Streetsblog San Francisco

When it comes to re-centering the Washington bureaucracy to better
accommodate cities’ needs, the first year of the Obama administration
has brought its share of progress (a three-agency partnership set to spend $150 million on sustainable development) and hiccups (a White House urban affairs office with lots of talk but little action).

Now
the next milestone is the White House’s 2011 budget proposal, set to
hit the streets early next month. And in his speech to the U.S.
Conference of Mayors yesterday, the president vowed that metropolitan
areas would get their fair share of attention. Obama outlined three
goals in his speech:

First, we’ll build strong, regional backbones for our economy by
coordinating federal investment in economic and workforce development,
because today’s metropolitan areas don’t stop at downtown. What’s good
for Denver, for example, is usually good for places like Aurora and
Boulder, too. Strong cities are the building blocks of strong regions,
and strong regions are essential for a strong America.

Second on the White House’s list: beefing up funding for the
sustainable communities alliance struck by the Environmental Protection
Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and U.S.
DOT. "We need strategies
that encourage smart development linked to quality public transportation that bring our communities together," Obama said, echoing his Transportation Secretary’s push for more competitive TIGER transportation grant money this year.

Obama described the third plank in his urban agenda as "creating neighborhoods of opportunity":

Many
of our neighborhoods have been economically distressed long before
this crisis hit, for as long as many of us can remember. And while the
underlying causes may be deeply rooted and complicated, there are some
needs that are simple: access to good jobs, affordable housing,
convenient transportation that connects both, quality schools and
health services, safe streets and parks, and access to a fresh, healthy
food supply.

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When President Obama signed an executive order in October requiring federal agencies to craft strategies for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, he described the mandate as Washington "lead[ing] by example" on the pollution-reduction front.

And
that’s true — but the order also includes language telling federal
agencies to get involved in integrating local transportation planning,
with a particular focus on selecting sites for government facilities

that are pedestrian-friendly, near existing employment centers, and
accessible to public transit, and emphasize existing central cities
and, in rural communities, existing or planned town centers;

The
overall goal for government agencies, as Obama’s order put it, should
be to "strengthen the vitality and livability of the communities in
which federal facilities are located." Given that more than 2,200
communities host federally owned or leased property, that edict could unleash a lot of local energy for transit and pedestrian improvements.

The
order also gives federal agencies eight months to craft long-term
sustainability plans focusing on how to implement "strategies and
accommodations for transit, travel, training, and conferencing that
actively support lower-carbon commuting and travel by agency staff."
The White House budget office and Council on Environmental Quality are
charged with vetting each agency’s proposal.

And as each agency devises those emissions-cutting plans, the Obama administration’s push to consider sustainability as a transportation, housing, and environmental issue is given a meaty role in the process.

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President Obama today threw his weight behind significant new
transportation spending as part of a broad jobs bill taking shape in
Congress, with $50 billion slated for transit, roads, bridges, and
ports and the administration endorsing "merit-based infrastructure
investment that leverages federal dollars."

During his speech in Washington, Obama revisited his past acknowledgment of the trade-off
between the goals of creating transportation jobs quickly and focusing
on projects that substantially improve America’s built environment. 

"I recognize that by their nature these projects often take time, and
will therefore create jobs over time," Obama said. "But the need for jobs will also
last beyond next year, and the benefits of these investments will last
years beyond that."

Obama
offered no details on the costs of his new economic recovery effort,
which also includes rebates for energy-efficient home retrofits (the
so-called "cash for caulkers"
concept) and tax incentives for small businesses. But a senior
administration official told reporters after the speech that the
infrastructure portion of Obama’s jobs proposal is expected to cost $50
billion.

The administration also suggested that it would seek
to offset the new legislation with repaid financial bailout money,
running counter to a report
this morning that the White House would be limited in its ability to
use funds from Wall Street’s Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).

But
as Congress sifts through lengthy — and so far non-specific — lists
of "ready-to-go" projects from highway and transit planners, the day’s
biggest transportation reform news came buried in a White House release
outlining details of its plan. Under the infrastructure section of the
jobs bill, the White House stated:

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In a speech much anticipated by those tracking the D.C.
environmental debate, President Obama today took on opponents of
congressional action on climate change, decrying "naysayers" who "make
cynical claims" that ignore scientific evidence of the harm caused by
emissions.

But
"far more dangerous" than the rhetoric of climate deniers or skeptics,
Obama added, is the tendency towards cynicism about America’s chances
of ending its dependence on fossil fuels.

Speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Obama described a perspective that "we’re all somewhat complicit in":

It’s the pessimistic notion that our politics are too broken and
our people too unwilling to make hard choices for us to actually deal
with this energy issue that we’re facing. And implicit in this argument
is the sense that somehow we’ve lost something important, that fighting
American spirit, that willingness to tackle hard challenges, that
determination to see those challenges to the end, that we can solve
problems, that we can act collectively, that somehow that is something
of the past.

I reject that argument.

Obama’s speech, which focused on building confidence in U.S. scientific
innovation and lawmakers’ efforts to find "consensus" on climate
change, sounded broader political notes that proved effective during
his campaign last year.

Still, while the president offered no shortage of hopefulness, he made few direct references to the Senate climate bill that will take
its first major step towards passage next week with a series of
environment committee hearings. Obama praised Sen. Lindsey Graham
(R-SC) for partnering this month with the Senate climate bill’s chief
sponsor, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA), on an op-ed that outlined a potential compromise approach on emissions limits.

But
the question of where the White House would stand on some of the most
contentious issues in the climate debate, including how much revenue to
set aside for clean transportation, remains unanswered. Transportation
Secretary Ray LaHood suggested during the summer that the administration may not weigh in on the transport issue until climate talks reach their final stages.

With Congress out of town on its Memorial Day break, the nation’s
capital is a quiet place to be — but all of that will change next
week, as the appearance of the House transportation bill is expected to
kick off an intense battle to reshape federal policy on transit, bikes, roads and bridges.

Many urbanites remember the last congressional transportation bill as a disappointment
that pushed a pro-highways approach while forcing transit projects to
compete for a small slice of the federal funding pie. But that 2005
transportation clash brought us some instructive moments that escaped
the mainstream media’s focus at the time.

As a semi-regular
feature on Streetsblog Capitol Hill, I’ll be looking back at past
transportation debates that have the potential to impact the upcoming
re-write. For today’s installment, let’s look at the "complete streets"
amendment that fell six votes short of passage in 2005 but had a pretty crucial sponsor: then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL).

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You've probably seen this already. It's the latest graphic representation of the nation's proposed high-speed rail corridors, and it's been all over the transportation blogosphere since President Obama stood beside it at a press conference yesterday.

Those corridors are likely to change somewhat as the administration refines its new strategy for high-speed rail, says Transport Politic blogger Yonah Freemark, who credits the administration for taking serious steps toward a national rail plan.

Perhaps the biggest positive from yesterday's presser is that Obama linked the idea of high-speed rail to local transit, center cities, and car-free transportation:

Imagine boarding a train in the center of a city. No racing to an airport and across a terminal, no delays, no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no taking off your shoes. (Laughter.) Imagine whisking through towns at speeds over 100 miles an hour, walking only a few steps to public transportation, and ending up just blocks from your destination. Imagine what a great project that would be to rebuild America.

At a press event in DC yesterday, President Obama touted the two thousandth transportation project to receive federal stimulus funds.
I’m speculating a bit here, but the White House probably had some
discretion when choosing which item to highlight for this milestone. So
did they pick a refurbished transit station? A new bike route? Perhaps
a bridge repair project to signal that we’re not going to repeat the mistakes that led to the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis?

None of the above. The same president who proclaimed the days of building sprawl to be over boasted about the widening of a highway interchange near Portage, Michigan
from four lanes to six. Obama, apparently, isn’t immune to
ribbon-cutting syndrome: Like many other elected officials, he can’t
resist associating himself with a hefty road expansion project.

In
this case, the president didn’t have the interchange itself as a
backdrop, but he did surround himself with construction workers for the
cameras. I’m still looking forward to the day when bus drivers get to serve as stage props too.

File the following in the "Can't Believe My President Gets It" category. 

In an interview with columnists last week on Air Force One, President Obama drew a clear link between regional planning, land use, transportation, and energy policy, implying that bad planning has led to an increase in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and commute times, which negatively impacts the environment.  He also suggested that USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood should consider changing the highway and transit spending ratios in the Transportation Equity Act (TEA).

In response to a question about infrastructure spending in the stimulus and anticipation of addition infrastructure spending in the future, the president said the following:

Well, number one, we’ve got the transportation reauthorization bill that’s going to be coming up. So one thing to keep some perspective about on the recovery package is this is supposed to provide a jolt to the economy above and beyond what we’re doing already in the federal budget. And so I expect that Secretary LaHood, working with the various transportation committees, is going to be moving forward on a transportation bill. I would like to see some long-term reforms in how transportation dollars flow, and I’ll give you just a couple of examples. I think right now we don’t do a lot of effective planning at the regional level when it comes to transportation. That’s hugely inefficient. Not only does it probably consume more money in terms of getting projects done, but it also ends up creating traffic patterns, for example, that are really hugely wasteful when it comes to energy use.

If we can start building in more incentives for more effective planning at the local level, that’s not just good transportation policy, it’s good energy policy. So we’ll be working with transportation committees to see if we can move in that direction.

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The Metropolitan Transportation Commission's (MTC) main auditorium in Oakland was standing-room-only  Wednesday for an Allocations Committee meeting where the MTC board debated proposals by staff on how to spend the expected stimulus money when President Obama signs the bill into law.  MTC Executive Director Steve Heminger explained the need to get the discussion started even before Washington made anything final because the deadlines for spending the stimulus money are so tight and the MTC doesn't want to return unspent funds.

Though the final transportation numbers for stimulus funding are not yet available, the MTC outlined the range that will be given to the Bay Area regardless of what is signed into law (Overview PDF) (Detailed PDF).  As outlined in the meeting, transit funding for the region would outpace highways by more than double, or between $320-500 million, of which MTC staff recommended 65 percent should go to rehabilitation and preventive maintenance (a backdoor option that essentially allows operators to put stimulus money into operations). 

Of the rehab and operations money, San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) will receive the greatest share, at 25 percent, followed by BART with 24 percent, and the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) with 17 percent, ratios that reflect funding strategies that have been developed at the MTC, including ridership, route miles, and revenue-to-vehicle miles. 

Of the $140 million for local streets and roads, roughly 40 percent of the proposed rehabilitation projects have pedestrian and bicycle improvements.

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