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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) plans to call up a job creation bill on Monday that includes a stopgap rescue of the highway trust fund but none of the new infrastructure spending okayed
by the House. Even that pared-down measure faces a GOP filibuster
threat, but many Democrats remain undaunted in their push for more
federal aid.

In a letter sent this afternoon, 17 Democratic
senators urged Reid "to make transportation infrastructure investment a
top priority in any jobs package debated in the coming weeks." Senate
environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said yesterday that
Reid plans to call up further jobs legislation this spring that would
include transport spending, but few details have emerged as to the
timing or makeup of any future bills.

The letter — a full list of senators who signed on is available after the jump — cited the strong demand on the state and local levels in the stimulus law’s competitive TIGER grants, as well as its high-speed rail funding. An excerpt:

As
you move forward with legislation to to create jobs, it is critical
that any such legislation include significant investment in
transportation infrastructure. We can sustain and create hundreds of
thousands of jobs by rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges,
expanding access to mass transit, building a comprehensive high-speed
rail network, investing in our freight infrastructure, and modernizing
our nation’s air traffic control system. …

[A]lthough the funding for transportation infrastructure in
the [stimulus law] was a good first step, we must do more. Around the
country, transportation projects stand ready to create jobs while
repairing and revitalizing our infrastructure — all they need is a
funding boost. …

Transportation infrastructure
investment is one of the most effective and efficient ways to create
good-paying jobs and boost our economy. It helps us remain competitive
abroad, become energy independent, and reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

Read more…

The freight rail industry yesterday claimed
the top three awards in the Obama administration’s competition for $1.5
billion in TIGER stimulus grants, with Transportation Secretary Ray
LaHood singling out train shippers for an online shout-out:

(Chart: AAR)

You know, although passengers and
commuters have human faces, we need to remember that trade depends upon
the safe, smooth, and efficient delivery of goods. Our groceries depend
upon it as well. And jobs depend on it.

This DOT understands that.

But freight companies are hardly resting on their laurels today. The Association of American Railroads (AAR),
a Washington trade group that represents freight movers as well as
Amtrak, is just out with a report that carves out the industry’s turf
in a big way — including a legislative wish list.

Titled
Great Expectations, the report positions the freight industry as an
economic powerhouse well-positioned to power the nation through a
recovery from its lingering recession. Freight railroads generate $265
billion of economic activity per year while emitting 75 percent less
than similar shipments carried by truck, according to the AAR.

To
illustrate the financial might of the top U.S. freight companies, the
AAR produced a chart (above) that compares train shippers’ annual
spending on capital infrastructure and maintenance with the highway
budgets of major states.

So with the industry riding high from its stimulus victory, much to the dismay
of its trucking competitors, what’s standing in the way of a freight
renaissance? Government regulations, according to AAR chief Edward
Hamberger.

Read more…

Representatives from Washington’s road and transit lobbies joined
Senate environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today to
call for swift passage of job-creation legislation that is slated for a
vote in the upper chamber of Congress on Monday.

Faced with the prospects of a GOP filibuster, Senate Democrats have taken up a pared-down jobs bill that features
a $20 billion rescue of the nation’s cash-strapped highway trust fund
and an expansion of Build America Bonds, a popular infrastructure
financing program.

"Ensuring these are included in the very first jobs
package is so essential," Boxer told reporters today. "We just don’t have time to wait for an extension of the highway
trust fund."

That fund, which provides money for
bicycle and pedestrian projects as well as roads, is operating under a
stopgap re-upping of the 2005 federal transportation law that is set to
expire at the end of the month. Without a $20 billion transfer to keep
the fund in the black until 2011, Boxer said, its coffers would run dry
sometime in the summer.

John Horsley, executive director of
the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials
(AASHTO), and William Millar, chief of the American Public
Transportation Association (APTA), joined Boxer in touting the need for
a highway trust fund extension — which would effectively postpone
debate on a new long-term federal transport bill until after the 2010
midterm elections, dealing a blow to House efforts to spur action this year.

"Failing
an extension of the authorization bill," Millar said, transit agencies
"would not be able to invest the money" Congress already has
appropriated for his sector.

Despite support from road and
transit interests, as well as bipartisan agreement on the need to keep
the highway trust fund solvent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D-NV) is far from assured
of winning 60 votes for his first jobs bill. If the initial measure can
squeak through next week, Boxer said senators could soon take up a
second jobs bill that includes more infrastructure spending –
potentially in line with the House’s $37.3 billion in new investment.

With more than $56 billion in applications submitted for just $1.5
billion in available funding, the Obama administration’s TIGER grants
– short for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery –
was one of the stimulus law’s most hotly contested programs. So it’s no
surprise that the process resulted in its share of losers as well as winners.

Georgia found itself on the sidelines again, less than a month after it failed to secure a significant share of the stimulus pot for high-speed rail. After spending an estimated $750,000 to apply for
nearly $300 million in grant money for a new streetcar network, Atlanta
fell short — along with more than a dozen other TIGER bids from around
the state.

Local officials acknowledged
to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that other cities’ successful
streetcar pitches, such as Tuscon’s and Portland’s, would contribute a
greater share of costs on the local level, but Georgia’s TIGER shutout
is still bound to sting.

Its southern neighbor, Florida,
also saw no TIGER grant winners despite submitting 120 applications,
totaling an estimated $4.3 billion, for a major intermodal transit hub and a port expansion.

In the private sector, Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad lost its bid for federal help with a new Kansas City rail facility even as competing freight companies CSX and Norfolk Southern scored big under the TIGER program. Still, the company — recently bought by Warren Buffett — is considered likely to move ahead with the project using its own funds.

Another state that saw its TIGER hopes dashed was Connecticut, where the state DOT endorsed about a dozen proposals, half of them dedicated to the freight sector.

Overall,
the U.S. DOT looks to have focused its attention on TIGER money for
transit and other clean transport projects while giving highways
somewhat of a second-fiddle status. Roads accounted for 57 percent of
total TIGER applications, but road-only proposals got less than $185
million, or about one-eighth of the total pot of grants.

That
trend sparked palpable excitement among many transportation reformers,
but some expressed concern that state DOT officials could turn the
TIGER program into a rationale for postponing the transition to a fully
merit-based system of infrastructure spending.

"An
innovation grant is no excuse for not doing a good job with the rest of
your money," one clean-transport advocate said in an interview. "The
fact that it take TIGER to get bridges replaced when state DOTs are
spending much of their money building new roads is wrong … but the
fact that it does means that we need reform."

The Obama administration today announced the winners of $1.5 billion stimulus in highly competitive stimulus grants under the program known as Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery, or TIGER. Southeastern and midwestern freight rail projects were the day's biggest winners, with urban streetcar projects also making a big splash.

Atop the list of TIGER grants [PDF] was a $105 million infusion for the Alabama and Tennessee sections of the Crescent Corridor, an ambitious Norfolk Southern project that would divert shipping traffic from trucks to trains while upgrading passenger rail service from the Gulf Coast through the Mid-Atlantic region.

CREATE, a seven-year-old effort to enhance freight mobility in the Chicago area by creating auto and pedestrian routes around rail tracks as well as separations between passenger and freight routes, netted $100 million from the TIGER fund.

The No. 3 TIGER winner was also a freight corridor: The National Gateway plan, aimed at boosting capacity on three CSX rail shipping lines in Ohio and Pennsylvania, won $98 million, or more than half of the project's estimated remaining costs.

Among the several cities who sought stimulus grants to construct new streetcar lines, Tuscon ($63 million), Dallas ($23 million), and New Orleans ($45 million) emerged victorious. The latter city was singled out by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood for a December announcement of new streetcar grants, seen at the time as a boost to its chances for federal aid.

Kansas City's streetcar appeared to fall short, but its local Green Impact Zone project won $50 million in funding for a slate of upgrades that includes local transit access points.

Another category of project that fared well in TIGER -- in which the U.S. DOT put different transportation modes on the same footing, rather than operating under bureaucratic "silos" that separated roads from transit -- was projects to unite foot, car, transit, and bike traffic under one roof. Epitomizing this type of proposal was the Twin Cities' $35 million grant to renovate the St. Paul Union Depot into a state-of-the-art transfer point for all types of local travelers.

Read more...

The White House Council of Economic Advisers' first annual report under President Obama made headlines today for its gloomy job-creation outlook, but tucked inside its 462 pages is a tangible reflection of a changed outlook on transportation policy under the new administration.

In a section entitled Rescuing the Economy From the Great Recession, for example, the president's economic aides name-check a series of "Responsible Policies to Spur Job Creation."

One of those policies -- which neither the House nor the Senate has chosen to add to their jobs bills this winter -- is an expansion of the stimulus law's merit-based TIGER grant program, which many transport reformers view as a step towards a leveling of the playing field between transit and roads. Here's the relevant section of the White House report:

The experience of the Recovery Act suggests that spending on infrastructure is an effective way to put people back to work while creating lasting investments that raise future productivity. For this reason, the Administration is supporting an additional investment of up to $50 billion in roads, bridges, airports, transit, rail, and water projects. Funneling some of these funds through programs such as the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program at the Department of Transportation, which is a competitive grant program, could offer a way to ensure that the projects with the highest returns receive top priority.

The economic report also touts the value of clean transport spending in its section on energy policies to aid adaptation to climate change.

"Investments in high-speed rail and public transit will increase energy efficiency by improving both access and reliability, thus making it possible for more people to switch to rail or public transit from autos or other less energy-efficient forms of transportation," the president's advisers wrote.

Will this White House support, however buried it might be, help persuade congressional leaders to add more transit and rail aid to any jobs bill that comes down the pike?

Read more...

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation
Officials (AASHTO), the trade group representing state DOTs in
Washington, yesterday unveiled a website
and report billed as a one-year "progress report" on the White House’s
$34.3 billion in formula-based transportation stimulus spending.

AASHTO’s
report, citing data furnished to Congress, noted that 77 percent of the
stimulus’ formula money has been spent on contracts "out to bid" and
estimated that 280,000 "highway and transit jobs" were directly created
by the transportation spending.

Interestingly, the group’s chart [PDF]
showing state-by-state progress on transportation stimulus omits the
estimates of jobs created by each category of spending — perhaps
because a December analysis of those totals showed that transit was a more cost-effective employment generator than road projects.

Overall,
the report attempts to make a case for more investment in
infrastructure as part of a second round of job-creation legislation,
using anecdotes from state DOT officials and local construction workers
who claimed a steady paycheck thanks to the stimulus law. 

"Although transportation received only 6 percent of
total [stimulus] funding, it represents more than 24 percent of the
jobs created by the Act so far," AASHTO executive director John Horsley
wrote in his introduction to the report.

But the group made no direct call for an end to the stalemate
over long-term transportation policymaking, supporting only an end to
the short-term extensions of the 2005 infrastructure law that have
occupied Congress since the fall.
With the political climate crying out for a deal on transport financing
that can drive broad reform of the existing, bloated system, AASHTO’s
priorities appear squarely in favor of … maintaining that system.

From its report (emphasis mine):

Read more…

The winners of $1.5 billion in merit-based transportation stimulus grants through the program known as TIGER (Transportation
Investment Generating Economic Recovery) will be announced on or
perhaps even before February 17, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood
confirmed this week.

Language
in the Obama administration’s first economic stimulus law required
TIGER funding recipients to be named by February 17, and LaHood told
the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday that word may come down
"a day or two before that."

Metro and rural areas around the country are eagerly awaiting
word on the fate of their TIGER applications. Nearly $57 billion in
bids were submitted for the stimulus law’s much smaller pot of transportation aid.

LaHood also addressed the fate of the $600 million that Congress included in its 2010 transportation spending bill for more grants in the vein of TIGER, which rewards
projects that meet a core group of benchmarks — including job creation
and sustainability — rather than running funds through
often-politicized state DOTs.

That extra $600 million in
TIGER grants will spark a new round of competition, LaHood said, with a
second round of winners announced in the coming months.

The
Transportation Secretary also broke some news relating to the White
House’s proposed National Infrastructure Fund, which has some key
differences from previous congressional plans for an Infrastructure
Bank located outside of the U.S. DOT. LaHood told lawmakers that "we
will be proposing authorization language very soon" so that Congress
can examine the details of the White House’s Fund plan.

Today brought news of two grim transportation numbers from the Obama administration: 2 and $53 million.

The
first figure is the percentage of federal transport stimulus contracts
that have gone to disadvantaged and minority-owned businesses,
according to the U.S. DOT. The 2-percent figure was released this
afternoon by the Transportation Equity Network (TEN), which included
government emails verifying its data.

In real dollar terms, that 2 percent comes out to $986 million
of the stimulus law’s $48 billion in total transportation spending. The
low total for disadvantaged and minority firms, known by the shorthand
of DBEs, comes five months after Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced a $20 million bonding program aimed at helping less well-connected companies compete for federal business.

"This number is absolutely shocking," TEN executive director Laura Barrett said in a statement. "Secretary LaHood is
encouraging state DOTs to increase allocations to minority and disadvantaged
contractors, but this number proves that encouragement is not enough. The old
boys network that locks out minority contractors was built on the state and
local level, and it needs to be fought at that level to reverse this outrageous
inequity."

Anecdotal reports of minority contractors getting shortchanged by transportation stimulus spending have emerged in Illinois, Minnesota, and California, among other states. The 2005 federal transportation law states that
at least 10 percent of federal roads and transit spending should be
routed through DBEs, unless the Transport Secretary determines
otherwise.

The second not-so-great transportation number, $53
million, reflects the total spending on pollution-reducing transit
grants that the White House included in its budget proposal for fiscal year 2011.

The
administration hopes to steer nearly 10 times that amount, or nearly
$530 million, to its new three-agency partnership for sustainable
communities. Still, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI)
pulled out the $53 million number today to note that the White House
had proposed $22 million more for the same type of transit grants last year (and ended up spending $100 million).

From the EESI’s budget statement (emphasis theirs):

Read more…

Senate Democratic leaders appeared this morning to tout their
commitment to passing a job-creation bill by the end of next week –
but the substance of their jobs measure, including the fate of pivotal
transportation provisions, remains up in the air.

Harry
Reid (D-NV), the upper chamber’s majority leader, told reporters that
he was "hopeful" a bipartisan jobs bill could be ready for public view
within the next day or two, followed by a first vote on Monday. "If
not," he added, "[Democrats] will lay one down ourselves."

The Obama administration has called for
the Senate to add more funding for TIGER (Transportation Investment
Generating Economic Recovery), the stimulus law’s $1.5 billion
merit-based grant program, to its jobs plan. Reid indicated on Tuesday
that his party was receptive to more TIGER aid.

Another infrastructure-centric provision attracting broad interest is an extension of Build America Bonds
(BABs), which allow local governments to finance transportation
projects more easily by offering a 35 percent federal subsidy. New York
City’s transit authority is one of many local agencies turning to BABs to make debt offerings more attractive to private investors.

Finally, the politically tricky status of the highway trust fund remains on Congress’ plate, with the House and Senate still at odds over how to keep it funded nearly five months after the first expiration of the nation’s 2005 federal transportation law.

Reid
said earlier this week that a one-year extension of the trust fund
likely would be added to the Senate’s jobs bill. But with Senate
Democrats aiming to coax Republicans on board by breaking up their
economic-recovery agenda into smaller pieces, it remains to be seen
whether the trust fund, BABs, or TIGER will make it into the
legislation set for votes on Monday.

Also left unanswered is
how much, if any, spending the Senate would direct at ready-to-go
transportation projects. An initial jobs-bill outline circulated last
week suggested that $14 billion for roads and $7.5 billion for transit
could make it into the legislation, but Democrats offered no hint of
whether those numbers were still in the mix.

The office of
Senate environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who has
taken the lead on the infrastructure elements of her party’s jobs
program, did not immediately return a request for clarification of the
timing for transportation spending.

If Senate Democrats were
sure of anything this morning, however, it was the need for speedy
consideration of the yet-to-emerge jobs provisions. "Let’s put these on
the floor and move on them with a sense of urgency," Majority Whip Dick
Durbin (D-IL) said.