Streetsblog San Francisco

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.”

A.B. 710, the Infill Development and Sustainable Community Act of 2011 introduced by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) would mandate that automobile parking in Transit Oriented Developments be limited to one car per residential unit or per 1,000 square feet of retail space. The Assembly Housing & Community Development Committee is scheduled to hear this legislation at their next meeting on April 27.

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:

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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.

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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.

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The long-term impacts to transportation funding as a result of the Federal Transit Administration's (FTA) civil rights compliance probe of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) won't be clear for some time, but the action by the federal administration has transportation policy circles buzzing. Experts in civil rights and regional planning policy couldn't point to another instance of a metropolitan planning organization (MPO) like the MTC being required to submit to similar scrutiny from the FTA, while social justice advocates felt vindicated for their longstanding contention of discrimination in transportation funding.

The FTA probe stemmed from a complaint by Public Advocates, a civil rights law firm in San Francisco, over BART's failure to properly analyize the equity impacts of its fare policy for the controversial Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) as required under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As a result of the complaint, the FTA denied BART $70 million in federal stimulus funds for the project. Because the MTC channels significant federal funds to BART and because it continually approved motions to send stimulus funds to an agency that ultimately failed its responsibility to comply with Title VI, the FTA turned its eye on MTC.

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.

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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.

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San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced today that Muni will restore 61 percent of the service it cut in May, or about 178,781 service hours, after identifying about $15 million in funding sources and "operational savings," which involves scaling back stand-by hours, or non-driving time, for operators.

"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.

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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.

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