Streetsblog Capitol Hill

In a press conference today sponsored by the American Public Transportation Association, Obama administration officials affirmed their commitment to transit, especially good maintenance of transit systems. As FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff told reporters:

Decay in the ceiling of Philadelphia's 110-year-old Wayne Junction transit station, which got a $4 million federal grant for repairs after the roof fell in. Photo: SEPTA

We have a challenge in that we want to provide the American public, in a maximum number of communities, with real transit choices, and give them the opportunity to keep more of their paycheck in their wallet, rather than hand it over at the gas pump. But in order to do that, the transit service has to be available; it has to be safe and clean; it has to be reliable and desirable. The only way you get that is by continuing to invest, not just in the expansion of systems, but in the necessary maintenance and major capital reinvestment in systems.

Rogoff said that the largest area of growth in the president’s transportation budget for 2012 is a new formula assistance program for the state of good repair for transit systems. (Indeed, the “Bus and Rail State of Good Repair” budget item is slated for $10.7 billion in 2012 but its allocation shrinks to $3.8 billion in 2013, rising year by year from then.)

Rogoff said it was “spooky” to see how many commuters depend on aging and deteriorating transit systems. He recently facilitated a $4 million federal grant to rehabilitate the 110-year-old SEPTA station at Wayne Junction in North Philadelphia (incidentally, about three miles from where I grew up) where the roof collapsed last year.

Transit agencies and advocates have been saying that high gas prices have led to a spike in transit ridership. In the first quarter of this year, ridership was only up 1.6 percent over the first quarter of last year, but gas prices didn’t really spike until March, so the second quarter results may be more telling. Still, APTA President Bill Millar says it represents the largest quarterly ridership increase in more than two years.

Millar also touted the track record of transportation-related ballot initiatives so far this year. Seven out of eight local initiatives have passed, despite the fact that each one raised taxes or maintained a tax increase.

Read more…

Today’s Senate Banking Committee hearing held some good news for transit riders. Unintuitive though it may be, Banking has jurisdiction over public transportation in the Senate. While in the House, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee handles every aspect of the reauthorization, in the Senate the bill gets carved up. Environment and Public Works is taking the lead, with the specifics on transit left to Banking. Luckily, there are some transit champions on Banking: Jack Reed (D-RI), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) to name a few.

In an uncertain time for national transportation policy, there were several reassuring signs at today’s hearing, if you knew where to look. Here are five pieces of good news:

#1: Administration Pushes to Expand Transit Operating Assistance and State of Good Repair

Significantly, FTA Administrator Rogoff echoed Secretary Ray LaHood’s recent announcement of a push to expand operating assistance for transit agencies.

“There’s no point in using federal dollars to buy brand spanking new buses for transit systems if they cant afford to pay the drivers to put those buses into service,” Rogoff said. “We are proposing assistance that would be targeted and temporary, aimed at economically distressed, urbanized areas with 200,000 or more in population and phased out over three years.” (Smaller metros can already use federal funds for operating costs.)

Larry Hanley of the Amalgamated Transit Union mentioned that with population growth, more and more metro areas are hitting that 200,000 mark, disqualifying them (under normal circumstances) for federal operating aid, making initiatives like the one Rogoff mentioned all the more important.

The plan would be to offer up to 25 percent of an agency’s funding for operating costs the first year, narrowing that to 15 percent the second year and 10 percent the third and final year, with a sole focus on preserving service, especially while Americans are seeking out transit as an alternative to high gas prices.

Rogoff also said the agency has a new program to invest in the state of good repair of transit systems, citing the backlog of $50 billion in maintenance costs in just the country’s seven largest urban rail systems. He said it couldn’t just be a federal burden though – he wanted to see all levels of government step up to address the shortfall.

Ranking Republican Richard Shelby (R-AL) echoed the need for maintenance funds, but framed it as a mandate on local systems, asking that transit agencies that receive billions in federal funding for new capital projects be required to keep a state of good repair.

Read more…

A powwow between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, President Obama, and House Speaker John Boehner last night failed to yield a compromise that would put a budget in place before the government shuts down at midnight tonight. The failure of yet another attempt to negotiate makes a government shutdown all but inevitable.

Just a month ago, AASHTO sounded the warning that the transportation sector could lose up to $100 million a day in case of a shutdown. However, Congress’s extension of SAFETEA-LU through the end of the fiscal year (September 30) has put their minds at ease. Now, AASHTO spokesperson Tony Dorsey says spending for federal highway programs will continue unabated, despite a shutdown. “At this point,” Dorsey said, “we’re not anticipating any issues.” Still, he said, they’re hoping that “should there be a shutdown, it will be a very, very short one.”

But that’s not the whole story. According to a detailed DOT shutdown plan, the vast majority of the Federal Transit Administration would shut down, keeping only 54 out of 575 positions working. Already-awarded stimulus grants would continue to receive oversight and the Lower Manhattan Recovery Office would continue to function. The $270 million that the FTA normally remits to transit agencies every week would cease.

Jeff Rosenberg, government affairs director for the Amalgamated Transit Union, says the SAFETEA-LU extension only continues government’s authority to pay for transportation programs. But “if the FTA isn’t authorized to open the door,” he says, those payments will cease. That could be especially damaging for smaller metros that receive operating assistance, not just capital funds, from the feds. However, he’s hopeful that a potential shutdown would only last a couple of days and would just be “a blip on the screen.”

What else can you expect to happen if the government does shut down as of midnight tonight?

• At least 800,000 federal employees would be furloughed immediately. That would cause a massive drop in transit ridership, especially here in D.C., where Metro is predicting a five to 20 percent drop in case of a shutdown. Michael Perkins of Greater Greater Washington estimates that this would result in a loss for Metro of a quarter million dollars a day.
• Amtrak’s federal subsidies – up in the air for months now anyway as Congress debates whether to eliminate them, reduce them, or maintain them – will stop. However, Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman recently assured employees that the rail operator can keep going on ticket revenue alone in the short term.
• The Federal Highway Administration will stay open, with no positions furloughed, according to the DOT shutdown plan. The FHWA is funded with contract authority and has enough funds available to operate in that way for about a month.

Read more…

Local transit agencies that are planning service cuts and fare hikes as a result of budget constraints have been warned: cost-cutting measures shouldn’t unfairly affect people of color.

Peter Rogoff, head of the Federal Transit Administration, sent out a letter to local transit authorities last week reminding them of their duty to comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which “prohibits federally-funded programs and services from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin.”

The Transportation Equity Network notes that people of color are up to six times more likely to depend on public transportation than white Americans. “As a result,” said TEN’s Laura Barrett in a statement, “the epidemic of service cuts and fare hikes around the country are having a devastating impact on the ability of millions of Americans to access jobs, education, health care, and opportunity.”

TEN applauded Rogoff’s letter, stating that “a budget crisis is no excuse for violating civil rights.”

This issue has been raised recently with respect to the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. MARTA was forced to impose widespread cuts to bus service and raise monthly and weekly fares last fall. Laurel Paget-Seekins of the Atlanta Transit Riders’ Union said the pain was distributed more or less equally, but since then, there has been a call to reinstate the Braves Shuttle, which took mostly-suburban baseball fans from the train to the ballpark. Paget-Seekins said MARTA is being pressured by some business and political interests to bring back the service. Meanwhile, she says her bus route has been folded in with two other routes and is often overcrowded.

“That’s why people are upset about this idea of putting back the Braves shuttles,” she said. “Because those of us who ride every day are still kind of suffering from the cuts that happened last fall.”

MARTA riders are 78 percent black and 14 percent white, she said. In addition, more than 50 percent do not have access to a car and more than 60 percent make less than $30,000 annually.

The Atlanta Transit Riders’ Union watches MARTA and local and state government agencies closely for civil rights abuses. The union has filed a complaint against the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, which runs a commuter bus service that doesn’t serve low-income communities, Paget-Seekins said. The FTA is now performing a compliance review in response.

The House is still voting on amendment after amendment to the continuing resolution that will fund the federal government for the rest of FY2011. Just a quick recap as we go into the weekend. The “base bill” of HR 1 – not the amendments – would do the following:

• Eliminate the entire high-speed rail program.
• Cut $430 million of the $2 billion allocated for the Federal Transit Administration’s New Starts program, the federal government’s primary means of support for transit capital investments.
• Eliminate TIGER, which provided more than $2 billion to innovative state and local transportation programs around the country last year, and rescind all unspent funds from last year.
• Cancel federal payments to the Washington, D.C. metro system.

As for the amendments:

• Republican Pete Sessions of Texas failed to cut $447 million out of Amtrak’s budget.
• Democrat Jared Polis of Colorado tried to keep the government from rescinding unused TIFIA and TIGER grant money from the stimulus. Polis’ amendment failed.

Read more…

Aging infrastructure across the country has become an enormous safety risk. It’s also becoming an economic hazard.

Last year, the Federal Transit Administration announced that the seven largest rail transit systems had a backlog of $50 billion in maintenance needs to bring them into a state of good repair. In June, the agency determined that nationwide, the backlog is nearly $78 billion.

Though these needed repair and maintenance projects may be less impressive to the public than major expansions, they are key to increasing ridership and decreasing costs.

Last week, FTA Deputy Administrator Therese McMillan told the North America Strategic Infrastructure Leadership Forum that the agency is linking good transit maintenance to its livability initiatives. Keeping systems in good repair, she said, is the foundation of safe, reliable rail service that can help draw new residents to vacated areas.

“When we’re looking at the opportunities for in-fill, particularly in our major urban areas, where we can take advantage of the infrastructure we already have, this is where State of Good Repair becomes a very key piece of a livability initiative,” McMillan said. “So it’s not just about building the new stuff into greenfield. It’s about investing and making transit a real value-added as part of these strategic re-investments in communities.”

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority boasts the oldest transit system in America, said Richard Davey, who heads up the MBTA. So maintenance is no small task for them. Ninety-nine percent of the MBTA’s five-year capital plan is for repair and maintenance, which is projected to decrease their debt burden.

Bringing existing infrastructure up to code isn’t always the most popular use of money, especially when agencies have to choose between maintenance and investments that riders perceive more easily. Jeffrey Knueppel of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) said his agency even takes heat for focusing on safety. “At times we are criticized for not expanding the system, and also at times for not doing the customer amenities projects that other agencies have done,” he said.

But he said prioritizing maintenance is by far the most efficient use of funds. Looking at SEPTA’s bridges, Knueppel said, “We have an opportunity now to rehabilitate most of them, rather than replace them. If we continue to defer spending on our bridges we’ll end up spending a lot more money later to replace these structures.”

So how to pay for it?

Several agencies, including the MBTA, SEPTA, and New Jersey Transit, are looking at their parking assets to augment existing income streams. They’re considering leasing or selling off some of their parking lots. In the Philadelphia suburbs, towns that find themselves short on nighttime parking want to enter into an agreement to use the SEPTA lots during the off-peak hours.

Meanwhile, the FTA is developing proposals on the issue and is beginning to train grantees on asset management, but access to money for repairs is still a difficult prospect for many transit systems.

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

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

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

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

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

Read more...

Americans who ride trains and buses are suffering the effects of a huge maintenance backlog, according to a new study by the Federal Transit Administration [PDF]. It would take a down payment of $77.7 billion to bring the nation's transit systems up to a state of good repair and another $14.4 billion per year, on average, to keep transit running smoothly, safely, and comfortably for riders. 

The National State of Good Repair Assessment Study is a follow-up to a similar report issued last year, which catalogued the needs of the country's seven largest rail systems. This year's look widens the lens to include small and medium sized transit operators, including rural systems, and buses as well as trains. 

America's bus system is in particularly bad condition, according to the FTA. Nine percent of all assets received the lowest rating, poor, and another 32 percent were deemed marginal. While rail is in a slightly better condition -- nine percent of assets are poor, but only 17 percent are marginal -- the costs of bringing rail to a state of good repair are far higher. It'll take $59.2 billion, plus an average of $8.2 billion annually, to keep the rail system well maintained. 

Last April, the Federal Transit Administration announced a competitive grant program to try and improve the quality of the nation's bus fleet. But though applications for the grants have totaled over $4.2 billion, the agency only has $775 million to disburse.

To put these numbers in context, the federal stimulus law provided $8.4 billion in transit aid.

Read more...

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and FTA chief Peter Rogoff announced the winners of $293 million in competitive grants for bus and streetcar projects today. The biggest chunks of funding will help build streetcar projects in Cincinnati, Charlotte, Fort Worth, and St. Louis, as well as rapid bus corridors in New York and Chicago. All told, the funding will be distributed among 53 projects, chosen from more than 300 applicants.

While streetcar projects got the largest individual grants, most of the funding will go toward bus projects, including a number of grants for smaller cities to build, expand, or improve stations like Des Moines's Multi-Modal Transit Hub. Several bus projects have an information component, promising to make service more predictable and convenient by giving riders a clear sense of when buses will arrive.

Also on the list is Boston's regional bike-share network, slated to receive $3 million to help build more than 500 public bicycle stations. The bike-share project made the cut because of its potential to expand the reach and accessibility of the bus and rail system. Boston's bike-share launch recently got pushed back to 2011, but at that scale, it would be, by far, the largest system in the country.

Here's a sample of the major projects that got a boost:

• Cincinnati will receive $25 million to help build a six-mile streetcar route, with an eye toward spurring mixed-use development downtown. The city planning commission recently took the enlightened step of reducing parking requirements along the future streetcar route.
  
• Chicago received support for a pair of rapid bus projects: $11 million for the Jeffery BRT corridor, which will improve service to major job center on a route with poor access to trains, and $25 million for a two-mile, east-west bus priority street serving several routes downtown.
  
• New York City's 34th Street busway got an $18 million grant. Streetsblog NYC readers have been following this project for a couple of years. NYCDOT recently announced its intention to make 34th Street the first physically separated busway in the city.
  
• One of the surprise winners was Fort Worth, which received about $25 million for a 2.5-mile one-way streetcar loop, intended to serve as the hub in a future network. Streetsblog Network member Fort Worthology called the grant "incredible and extremely positive news" for the larger streetcar project.
  

You can see the complete list of projects here.

Read more...

The Obama administration plans to award $775 million in bus transit grants this summer, Federal Transit Administration (FTA) chief Peter Rogoff announced yesterday during a transit industry conference in Ohio.

The bus grants are aimed at shoring up aging equipment and helping cash-strapped localities modernize their systems. Instructions for application will be released tomorrow in the Federal Register, with bids due by next month.

"The Obama administration is making these funds available to ensure that financially strapped transit providers can keep buses rolling and serving the public during these difficult economic times,” Rogoff said in a statement released by the FTA today.

The $775 million comes from already-appropriated but unallocated federal bus funding, meaning that no new act of Congress will be required to release the money.