Streetsblog San Francisco

At this point, we’re not expecting any movement on a transportation bill, in either house, before the August recess. (After that, get ready for a panicked frenzy of activity ahead of the September 30 deadline.)

From what we hear from Sen. Barbara Boxer’s staff, the EPW bill includes dedicated funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects. The House bill does not, though it does say that bike-ped projects will still be “eligible” for various pots of funding.

But “eligibility” is virtually meaningless without a federal mandate for spending. As the League of American Bicyclists points out in a new fact-sheet on eligibility, history shows that if the federal government tells states they “can” spend money on bike-ped – but they don’t have to – they don’t.

Indeed, all 50 states together spent just $40 million on bike-ped programs in the 18 years leading up to the passage of ISTEA in 1991, which created the three major sources of bike-ped funding. The states had complete freedom to use federal funds – with no state match – on bike-ped projects, but they simply didn’t.

Even today, programs that would appear to be tailor-made to fund bicycle and pedestrian projects – like the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program (CMAQ) – are rarely used on biking and walking. Only five percent of CMAQ money has gone toward biking and walking, despite their “eligibility” and obvious fit. When advocates talk about “dedicated funding,” they’re usually talking about three other programs, which spend more on bike-ped: Transportation Enhancements, Safe Routes to School, and the Recreational Trails Program.

What’s more, states tend to spend bike-ped money slowly, holding onto those funds until rescission time, when they’re asked to send money back to the federal government. Last year, Transportation Enhancements and CMAQ bore 44 percent of the rescission cuts nationwide – although those programs represent just 7.3 percent of total federal-aid highway funds.

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It’s payback time again for state DOTs. The fine print on the jobs bill Congress just passed includes a $2.2 billion rescission from state transportation funding, and projects to make biking and walking safer are especially at risk of losing out.

This isn’t coming out of the blue. It’s part of a game Congress played five years back, when they approved more transportation funding than the White House would allow. They left the bigger number in the bill, only to periodically ask the states for some of it back in the form of rescissions. Now is one of those times.

But here's what’s getting bicycle and transit advocates worried: This time, the money could come disproportionately from bike and pedestrian improvements.

“This is different from the other rescissions in a few ways,” said Caron Whitaker of America Bikes. “One, the other rescissions were subject to a proportionality clause to ensure that certain programs weren’t hit disproportionately, because they had been cut disproportionately in earlier rescissions. Two, this doesn’t cover same breadth of programs as the other ones did.”

Off-limits this time around are funds for the Highway Safety Improvement Program, the Railway-Highway Crossings Program, the Surface Transportation Program, and Safe Routes to Schools.

That means there are fewer programs left on the chopping block, increasing the chances that bicycling and transit programs will be affected -- and there are no rules saying state DOTs have to play fair.

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Federal funding for pedestrian and bicycle projects reached a new high last year, according to a report released today by the Federal Highway Administration. In terms of dollars, federal investment in walking and biking more than doubled compared to the previous high, set in 2007, thanks largely to an infusion of $400 million in stimulus funds.

The share of all federal transportation spending devoted to bike-ped projects also rose to an unprecedented level -- all of two percent. Advocates for walking and biking applauded the trend while pointing out the potential for much greater federal commitment to active transportation.

"It continues to be an improvement, and it continues to be a tiny fraction of the money that's available to potentially be spent on biking and walking," said Andy Clarke of the League of American Bicyclists.

Subtracting the $400 million one-shot in stimulus funding, Clarke noted, yields a less impressive year-on-year increase. And part of the increase in reported bike-ped spending might also simply reflect better record keeping by state DOTs, as agencies document the construction of sidewalks and bike lanes as part of larger projects, according to Barbara McCann of the National Complete Streets Coalition.

The spending figures come from an update on the state of walking and biking that the feds release every five years. The original National Bicycling and Walking Study, released in 1994, set two major targets: to double walk and bike mode-share, from 7.9 percent of all trips to 15.8 percent; and to reduce pedestrian and cyclist fatalities by 10 percent.

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As the Senate opened its second round of climate change hearings
today, Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter delivered the urban case for
climate legislation, outlining an array of infrastructure improvements
and green reforms that would be made possible by federal action to
reduce carbon emissions.

Testifying on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Nutter singled out his city’s "complete streets"
policy as a key element of the local revitalization that has attracted
more private investment and new residents to Philadelphia:

Over
the past five decades, Philadelphia lost jobs and residents. The pulls
that caused people to leave our city and others like it were driven in
part by government policies that valued highways over transit and new
tract housing over older row homes. But, in recent years, Philadelphia
has begun to witness a rebirth… people and jobs are moving in and
private investments are being made. People again view our walkable
neighborhoods and public transportation systems as assets to value and
nurture.

Nutter also described a series of
sustainable infrastructure projects that his city is prepared to launch
once long-term funding is secured. The Senate climate bill sets up a
new block grant program that would provide that long-term funding,
directing money to metro areas for energy efficiency and conservation
projects.

Among the Philadelphia proposals mentioned by
Nutter were the city’s "green corridors" program — now in line for a
$6 million pilot phase — that would install landscaped sidewalks to
collect storm water as well as new energy-efficient streetlights and
traffic signals. A parallel effort, known as "green streets," would
increase tree cover and install curb bump-outs with sidewalk planters
to decrease heat-trapping.

"Our experience… is
characteristic of so many cities that are moving forward with these
investments," Nutter told the Senate environment committee, which will hear from more than two dozen witnesses today alone.

Republican
witnesses offered a counterpoint to the urban experience, focusing
almost exclusively on the high cost that regulating emissions would
impose on traditional fossil fuel-burning industries.

"We
are in favor of green jobs but not at the expense of the heartland, of
red, white, and blue jobs," Bill Klesse, CEO of oil company Valero,
told the environment panel.

Today’s hearing can be followed live here, courtesy of the committee.

The Congress for the New Urbanism will meet in Portland, Oregon, in early November for the annual Project for Transportation Reform, a summit to further define and clarify emerging urban transportation policies that embrace entire networks, rather than interdependent transportation segments, and that seek to balance modal transportation splits and reduce overall vehicular miles traveled (VMT).

Summit attendees and partners, including Streetsblog, will participate in discussions on emerging network planning and develop a strategy for informing the national transportation infrastructure debate, of particular significance as the climate and transportation bills move forward. As the draft CNU Statement of Principles on Transportation Networks notes [PDF], climate change and infrastructure problems in the US continue to intensify:

The US now has the world’s highest level of VMT per capita, while simultaneously experiencing the highest traffic fatality rates of any developed nation. Per capita traffic delay has more than doubled in the United States since 1982. This deterioration in transportation system performance has occurred in spite of an ongoing public investment of more that $200 billion per year in transportation infrastructure."

CNU President John Norquist said the current focus by transportation professionals on road capacity gives us cities like Detroit, where consistent spending to widen roads has destroyed communities.

"Federal and state DOTs don't understand how cities work. They still want to take rural forms and jam big roads into cities." he said. "Rather than measuring projected traffic flow, they should be measuring how much value it adds to a neighborhood. The US can't afford to be energy wasting and spending money on projects that destroy the value of neighborhoods."

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SamTrans - the buses and paratransit vehicles that run the length of El Camino Real between Palo Alto and Daly City, traverse the Santa Cruz mountains, and service San Francisco's financial district - is preparing to raise fares and reduce service on some bus lines and eliminate other lines in order to close a $28.4 million budget gap.

SamTrans serves more than 15 million riders annually through its 339 regular buses and its Redi-Wheels and RediCoast (Paratransit) vehicles. Its fixed-route bus system currently consists of 54 routes.

The financial crisis forced SamTrans Deputy CEO Chuck Harvey to present several options to close the gap at a San Mateo County Transit District Board of Directors meeting August 12 and arrive at a preliminary operating budget of $136.5 million for the 2010 fiscal year.

Harvey presented options for achieving 7.5 percent, 10 percent, and 15 percent savings. "To get to 15 percent savings, it's wholesale amputation," he said.

To achieve 15 percent savings Harvey proposed: reducing service on up to 22 lines and eliminating 17 lines; increasing adult, youth, and discounted fares by 25 cents or more; and eliminating the 15 percent discount on the SamTrans pass with the purchase of a Muni sticker.

"It is indeed a cruel twist of fate that brings us here today," said Board of Directors Chairwoman Zoe Kersteen-Tucker. "More than ever, we need to reduce our dependence on cars, yet we are facing a significant crushing deficit, and we cannot look to the state to help us out at least for the next four years."

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Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported this week
that the Obama administration — which often talks about reducing
transportation-based emissions — is staying mum on a bill that would
devote a guaranteed share of revenues from carbon regulation to
transit, bike paths, and other green modes of transport.

But that doesn’t mean the proposal, otherwise known as "CLEAN TEA," is losing momentum.

The bill, introduced by Sens. Tom Carper (D-DE) and Arlen Specter (D-PA), picked up three new co-sponsors in the Senate yesterday. Its five supporters all sit on the Environment and Public Works Committee, which will get first crack at climate legislation in September.

So
who’s still dragging their feet on giving 10 percent of the climate
bill’s funding to green transportation? (The House-passed climate bill,
by comparison, allows only 1 percent of revenue to pay for transport improvements. Meanwhile, transportation generates about 30 percent of U.S. emissions.)

Find out after the jump.

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An 18-month extension of existing transportation law cleared the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee today, but not before spirited debate on a proposal billed as a compromise with House members who remain strongly opposed to the Senate's stopgap.

The "clean" re-upping of the 2005 transport law, stripped of the few reforms the Obama administration had proposed, passed with one dissenting vote: Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), who lost a bid -- on his birthday -- to cut the extension down to 12 months.

"Everyone realizes the current law is inadequate to get the job done," said Voinovich, who has aligned with Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) and his House transportation committee to fight the White House and Senate on the extension.

"We have a Senate and we have a House ... what I'm proposing here is something very reasonable."

Voinovich's compromise won support from three Democrats, including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (MN), whose panel has the tricky task of approving $20 billion in spending cuts or offsets to keep the nation's highway trust fund flush until after the 2010 midterm elections.

But the 12-month proposal fell on an 8-11 vote, with environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) offering Voinovich a contrite birthday consolation and a promise to tackle a "transformational" transportation bill -- once the thorny question of revenue is sorted out.

"There is way less of a chance that, if we go 18 months, we'll have to do another extension," Boxer said. Though "I respect, like, love" Oberstar, the chairman added, "in order to meet his six-year bill, you'd have to double the gas tax."

Boxer has said she is open to indexing the gas tax, which has gone untouched by Washington since 1993, to inflation. Any increases, however, face an uphill battle winning over re-election-minded lawmakers.

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