Streetsblog Capitol Hill

In order to “address our insolvent transportation program and end the taxpayer bailouts of the Highway Trust Fund,” Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) has introduced a bill to let states “opt out” of the federal transportation program altogether.

Rep. Scott Garrett's own state would likely not do well under his plan to hand states the reins on transportation funding. Photo: Pete Marovich/Zuma via Mother Jones

In true devolutionist fantasy style, Garrett says he wants to give states the option to forgo their transportation allocations and keep the 18.4 cents per gallon that now is charged as a federal tax.

It harkens back to the old griping from “donor” states that they pay more in gas taxes than they get back in formula funds, only there’s no such thing as a donor state anymore because of the constant stream of federal bailouts. Garrett says that’s the target of his bill.

“For our children and our grandchildren’s future, we must put an end to Washington bailouts,” said Garrett upon introducing the bill. “On top of the bailouts to the banks and car companies, the hardworking American taxpayers have bailed out the Highway Trust Fund no less than three times over the last five years. It must stop.”

Garrett’s press release also notes that MAP-21 provided for $18.8 billion more from the general fund in 2013 and 2014.

He says letting states opt out of the federal program would “free up states’ transportation dollars from federal micromanagement” – though MAP-21 gave states an even longer leash than they’d asked for.

Giving states sole authority over the nation’s infrastructure is a funny way to “solve” the infrastructure funding problem. First of all, the recession has been brutally hard on states, forcing cuts to just about every program, no matter how essential. Second, virtually all states are constitutionally bound to balance their budgets. Maybe that’s Garrett’s big idea – states can’t run up deficits like the feds can, so let the states handle it. That’s a recipe for either massive cuts in infrastructure spending – fresh on the heels of the latest D+ from the American Society of Civil Engineers – or tax hikes.

Garrett’s bill is almost definitely going nowhere (he introduced the same bill two years ago, and it died without any serious consideration), but it would be interesting to consider what would happen if his home state opted out of the federal transportation program.

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Earlier this month we asked you: What is the worst parking crater in America? What is the ugliest parking scar draining the life from a downtown?

And Streetsblog readers answered. In all we received 23 submissions from nearly as many states, from the blazing blacktop of San Bernardino, California, to the asphalt expanses of Philadelphia — and a lot of pockmarked places in between. We received so many, we had to break it down into a March Madness-style tournament, matching up 16 finalists in a single-elimination bracket.

Who will take home the championship? That’s up to you. Over the next two weeks, we’ll be matching up city versus asphalt-maimed city and asking for your vote to determine who will advance. Ladies and gentlemen, the bracket:

We’re kicking off the competition today with a matchup between two proud metros. One gave us the Champagne of Beers, the other gave us Frank Sinatra. It’s Milwaukee versus Jersey City.

Remember to vote at the bottom.

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Water rushing into the Hoboken PATH station through an elevator shaft last night. Photo credit: Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

As the East Coast surveys the damage from Hurricane Sandy, cities are still struggling to get their transit systems back up and running.

In New York City, there is no firm timetable for restoring subway service after train tunnels were flooded with a surge of saltwater, in what New York MTA Chair Joe Lhota has called the most devastating event to ever strike the subway system.

In Philadelphia, SEPTA is slowly bringing back service on subway and bus lines. The regional rail system is down at least until tomorrow, with the majority of the damage apparently from downed trees. Amtrak has also continued its suspension of service on the Northeast Corridor, with repairs pending on the track and signal systems, as well as the removal of trees and other debris.

New Jersey Transit was hit hard, with “major damage on each and every one of New Jersey rail lines,” according to Governor Chris Christie, including washouts along the North Jersey Coast Line and at Kearny Junction, as well as flooding at rail hubs in Secaucus, Hoboken and Newark Penn Station, according to the AP. It could be seven to 10 days before PATH train service is restored.

DC’s metro came back online at 2:00 p.m. today, and there was no major flooding or damage reported to Baltimore’s and Boston’s transit systems.

Damage to infrastructure isn’t the only cost of the hurricane — lost productivity will also ding the economy, as workplaces up and down the coast stay shuttered for another day today.

One early estimate pegged the total damage caused by the storm at more than $20 billion, with insured losses at about $7 billion. Infrastructure repairs figure to account for a substantial portion of the costs. With transit agencies and local governments still feeling the fiscal squeeze, who will foot the bill?

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New Jersey’s cities — even downtrodden and smaller ones — are seeing a dramatic shift in population trends, according to research from smart growth group New Jersey Future.

The small city of Red Bank, New Jersey has seen dramatic population growth over the last four years, part of a statewide trend toward already-developed areas. Photo: Pruzach

The state’s eight largest urban areas – Newark, Jersey City, Trenton, Paterson, Elizabeth, Camden, New Brunswick, Atlantic City — accounted for 11.4 percent of the state’s population growth between 2008 and 2011. That’s a big change compared to the 1.1 percent those cities accounted for between 2000 and 2008. According to NJ Future, this period marks the first time since the 1930′s that the growth rate of these cities (1.7 percent) has come close to the statewide rate (1.8).

Sprawl appears to be losing steam in a state that is very well-known for it. The 188 cities and towns in New Jersey that are at least 95 percent developed, or “built out,” saw their populations rise 2 percent between 2008 and 2011 — slightly more than the state average of 1.8 percent. In the eight years prior, this same group of municipalities had declined 1 percent.

Finally, even 30 “distressed cities,” as identified in 2006 by the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey, saw their prospects take a turn for the better. Over the last four years, these places outpaced state growth 2.6 percent to 1.8 percent.

New Jersey Future‘s Tim Evans says the national trend toward urban living has clearly arrived in New Jersey.

The Census Bureau and the Associated Press have already noted the turnaround in the municipal data from the national perspective, with cities growing faster than their surroundings for the first time in decades. Is the same thing happening in New Jersey? In a word, yes.

Considering that New Jersey is the most developed state in the nation, this trend toward redevelopment of already-built areas and away from continued development of a dwindling supply of open land is good news. If any state is in need of a rethinking of the dominant development paradigm – or is better poised to capitalize on the alternative – it is New Jersey.

New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg has been spoiling for a fight ever since the Port Authority raised tolls to cross into New York. And yesterday, he got it.

The Lincoln Tunnel helix in 1955. It hasn't been rehabbed since then. Photo: Wikipedia

Lautenberg invited Bill Baroni, the deputy director of the Port Authority, to testify at a Commerce Committee hearing that turned into little more than a showdown between the two men.

Lautenberg was commissioner of the Port Authority from 1978 to 1982, and he said that back then, the toll was $2, which would be about $5 in today’s dollars. “When it costs $12 to drive your car across a bridge in America, something is wrong,” Lautenberg said, adding that the decision to raise the rates was made “behind closed doors.”

Baroni countered that the Authority had actually held 10 public hearings on the toll increase, involving more than 1,500 people. He went through a list of crisis-level needs that necessitated the toll increase, from the Bayonne Bridge, which has to be raised to allow larger ships to pass under it, to the Lincoln Tunnel helix, which hadn’t been rehabbed in 70 years, to the George Washington Bridge’s suspender ropes, which need replacing.

But then he mentioned that Lautenberg, as a former commissioner, has a free E-ZPass, and that “it is impossible to argue fairness in tolls if you don’t pay them.” The whole thing spiraled into a war of words from there, with Baroni at one point obliquely comparing Lautenberg to Joe McCarthy.

The shoot-‘em-up nature of the hearing may have been the most entertaining part, but amidst the political theater there were some meaningful comments on the utility of tolling: for example, Baroni’s insistence that more funds from drivers are needed to bring his agency’s infrastructure into a state of good repair. Barring an increase in the gas tax, tolling is the only way to raise that revenue and maintain aging roads and bridges.

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Without ARC, these century-old tunnels will remain the only way for NJ Transit commuters to get to Manhattan. Photo: NJ Transit via Second Avenue Sagas

It was never about cost overruns. It was never about New Jersey’s share of the price tag. Chris Christie’s decision to kill the ARC tunnel under the Hudson River was always about two, and only two, things: the governor’s unwillingness to raise the state’s rock-bottom gas tax and his desire to make a name for himself among national Republicans.

A new report from the Government Accountability Office, the independent and non-partisan investigation agency of the federal government, lays bare what transit advocates knew all along: Christie wanted to break into the piggy bank of transit dollars put aside by previous administrations and use the money to bail out the state’s highways. He was willing to say anything to get his way.

Christie’s untrue statements about New Jersey’s most important transit project were catalogued by the New York Times, which broke the news of the GAO report this morning. The governor claimed, for example, that New Jersey would be paying 70 percent of the cost of building the first new rail tunnels under the Hudson in a century, which he argued was too high. The GAO found that the state would only shoulder 14.4 percent of the cost.

Christie repeatedly cited cost overruns, which he said would put the total price tag at up to $14 billion, as a reason to pull the plug on the project. But, reported the Times, “the range of estimates had in fact remained unchanged in the two years before he announced in 2010 that he was shutting down the project. And state transportation officials, the report says, had said the cost would be no more than $10 billion.”

Compare that to the value that ARC would have created for New Jersey. At the time, analysts predicted that the project would raise New Jersey property values by $18 billion and allow $50 billion in new wages to come back to the state from New York City. The GAO concluded that the ARC tunnel would have provided the region with economic, environmental and mobility benefits, though the report could not quantify to what extent. Read more…

Last summer, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey raised EZPass tolls from $8 to cross a bridge into the city during peak hours to $9.50, with planned increases to $12.50 in a few years (cash tolls are increasing somewhat more). Tolls for five-axle trucks will rise as high as $125.

Photo: Office of Senator Frank Lautenberg

The hikes marked the first time the Port Authority had raised tolls since 2008, and the only the third since 2001. Nevertheless, congressional representatives from the area are making noise. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) teamed up today to announce a bill to increase federal oversight of road tolls.

The “Commuter Protection Act” would restore U.S. DOT’s power to determine whether tolls on interstate bridges and tunnels are “just and reasonable” and set lower maximum tolls if they deem it necessary. The agency had that power until 1987, when it was revoked during an era of deregulation. The bill would also require the Government Accountability Office to produce a report on the “transparency and accountability” of how toll rates are set.

“When it costs $12 to drive your car across a bridge in America [the rate for cash tolls], something is wrong,” Lautenberg said in a statement. “Commuters are suffering.”

Lautenberg has a strong pro-transit record, but in this case he may end up hurting transit by taking up the cause of constituents who drive into the city. For one thing, the tolls have led to a four percent drop in traffic across the Port Authority crossings, which is good news for bus speeds. Meanwhile, ridership on PATH trains has risen 3.7 percent.

It’s still an open question whether the final draft of the bill will consider transit a “just and reasonable” purpose for tolling funds. There is currently no legal definition of “just and reasonable.” Even if transit is covered, however, the bill could still do damage.

If the U.S. DOT were to actually intervene with the Port Authority, for instance, there would probably be less funding available for transit. Already, the Port Authority scrapped plans to build a much-needed new bus depot in Manhattan because Governors Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo scaled back the latest round of toll hikes.

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White Flint, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC, should be a shining example of transit-oriented development. It’s centered on a metro station on the busy red line, sandwiched between the bustling suburban downtowns of Bethesda and Rockville.

Developers and the public are together preparing to turn White Flint's Rockville Pike from this...

... into this. Images: MontCo Planning Director's Blog (above) and White Flint Partnership (below).

But instead, it’s “sprawling suburbia,” covered in surface parking lots and lacking a true road network. “Community members say they’re within spitting distance of White Flint Mall but they have to drive to get there because of the road network,” says developer Francine Waters, who manages the transportation and smart growth program at Lerner Enterprises.

Seeing the wasted potential of the area, Lerner and five other developers that own much of the land in White Flint came together to figure out how to make Rockville Pike, White Flint’s main artery, a destination and not just a thoroughfare. Waters told the story this week at Rail~Volution to an audience eager to learn how public-private partnerships and value capture strategies could work in their neck of the woods.

Not only are the White Flint developers looking to include more mixed-use development in the community, they want to build new local streets to fill in a viable street grid and redesign the eight-lane Rockville Pike into a “21st century boulevard” with wide sidewalks, bike lanes, six rows of trees, and dedicated transit lanes. They want to fill those lanes with bus rapid transit to take short-haul commuters off of the at-capacity red line.

The infrastructure total is estimated to cost $601 million – and the federal government isn’t picking up a dime of it.

White Flint is at the forefront of a new kind of infrastructure financing – one which involves the private sector more than the government. As federal funds dry up, all eyes have turned to public-private partnerships, but the topic is still often the subject of much head-scratching and hand-wringing in Congress. Indeed, some have rung the alarm bell about over-reliance on the private sector when it comes to building high-speed rail, saying the public often bears too much of the risk while the private developers carry off all the profit.

Through an extended series of community consultations, White Flint’s developers appear to have gained the public’s trust, and now they’re charging forward with ambitious plans to remake an auto-centric suburban sprawl zone. And by bypassing federal aid, they’re also bypassing the reams of paperwork and bureaucratic processes that come with it, which often add years and millions of dollars to total project cost.

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Despite the rather obvious link between transportation investments and development patterns, land use planning is simply not a consideration at your average state DOT.

The town of Metuchen is one of New Jersey's "Transit Villages," a program designed to encourage sustainable, transit oriented development. Photo: NJ.com

Most state DOTs — and there are notable exceptions — see their primary responsibility as building highways, never mind that highways are likely to spur outward development, which leads to the need for more highways. What comes after the highways are built is considered by many to be beyond the state transportation agency’s scope.

A decade ago, however, the state of New Jersey — historically a poster child for sprawl — achieved a transportation planning breakthrough. Two administrators at the New Jersey Department of Transportation set out to reverse the whole dynamic. They wanted to make transportation projects more holistic, serving communities rather than subordinating all other concerns to the hallowed cause of car capacity. They wanted to infuse transportation planning with a land use strategy that would minimize costs and environmental impacts.

At the time, the Garden State was rapidly approaching the limits of its developable land. And the standard practice of tackling congestion with more roads just seemed to be a fiscal impossibility, says Jack Lettiere, who led NJDOT from 2002 to 2006.

“We spent tens of millions trying to relieve congestion,” said Lettiere. “The faster we went, the slower we went. People were getting mad at us. Funds were getting low.”

Working with planning director Gary Toth, Lettiere sought to institute a new approach. They created a program within the department called New Jersey Future in Transportation (FIT) and, though later administrations have diluted its impact, the concept remains influential.

At the time, NJDOT was building on a concept, pioneered by the state of Maryland, called “Context Sensitive Solutions.”

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

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

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

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

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

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