it will also take significant financial investment to bring public
transportation systems up to a state of good repair, increase the
training of the men and women and who work in our industry and correct
safety deficiencies identified. If safety is to be taken to the next
level, investments must be made. It is not enough to just pass laws and
issue regulations.