Image via SFMTA. See full PDF here.

The Transportation Sustainability Program (TSP) would reform the city’s transportation practices in three key areas: by eliminating reliance on the automobile-centric measuring stick known as Level of Service (LOS), by instituting a system of development impact fees that fund sustainable transportation improvements, and expediting the review process for pedestrian, bicycle, and transit projects. The details are on the wonky side, but if the city delivers on these reforms, SF could be looking at a much more rapid build-out of transit corridors, bikeways, and pedestrian safety measures.

“This program is taking a look at how we manage, regulate, and mitigate for development as it relates to transportation to develop a process that’s more transparent, equitable, and meaningful, and provides a much better nexus between land use planning and transportation,” said SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin.

SF Planning Department Assistant Director Alicia John-Bauptiste presented details [PDF] about the TSP Tuesday to the SFMTA Board of Directors. The program, currently planned for adoption in late 2013, is a coordinated effort between the SFMTA, the Planning Department, the SF County Transportation Authority, and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

One key component to the TSP is the Transportation Sustainability Fee (TSF), which would replace the current Transit Impact Development Fee (TIDF) that building developers pay to the SFMTA to account for infrastructure costs due to car trips and transit trips made by users of those buildings. The TSF would be based on offsetting car trips added by a project, and its revenues could only be spent according to a spending plan to directly fund projects that improve transit service and bicycle and pedestrian safety. Developers would receive discounts on the TSF for building less car parking, and it would apply to residential buildings (except affordable housing), which the TIDF doesn’t.

According to John-Bauptiste, many developments and transportation projects will also no longer be required to conduct an environmental impact report (EIR) as part of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which would lead to major time and cost savings. “Individual projects will be relieved of having to study cumulative transportation impacts because the TSP EIR will study those impacts. Project-specific analysis will be limited to site design issues such as loading docks, curb cuts, and pedestrian and bicycle safety,” the presentation says.

Planners would also be relieved of having to measure projects using LOS, a tool that grades transportation projects based on how much they might slow down cars. LOS often calls for planners to take measures that “result in inconsistencies with achieving the city’s transit-first policies,” said John-Bauptiste.

A recent cartoon about LOS by Andy Singer.

Image: Andy Singer

“If what we’re concerned about is how quickly automobiles are moving through a particular intersection or roadway segment, a logical mitigation might be to expand roadway capacity, to add a lane of traffic,” said John-Bauptiste. “That is, first of all, often infeasible in a built-out, urban, dense environment such as San Francisco. It, secondly, can often be in contradiction to our policies supporting the bike network or pedestrian safety.”

Instead, the program would implement a new metric called Transit System Performance, which turns the LOS approach on its head by evaluating the transportation network holistically and focusing on reducing driving and improving conditions for walking, bicycling, and transit. This metric was developed as an alternative to LOS over recent years, and in 2009, San Francisco agencies successfully lobbied the state to allow cities to use alternative metrics.

“This is the latest in a long-running conversation about reconciling our practice of CEQA with our city’s wonderful adopted policies,” said Andy Thornley, policy director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. “We decided as a city quite a long time ago that we didn’t want to use LOS in CEQA.”

Under the TSP’s new environmental review system, projects would move so much faster that Reiskin said some improvements currently in development might get finished sooner by waiting until after the reforms are adopted.

“One of the main cost- and schedule-drivers of environmental review is transportation analysis, and that’s for any large development project,” said Reiskin. ”Somewhat ironically, that has created cost and schedule extensions for our own projects, even those that on the surface would appear to be very clearly imparting positive environmental impacts to the city — the Bike Plan is perhaps the poster child for that.”

As another example, he pointed to the Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP), which Mayor Ed Lee has said is his #1 priority for Muni. The SFMTA is now at the outset of a 21-month, $2 million environmental review process for the TEP, said Reiskin. The TEP “is really about speeding up transit — a very clearly environmentally-beneficial initiative, but because we currently are under a Level of Service methodology… the TEP is subject to a full environmental impact report,” he said, though he noted that the TSP reforms won’t come soon enough for the project to take advantage.

The SFMTA Board roundly praised the program, and directors Joél Ramos and Bruce Oka emphasized the urgent need to implement it. “Every month that we don’t have a policy like this in place, we stand to lose, who knows, millions of dollars,” said Ramos.

Director Malcolm Heinicke hailed the program as a “creative way to restructure at the more local level to meet our goals and still satisfy the state act.”

“There’s always complaints about the CEQA process. There’s always calls to reform it at the state level,” he said. “It’s impressive that someone is actually doing something about this rather than just throwing up their hands and saying, ‘CEQA screws up everything.’”

Aside from the program’s cost savings, the TSF is expected to generate $630 million over 20 years and leverage $820 million more in other funding. The streams of revenue would fund “a comprehensive and strictly regulated $1.4 billion plan targeted at highly-efficient transportation system improvements,” according to the SFMTA presentation. Every two years, the city would dedicate funds to projects like the Market Street redesign, Muni’s TEP, Bus Rapid Transit on Van Ness and Geary, regional improvements like Caltrain electrification, the bikeway network, and pedestrian improvements.

City staff are currently reaching out to stakeholders for the program. This month, they plan to introduce a legislative ordinance and begin conducting the program’s EIR, which should finish next summer. The program is set to be heard and adopted by the SF Board of Supervisors in fall of 2013.

In 2008, Bruins for Traffic Relief Rallied for the Measure R transit sales tax which despite earning nearly 70% of the vote barely passed. New legislation seeks to lower that threshold from 67% to 50%.

A series of amendments proposed by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) to SB 791 would lower the threshold of voter approval for new taxes to fund transportation improvements from 67 percent to 50 percent.

“SB 791 empowers local communities to meet their local transportation needs, improve regional mobility, and invest in high-priority, job-creating infrastructure improvements,” said Sen. Steinberg.

News of this change broke over the weekend, and already transportation groups such as the Bay Area’s TransForm are providing Action Alerts for Californians to contact their representatives in Sacramento.

The anti-congestion charge, in the form of per gallon fees on fuel paid at the pump, could be used to fund transit, bike and pedestrian projects, toll lanes, and the safety and maintenance of state highways and bridges. The charge would be levied on the sale of gasoline and diesel fuel and, for electric cars, on vehicle registration, and could be implemented for up to 30 years.

Revenues could pay for transit capital, operations and maintenance; bicycle and pedestrian programs and projects; programs and projects that would demonstrably reduce the growth in vehicle miles traveled (VMT); conversion of carpool lanes to toll lanes; and improvements “relative to the maintenance, safety and rehabilitation of state highways and bridges.”

“Almost half of California’s greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation,” said Warner Chabot, CEO of the California League of Conservation Voters. “SB 791 will provide Californians with better transportation choices. It will lead to fewer cars on the road and will greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This bill is an environmental milestone.”

As we’ve seen with other proposals that would allow expansion of transit, bicycling or pedestrian networks, there is unity between environmental groups, organized labor and business leaders when it comes to supporting “pro-transit” ballot initiatives.

“The transportation improvements that would be made possible by SB 791 would create desperately needed good jobs in California,” said Maria Elena Durazo, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. “Every $1 billion invested in transportation creates about 47,500 jobs. SB 791 will put Californians back to work, especially those who have been hit hardest by the recession.”

In 2008, Los Angeles County became the most recent county to pass a tax to fund transportation improvements. Because any voter approved fee requires two-thirds support, it was a long night for transit advocates on November 4, 2008 despite overwhelming support for the initiative. For Denny Zane, the executive director of Move L.A., the coalition founded to support Measure R, Steinberg’s proposal is a welcome change.

“In 2008 voters in LA County miraculously voted to support the Measure R sales tax for transportation by a two-thirds vote in the throes of a collapsing economy. But, it should not require a miracle to ensure the future of our transportation system and our economy,” said Zane. “This bill provides the opportunity for congestion reduction strategies that can be approved by a sensible majority vote, including expanded transit services or highway improvements.”

No hearing date has been scheduled for SB 791, but Streetsblog will cover this legislation if it moves through the Senate and Assembly.

A full bike rack outside the Senate building where today's EPW hearing was held. Photo: Tanya Snyder.

You’ve worked with us on Safe Routes to Schools, because that’s so crucial, and we kept it, and bike paths, and we kept it, and recreational trails, and we kept it. Tough debates, giving here, taking there. But that has remained in the bill.

The reauthorization negotiations have been largely overshadowed by the ongoing talks over the debt ceiling. For a long time it appeared that if the debt talks had any impact on the transportation program, it would be to institutionalize the 33 percent cuts mandated by House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan’s budget. However, as Boxer mentioned a few times during today’s hearing, the outlook is looking brighter.

The bipartisan Gang of Six has a plan to cut the deficit and raise the debt ceiling. That plan calls for very little spending – but the one area they did see fit to spend on was infrastructure. The Gang of Six plan calls for the following:

Tax reform must be estimated to provide $1 trillion in additional revenue to meet plan targets and generate an additional $133 billion by 2021, without raising the federal gas tax, to ensure improved solvency for the Highway Trust Fund.

According to our sources, that additional revenue would stabilize the trust fund for the next 10 years.

The vote of confidence by the Gang of Six is encouraging and should be a shot in the arm to the Senate. If that debt plan passes, it could even give House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica enough political cover to raise the total price tag of his bill.

EPW was able to get bipartisan buy-in, even from one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate, James Inhofe (R-OK). Despite his conservatism on nearly every issue, though, Inhofe says he’s a “big spender” when it comes to two things: national defense and infrastructure.

Many senators mentioned the oft-repeated number $2.2 trillion: the amount the U.S. would have to spend over the next five years just to get the nation’s infrastructure to “passable” condition, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. That’s eight times more than the Senate bill foresees.

Still, the Senate bill remains larger than the House bill and for a shorter duration, and it remains to be seen how the two chambers will reconcile their competing visions. Terry O’Sullivan of the Laborers’ union said the House proposal “locks in failure for six years” and “gives up on America.”

O’Sullivan and nearly everyone else who spoke mentioned the massive job loss that would be caused by the low funding levels in the House bill – 630,000 jobs, according to Sen. Boxer. “We’re inviting unemployment,” she said.

Boxer said she’d visited a job re-training program that was teaching people to become chefs. Several of the participations had been construction workers who had “given up” on finding work in their field, she said.

Boxer pleaded with transportation advocates to keep contacting their senators – including her – to encourage them to move the reauthorization bill.

“We need the people to communicate with those on the Finance Committee on both sides of the aisle, and this committee, that you really need us to do this,” she said. “A lot of you said it took courage for us to come together. We need to have you in the background, with a loud voice.”

She said she felt that the public support was behind her in going forward with the bill, but advocates need to keep it up, especially with the Finance Committee which is still searching for $12 billion to close the funding gap. “They have to feel that this is a priority,” Boxer said. “If they don’t sense that America wants this, it’s going to be very difficult.”

Sen. Max Baucus, who chairs the Finance Committee and also leads the EPW Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure, said he’s “fairly confident” and “optimistic” that they’ll find the money.

Baucus was the first lawmaker to publicly call for a two-year bill, but at the hearing admitted it wasn’t ideal. “Chairman Boxer held out for six-year bill as long as possible,” he said. “But the issue is funding.”

At the end of the hearing, Boxer expressed frustration that President Obama hasn’t been more present in these negotiations – except for his recent mentions of an infrastructure bank. “We have to convince the administration to please weigh in, now,” she said. “Yes, we want an infrastructure bank; we love it, it’s great, but it’s not the core program.”

Deron Lovaas of NRDC said the administration has been “AWOL.” He said he’s disappointed the only administration bill that’s been made public was a leaked, “pre-final” version that had major sections that don’t reflect actual administration positions. He said President George W. Bush released an administration draft.

“The previous administration actually did a better job of managing their approach to this bill than the current administration,” Lovaas said, “which is disappointing, given how much skill Sec. LaHood and his team have.”

Boxer reiterated her desire to get the bill out of committee before the Senate leaves for August recess.

The federal transportation bill by Rep. John Mica would focus on the federal highway system, not sustainable transportation.

Public transit programs in California could take a $468 million annual hit under the proposed transportation bill unveiled last week by Rep. John Mica (R-FL). The Mica plan would also potentially result in the loss of 17,565 annual jobs, according to an analysis [pdf] by Transportation for America. Overall, T4A predicts the scaled-down bill would result in a 37 percent reduction in federal investments in public transportation when compared to current levels.

“What you will see, more than likely, is transit agencies taking what money they have available for operations and shifting some of that over into making up that federal cut for the capital expenses,” said Ryan Wiggins, the T4A Southern California field representative. “What they might be forced to do is a combination of fare increases, and/or service cuts.”

“This is the federal government not investing in our infrastructure. That’s what it is,” said Randy Rentschler, a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. “I think there are some elements to it that are positive, but often what matters most is the money, and the money is clearly inadequate.”

In San Francisco, SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose said Muni would be forced to defer or delay some major capital investment projects, including work on the Central Subway, Van Ness BRT, the replacement of trolley coach and motor coach vehicles, and an upgrade of rail and overhead line infrastructure. It would also force the agency to “defer fleet rehabilitation of motor coach and historic fleet vehicles which will impact service due to lack of available vehicles” and delay the scheduled replacement of 35 paratransit vans, along with other projects.

The bill would also eliminate any federal guarantee for bicycle and pedestrian programs. Wiggins said T4A fears that money which typically comes from federal transportation enhancement funds would all be funneled to big infrastructure projects, and bike and ped programs would get neglected by state transportation agencies.

Dave Snyder, the executive director of the California Bicycle Coalition, was more optimistic, considering the strong advocacy for biking and walking in the state.

“We have some work to do in California to make sure that the kinds of projects that were funded out of enhancements continue to get funded but I’m confident that in most areas of California, anyway, we can maintain that level of funding, if not increase it, thanks to the growing support for this kind of stuff,” he said.

Senator Barbara Boxer, who sits on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has vowed to fight the proposed cuts, and is offering her own proposal.

The cover page of the GOP plan document. A mess of empty rural highways: is that the new direction they want for federal transportation policy?

First, to recap:

The transportation reauthorization proposal that House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica unveiled yesterday (sans legislative text) calls for $230 billion over six years, cutting 33 percent out of current spending levels. The plan maintains the current 80/20 split between highways and transit funding, supports state infrastructure banks in lieu of a national one, and expands the popular and oversubscribed TIFIA loan program.

Why a Six-Year Bill

At yesterday’s press event to roll out the bill, Mica and other House members explained their commitment to a six-year bill, in contrast to the Senate proposal of a two-year bill.

“We want long term bill,” Mica said. “We heard across the country that our state secretaries of transportation want some stability.”

Richard Hanna, the vice chair of the Highways and Transit subcommittee, contended that the stimulus failed to boost employment significantly because “shovel-ready,” short-term projects don’t create many jobs.

“By passing a six-year transportation bill, this committee will provide the states and transportation agencies with an established stream of federal funding that will allow them to take on major projects,” said Hanna. “Given this predictability, states will be more comfortable taking on bridge replacement, highway interchange improvements, etc. These are projects that provide jobs for two or three years, not two or three months.”

Without the assurance of a long-term bill, Hanna said, “states will continue to put off major construction projects.”

“The two year plan is a recipe for bankruptcy of the trust fund and also a closedown of long term projects across the country,” said Mica. “And if you don’t believe that, look what’s happened. We’re under a two-year extension right now, which expires in September. That’ll be two years. And look what it’s given us! Not much.”

Even advocates of a short bill agree that a longer one is ideal, as it allows for planning, but they say transportation agencies can’t plan major projects with the tiny trickle of federal funding the House bill would let flow to the states, either. Some state DOT heads say they’d rather have adequate funding for two years than meager funding for six.

Rules and Funding Constraints

Mica made it clear that while he’s also disappointed the funding levels are so low, he’s hampered by the political climate of fiscal conservatism in the House and, more specifically, by House Rule XXI, which includes a “pay-as-you-go” provision [PDF] that Mica takes as a prohibition on spending more than the Highway Trust Fund takes in.

“I wish I could jump over the moon,” Mica said, “but I can’t do that either.”

He said several times that he and other committee members would be appearing before the Ways and Means Committee, which makes decisions about how to fund programs, to appeal for help. He wasn’t very specific about what they’d ask for, though he did mention some bonding and tax credits for private companies investing in infrastructure. He wouldn’t say that he would push for any kind of increased user fee, whether a gas tax hike or a VMT charge.

“We’ve tried to look at every dollar of revenue that’s coming in and how we can maximize it,” Mica said, explaining that by consolidating programs, encouraging private investment and streamlining the review process, he thinks they can “do more with less.”

They’re eliminating 70 programs out of the “mind-boggling” list of federal transportation programs and “devolving to the states the ability to approve” programs. Federal mandates for certain programs (including bike, pedestrian, and other livability programs) will be eliminated, but states will maintain the “flexibility” to spend money on those things. Unfortunately, if history is any guide, many states end up under-spending on these alternative transportation programs, even disproportionately sending bike/ped money back to Washington when called upon to rescind funds from their budgets.

Mica said there will be more money available (despite the smaller size of the bill) for all of those programs because it cuts federal overhead costs and eliminates the need for state and local officials to “hightail it to Washington to talk to some bureaucrat in one of the agencies.”

Focus on Highways

“The focus of the bill is on the national highway system,” Mica said, in answer to a question about the elimination of funding for walkability. “We can’t fund every local project.”

“We’re trying to make certain that our federal responsibility is met first, and that’s our interstates and our major infrastructure projects.”

He then used the opportunity to boast that the bill has no earmarks, reducing the amount spent on frivolous “pet” projects, and that there are no “special set-asides” – Republican code for things like multi-use trails.

Republicans say their plan would keep the Highway Trust Fund afloat, whereas Democrats' plans would drive it into the red. Source: House Transportation Committee

The bill doesn’t have any dollar amounts attached to specific programs but Rep. Bill Shuster said that it doesn’t have anything specifically for high-speed rail. Still, he promised that the plan would improve upon the high-speed rail program, which he accused the Obama administration of “mishandling.”

“We’re going to fix it in this bill,” Shuster said, “requiring that projects are truly high-speed – and the definition of high-speed will not be 110 mph; it will be 125 mph.” He also pledged greater transparency.

They’re cutting Amtrak’s funding by 25 percent and placing limits on what the funding can be used for. For example, Shuster said, it couldn’t be “squandered” on lawsuits like one that Amtrak is involved in now.

The plan also calls for improvements to the Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing Program, which is funded at $35 billion but has only managed to spend about $1 billion in the last 13 years.

No Competition But Private Competition For Transit

Mica is one Republican who has long been a fan of rail and mass transit. At yesterday’s event he said, “When you see the price of one car on the road, and new highway construction through metropolitan areas or even rural areas, you become an advocate of transportation alternatives.”

Still, that support hasn’t translated into any breaks for transit in this bill. Even with transit’s share of the overall pie staying the same, the reduced overall funding levels would mean a cut from about $11 billion for transit today to about $7 billion.

On the positive side, the proposal would “streamline” the New Starts and Small Starts program for transit, “cutting project development time in half,” according to the plan. Indeed, project development times are slated, under this plan, to go from 15 years to six by making federal reviews happen at the same times, instead of each waiting for another to end.

But overall there’s a lot of bad news for transit in this bill. The transit section also encourages private companies to provide public transportation services. House Republicans like what they see in the success of privately run intercity buses and want to see vanpools compete with city buses in urban areas, in addition to more private participation in rail transit. Some critics of private participation at this level worry that private operators will take over the lucrative routes, leaving the slower routes for public agencies to run (and lose money on).

The plan would also repeal discretionary transit programs that the Republicans say are “unpredictable and not transparent,” returning instead to strict formula funding. This move flies in the face of repeated and growing demands for increased performance measures, which would often use discretionary funds as a “carrot” to encourage cost-effective programs that meet national transportation goals.

Indeed, the House bill is notable in its rejection of performance measures and competitive programs like TIGER and the Sustainable Communities grants instituted by the Obama administration. Committee staffer Jim Tymon had to field Streetsblog’s question on performance measures when Mica couldn’t answer it, but Tymon’s response was vague.

He said that performance measures would be developed in conert with USDOT and state DOTs. He said that while states will have increased flexibility for how they spend their money, they will be held accountable for how they meet performance standards. If they don’t meet those standards, he said, they will be made to spend money in the areas where they are underperforming.

An Unlikely Ally

While responses continue to roll in from advocacy groups and lawmakers alarmed by the funding cuts, several notable people called in to Mica’s press event to thank him for the new proposal. One of them was L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a champion of transit investment. He thanked Mica for “listening to the 113 mayors who have gotten behind the expansion of TIFIA.”

“Your proposal to raise the budget authority of TIFIA to a billion dollars goes beyond even what many of us had talked about early on,” Villaraigosa said, “and we think it’s exactly where it needs to be.”

That’s a useful high-profile endorsement for Mica from a pro-transit Democrat. Still, it’s unlikely the mayor will support Mica’s plan over Boxer’s, which also includes America Fast Forward, another plan supported by Villaraigosa to increase federal leveraging of private funds.

Sen. Barbara Boxer tells reporters nearly 500,000 construction jobs would be lost if the House cuts transportation funding. Photo: Alice Ollstein

Though she had initially pushed for a six-year bill, Boxer made it official that the EPW proposal is for a two-year bill that will only cover current funding levels plus inflation—about $109 billion over the two years. She said the Finance Committee is “very optimistic” that it can find the needed $6 billion per year in addition to the Highway Trust Fund revenues. There are “various ways to get there,” she said, but her preferred method is to redirect funds from the expensive wars abroad.

“We are now spending $12 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan,” she said. “We need $12 billion over two years. We are winding down those wars. It seems to me there’s a lot of funding available for this. It’s a very small amount compared to what we’re spending every month.”

At today’s press conference, Boxer focused mostly on the urgency of saving 500,000 construction sector jobs and 100,000 transit jobs, citing new Federal Highway Administration stats about the ramifications if Congress passes Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget, with its 30 percent cuts to transportation. Boxer’s aides pulled out charts detailing just how many jobs would be lost in each state, and Boxer pointed to the over 43,000 that her home state of California would shed.

“People just think you can say, ‘Oh, we’re going to cut 30 percent or 20 percent or 50 percent’ and they don’t really look at the ramifications,” she said. “Here are the ramifications: In my home state, 43,000 families would be devastated. And the nation’s bridges and highways are not going to be in any way considered safe, because with that tremendous cut we can’t do the things we need to do to keep up with our needs.”

As we reported recently, some criticize Boxer’s jobs-centric approach, since jobs are just a small part of the bill’s long-term boost to the economy, but jobs and unemployment are still the hot-button issues of the day, and clearly Boxer thinks it’s a winning issue.

As for the parts of the bill that the “Big Four” on the EPW Committee still need to iron out, Boxer wouldn’t give details, but said, “I think we’re getting extremely close. I don’t see any major disagreements at all.” She declined to comment on either an Infrastructure Bank or guaranteed federal funding for bike/ped projects, but confirmed that there will be no earmarks allowed.

“This is a very strong priority for the nation—you can’t be a great economic power without investing in infrastructure,” she said.

Rep. John Mica (R-FL), chair of the House Transportation Committee, will unveil his bill tomorrow, but whether it will get marked up – or even formally introduced — before the August recess is still up in the air. Boxer says her bill will be marked up “in a couple of weeks.”

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.

Meanwhile, the Senate EPW Committee, by all accounts, is raring to go on its transportation bill draft, but the House usually goes first on all bills related to spending. The Senate could still introduce its bill and start holding hearings, but it’s unlikely to come to a vote until the House has passed its version.

All of this makes a straight extension of the current transportation bill – the option no one wanted – the most likely scenario.

The debt ceiling deadline is August 2, and if there’s no deal by then, there will be tremendous pressure on Congress to stay in session to figure things out. But there’s nothing Congress hates more than missing recess, so that seems unlikely (though right now, consensus seems even more unlikely, so your guess is as good as mine).

Assuming Congress does manage to take its recess, both chambers will be out from August 8 until after Labor Day. The current transportation bill extension expires September 30. What do you think the chances are that both chambers will introduce, pass, and reconcile new transportation bills in the three-and-a-half weeks they’ll have after recess ends? If you said “diddly squat,” you’re a pretty smart cookie.

Would the two chambers just extend the current bill until 2013, when the president election is over, a new House and Senate are seated, and a new conversation can begin on how to raise revenues? That’s more or less the idea behind a two-year bill, which the Senate appears to be supporting. It’s possible the House could come back in September and agree to those terms, but that would be an awfully quick turnaround, especially since Mica’s been insistent that the bill have a six-year duration.

The Senate’s bill, as far as we understand it, would buy Congress enough time to get past the elections, because it does involve a slight bump in spending. But a straight extension of the current bill wouldn’t get us there. The Highway Trust Fund is projected to run dry next summer, so a SAFETEA-LU extension would run headlong into that impending crisis. So Congress will likely have to pass a short-term extension, coming back to the issue in early 2012 — and actually solving it — before the highway trust fund goes insolvent.

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.

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.

Advocates for bicycle and pedestrian projects have been nervous about talk of “consolidating wasteful programs,” as Republicans on the committee have long let it be known that they consider bike/ped projects to be “wasteful.” Boxer made it clear that she disagrees (though she does agree that other “enhancements” like museums don’t belong in the transportation bill). “Certainly any mode of transportation – roads that support alternatives such as bike paths, walkways – will be included and get good attention,” she said, adding that they plan to continue to guarantee federal funds for these programs, not just leave it up to the states (though that part is not yet finalized).

She reiterated her support for indexing the gas tax to inflation but quickly discarded it as a non-starter – and besides, the question of how to pay for the bill is the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee, which will be looking for ways to make it viable. The chair of the Finance Committee, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) is one of the “Big Four” of the EPW Committee who has agreed to the current principles, so that’s a good start.

“We’re ready to rock and roll,” said Boxer. The committee plans to start hearings on the final draft of the bill in two weeks and mark it up before the July 4 recess, meaning they would finalize the bill and send it to the full Senate for approval. She said Majority Leader Harry Reid is “elated” that the four major committee members have found bipartisan agreement on such substantial elements of the bill, which staff members say is already 150 pages long (though not in standard legislative formatting).

The Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over transit, and Commerce, with control over rail, haven’t written their pieces of the bill yet. So far, we expect the highway/transit split to remain 80 percent/20 percent. Expect the debate over high-speed rail in the Commerce Committee to be intense.

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.”

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.”

Nancy Skinner.

The benefits of capping the total amount of car parking, or at least reducing the requirement to build parking, in developments near plentiful mass transit is probably obvious to you if you’re reading this article. Reduced car parking insures that the people living in the T.O.D. will be the one using transit and the new developments will actively reduce the number of car trips made in the area. But there are other benefits as well. By reducing parking mandates, the cost of new development construction goes down, meaning projects for lower-income and transit-dependent populations become more economically doable. AB 710 also provides some flexibility to local jurisdictions that may require higher minimums if written findings are made based upon substantial evidence in the record including a parking utilization study.

Despite the dramatic changes this legislation could bring to development patterns throughout the state, the legislation hasn’t received a lot of attention. An Internet search of the legislation brought up a few bill summaries, a resolution opposing the legislation by the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, and a blog post by American Institute of Architects, Los Angeles Chapter’s, Will Wright supporting it.

Wright explains how A.B. 710 supports the state’s smart growth and emissions reduction goals approved by the legislature and Governor Schwarzenegger in recent years:

The state has shown interest in helping communities realize the goals of developing more sustainably. California has taken steps over the last several years to establish programs and policies to help incentivize sustainable regional and local planning and development efforts; however, there is still much that can be done to remove barriers and incentivize new development with public transit and alternative transportation options.

The Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors note in their opposition that there are two areas that would be impacted in unincorporated Contra Costa County, and both of those areas would see their parking maximums reduced. The Supervisors felt that, while supporting the concept of maximum parking requirements, A.B. 710 takes away too much autonomy from the County.

AB 710, if enacted, would establish parking maximums for all transit-oriented development projects, or projects located in “transit intensive areas.” While County staff agrees that strict parking requirements, in principal, are necessary for transit-rich areas and areas with high transit-oriented development investments, the discretion for establishing said requirements should remain with the local jurisdiction. This legislation would eliminate the County’s autonomy in establishing parking standards we deem appropriate for our transit-oriented development project areas.

As this legislation moves through the Assembly, it is bound to attract more attention. Streetsblog will keep track of the bill’s legislative path and any news articles it generates in the coming weeks.

Ranking Member Nick Rahall presents Chairman John Mica with a new gavel to run the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Meet the new House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

The committee’s meeting this morning, the first of the 112th Congress, included twenty new Republican faces, 19 of whom are freshman representatives. The mostly administrative agenda didn’t offer many chances for the committee members to talk policy, but even some of the freshmen’s short introductions proved potentially revealing.

Chair John Mica and Ranking Member Nick Rahall each forcefully restated his commitment to keeping the committee running on bipartisan terms. “This has been one of the most bipartisan committees and it will continue to be,” said Mica. In a rhetorical reach across the aisle, Mica also used the president’s State of the Union call to invest in transportation as a springboard for his own remarks.

“There’s no Republican bridges, there’s no Democratic bridges, there’s only American bridges,” said Rahall. He urged committee members to “stand together, even against party leadership if necessary,” to keep partisanship out of their work. He even serenaded Mica with a one-day-early rendition of Happy Birthday.

More importantly, both Mica and Rahall agreed on a proposed schedule for the committee: as previously reported, aviation reauthorization will come before the surface transportation bill.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the surface transportation bill is being abandoned. “We’re going to get the darn thing done,” promised Mica. He also announced that the committee will take a listening tour across the country in mid-February to gather ideas from across the country. “I’m going to be as flexible as a Barbie doll,” said Mica.

The Republican freshman also had a few interesting things to say. Here are a few that stood out.

• Tom Reed, from Western New York, suggested that the House’s new anti-spending fervor should perhaps spare transportation. “It’s through our infrastructure that we can unleash the private sector,” he said. “That’s proper government spending.”
• Two representatives, Pennsylvania’s Lou Barletta and New York’s Richard Hanna, cited their private sector infrastructure building experience. Barletta founded the Interstate Road Marking Corporation, which became the largest pavement marker in Pennsylvania, and Hanna’s construction company handled a variety of public and private projects.
• Pat Meehan, who represents the Philadelphia suburbs, said that his district has “complex needs” ranging “from rail to ports to highways.” In contrast, Florida’s Steve Southerland only noted that I-10 and I-75 run through his district.

This new rendering shows 9-foot instead of 5-foot sidewalk extensions. Image: SF Planning Department, City Design Group

A proposal [pdf] to significantly improve sidewalk conditions for N-Judah riders in Cole Valley is headed to the SFMTA Board for approval with some modifications. As we wrote in November, the current sidewalks on Carl Street at Cole and Stanyan can’t accommodate the thousands of passengers who use the stops daily, so riders waiting for trains often stand in the street, and are forced to weave through parked cars to board.

The proposal has been revised and would extend the sidewalks by 9 feet on all three proposed transit bulbs on Carl Street (see the photo below the break), which “allows seamless boarding of trains.”  On the southwest side of Carl and Cole, the inbound bulb would stretch for 113 feet instead of the original 165 feet. The entire length of a two-car train is about 150 feet.

The SFMTA said it reduced the length of the longer inbound bulb to alleviate concerns about the loss of parking, which will translate into giving back one parking space. As it stands now, four parking spaces on that section would be removed, and the proposal itself would allow for the removal of a total of eight spaces on Carl. Some neighbors remain concerned about removing those spaces and continue to oppose the plan.

Overall, though, the SFMTA said there is a lot of support for the proposal, and in an email to Streetsblog, outlined some of the many benefits:

Installing these transit bulbs will improve conditions for the nearly 6,000 daily passengers that use these transit stops by eliminating the need for passengers to weave between tightly-parked cars as they get on and off of N Judah trains.  They will also improve pedestrian visibility at the intersections, provide the train operators a clear view of boarding and alighting customers, and reduce train dwell times by encouraging passengers to board through all doors.  Furthermore, they will eliminate conflicts between trains and parked cars, particularly at the outbound stop on the northeast corner of the Carl/Cole intersection, where the N Judah tracks curve and illegally parked cars have caused numerous delays and several side-swipe collisions.

The proposal will go before the SFMTA Board for approval next Tuesday, January 18th, at 1 p.m. in Room 400 at City Hall. If you support the proposal, you’re encouraged to write the board at mtaboard@sfmta.com and tell them so.

Revised proposal. Image: SFMTA

Flickr photo: jovino

According to Thomas Sanchez, chair of the Urban Affairs and Planning Department at Virginia Tech and a Brookings Institution fellow, the FTA's action against BART was unprecedented and perked up the ears of transportation policymakers around the country.

On the other hand, Sanchez said he wasn't necessarily surprised with the action at the MTC because of a previous lawsuit by Public Advocates, Darensburg v. Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which provided significant evidence in his mind that the MPO wasn't fulfilling its Title VI requirements. Sanchez said the commission had been asked numerous times by advocates like Urban Habitat to conduct an equity analysis of its funding practices in general, and had grown quite vocal with OAC complaints.

"I personally think it's a positive from a standpoint of accountability and transparency and holding these organizations accountable for a fair amount of federal money they are getting," said Sanchez.

While Sanchez said the BART OAC case was significant because the FTA withheld money rather than merely exchanging pointed letters, the MTC should have had better mechanisms in place to monitor BART and should have acted on the advocates' complaints of improper equity analysis.

"It's their responsibility, not only that the subcontractor follows through with the work, but the letter of the law," he said.

An FTA official in Washington confirmed to Streetsblog that no other MPO was currently under similar scrutiny and that the complaint by Public Advocates against BART had led to the request of documents from the MTC. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the the first step is always to help the grantee come into voluntary compliance, and that in this particular situation the agency was obligated to follow up to see what the MPO was doing to monitor its subrecipients.

The FTA official also noted that while it might have appeared that withholding the money from BART for the OAC was a sanction, the issue was more about the tight timeline for allocating stimulus funds. The FTA did not believe BART would be compliant with Title VI by the time the money had to be obligated, so it denied the funding request.

The MTC subsequently distributed the money to transit operators throughout the region in accordance with its Tier II spending contingency.

MTC spokesperson John Goodwin told Streetsblog last week the organization would "work with the FTA to meet their deadlines." When contacted for this story he said he had nothing new to add to his comments from last week. Neither MTC Commission Chair Scott Haggerty nor Vice-Chair Adrienne Tissier replied to Streetsblog's requests for comment.

Wynn Hausser, a spokesperson for Public Advocates, said he doesn't believe the MTC has the proper procedural requirements in place to monitor Title VI compliance of subrecipients and the probe will ultimately demonstrate the shortcoming. 

MTC Commissioners Question Governance and Projects

Perhaps surprisingly, several MTC commissioners interviewed by Streetsblog agreed with the advocates and argued the FTA probe could compel the Bay Area to reconsider how it spends billions in federal funds, including past allocations for projects they contend never went through proper equity analysis.

"I think it would be fair to say that was a red flag, that it was alarming," said Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese, an MTC commissioner representing the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). Cortese listed numerous concerns with MTC procedure and representation and called into question several funding decisions in the region, which to his knowledge sailed through the commission without equity analysis.

"I do think there is a lot the MTC should be concerned about," said Cortese. "If the FTA knows the half of it, they should be concerned."

Cortese said he hoped the OAC wouldn't become the only poster child for the region's failure to comply with Title VI and argued there were programmatic issues throughout the region. Cortese listed several other projects where the MTC had moved hundreds of millions of dollars without conducting equity analysis. He said the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) had de-prioritized the Capitol Expressway light rail project, which had undergone equity analysis and would have served low income communities of color, in favor of BART to San Jose.

"[The VTA] defunded a project that their own equity criteria said was needed. That's a $300 million example," said Cortese. "At what point does MTC have an obligation to say that's not right? To what extent does MTC have the tools to do something about it?"

He also noted MTC had moved money from the Dunbarton Bridge rail project to BART's Warm Springs extension without an equity analysis. "I don't remember anyone ever doing that analysis," he said.

"Lots of money gets moved around politically without a lot of analysis on civil rights and equity," added Cortese.

San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, who sits on the commission and has been an outspoken critic of the current OAC project, said fellow commissioners didn't want to consider anything but the nearly $500 million tramway. He said the commission never seriously pushed BART to study other options, such as the bus rapid transit proposal by the transit non-profit TransForm.

"Although the Oakland political machine was able to turn out a large number of people saying build the project, it seemed pretty clear the benefits were not there on the OAC," said Daly. "I think TransForm has done a really good job of debunking that. If your real concern was the economic vitality to the airport, you would run a BRT or other transit option that serves the people of the area."

Daly also complained that MTC Executive Director Steve Heminger had recently supported a $20 million funding swap at the California Transportation Commission (CTC) to make up for the gap that resulted when the FTA didn't give BART the $70 million in stimulus funds it expected. Daly said he wasn't supposed to catch the funding swap issue and when he did, MTC staff was not pleased.

"Obviously Heminger and MTC are moving ahead with trying to figure out how to fund the OAC without all this and that's fine. But to do it under the darkness of night, I thought that was pretty low," said Daly.

Urban Habitat's Bob Allen questioned the funding swap as well. "The level of effort and coordination the CTC is doing with the MTC because this is a pet project is embarrassing," he said. "Where was the level of effort when the operators were bleeding jobs?"

"When a capital project goes over budget by $100 million, there's always an explanation. When a transit operator like AC Transit encounters health care cost increases, they say it's mismanagement. They don't go out of their way to do crap for the operators," said Allen.

Supervisor Cortese also expressed concerns about the representational structure of the commission itself. Despite having 25 percent of the population in the Bay Area, Santa Clara County is not proportionately represented, and East San Jose, which has a strong people of color and low income community population, doesn't have a significant voice on MTC, said Cortese.

Cortese's appointment by ABAG created temporary parity, but when his term ends, he said, Santa Clara County will only have two permanent appointees and neither of them would represent the half million people of East San Jose. "That's a permanent structural failure," he said. 

Impact of the Probe

Source: Tom Sanchez.

The potential problems at MTC are not necessarily novel among MPOs around the country, as Sanchez noted in a paper on democratic governance and demographics in transportation planning. In the paper, he wrote that 88 percent of MPOs are governed by whites, while the regions represented by MPOs are only 61 percent white. He also indicated MPO boards are over-represented by suburban interests because of "one area, one vote" governance structures.

Without better representation by communities that are supposed to be protected by Title VI, Sanchez argued MPOs would not really engage the public and fulfill their responsibility to the law. MPOs should do more than pay lip service to public involvement in decision making:

Community-based groups that assist transportation agencies should be encouraged to improve outreach processes and strategies to identify culturally diverse groups and facilitate their involvement. Such efforts are greatly needed to support information dissemination about transportation and related land-use impacts. Mechanisms are needed that allow formal recognition of coalitions of community representatives on MPO advisory committees and decision-making boards.

"That's really who they answer to, that's who pays the bills, the public," Sanchez told Streetsblog. Sanchez said the MPOs are ultimately public bodies and should be responsive to complaints raised by the public, not just "blow them off," as he said MTC had done previously with concerns raised by advocates like Urban Habitat.

"If the public isn't happy, then your customers aren't happy. What do you do, tell them too bad?" he said. "From a public relations standpoint and a good practices standpoint, that doesn't seem like a good way to do business."

Urban Habitat's Allen hoped the FTA action would ultimately lead the MTC to reconsider how it conducts business in the region, including its adherence to the letter of civil rights law and a reconsideration of its representational governance.

"Changing the structure of MTC would change the investment outcomes," Allen said. He argued transit operators should be directly represented on the commission and it should better reflect geographic equity.

Allen said since the FTA investigation of BART, the staff there has had an open line of communication with the advocates about their overall equity analysis, though he said Urban Habitat disagreed with the sufficiency of BART's OAC equity analysis (the FTA recently sent BART notice that it had complied with the necessary requisites for its OAC fare analysis).

Looking forward, Allen hoped the FTA's probe into the MTC would compel commissioners to take civil rights seriously and not just lead them to "check off the boxes" required by the law. "We want to make sure they're going as far as we think they need to go to comply with federal civil rights compliance."

Beyond the Bay Area

Advocates for transit and social justice are taking cues from the MTC action to influence their regional MPOs beyond the Bay Area. The Los Angeles Bus Riders Union (BRU), which made history in 1996 with a successful Title VI challenge against the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has been closely watching the BART and MTC cases.

"I feel like this is a historic move for those of us who advocate on behalf of the transit dependent, working class communities, and communities of color," said Esperanza Martinez, lead organizer for the BRU. Referring to President Obama and FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff, she added, "It speaks to the real possibilities and opportunities that have been created through the new administration."

"It sets a precedent for agencies like the MTC to tread more carefully in terms of how they make choices on how they spend local, state and federal funding to build projects that have discriminatory impacts," she added.

Supervisors Michaela Alioto-Pier and David Campos questioning SFMTA Board nominee Cheryl Brinkman at the Rules Committee meeting today. Photo: Matthew Roth.

A noted transit advocate and a key organizer of Sunday Streets in San Francisco has cleared the most significant hurdle to her appointment as the newest member of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which runs Muni and manages every street in the city. Cheryl Brinkman, a product manager in generic pharmaceuticals at McKesson Corporation and the chair of the board of the transit non-profit Livable City, received unanimous support from the Board of Supervisors' Rules Committee, which has recommended the full board approve her nomination at its meeting next week.

Advocates had cheered when Mayor Gavin Newsom nominated Brinkman to replace one of the two MTA Directors who had been termed out at the end of April, given her transit and bicycle bona fides. In testimony today, nearly everyone acknowledged her significant work at Livable City over the past three years to bring San Francisco's Sunday Streets ciclovias from a few controversial pilots to a permanent fixture now supported by many in the business community that initially resisted the events.

Supervisors on the Rules Committee hoped that experience and her understanding of transit issues would improve a board many described as beholden to Mayor Newsom, and at direct odds with the mandate of the independent SFMTA as defined by a voter initiative in 1999.

"Without casting any aspersions against the members of the MTA, some of us believe the MTA Board of Directors has not demonstrated the kind of independence that is really needed to have meaningful oversight of an agency with an $800 million budget," said Supervisor David Campos, Chair of the Rules Committee.

Campos lauded the public process that Mayor Newsom followed and said, given the impact Muni and streets have on mobility and livability, this was a significant appointment to consider. While he wished the ballot measure he drafted with Supervisors Mar and Chiu to split appointments to the MTA Board had not been withdrawn during the course of budget negotiations, Campos assented that Brinkman was the best nominee he could hope for.

"The current structure does not provide for the level of accountability and independence that is needed. Until that structure changes, we're going to continue to have a lack of representation of some communities, we're going to continue to have a lack of transparency on some issues," said Campos.

But, he added, "I think the experience she brings will be very useful to the board. I think the nomination is as solid a nomination we could have."

For Brinkman, the learning curve will be admittedly difficult, as the SFMTA's long-term budget concerns could spell difficult decisions, particularly if the economy doesn't significantly rebound and the state resumes transit funding raids next budget cycle. 

Brinkman leaving City Hall after the vote to recommend her nomination to the full Board of Supervisors at their meeting next week.

"I know that I have a lot to learn about how the MTA is run," said Brinkman, though she vowed an "absolute openness to listen to all sides and to look at the full clear facts and to make decisions based on that."

"I think I have a lot of knowledge of the nuts and bolts of transportation and the nuts and bolts of urban living and I really hope to bring that to the board and ask the questions and ask staff to take maybe another look at things," said Brinkman. "I know going forward I think there's a lot of things staff wants to do and if we give them the encouragement they can actually run with it and they can actually start working on things when they know we're looking for answers on how to solve a problem."

The two most important issues she identified for the agency were finding sustainable revenue streams for long-term financial viability and improving safety, both on buses and trains and for all users of the streets. She applauded the effort to restore service following the recommendations of the Transit Effectiveness Project and said the agency must strive to realized efficiencies and service improvements to regain the trust of the riding public.

"I know it can be hard to continue to ask the public for more revenue without showing that you're actually saving money in certain areas and adding operating positions."

When asked whether she could maintain her independence even when her views were at odds with the Mayor, Brinkman said she understood the concerns raised by the supervisors and other critics about the board's decisions. "I understand that people have those concerns. I know speaking for myself I'm a pretty strong person, so I don't think that's personally a problem for me," she said.

The most glowing words of the day were given by Supervisor Eric Mar, who initially asked Brinkman to defend herself from the criticism that she is a "bike person."

After defending her multi-modality and her love of transit, Mar said Brinkman's nomination was refreshing. "I'm strongly supportive of her nomination and think she would be a tremendous progressive visionary on the MTA board," he said. "I think it's one of Mayor Newsom's best appointments and I hope to see many more like it."

Supervisor Alioto-Pier offered advice to Brinkman rather than questioning her motivations. Alioto-Pier asked her to please put the needs of Muni's disabled passengers first and foremost, noting serious problems with wheelchair lifts that malfunction and make mobility that much more difficult for the disabled. She urged SFMTA staff and directors to try using a wheelchair for a day and see how those challenges manifest throughout the system.

Alioto-Pier also said that the SFMTA Board of Directors needed to do a better job of customer relations, particularly as it related to neighborhood concerns about stop signs and traffic calming. Before the SFMTA was created in 1999, said Alioto-Pier, the public could address concerns about their streets to the supervisors, but now those lines are not as clear and accountability is not as good.

"I just want to be sure you realize that your job is very community service oriented. I want you to embrace that, it's a lot of work," she said.

In questions after the hearing, Brinkman acknowledged she supported Supervisor Sean Elsbernd's ballot measure to reform labor work rules and compel the Transit Workers Union 250-A, which represents Muni operators, to set wages through collective bargaining. Brinkman said she met with nearly every supervisor, including Elsbernd, and she was excited by the prospect of working with them to improve Muni. She also noted that Elsbernd had offered interesting insights into the debate around Sunday meters and that he had been working with his merchant constituents to explain the value of meters for business.

"The good news today is Muni riders will experience more frequent and reliable service starting on September 4th," Newsom said in a statement, which was released after he made the announcement on KCBS radio. "This represents real progress towards our shared goal of fully restoring Muni service by this time next year."

Early last month, the SFMTA Board voted to restore half of the 10 percent service cut it implemented in May. Since then, the Mayor's Office and the SFMTA said they identified additional funding sources from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the San Francisco County Transportation Authority. In addition, the SFMTA will initiate some "service efficiency" changes that would result in about $900,000 in savings. That allowed them to tack on 11.1 percent in additional restorations, and make today's announcement.

At the SFMTA Board meeting today Transit Director John Haley explained the changes in a presentation (PDF) titled "Service Restoration Plan." He said one of the agency's priorities was to make sure they could restore service while effectively managing it. He acknowledged that a lot of pieces need to fall in place to make the restoration a success.

"Over the last several months when it comes to schedules and service levels we've all become masters of the two minute drill. We are on a very tight and unforgiving schedule to get this to a successful level of execution on the 4th of September," he said, adding that for the first time in six months new operators are being trained and the agency recently implemented a new absentee policy that will help them better manage the day to day workforce.

SFMTA Transit Director John Haley gives his presentation to the SFMTA Board of Directors. Photos: Bryan Goebel.

Although Haley said it was important to keep the operators union "involved and engaged," leaders of TWU Local 250-A said the Mayor's announcement caught them by surprise. Acting TWU President Rafael Cabrera was informed by Streetsblog of the news, and said he would have a fuller response once he had time to review it.

"They're trying to fix Muni but they're fixing it the wrong way. They've got to look at the deficiencies from the top to the bottom. Don't start from the bottom to the top," said Cabrera, referring to the Mayor and Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, whose initiative to reform the way Muni operators are paid is on the November ballot.

Cabrera said the list of new schedules was presented to them by the SFMTA during an 11am meeting but the Mayor made the announcement just after 9am, and he was not told there would be any announcement.

"If you met with me at 11 o'clock and you had the Mayor speaking at 9 o'clock, that's a miscommunication there. Something is wrong there," Cabrera said. 

"Our biggest problem with the SFMTA is the politicians negotiating our contract in the media," said TWU's Michael Postell.

SFMTA Executive Director Nat Ford told Streetsblog that if the union doesn't agree to the 232 hours in reduced monthly stand-by time the agency would force them to adhere to the schedules.

"If they do not agree to do it we have the ability as management to impose a forced sign-up where we actually go through, by seniority, and sign those work programs to the operators. We began that process the last go around but we've never done a total forced sign-up," he said.

The Mayor's Office said the reduction in stand-by hours would reduce the number of drivers needed by 20 operators. 

Here are the other changes announced today:

• The restorations include the addition of seven trolley coaches and two LRVs back into the system.
  
• An average of 504 additional daily weekday service hours, 499 Saturday hours, and 421 Sunday hours.
• Restored Owl Service to every 30 minutes
• 
Restored night end times for Community
  
• Routes 
Restored night end times for many Local/Rapid Routes 

• Restored light rail vehicle (LRV) service 

• Added capacity back to 13 weekday routes and three Saturday/Sunday routes
  
• 
Restored evening or night frequency on nine routes
• 
F-Line historic service better integrated into schedule to increase headway efficiency

The Mayor's press release stressed that his office would work with Supervisor David Chiu, who announced a deal last week with Newsom instead of a Charter amendment, and the Controller's Office to identify the additional $6 to 7 million in "additional efficiency savings and revenues" that would be required to restore all of the service cuts. 

TWU President Rafael Cabrera and his union colleague Michael Postell read the Mayor's press release, which took them by surprise.

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.

Photo: Keenahn

"Bay Area residents should be really excited about the 15 percent target. That's because it's high enough to trigger the transportation and land use changes we need to make the region more livable and affordable, especially as our population grows significantly by 2035," said Marta Lindsey, the communications and development director at TransForm.

Lindsey sent out an alert last week urging people to write emails to the MTC, fearing the commission would adopt a lower target of 10 percent, which its planning committee recommended at a meeting earlier this month.

"It's a realistic target given MTC's modeling and the kinds of investments and policies we already know really move the needle in terms of how much people drive their cars," said Lindsey.

Under the groundbreaking anti-sprawl bill, SB 375, most of the state's 18 MPOs are required to set a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions for passenger vehicles and light trucks by 2020 and 2035. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) recently adopted a set of draft targets (PDF) for the four largest MPOs (the Bay Area, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego), which represent 80 percent of the state's population. Each MPO will then be required to development a Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) to show how it will meet its target. CARB is expected to adopt final targets in September.

The recommended target for the MTC was between 3-12 percent of 2005 levels by 2035. The commission's 8-4 vote for 15 percent followed a presentation (PDF) by Executive Director Steve Heminger and testimony from a diverse group of advocates who urged the MTC to adopt the stronger target. The dissenting commissioners -- James Spering, Bill Dodd, Bill Glover and Amy Worth -- represent Contra Costa, Napa and Solano counties.

Draft targets recommended by the California Air Resources Board. Sacramento's target is among the highest because the region is forecast to have the most growth. While most MPOs are required to recommend targets by June 30, Sacramento's MPO, SACOG, will not consider them until August.

In his presentation, Heminger told commissioners that combining an aggressive focused growth strategy (which would amount to a 12 percent reduction) with traffic diversion management programs such as telecommuting (a 3 percent reduction) and road pricing (8 percent) could probably bring the Bay Area toward an 18 percent target reduction by 2035. But he acknowledged that the region is less advanced in pursuing "road pricing, employer trip reduction, or 'smart driving' programs," which in many cities and counties are politically unpopular.

"It took us 20 years to get a congestion price on the Bay Bridge, so at that rate, god knows how long it will take to get the rest of the roads priced up," said Heminger. "That's tough politics. It's tough duty. It requires, in many cases, action by the Legislature, the Congress, whereas a lot of these land use strategies can be pursued on your own authority."

Using what the Natural Resources Defense Council has called a flawed model, Heminger calculated that a 25-cent fee per mile driven would be necessary to meet the MTC's 18 percent target. He estimated the fee would generate $14 billion annually, costing the average household about $4,500. The money could be used to fund more transit services and subsidize affordable housing, low-income tax credits and commuter costs.

Amanda Eaken of NRDC, who served on CARB's Regional Targets Advisory Committee along with Heminger, said the estimate was "significantly conservative" and that the agency wasn't properly calculating the impact of the costs of driving. She said such a fee, when considering that trip lengths have been repeatedly demonstrated to change with higher costs, would have a much more significant impact on reducing GHG emissions if the model allowed trip lengths to change. In an email, she explained it further:

Even a layperson can understand that if the model doesn't allow trip length to change as a result of higher cost, something is wrong. The estimate is further conservative because none of the modeled scenarios actually re-invested the $14 billion generated through the fee to estimate the GHG reduction potential of providing higher quality transit and other transportation options.

Eaken cited a figure from Elizabeth Deakin, a planning professor at UC Berkeley, who she said estimated that a 2. 5-cent VMT fee "would get you a four percent reduction. So, extrapolating that out, your 25-cent fee would get a 37 percent reduction. Now that's illustrative and there are certainly issues with that...but there are serious issues with this model."

Still, Eaken, in her blog post on The Switchboard, praised the MTC for its action. "This vote represents a significant improvement over MTC's starting place just a couple of months ago, when their adopted RTP (Regional Transportation Plan) would have increased GHG emissions by 2 percent per capita over 2005 levels."

Her testimony was followed by Cary Knecht of Climate Plan who said that a much more modest fee of four cents would be all that is necessary to achieve the reduction.

MTC graphic

One of the most compelling figures was a chart showing the difference in health care cost savings for each of the proposed targets, a point that was hammered home in public testimony by Julie West, the executive director of the Bay Area chapter of the American Lung Association.

"The difference between a 10 percent target and a 15 percent target is 40 million dollars in health care savings, lost productivity, school absences and premature mortality. So, a strong implementation of SB375 is a top priority for the public health community, as you can imagine."

She noted that the Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the Northern California Council of Hospitals, the American Academy of Pediatrics, local health departments and every local medical association had signed a letter of support in favor of the stronger target. "We support a strong implementation of SB375 to combat the negative outcomes associated with communities designed for cars from asthma, to obesity, to traffic injuries and deaths."

Several speakers testified that the higher target will also benefit and impact low-income communities and communities of color, particularly those who have been moving away from urban centers.

"We think that low-income communities are gravely impacted moving farther and farther away from the cities and it costs more money for them to use the public transportation system and we'd like to see subsidies and some type of protected measures implemented to reduce the economic impact on the low-income communities as they're trying to get to work," said Azibuike Akaba, a policy associate overseeing the public health and equity impacts of SB375 for the Regional Asthma Management and Prevention program, or RAMP.

Parisa Fatehi of Public Advocates pointed out that her organization, along with 49 signatory organizations, including TransForm, sent a letter (PDF) to CARB's Chair, Mary Nichols, calling for the agency to consider six steps for a social equity approach to its target setting recommendations that "account for all races and social economic backgrounds."

"What does that mean? For example, increasing housing and transit affordability, improving what we call the jobs-housing fit, will mean that all workers can live closer to their jobs, vital services and grocery stores and health care, and thereby reduce their vehicle miles traveled," she told the commissioners.

Henry Hilken, the research and planning director for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, said much of the hard work implementing SB 375 will involve reaching out to communities to build support for the kind of ambitious land use and pricing changes that will be required to set the Bay Area on a path toward more sustainable communities.

"We think it's going to be critical, in moving forward in the coming years, to really engage local governments, the public, businesses in a really frank discussion as to what those local land use decisions mean, what pricing decisions mean. Quite honestly, that's probably more important than the specific number that's set for the region."

It's official. It's Jerry Brown versus Meg Whitman for Governor of California. While we can expect a vigorous campaign between now and the election in November, neither candidate has staked out solid ground on transportation issues. For Brown, there's a track record going back decades, but for Whitman all we know about her positions is what was learned in a Republican primary where each candidate lurched as far to the right as possible.

That being said, here's what we know, and what we need to know about each candidate's positions on transportation spending, transit funding, high speed rail, raising the gas tax, the state's greenhouse gas law, offshore drilling and freight movement.

Transportation Spending Plans - Whether or not the state continues to build highways as though it has no negative impact on California's poor air quality or whether the state finally decides to "Fix-It-First" is possibly the most important issue in this election that nobody is talking about. Think about it, the next Governor could decide whether to move forward with Governor Schwarzenegger's idea to double-deck the I-405 or could order Caltrans to abandon highway projects until no bridges in the state are listed as "structurally deficient."

As you'll see with many of the issues we're looking at, during this early stage neither candidate has gone into detail on this issue. Whitman has made some statements that the state needs to invest in its roads and ports because both are crumbling. While that sounds as though she's embracing the concept of fixing what's broken, she wouldn't be the first politician to believe that "fixing crumbling infrastructure" means building more roads.

During Brown's tenure as Governor in the 1970's, highway expansion was somewhat de-emphasized in favor of building transit options. It remains to be seen whether that would continue to be his policy, whether it would morph to a "Fix-It-First" policy or whether he develops a new transportation plan.

Brown has a long record of supporting transit as governor and mayor. For example, when he visited Los Angeles for the first inauguration of Antonio Villaraigosa, he blogged that even though the mayor had serious plans to clean L.A.'s air, "With respect to transportation and the environment, much of the solution lies at the state and national levels. Here is where the funds are to support public transit, clean fuels and road improvements we desperately need." That doesn't sound like someone who is planning to cut transit funding as governor. The Chronicle also points out that as Governor, Brown helped divert gas tax funds to pay for transit improvements.

Some have speculated that Whitman would cut what little Sacramento restored of its transit operating subsidy as part of her pledge to "cut spending." However, she's never addressed the issue head on. As a matter of fact, the only mention of the word "transit" on her website is a vague promise to devise a "transit plan for the future."

High Speed Rail - Robert Cruickshank, the author of the California High Speed Rail Blog and long-time supporter of the bullet train project, writes about how a change in administration could derail the entire HSR plan. So far, neither candidate has given a definitive position on the current California High Speed Rail proposal. History, however, has shown Brown to be a supporter of the concept going back to his first stint in the State House.

Cruickshank writes:

As Attorney General, his office has been supportive of the project, and backed the CHSRA’s controversial position on the Transbay Terminal project studies last September.

Brown is still espousing a vision of “elegant density” for California’s future, as he did 30 years ago, a vision that was never really implemented after the Reaganite turn politics took in the 1980s, but a vision that holds urban density and mass transit at its core. There is every reason to believe Brown will continue to support HSR today.

Meanwhile, Whitman hasn't addressed the project directly. A search of her website reveals only a couple of mentions by supporters on various message boards. Some speculate that Whitman hasn't had a chance to form a full position on the project that balances her position that the state needs better transit with her position on fiscal restraint. Others think she will just play politics and use it as a wedge issue to peel away some liberal voters in San Mateo County.

The Gas Tax - Whitman is opposed to a state gas tax increase. To the best of my knowledge, Brown hasn't stated a preference yet. The only candidate who staked a position on increasing the gas tax to pay for transportation was Tom Campbell, who lost to Whitman in the GOP Primary.

AB32 - Finally, an issue that's clear cut. Whitman wants to delay efforts to implement the state's landmark Climate Change legislation, which would begin in 2012 with the goal of reducing the state's emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Brown supports AB32 and has fought legal efforts to repeal or delay the law.

Meanwhile, Brown has "always" opposed opening more of California's coast to oil drilling.

Freight Movement - Both candidates are on the record as supporting electrifying the ports and freight rail, but neither has rolled out an in-depth green ports plan. For Brown, we again have a lengthy record, including his role in helping to clean the air around the Port of Los Angeles. For Whitman, we have a statement on her website saying she supports clean ports, clean air, and electrified freight movement.