Since March, I’ve been doing a monthly video series called “On the Go with Ray LaHood,” where I respond to questions from the public. I want to thank Streetsblog readers for supplying the bulk of the questions we received this month.

But in my latest “On the Go” video, I was only able to answer a few of them. Since you provided so many great questions, I thought it would be nice to answer a few extra ones right here on Streetsblog.

On my Fast Lane blog, Josef Szende asked, “Does the USDOT consider its job on creating a sustainable transit system to be over once the majority of the country is using electric vehicles?”

Josef, it’s true that I’m excited about Electric Vehicles. They’ve got a lot of potential to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and they really help solve the problem of tailpipe emissions. But many people don’t want to own cars–electric or otherwise. And, with transportation costs as the number two item in most household budgets, we know Americans need access to affordable transit options.

So this DOT is pushing forward to continue growing innovative transit systems across the U.S. For example, our Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has a very popular Urban Circulator program and a successful New Starts program that, on Monday, announced nearly $1.6 billion for 27 projects nationwide.

And earlier this week, to support President Obama’s emphasis on sustainability, the FTA announced more than $100 million in competitive grants for emerging clean fuel and hybrid or electric propulsion technologies for transit buses.

On Facebook, Kyle Merville asks, “How could DOT encourage a more even spread of transportation money to cities? How can the DOT invest in urban infrastructure and modernize it to better serve the citizens who depend on these systems daily?”

Well, Kyle, the answer is that DOT awards a number of grants to America’s urban areas. The FTA has a specific Urbanized Area Formula program for transit capital investments — including the kind of system maintenance you ask about. In addition, FTA also offers a Bus and Bus Facilities program, a Metropolitan and Statewide Planning program, and several other programs that make awards to cities.

We may not have a road program dedicated to urban areas, but that doesn’t mean the state departments of transportation don’t balance urban, suburban, and rural needs appropriately. In fact, many of the largest highway and bridge improvement projects our Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) funds are located in urban areas. The FHWA also has programs to improve air quality, and most of those awards end up in our nation’s cities.

Then we have our very popular TIGER I and TIGER II discretionary programs, where cities and regions applied directly for support. Our competitive TIGER awards funded many creative projects to solve problems across America — multi-use paths, transit systems, road and bridge projects — and many of these were in urban areas. And, if you look at the transportation recommendations the President has sent to Congress for 2012, we’ve made sure to include programs where cities and regional partnerships can come directly to us.

The last question comes from Clarence Eckerson, Jr., who asks, “Would you go for a bike ride with Streetfilms?”

I’m sorry to tell you this, Clarence, but Washington, DC’s Jay Mallin has beaten Streetfilms to the punch on this one. Earlier this month, Jay joined us for a DOT bicycle commute and produced this video. I hope everyone enjoys his video, and, once again, thanks for the terrific questions. Please keep them coming!

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

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

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

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

The New Britain-Hartford Busway will provide commuters traveling between New Britain and Hartford a more efficient and cost-effective alternative to the current daily commute on Interstate 84, the region’s most congested highway. The dedicated busway will provide the area’s relatively large transit-dependent population better access to the 81,000 jobs along the route and across the busway’s 11 stations, promote redevelopment opportunities along the 9.4-mile corridor, and provide faster transit access to major activity centers throughout the area. The FTA anticipates an overall federal commitment of $275.3 million to the $572.7 million project.

Denver’s 13-station Eagle Commuter Rail project, which will add nearly 23 miles of service to Denver’s transit system connecting downtown Denver and Denver International Airport to the east with numerous communities in between. Ultimately, the FTA projects contributing approximately $1 billion towards the $2 billion project, which is expected to create 5,400 jobs during peak construction. This is one component of FasTracks, a multi-billion dollar, multi-year transit-expansion program that will help Denver support smart, sustainable growth, create jobs, and compete for business for decades to come.

The Rapid C Bus Rapid Transit Line will help to relieve traffic congestion in West Seattle, Washington, improve access to downtown Seattle’s 150,000 jobs, and connect the popular Washington State Ferries serving Vashon Island and Southworth among other spots along the corridor. Nearly $21.3 million in discretionary 2011 funds has been budgeted for construction of the $28.4 million project. The C Line, which should be fully operational by the fall of 2012, is expected to create approximately 180 construction, manufacturing, and transportation jobs during the peak construction period.

The Central Corridor light rail project will connect Minnesota’s two largest cities—Minneapolis and Saint Paul—by light rail for the first time. The FTA recently signed a Full Funding Grant Agreement making a long-term financial commitment to the $957 million light rail line, which will carry 40,000 riders along this busy 11-mile corridor. The project, which includes 18 new stations and 31 new rail cars, is scheduled to open in 2014. In addition to serving the downtown areas of the Twin Cities, the Central Corridor line will provide more efficient access to the University of Minnesota, the Midway area, the State Capitol complex, Target Field and the Metrodome, and many neighborhoods in between.

The Austin MetroRapid is a 37.5-mile, 40-stop, bus rapid transit (BRT) system. The FTA is supporting the local vision with a $24.2 million investment in 2011 towards the nearly $50 million project. The project, which is scheduled to open in the summer of 2013, is the first phase of Capitol Metropolitan Transit Authority’s comprehensive and forward-leaning All Systems Go ten-corridor long-range transit plan.

Note that LaHood had Facebook on in the background during his last video chat. (And he says he's not a hipster.)

Got a question for Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood? He’s all ears.

LaHood has been doing a series of video chats where he responds to questions from the public, and a DOT official told me they would like to “explicitly invite Streetsblog readers to submit their questions to the Secretary” for the next episode of “On the Go with Ray LaHood.”

There are three ways to submit questions. You can leave a comment on the Secretary’s blog, go to his Facebook discussion page, or tweet a question using hashtag #q4ray.

Go ahead, give him your best shot.

Sec. LaHood immediately after addressing the Bike Summit. Photo by Clarence Eckerson.

Last year, he captivated the Summit crowd with his famous “Tabletop Speech” and his declaration that “this is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.”

Last night, League of American Bicyclists President Andy Clarke introduced LaHood with the high praise, “He talks about bikes -– not just with us -– but with other people too!”

LaHood encouraged the attendees, who will be going to Capitol Hill to lobby their representatives on Thursday, to “talk to your member of Congress about the importance of making communities cycle-friendly.” He reminded them that Ohio Congressman Steve LaTourette went from ridiculing cycling to supporting it after hearing from committed advocates. (LaHood was polite enough to not mention LaTourette by name, but everyone in the room knew who he was talking about.)

“I want you to work hard on your members of Congress,” LaHood exhorted the crowd. “We really need your help more now than, maybe, ever before. Because you know that a new crowd is in town and they have a little different agenda and it’s being played out in a way that maybe doesn’t reflect the kind of values many of us believe in.”

He didn’t talk much about the “big, bold” transportation plan proposed by “that fella I work for” (President Obama), other than asking attendees to “charge up to Capitol Hill” and push members to support cycling.

LaHood bolstered his own cred with the room full of cyclists by telling stories of how he and his wife go cycling on the C&O Canal trail every weekend (though I think he meant the Capital Crescent), and recounting his own early years riding a Schwinn all around town, and how he bought bikes for his four kids and his nine grandkids to make sure cycling was part of their lives.

“You have a full partner -– many more than one partner -– at DOT,” he told them.

After LaHood’s speech, participants migrated a few blocks away for a reception honoring Bike Pittsburgh as the Advocacy Organization of the Year, Jackie Douglas of Boston’s LivableStreets as Advocate of the Year, the New Belgium Brewing Company as the Business Advocate of the Year, the Michigan Complete Streets Coalition as Winning Campaign of the Year, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition for Best Practices, the Willamette Pedestrian Coalition’s Stephanie Routh for the Susie Stephens Joyful Enthusiasm Award, and the Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling got the award for Innovation.

Tomorrow, the Bike League will announce this year’s Bicycle Friendly Businesses and Universities (a new category). NACTO will release its Urban Bikeway Design Guide, written to bring bicycle innovations long ignored by AASHTO and the FHWA into roadway design. And NYCDOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, seemingly unfazed after being named in a lawsuit by anti-bike-lane plaintiffs yesterday, will address the gathering, along with Congressional Bike Caucus founder Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. A representative from the First Lady’s Let’s Move! Campaign will be the lunchtime keynote.

The plan is a blueprint that Congress can use as a basis for its transportation reauthorization bill. It has a lot in common with then-Transportation Committee Chair Jim Oberstar’s bill from 2009. And, like Oberstar’s bill, it leaves unanswered the question of how to fund transportation investments. This time, however, it comes in the midst of an all-out Republican war on deficit spending.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says the president's proposal represents the administration's "big bold vision" for transportation. Photo: Tanya Snyder

How much of this plan will survive the GOP cutting machine is anyone’s guess. There’s a lot in the president’s proposal that’s worth saving. Some notable elements:

• Transit funding is going up by 127 percent, while funding for roads and bridges is getting a 48 percent increase. That represents a significant shift in the highways-to-transit ratio, which will go from an 80-20 split to a 74-26 split.
• The Highway Trust Fund is getting a long-overdue name change. The new Transportation Trust Fund will now have four accounts – the traditional highways and mass transit accounts and also new accounts for passenger rail and an infrastructure bank.
• Some advocates are disappointed that the proposed infrastructure bank will be housed at DOT and not be formed as an independent entity, as many had hoped. Still, the shift to more discretionary, competitive grants is a huge victory for reformers.
• The consolidation of 55 road programs into five means there will no longer be separate pots of money for bridges, for example, or trucker rest areas, according to Undersecretary Roy Kienitz. That money will be rolled into a larger pot of funding for highways that states and local governments will compete for. The five programs will be: the National Highway Program, Highway Safety Improvement, Livable Communities, Federal Allocation and Research, Technology, and Education.
• The TIFIA loan program will go from a $120 million allocation to $450 million; TIGER, which has given out $2.1 billion in grants so far, will get $2 billion the first year in the president’s proposal.
• The funding for livability programs – $28 billion over six years – will include bike and pedestrian improvements, but allocation decisions rest with the states.
• While the new bill doesn’t have a line item for a new national freight policy or a new office overseeing freight movement, Kienitz said freight programs got the lion’s share of TIGER grants (pun not intended, I think) and will be well-positioned to get money from the infrastructure bank.
• Amtrak funding will be split into two accounts: one for state of good repair and one for new system development.

In a briefing at the DOT with reporters today, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood reiterated that transportation has historically been a bipartisan issue and he expects Congress will be unanimous in wanting to pass this bill, as it will create jobs in their districts. But this bill is falling into a unique political environment.

First, the House is an earmark-free zone now. A massive transportation bill was easier to vote for when lawmakers could point to specific projects in their districts that would be included. Now that their districts will have to compete for money, it might be a far harder sell. When asked about that, LaHood simply said, “We’re gonna find out.”

Second, the Republican scissorhands that control Congress, with their single-minded determination to cut spending, are sure to have a harsh response to a half-trillion dollar proposal that has no real revenue stream attached to it.

Indeed, LaHood said the administration plans to spend no more than it brings in, but they don’t actually have a plan for accomplishing that goal. He said he’d leave it to Congress to work out the revenue part. DOT officials admit it is a “non-trivial” amount of money to look for. Meanwhile, he stands by the decision not to raise the gas tax while unemployment is still high.

As the White House rolls out this budget proposal, based on input administration officials collected in six listening sessions around the country, the House Transportation Committee is holding its own listening sessions. Today it held the first two, both in West Virginia, where lawmakers heard from contractors and highway authorities about the need for a new bill.

When asked how he planned to sell a rural-oriented Congress on the bigger slice of the pie for transit, LaHood said some of that transit money will be for rural areas, not just big cities. He wants to make sure rural people who can’t or don’t drive have access to transportation “so that rural America is not left out.”

Senator Barbara Boxer, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, US DOT Secretary Ray Lahood, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Transbay Joint Powers Authority Board Chairman and SFMTA CEO Nat Ford at the Transbay Transit Center groundbreaking. Photos: Matthew Roth.

Though most of the California political class celebrated the groundbreaking of the new Transbay Transit Center with U.S. DOT Secretary Ray LaHood in San Francisco yesterday, significant questions remain for funding a national high-speed rail network through the federal transportation act.

The event swarmed with Secret Service and various other branches of law enforcement keeping an eye on a crowd that, as San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom joked with LaHood, was mostly made up of consultants on the Transbay project.

LaHood cracked wise several times at Newsom's expense, repeating more comments Newsom made before the press conference to the public and the media and suggesting Californian's should vote him in as Lt. Governor on his humor alone.

When he stopped ribbing Newsom, LaHood gushed about how far "ahead of the curve" California is on high-speed rail. LaHood said U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) had cast "courageous votes" that made the stimulus bill possible, which meant a $48 billion infusion for the US DOT or nearly two-thirds his annual budget. From the $8 billion President Barack Obama added for high-speed rail nationally, California received $2.3 billion, $400 million of that for the Transbay Transit Center.

"People who come back from Europe or Asia and have ridden high-speed rail, like many of you have, come back to America and ask why we don't have high-speed rail in America? Because we've never made the investment, that's why," said LaHood. "This year we had 8 billion times more money for high-speed rail given President Obama's vision to connect America with high-speed, inter-city rail."

LaHood also pointed to California's competitive advantage in federal money for high speed rail because the state has "its act together and you want high-speed rail, you've been working on it for a decade."

"The people deserve a lot of credit, to go to the polls, and to cast votes to raise taxes in order to develop the kind of infrastructure for high-speed rail, the people deserve a lot of credit."

While ribbon cutting on such a monumental project made for good photos and sound bites, long-term funding for high-speed rail nationally and in California is not a sure thing. Despite the $8 billion last year and another $2.5 billion this year, the U.S. lags far behind China, which is investing nearly $300 billion over the next decade on its high-speed rail network. What's more, states sought seven times more funding for rail than the stimulus gave out and demand is only growing.

When asked if the Senate will take up the re-authorization of the national transportation act, Senator Boxer told Streetsblog after the Transbay event she hoped to have a bill out of her Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and to the Senate floor this year. "I think we have a very good chance but I can't say for sure," she said.

When asked if her bill would mirror House Transportation Committee Chair James Oberstar's (D-MN) commitment to increase transit funding, Boxer said, "I would hope so. I would hope we will be able to do that."

When asked whether she thought she could convince Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking minority leader on her committee and an opponent of linking climate and transportation policies, to support money for high-speed rail or at least stay out of her way, she said, "I don't know how he feels on high-speed rail," but that it was "not necessarily a problem."

Senator Boxer elaborating on the climate and transportation bills.

Boxer also noted that with a comprehensive energy bill unlikely in the near term, she and her colleagues were looking for numerous other options to "put a price on carbon," whether by making sure the Environmental Protection Agency was vigilant in regulating carbon emissions or by supporting states' efforts to limit climate change, such as the Western Climate Initiative.

"If we can't convince our colleagues that this is serious, we're going to do absolutely everything we can absent comprehensive legislation," she said.

While the federal agenda was important to her, Boxer indicated she was concerned with a local battle now brewing: California's Proposition 23, which would suspend the landmark AB 32 climate change law. "The other thing I have to do is just make sure California can move forward and that there's no preemption of what we're doing. Right now I'm fighting to defeat Prop 23, which would be a disaster," she said.

Given recent polling that shows Boxer losing ground to her Republican Senate challenger, Carly Fiorina, transportation advocates nationally should be concerned. If she were to lose her seat to Fiorina and the EPW committee were to be shaken up, a transportation act with significant funding for transit and high-speed rail would be more precarious.

Editor's note: This is the first of a three-part series on the past, present and future of traffic engineering in San Francisco. 

Jack Lucero Fleck remembers his teenage years as a sputnik, the kind of kid who was as "nutty as a slide rule," loved math and science, and knew he was headed in that direction. It was the summer of 1965, and living in Peoria, Illinois, the same town where US DOT Secretary Ray LaHood grew up, Fleck couldn't quite peg what he wanted to do in life. And then there were the Watts riots.

"I got kind of interested in, 'well, what caused that? Why were people burning down their neighborhood?'," Fleck, 62, explained during a recent interview. "I decided I would go into civil engineering because I liked to do math and science and engineering and I would combine it with city planning to make cities better places to live, so people wouldn't want to burn them down."

For the last 25 years, Fleck, who retired yesterday from his job as San Francisco's top traffic engineer, has had a hand in almost every major transportation project in San Francisco, from the demolition and boulevard replacement of the Embarcadero and Central Freeways, to helping in the design of the T-Third line and Central Subway, to crafting a controversial proposal to remove the bike lane at Market and Octavia Streets.

He has sometimes been the bane of transit advocates for defending post-World War II traffic engineering orthodoxy favoring one-way street networks, such as those that roar through neighborhoods like the Tenderloin and SoMa. While some advocates have been working to dismantle some of the one-way arterials, Fleck, who became lead traffic engineer in 2004, is a firm believer in them. Still, those advocates and transportation professionals who have worked with Fleck (none we contacted would go on the record with their criticisms) say he has been a true professional and easy to work with.

"His views are very progressive and he's very environmentally conscious," said Bond Yee, the interim Director of Sustainable Streets at the SFMTA who has been at the agency four years longer than Fleck. "He epitomizes what the new generation of transportation professionals is becoming. He's a little bit ahead of his time."

Fleck had a lot to talk about during our 90 minute interview last week. Some answers are revealing and offer insight into his thinking as a traffic engineer who has been entrenched in the design of our city streets for more than two decades.

Fleck in his office at the SFMTA.

Fleck said he learned the word livability from Don Appleyard while he was studying City Planning as a graduate student at U.C. Berkeley and it struck him "that that's what I wanted to do, make cities 'livable,' and I don't know that it was really a word that was used a lot until recently, but it does make sense."

Fleck's first job out of school was working on the Berkeley traffic diverters, and he got a stern lesson that traffic engineering doesn't always have to do with left or right politics.

"Some of the NIMBY types are pretty conservative, but then some of my friends on the left would surprise me that they would be pretty hostile to the diverters, you know? That they were people who were with the anti-war movement or whatever and they were just inflamed, 'oh the idea of those things in my way.' So I kind of realized that traffic is a funny issue, it's not exactly left and right and people get very emotional about it."

Fleck recalls, for example, the battle over tearing down the Embarcadero freeway after the 1989 earthquake, when lefty Terrence Hallinan (who went on to become the long-time district attorney before Kamala Harris), was among the supervisors who voted 6-5 to rebuild it. He was working for the Department of Public Works at the time.

"These freeways were taking land off the tax rolls. They weren't really making the city a better place or anything. So, it was great to see it go," said Fleck, who was engaged in a debate at the time about whether the traffic from the demolished freeway would live up to predictions of gridlock on city streets.

"The fact that all that traffic didn't go away, actually, helped us win the argument to say that they didn't need the freeway because the city streets were handling it all."

"Going back to my Berkeley experience I do feel there are arterials that need to carry more traffic and then there are residential areas that you want to protect. So I don't really support the idea that the traffic should just be tossed out there widespread."

Fleck cites the demolition of both the Embarcadero and Central freeways as projects he was involved in that were some of his greatest accomplishments, but building the staff at the SFMTA, and changing the culture of the agency, is something he's most proud of.

"I think we've really looked at people who have backgrounds in both engineering and planning because they have that diverse sort of broader viewpoint," said Fleck." I think that we have people who really get it in terms of the Transit First policy and pedestrians and all the things we are trying to do here. I think in terms of a lasting legacy I would feel that that's more significant than anything."

"From the 50s, to now, almost 60 years, it's incredible to think back. There's only been five traffic engineers. And Jack's number five," said Yee, who was the longest serving traffic engineer before Fleck from 1990 to 2004.

Among the Transit First accomplishments Fleck listed in a slide presentation (PDF) at a recent SPUR luncheon are the city's 40 miles of bike lanes (bikes and pedestrians were added to the policy in 2000), 13 miles of transit lanes, transit signal priority at more than 100 intersections, pedestrian countdown signals at 800 intersections and a 30 percent reduction in injury collisions over the past 30 years. He also used this graph to point out that traffic fatalities have been on a steady decline.

"I kind of feel like this is in response to people who feel like traffic control devices actually are unsafe or less safe. I really don't subscribe to that. I think there is an argument to be made on big wide open intersections with low volume that it works pretty well without stop signs or anything because people have lots of visibility, and especially if you put traffic signals in, those can work."

Fleck attributes the decline to the three e's: engineering, education and enforcement, but thinks it's also the signals, the mast arms, the countdowns "and all those things that improve safety."

Fleck spent the first two days of his last week at the SFMTA attending the Western Institute of Transportation Engineers conference in San Francisco, where he made this presentation (PDF) with Yee titled, "What It Will Take to Stop Global Warming: The Case for Electric Cars." While he acknowledges that there is a danger electric cars could perpetuate sprawl and generate more auto-oriented development, Fleck sees them as key to fighting global warming.

"It's not the ultimate total, everything solution, but I think given the danger of global warming, and being underwater, it kind of makes everything else moot. We can fight about all of the other things that we want to do, but if we are under water it's not going to matter."

Fleck plans to continue working on global warming solutions, and hopes to improve his neighborhood in Oakland by encouraging "the political forces there to get solar panels on people's roofs and plug-in facilities in their driveways so people can have electric cars, and they won't be generating all this C02."

About leaving the SFMTA and the challenges ahead, Fleck was optimistic.

"I think we are in good hands. I really feel great about the staff and I feel like the organizational structure right now is very good," said Fleck. "I like the idea of introducing the word 'sustainability' into our name. I think traffic engineering has traditionally been safe and efficient movement of people and goods, which I support, but adding the word sustainable will also be a plus as we think to future generations and make sure that whatever we do now isn't damaging."

LaHood, at
far right, during a tabletop speech at March’s National Bike Summit.
(Photo: Jonathan
Maus)

"Americans want to get outdoors … they want
opportunities to get out of congestion," LaHood told the assembled
cyclists, some of whom joined him in donning brightly colored bike
lapel pins to signify support for the Congressional Bike Caucus.

In addition to hailing the health benefits of bike-ped — LaHood
said he has used the local Rock Island trail near his Peoria hometown
"hundreds of times" — he also thanked the assembled advocates for
serving as a counterweight to the
criticism directed his way by the trucking industry after a March
policy statement that endorsed putting cyclists and pedestrians on equal
footing with drivers.

"We need to be promoting biking," the Cabinet member said, but that
effort "does not take away from other forms of transportation."

The letter presented to LaHood, accompanied by a signed poster that
the Washington Area Bicyclist Association compiled during last week’s Bike
to Work Day events, praised the March policy statement on bike-ped
but acknowledged its non-binding nature.

"We have a lot of work to do," wrote the letter’s signatory groups,
which included America Bikes, the Safe Routes to School National
Partnership, Transportation for America, and the National Complete
Streets Coalition. The advocates continued:

We should start by
integrating policies that increase safety and accessibility for
pedestrians and
bicyclists, including Complete Streets and Safe Routes to School, into
federal
law so that new projects receiving DOT funds accommodate all users of
the
road. We should also advocate funding for Active Transportation networks
in
our cities, towns and metropolitan areas. We look
forward to working with you on a new surface transportation law that
broadens transportation choices for all Americans … and introduces new
benchmarks for our federal dollars, including those that will support
biking and walking as equal modes of transportation.

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-VA), left, in the "congressional ride" during March's National Bike Summit. (Photo: bikeleague via Flickr)

GOP Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA), Michael McCaul (TX), Jack Kingston (VA), and Steven LaTourette (OH) signed on to the letter, which was sent to LaHood late yesterday in advance of today's Bike to Work Day events in the capital.

Referencing LaHood's March policy statement urging state and local transportation planners to put cyclists and pedestrians on the same footing as drivers in designing new infrastructure, the lawmakers wrote:

We recognize, and appreciate, that your statement was not about providing equal amounts of funding to all forms of transportation, or prioritizing bicycling and walking over other transportation modes such as trucking, freight or public transit. Instead, your commitment to consider all modes clarified that to give citizens a choice, rather than forcing them into their car, we must make sure that bicycling and walking are as safe and convenient as other modes.

LaTourette's endorsement of that federal embrace of bicycling and pedestrian access is particularly notable. He initially echoed the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Trucking Association in chiding LaHood for the non-binding bike-ped statement, wondering "what job is going to be created" by bike lanes before later walking back his remarks.

A complete copy of the letter, also signed by House transport committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), is available after the jump.

Dear Secretary LaHood:

We would like to thank you for the Department of Transportation’s release of the “Policy Statement on Bicycle and Pedestrian Accommodation, Regulations, and Recommendations” announced on March 15. We support the policy statement’s declaration that bicycling and walking are efficient modes of transportation that have an important positive impact on our communities.

We were pleased to see the policy statement’s acknowledgment of bicycling and walking as an important part of the transportation system. Bicycling and walking serve as cost-effective solutions to many of the serious issues facing our transportation system, including traffic congestion, funding concerns and air pollution. Moreover, as 40 percent of trips taken in our country are two miles or less, bicycling and walking should play an important role in providing transportation options in our small towns, suburbs and cities.

We recognize, and appreciate, that your statement was not about providing equal amounts of funding to all forms of transportation, or prioritizing bicycling and walking over other transportation modes such as trucking, freight or public transit. Instead, your commitment to consider all modes clarified that to give citizens a choice, rather than forcing them into their car, we must make sure that bicycling and walking are as safe and convenient as other modes.

We also appreciate the recognition of bicycling and walking as useful tools to address many other issues facing our nation such as increased oil consumption, air pollution, and our growing national debt. Investments in bicycling and walking have been shown to bring significant economic development to communities across the country, and to help families lower their own transportation costs. We believe that communities should be able to move forward with projects they feel are most advantageous to them, including bicycle facilities and pedestrian infrastructure.

We hope to continue to see bicycling and walking as a central part of your livability initiative. Thank you for all of your hard work on this issue. We look forward to working with you in the future.

Sen. Patty
Murray (D-WA), center, talks to Transport Secretary Ray LaHood, at left.
(Photo: WS DOT via Flickr)

Sen.
Patty Murray (D-WA), chairman of the upper chamber’s transportation
spending panel, praised the mission of the sustainability office but
told LaHood she has "concerns about" the Obama administration’s pitch to
send $200 million in Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) funding to
the effort next year.

"I also have questions about how these proposals from [U.S.] DOT
fit into our
larger debate over" paying for the next long-term federal
transportation bill, Murray said.

Murray’s measured assessment of the new alliance between LaHood,
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan, and the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) focused on how federal officials
would define the concept of "sustainability" as they determined how to
dole out grants to local development plans.

But her Republican counterpart on the spending panel, Sen. Kit Bond
(MO), took a harder line in challenging LaHood on the administration’s
ability to positively influence on-the-ground urban and rural planning.

"I’m not as confident [as others] that trusting federal
decision-makers in Washington to lead the process, to tell communities
how they should grow, is the right way to go," Bond said, tangling with
LaHood as he aligned with a road construction industry group that
criticized the administration’s sustainability budget.

Sending that $200 million from highways — about one-two-hundredth
of the FHWA’s annual budget — to the sustainable communities office
"may reflect a view that we want to get rid of auto transportation,"
Bond said.

"The idea we’re giving up on [roads] or don’t care about the
highways is nonsense," LaHood shot back. "People want other
alternatives. We have a state-of-the-art interstate system. If people
need more capacity, they can tell us that."

Bond’s reply was equally charged: "I’m telling you that."

Murray and Bond’s panel is charged with translating the White House
budget request into annual spending legislation for the U.S. DOT and
HUD. Congress ultimately
approved the administration’s proposed $150 million in
sustainability grants last year, but this year’s higher funding pitch
could face a tougher path to passage amid the lack of progress on a new
six-year federal transport bill.

Still, that continued reliance on extensions of existing
transportation law — which have necessitated a transfer of more than
$30 billion from the general Treasury to the highway trust fund since
2008 — gave LaHood ammunition against Bond and Murray’s complaint that
road users would be ceding that $200 million in highway money to the
sustainability office.

When lawmakers pay for transport programs from the general
Treasury, LaHood said, "part of that money comes … from all
the taxpayers — who, in some instances, want something other than
roads. I have to put that on the record."

Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) (Photo: Politico)

But
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s visit with Senate appropriators
today was anything but humdrum, as Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) challenged him
repeatedly to defend the White House’s efforts on sustainable
development and high-speed rail.

Bond cited a recent Wall Street Journal editorial by Wendell Cox, a conservative pundit who has penned laudatory literature for road lobbying groups, in accusing the Obama administration of frittering away taxpayers’ money on high-speed rail.

LaHood fired back, remarking wryly that Bond’s home state sought high-speed rail grants and publicly celebrated
its $31 million haul. "I got calls on this every day from senators and
governors" clamoring for an opportunity to build inter-city passenger
rail, LaHood said.

Answering Bond’s charge that the rail
funding process was less than transparent, the U.S. DOT chief threw in
a bold claim: "I don’t know of one lobbyist that darkened
our door with an application … that came to our door with the idea they
were going
to have some edge."

A November investigation
by the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity found that more than 50
government entities and private companies have hired high-speed rail
lobbyists, including the AFL-CIO, the Mayo Clinic, and overseas train
manufacturers such as Siemens and Bombardier.

The sharpest
exchange between Bond and LaHood came on the topic of walkable local
development, which the U.S. DOT has worked to promote through $150 million in 2010 grants and an inter-agency partnership with housing and environmental protection officials.

"What
is livability?" Bond asked LaHood, minutes after comparing the task of
defining the term to defining pornography. (The origins of that
reference are explained here.)

"Communities where people have access to many different forms
of transportation, and affordable housing … maybe they don’t want a car, so they can
walk to work or take mass transit to work," LaHood said, using the newly built-up neighborhood surrounding his office as an example.

Bond’s reply summed up the challenge of crafting new federal transportation policy in an era marked by rural-urban-suburban culture clashes. "I’ve got a lot of constituents for whom
livability means having a decent highway," he said. "They’ve got to drive between one town and
another town."

LaHood
gamely tried to put Bond’s criticism in perspective, noting that
highways received the lion’s share — $27 billion — of the
transportation funding in last year’s economic stimulus law.

Yet
Bond only dug in his heels, arguing that Americans had shown their
eagerness to use roads and bridges but would not embrace rail or
walkable infrastructure. "When did it become the responsibility of the
federal DOT to
build sidewalks?" the soon-to-retire senator asked, before LaHood that reminded him Congress set up dedicated funding for pedestrian improvements nearly 20 years ago.

A longtime critic of congressional earmarking, Feingold has proposed legislation that would take back earmarked money at all federal agencies that remained unobligated after a decade. During a Wednesday Senate Budget Committee hearing, Feingold asked Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood if the Obama administration would support the portion of his plan that affects infrastructure.

LaHood gave a hearty affirmative (viewable in the above video), telling Feingold that the U.S. DOT had begun identifying earmarks that were ripe for cancellation due to lack of use.

(Photo: brainlink.org)

The sample bill text [PDF]
was prepared by the U.S. DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration, which invited road safety groups to join auto industry
representatives, the AAA, and officials from state DOTs to help craft
consensus language.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood
called the legislation in a statement "another powerful tool in our
arsenal to help
the states combat this serious threat” of texting while driving in a
statement that accompanied the sample text — which carves out an
exemption from any fines or penalties for drivers who (emphasis mine):

Receiv[e] messages related to the operation or navigation of a motor vehicle; safety-related information including emergency, traffic, or weather alerts; data used primarily by the motor vehicle; or radio.

States
that adopt the Obama administration’s sample language, then, would
allow drivers to continue getting traffic tweets and texts from their
local DOTs, a practice dubbed "mixed messages" by the Associated Press
in a September investigation.

"It’s
not a perfect bill, but it was something that everybody in the group
felt they could put their name on it and say, ‘this is a good start,’"
Judith Lee Stone, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said in an interview, adding that the exemption for drivers getting traffic and weather alerts "may have just slipped by us."

If
the Advocates were to write their own version of sample distracted
driving legislation, Stone said, "we probably wouldn’t include" the
exemption. But she noted that the group has no plans to draft its own
language for states working on texting bans.

The U.S. DOT
noted in its release today that the sample bill "reflects current
circumstances and state of knowledge, but may be revised in the future
to incorporate new research findings, address evolving technologies, or
to harmonize with other legislation."

A research team from the University of Utah reported in December that reading incoming text messages had a more deleterious effect on drivers’ braking response times than writing texts.

Boxer and LaHood get on the same page. (Photo: AP)

If this sounds familiar, it's because Boxer held a similar forum downtown back in September 2008, where various officials from around Los Angeles, ranging from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and then-Metro CEO Roger Snoble, testified about their priorities for a long-term federal transportation bill.

The hours and hours of testimony can be described in two terms: "new starts" and "ports."  There was no mention of words such as "bicycle," "pedestrian," or even "smart growth."

The key to whether this new town hall will provide a chance to discuss what various transportation stakeholders need and desire in a transportation reauthorization bill will be up to Boxer, LaHood and Art Leahy, the new Metro CEO. Last time, non-VIPs had to wait through hours of presentations by elected officials and bureaucrats before any advocates -- or other people that don't collect a government paycheck -- got to take their turn.

If this is really a town hall, then hopefully all of the stakeholders, including commuters that don't have a paid driver, will get a chance to speak.

The Southern California Transit Advocate's Dana Gabbard agrees:

I'm glad to see Senator Barbara Boxer and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood have announced they are reaching out to stakeholders seeking input on the currently stalled federal transportation funding reauthorization bill. Which is all well and good IF the attendees reflect a wide range of stakeholders, not just usual suspects. Heretofore our region hasn't always done as well as it should in that regard. If more a diverse group of people see the process as being connected to their needs and concerns, maybe the chances of some progress [for] passage sooner rather than later would improve. At least the preliminary agenda includes some good concepts for discussion, including livability and safety.

Transportation Secretary LaHood, at left, with the president. (Photo: NYT)

"There
is a great deal of interest in this concept in the Senate," LaHood told
reporters during a wide-ranging discussion of the White House’s transport budget for the fiscal year that begins in October.

Asked about resolving any differences between the administration’s Fund plan and a more bank-like entity envisioned by senior lawmakers, LaHood emphasized his openness to cooperation: "The idea is that we’d work with Congress on their ideas."

LaHood
also noted that the U.S. DOT’s $78.8 billion budget request for 2011,
which marks a 2 percent increase from last year’s levels, includes $50
million in grants for an issue that he has turned into a personal
signature for him — cracking down on distracted driving.

One
topic of particular interest was the White House’s continued assumption
of transfers from the general Treasury to the highway trust fund (HTF)
pending enactment of a new long-term federal transportation bill. As
the federal gas tax, last raised in 1993, remains static and lawmakers decline to discuss
an alternative funding source, the presidential budget document
projects that the HTF would need more than $11 billion to make it
through the current fiscal year.

LaHood
told reporters that while "we’ve gone along
with the short-term extensions" of the 2005 federal transport law, the
most recent of which expires at the end of this month, the White House
has always sought to postpone the next bill until 2011.

"The biggest dilemma for
all of us is finding $400 [billion] to $500 billion, given that the highway trust fund is insufficient to fund all the things we
want to do," the former House Republican added.

The
uncertain status of future HTF infusions prompted one reporter to ask
whether transportation spending would be subject to the president’s
proposed three-year freeze on discretionary accounts. (Indeed, today’s
budget includes a chart projecting that long-term transit funding would
remain flat.) Chris Bertram,
the U.S. DOT’s chief financial officer, said the budget’s funding
levels should be considered "placeholder, rather than frozen."

LaHood made his announcement today at the Transportation Research Board conference. (Photo: AP)

The first move: LaHood’s DOT will rescind a 2005 rule
that elevated "cost-effectiveness" above all other criteria used to
determine whether a local transit project can receive federal funds.
Cost remains a factor in the "New Starts" process, but is no longer
given more weight than factors such as congestion relief.

House
transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) and Rep. Pete
DeFazio (D-OR), his top lieutenant, quickly issued a statement hailing
the reversal of the Bush-era mandate, which is blamed for slowing down
transit expansions in several major cities.

"Now we need increased investment dollars to follow this
reform, so that we can move forward with transit projects that
relieve congestion, reduce emissions, increase our energy
independence, and promote more livable communities across the
country,” Oberstar said in a statement.  “We must all continue to work
together toward a long-term authorization bill that makes transit
options available to more people."

The
second of the Obama administration’s moves: Environmental and economic
benefits will become official factors in evaluating "New Starts"
proposals. This change requires a rulemaking by the Federal Transit
Administration (FTA), which typically includes a period of public
comment, so will not take effect immediately.

In announcing
this latter shift, LaHood and FTA chief Peter Rogoff emphasized the
need to look at the community-building benefits of transit.

"To
put it simply: We will take livability into account," LaHood said today. "This
new approach will help us do a much better job aligning our priorities
and values with our investments in transit projects that truly strengthen
communities. We’ll
finally be able to make the case for investing in popular streetcar
projects and other transit systems that people want
– and that our old ways of doing business didn’t value enough."

Late Update:
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) weighed in with a statement connecting
today’s news to the White House’s broader sustainable communities push:

Rescinding this Bush administration restriction will unleash funding for
important transportation projects across the nation, jumpstarting local
economies and creating good jobs.  This means quicker and better funding
for streetcars, light rail, and bus projects that improve transportation,
revive local economies, and reduce global warming pollution. After much hard
work with the administration and my Congressional colleagues, this is an
exciting outcome that will create better and more transportation
opportunities.

Even Later Update: Transportation for America weighs in on LaHood’s announcement on its blog,
deeming the changes a positive step but emphasizing that cities and
towns are still competing for a limited pot of transit money.

"Even under the old narrow rules for winning approval, only a small
percentage of the many applicants were receiving limited funding," T4A communications associate Stephen Lee Davis wrote.

The
appropriate vehicle for making broad changes to the funding
distribution between roads and transit, however, remains the six-year
federal transportation bill — which is stalled on the Hill for a
number of reasons.

LaHood
addressed the ongoing impasse over a new federal bill during his
remarks today on the transit rules change, calling fresh six-year
legislation a "critical piece of the puzzle."

"I
recognize there’s a lot of capacity and demand for additional transportation
investments across the country that
neither the stimulus nor a new jobs bill can
provide," he said. "We
need to empower regional and local transportation authorities to invest
in the kinds of projects that will spur economic growth, enhance livability,
and preserve the qualities that make each area special."

To
help advance those goals in the absence of concrete congressional
action, the former GOP lawmaker vowed that U.S. DOT would "pursue more
flexible partnerships with states, MPOs, transportation agencies, and
local communities."

U.S. DOT chief Ray LaHood’s team is working on a six-year transport proposal of its own. (Photo: Getty)

The
subscription-only ClimateWire news service caught remarks from Beth
Osborne, the Obama team’s deputy assistant secretary for transportation
policy, who said the administration’s livability work has been slowed by laws that impede federal participation in local planning:

"A lot of it [is] the disjointed federal programs that
often discourage and certainly do not incentivize the coordination of
housing policy and transportation policy, water infrastructure policy,
economic development policy," she said.

"In fact, within the
transportation program, we really disincentivize this," she said. A
state that improves traffic flow and transit use will burn less
gasoline, meaning it will lose revenue from its main source of
transport funding — the gas tax. "That state that creates greater
efficiency can see their own budget get slashed as a reward."

This tension between the desire to cut transportation emissions and the
nation’s reliance on the gas tax for the majority of its transport
funding is a familiar one for Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and other
urban members of Congress.

Nadler lamented
back in June that many states were insisting on a guaranteed rate of
return from their gas-tax revenue based on a nonsensical "equity
argument" that says: "The more energy-efficient you are, the less gas
you use, the less [federal] funding you should get."

One key
ingredient in the Obama administration’s effort to carve out a stronger
federal role in local planning, of course, is the still-stalled
six-year federal transportation bill. And Osborne — seemingly aware of
the value of that legislation in removing longstanding obstacles to
coordination — told the TRB meeting that "Capitol Hill has asked DOT
to craft its own version of a transportation reauthorization bill,"
according to ClimateWire.

A legislative outline from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who spent much of 2009 urging lawmakers to put off discussion of the next six-year bill until 2011, would be an undeniable boost to Democrats who have long urged the administration to play a more active part in solving the puzzle of long-term financing.

But the political hurdles to enacting a new federal transport bill this year remain steep, as ITS America President Scott Belcher remarked in one of today’s TRB conference sessions.

"Everybody
wants to get past the elections" before passing new long-term
legislation," Belcher said, "and they want to get past the election
because they don’t want to raise taxes."

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood (Photo: Getty Images)

In his remarks at a Fort Worth transportation meeting, first reported by the local Star-Telegram, LaHood stopped far short of reversing the White House’s stated opposition to raising the federal gas tax, which has remained at 18.3 cents per gallon since 1993.

But
LaHood appeared to edge the door open to a solution to the nation’s
transportation funding crisis — provided that lawmakers swallow their
re-election concerns and acknowledge that the current gas tax is no longer raising enough money to run an effective system.

Here’s what LaHood said today (emphasis mine):

To index the federal fuel tax [to inflation], that’s something Congress is going to
have to decide. As we get into the reauthorization bill, the debate
will be how we fund all the things we want to do. You can raise a lot
of money with tolling. Another means of funding can be the
infrastructural bank. You can sell bonds and set aside money for big
projects, multi-billion-dollar projects. Another way is [charging motorists for] vehicle miles traveled. The idea of indexing the
taxes that are collected at the gas pump is something I believe
Congress will debate. When the gas tax was raised in 1992 or 1993, in
the Clinton administration, there was a big debate whether it should be
indexed. At that time, they thought there’d be a sufficient amount of
money collected. Now we know that isn’t the case. That is one way to
keep up with the decline in driving, and more fuel-efficient cars.

Another fact not mentioned by LaHood: Transportation construction inflation has increased at a rate twice as high [PDF]
as the Consumer Price Index, the Labor Department’s traditional method
of measuring price hikes for household goods. That means that raising
the federal gas tax to appropriately reflect the cost of infrastructure
improvements would be even more challenging than many in Washington now
admit.

GM CEO Fritz Henderson’s company can earn fuel-efficiency "credits" for its Chevy Volt. (Photo: IB Times)

"[W]e
recognize that we had to give a little bit," Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) chief Lisa Jackson told reporters today. "The good
news is that, by 2016, we will have caught up, and all
autos sold in this country are going to have to meet the one standard."

But the "German provision" isn’t the only loophole that made it into today’s new rule.

The
Obama administration also would allow car companies to earn credits for
achieving a lower CO2 emissions standard than the government requires
in any specific year.

Those credits could be carried
forward five years or back three years, used to make up for
deficiencies in other vehicle fleets, and even earned this year, ahead
of the new fuel-efficiency standard’s phase-in period, which begins in
2012.

For instance, an automaker that beats the standard
for its cars could use the credits it earns to safely produce more
gas-guzzling trucks. That automaker could earn even more credits for
any electric vehicles it produces, for improving its air-conditioning
systems, or for making more "flex-fuel" autos that can run on
ethanol-blended E85 gas — which is available in fewer than 2,500 gas stations nationwide.

Today’s
rule even allows automakers to trade credits with other manufacturers,
opening the door to a bit of horse-trading between Ford and Honda or
Toyota and General Motors.

The concept of credit trading
is not a new one; the EPA has employed it in other pollution
regulations that were drafted under Clean Air Act authority. Still, the
extent of the credits proposed today unsettled veteran fuel-efficiency
advocate Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign.

California
and 13 other states have gotten the go-ahead to begin imposing stricter
fuel standards on automakers before the national rule starts taking
effect in 2012, Becker said in an interview.

That could
create a perverse incentive for car companies to earn extra credits, he
added, "by shuffling more efficient vehicles into those states, then
com[ing] back
in 2012 and say[ing] we over-complied with the national law by selling
these cleaner cars."

For some domestic automakers, however, the "German provision" may sting most of all. The chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Michigan told the Detroit News last week that the loophole amounted to a "subsidy" for foreign companies. 

The EPA states in today’s fuel rule that it believes the "environmental
impact of the ['German provision'] will be very small," resulting in
0.4 percent more greenhouse gas emissions if every eligible car company
took advantage of the exemption.

In
fact, not every company selling fewer than 400,000 vehicles is expected
to avail themselves of the loophole. Becker, pointing out that most
automakers are already meeting Japanese and European fuel-efficiency
standards stronger than those in the U.S., urged the smaller companies
to comply with the full extent of the law.

"BMW and Mercedes talk about
the prowess of their engineers," he said. "One would think their engineers are good enough that they could comply with what
GM and Honda have to comply with."

There
is a 60-day window for public comments on the new fuel rule, after
which time the White House could make changes. Given the intensity of
industry lobbying in favor of the efficiency loopholes, however, Becker
said environmental advocates would push for a "backstop" that forces
automakers to meet higher fuel standards if they fail to comply with
the previous year’s limits.