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A few weeks ago, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor published his list of bills the House will attempt to get through before the August recess. The transportation reauthorization was not among them.

Rumor has it House Speaker Boehner doesn't want to deal with the transportation bill. Photo: AP/Charles Dharapak

Rumor has it that House leadership has put the kibosh on Transportation Committee Chair John Mica’s plans to get a bill out of committee and to the House floor in July. Supposedly, House Speaker John Boehner has told Mica not to mark up a bill, since it would just languish without a vote anyway.

This information came to us from a trustworthy source who is a few levels removed from the actual decision makers. (Streetsblog has a request in with Mica’s office to confirm.) Because it’s a compelling rumor that makes a lot of sense in the current political context, please indulge us as we run through the possibilities, but do take it with a grain of salt.

All will be clearer next week, when Mica either introduces his bill or he doesn’t — though even that won’t tell us everything, because introducing it and then keeping it stalled in committee would also likely be an acceptable option for leadership — as long as it doesn’t come to the floor.

All this is happening, of course, against the backdrop of the debt ceiling talks, as they rage (or whimper) on, with no solution in sight before an economic meteor (known as “default”) hits the planet. House Republicans are still saying they won’t accept any new taxes, leaving spending cuts as the only way to cut $1 trillion from the deficit. Their recipe for transportation? About a 33 percent cut, bringing transportation in line with current balance in the Highway Trust Fund. (The new formula bars spending based on anticipated revenues.) There’s not a state in the union that wouldn’t feel these cuts, deeply.

So, if it’s true that Boehner has said no to the reauthorization, it actually makes a lot of sense. The House can’t pass a bill with such low levels of spending – there wouldn’t be any support for it. But the Republicans can’t possibly introduce a bill that violates their own spending principles right now, as they’re digging their heels in on spending cuts as a pre-condition to raising the debt ceiling.

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Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood yesterday announced $1.58 billion in New Starts grants that will fund 27 transit projects around the country. The only major difference between this list and the list of proposed projects that came out in February 2010 is the glaring absence of the ARC tunnel project that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie unceremoniously axed last year.

The century-old transit tunnel NJ Gov. Christie decided not to modernize. Photo: TSTC

Christie’s decision to kill the project to expand capacity in a train tunnel under the Hudson River had one positive result: it must have made things easier for ­FTA officials to make the cuts required by the 25 percent haircut the New Starts program received earlier this year at the hands of Congressional budget-cutters.

The $200 million federal grant for ARC was one of the biggest on the list of proposed New Starts projects last year. The only other significant change is that the $45 million for “Other New Starts/Small Starts Projects” became $20 million for Alaska’s Denali Commission and for ferries in Alaska and Hawaii.

In its press release, USDOT highlights some of the transit projects that are moving forward:

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Photo: friedmanlynn

There are a lot of disturbing numbers in Transportation for America’s new report, “Aging in Place, Stuck Without Options.” It says the Bay Area currently has the best transportation access for seniors, but points out that in the coming years a rising number of people over age 65 will live in neighborhoods where transit service is either poor or doesn’t exist.

“In just four years, 62 percent more seniors in the San Francisco metro area will live with poor transit compared to 2000, versus 56 percent more for Oakland metro area and 66 percent more for San Jose metro area,” notes a press release from TransForm, an Oakland-based non-profit advocating for transit and smart growth.

In San Mateo County, as an example, 1 out of 4 residents will be over the age of 65 by 2030, and the number of people over the age of 85 will increase to two and half times the current number, according to the San Mateo County Health System. Sixty percent of baby boomers are projected to have more than one chronic disease, while nearly a third will be obese, and 25 percent will have diabetes.

“If we want to have healthy seniors, we have to invest in reliable, frequent and safe public transportation systems so that people can get where they need to go without a car,” said Jean Fraser, the San Mateo County Health System Chief. “If we develop our communities using the 8-80 rule — so sidewalks, bike lanes, streets, buses and trains are safe and welcoming to kids aged 8 and seniors aged 80 — we will keep both our seniors and our children much healthier.”

As Congress prepares a long-term transportation bill, transit advocates say it’s important that residents urge their representatives to adopt policies to ensure that seniors “remain mobile, active and independent.”

“The situation is already acute in the Bay Area, with annual transit cuts and growing demand,” said Stuart Cohen, the executive director of TransForm. “But now Congress is threatening to further slash funding and take away our flexibility to spend it on our greatest needs; more than ever we need Senator Boxer’s leadership as her committee finalizes the six-year transportation bill.”

Following T4A’s easy link to send a letter to Senator Boxer. More coverage at Streetsblog Capitol Hill.

Senator Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, just addressed reporters about the progress of the transportation bill.

Barbara Boxer said dedicated bicycle and pedestrian funding will still have a place in the federal transportation bill. Photo: Planetizen

Rather than holding funding at SAFETEA-LU levels, as we previously reported and as the EPW statement indicated, the committee is planning a $339.2 billion bill – current spending plus inflation, plus an expanded TIFIA loan program. That’s $56.5 billion a year. Boxer said the Senate bill would guarantee funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs, which had been in doubt.

TIFIA is currently funded at $110 million a year but demand has far outstripped the availability of loans. Boxer’s committee is proposing to increase that funding nine-fold, to $1 billion a year. She says that amount could leverage $30 billion a year in private investment. They also plan to increase the maximum federal share from 33 percent to 49 percent, with even more favorable terms for rural areas. The TIFIA program will keep its name but be folded into a new, larger program called America Fast Forward.

She’s still leaving open the option of an infrastructure bank, which she says she supports, but she’s always prioritized an expanded TIFIA program over an I-bank, mostly because she believes a program that already exists makes more sense than a brand new one.

Boxer said that including the $30 billion she hopes TIFIA will be able to leverage each year brings the bill over $500 billion – close to the administration figure. (Of course, the administration had leveraging mechanisms in its bill as well, notably the infrastructure bank, and didn’t include the private investment “leveraged” by those entities in its final number.)

She said her committee told the administration, “If you can show us the money, we’re happy to look at it,” but that “right now there isn’t any, so we’re going with what we think we can get through the United States Senate.”

Rep. John Mica, chair of the House Transportation Committee, has “different pressures,” Boxer said, including a House that has voted to use transportation funds for other purposes, but she added that they’re working closely together on the bill.

Boxer is “hoping for a six-year bill” but acknowledged that “we may not wind up with a six-year bill.” Still, she said that while a two-year option was very much “in the mix,” the committee wants the policy changes they make to take effect for six years. According to Boxer’s staff, if they pass this bill as a six-year bill, there will be a $12 billion shortfall every year as compared to Highway Trust Fund revenues. As a two-year bill, there’s a $6 billion annual shortfall. The committee is open to general fund transfers to fill that gap. The bill could also be three, four, or five years, of course, though those options are rarely mentioned.

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The Environment and Public Works Committee just released an outline of some core principles of its transportation reauthorization bill. In a statement, the top Republicans and Democrats of both the full committee and the Transportation Subcommittee – Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA), James Inhofe (R-OK), Max Baucus (D-MT) and David Vitter (R-LA) – said:

Sen. Barbara Boxer indicates the Senate transportation bill will hold spending to current levels, hints it will be a short-term bill. Photo: Bumpshack

It is no secret that the four of us represent very different political views, but we have found common ground in the belief that building highways, bridges, and transportation systems is an important responsibility of the federal government, in cooperation with state and local governments and the private sector.

They say their bill, called Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21):

• Funds programs at current levels to maintain and modernize our critical transportation infrastructure;
• Eliminates earmarks;
• Consolidates numerous programs to focus resources on key national goals and reduce duplicative and wasteful programs;
• Consolidates numerous programs into a more focused freight program that will improve the movement of goods;
• Creates a new section called America Fast Forward, which strengthens the TIFIA program to stretch federal dollars further than they have been stretched before; and
• Expedites project delivery without sacrificing the environment or the rights of people to be heard.

Nothing about an infrastructure bank, which is likely still a major sticking point. We’ll also be interested in hearing more about their decisions about transportation enhancements – those “beautification” projects the Republicans love to rail against, also known as bike and pedestrian infrastructure. We also wonder how much EPW has worked with the Banking and Commerce Committees so far to work out the language on transit and rail.

The joint statement indicates that Boxer may be softening her insistence on a six-year bill. They specifically say, “Our goal is to attain the optimum achievable authorization length depending on the resources available.” Sounds like a two-year bill to me, if they’re shooting to maintain current funding levels. And we already know that sounds like a two-year bill to Max Baucus, chair of EPW’s Transportation Subcommittee and head of the Finance Committee, which the four senators say they’re collaborating with to explore options for the solvency of the Highway Trust Fund without increasing the deficit – i.e., without transfers from the general fund.

We’re still not expecting to see a completed bill for a little while… the initial Memorial Day target has been pushed back to “sometime in June.”

According to Congressional insiders, members of the Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works are meeting today and tomorrow to hash out the details of their proposal for a multi-year transportation reauthorization bill. Hanging in the balance of these negotiations may be the federal government’s only programs dedicated to funding infrastructure for biking and walking.

Bike and pedestrian advocates are urging supporters to contact Senator Barbara Boxer today to tell her to retain dedicated funding for active transportation in the Senate transportation bill. Photo: CNN Politics

Advocates are rallying supporters to contact Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-California), and urge her and other senators to retain federal funding for bike and pedestrian programs.

Jeffrey Miller, president of the Alliance for Biking and Walking, says this marks an urgent opportunity to preserve funding for those important programs. “Senator Boxer is frankly our last hope,” said Miller. “If we don’t act now, dedicated funding for biking and walking programs may be written out of our transportation system for the next six years.”

The Senate occupies the key middle ground between the House GOP and the White House. House Transportation Chair John Mica (R-Florida) has indicated his desire to eliminate the federal commitment to bike-ped funding. While the Obama administration has repeatedly signaled its support for bike-ped programs under the banner of livability, if dedicated funding for bike and pedestrian projects isn’t preserved in the Senate version of the bill, there is little hope that they will reemerge in the conference committee process and get into the final bill, Miller said.

Biking and walking advocates are concerned that Boxer, who has generally been supporter, is being pressured to compromise and eliminate the programs, said Miller. Both the Alliance and the League of American Bicyclists are calling on their members to email Boxer, thank her for her past support and urge her to continue federal support for bicycle and pedestrian programs.

“At this very moment, she is negotiating with other senators who don’t think bicycling and walking are an important part of the transportation bill,” said Miller. “She needs to know we have her back on this issue and she shouldn’t give up on these crucial programs.”

“Transportation Enhancements, Safety Routes to School, and Recreational Trails are important programs for transportation, safety, and health that have a huge impact on the funding available for bicycling and walking projects,” said Bike League director Andy Clarke. “It is critical that these programs are included in the Senate draft. Otherwise, it will be nearly impossible to add them later in the process.”

Editor’s note: Matthew Ridgway is a principal at Fehr and Peers, a transportation design and engineering firm that routinely consults on bicycle and pedestrian projects throughout the Bay Area.

Within the world of bicycle and pedestrian planning, there are some cities that have been successful in securing significant resources for pedestrian and bicycle-related projects. These funds come from a variety of sources and the organizations that are the most successful understand the funding cycles and ways to package projects so that they will be win local, state, federal and private grants.

More importantly, programs that are sustained over time (the only way to affect change) are not entirely reliant on grant funding – they have more reliable funding streams, often general fund, that allow the programs to sustain themselves regardless of the ever-changing funding conditions. In talking with these agencies, a common theme emerged about the real constraint to implementing more bicycle and pedestrian projects.  It is not just funding – it is staffing.

Jason Patton, PhD, is the Bicycle and Pedestrian Program Manager for the City of Oakland. He was the first to say something to the effect of ‘I don’t need more funding, I need more staff.’ But then I heard it from Chadrick Smalley, Richmond Community Redevelopment Agency; Eric Anderson, City of Berkeley; and Aleida Chavez, City of Albany.  So I decided to dig a little deeper into the specifics. On Oakland’s situation, Jason writes:

We estimate that it takes 0.25 full-time-equivalent staff (FTE) of work by staff in the Bicycle & Pedestrian Facilities Program to deliver a bicycle project with $100,000 of construction costs. This staff time includes planning, feasibility, funding, outreach, approvals, design, project management, and construction management.

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A speaker testifies at today's Caltrain Board of Directors meeting. Photo: Aaron Bialick

The Caltrain Board of Directors declared a fiscal emergency for the third year in a row today as a step toward enacting severe service cuts to help close a $30 million deficit. At the meeting, dozens of speakers representing Peninsula families, city agencies and organizations plead with the board not to close stations next month.

“For the last ten years, Caltrain has either relied on one-time emergency funding or declared a fiscal emergency,” said Shirley Johnson of the Caltrain Bikes ONBoard project of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. She criticized the board for relying “year after year” on a fiscal emergency, which grants them the ability to quickly execute service cuts without environmental review. “It’s wrong,” she said.

If the proposed cuts are approved, service on the system would be reduced to peak-hour trains only, which agency staff says carry 80 percent of its ridership. However, the suspension of service at up to 16 stations along the corridor was heavily criticized as an ineffective means to save operational costs.

“The $30 million deficit has been created by our county governments decommitting from the funding necessary to offset these costs,” said daily rider Tom Gormond. ”The actions being proposed… will do nothing in terms of reducing the primary problem of all commuter railroads – the high amount of fixed costs that are required to provide service.  In fact, they will have the opposite effect by reducing ridership and increasing the need for greater amounts of government support.”

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Photo: Myleen Hollero/Orange Photography

A proposal to give thousands of low-income public school students free Muni passes is on its way to the SFMTA Board for approval after the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday. It followed a passionate show of support from dozens of speakers at Monday’s City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee hearing.

“We need to make good on the promise that we made to our low-income children and their families, and we need to do that as soon as possible,” said Supervisor David Campos, who sponsored the resolution along with six other supervisors. “We believe that this approach is the most expeditious way to implement a program whose funding has already been approved and set aside by the MTA Board of Directors.”

If the program is approved, about 10,000 low-income students would receive free passes from March to May. A proposal approved last February led the SFMTA to allocate the money for student passes discounted at $10, but distribution and access to student data presented logistical challenges.

“The intent was to provide a discount Muni pass to our San Francisco youth with the easiest access possible,” said Chris Armentrout, the San Francisco Unified School District’s (SFUSD) liaison to the Board of Supervisors. A long-term program to establish the Lifeline Youth passes for sale at the original $10 price is expected to start next year, he said.

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The White House hasn’t released its FY2012 budget request yet. What we know so far is that it’s a $3.7 trillion budget that would reduce the deficit from $1.6 trillion projected for 2011 to $1.2 trillion next year. President Obama “trims or terminates” more than 200 federal programs, according to the Washington Post, but has big plans for transportation: his budget envisions a $556 billion transportation bill. The Hill reports that the proposal includes “$50 billion in up-front investment that ‘creates hundreds of thousands of jobs in the short-term.’”

Image: Reuters

As expected, the President is trying to simplify the federal transportation program, consolidating 60 programs into five. The Post reports that those would be “limited to making investments only if Congress agrees on a financing plan that would not increase the deficit.” Politico reports that transportation would come from a “single trust fund covering highways and passenger rail systems like Amtrak.”

Insiders say there’s no gas tax hike planned (no surprise there) but there is funding to start a National Infrastructure Bank.

President Obama is also calling for increases in education spending, education research, and broadband access.

He plans to raise revenues by increasing some taxes on the wealthy, teeing up for another battle with Republicans, and ending oil and gas subsidies.

Among the cuts: community development block grants would lose $300 million, $1 billion would be cut from large airport grants, and nearly $1 billion would be trimmed from a fund that finances water treatment plans and other infrastructure projects, according to the Post.

We’ll be hearing more from the Department of Transportation in a few hours and will bring you more news when we have it.