Streetsblog Capitol Hill

The Senate yesterday restored hundreds of millions of dollars in federal transportation spending singled out for elimination by the House of Representatives.

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) fought to help preserve the transportation spending levels agreed upon in MAP-21 in a recent Senate funding resolution. Image: Wikipedia

The Senate’s continuing resolution — which would set spending levels through the end of FY 2013 — matches the transportation spending priorities laid out by MAP-21, the transportation bill hashed out in a bipartisan manner last year.

Top senators, including Barbara Boxer (D-CA), were alarmed when the House resolution, passed last week, called for spending cuts below what was agreed upon in the transportation bill — $117 million for transit and $555 million for highways.

Senator Boxer, who chairs the Senate Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, told reporters her approach to restoring spending levels was “very straightforward.”

“‘We said: ‘How can you do this? It’s not right, we paid for this,’” she said.

Pressure from Boxer and other Senate committee chairs wasn’t what clinched it, though: The Obama administration requested MAP-21 funding levels be honored, and the Appropriations Committee chair inserted that language into the bill.

Representatives of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials this morning applauded the Senate’s decision.

“The Senate’s continuing resolution recognizes that the nation’s economic recovery remains dependent on the funding levels envisioned in MAP-21 and now is not the time to deviate from those levels,” said Bud Wright, AASHTO executive director, in a press release.

The House and Senate versions of the continuing resolution must still be reconciled.

Tuesday morning, Rep. Earl Blumenauer took his usual place behind the podium at the National Bike Summit. (He never misses a Bike Summit.)

Rep. Earl Blumenauer never misses a Bike Summit. Photo: Brian Palmer

“I’m coming up this morning and smiling at someone going past me on the bike lane on Pennsylvania Avenue,” Blumenauer said. “Remember four years ago, I talked about risking my life on Pennsylvania Avenue. And I talked from a podium not unlike this and said, ‘Maybe we could just put bike lanes on Pennsylvania Avenue.’ Some of you clapped; others of you said, ‘I agree, but not in my lifetime.’ [Four] years later: It’s there, it’s a fixture, it matters to people. And it’s part of the renaissance in our nation’s capital.”

Blumenauer encouraged the 750 assembled cycling advocates to be “proud and modestly aggressive” in driving home the point that cycling infrastructure creates good, family-wage jobs. Safe Routes to School “gives us an opportunity to reduce [congestion during] the morning commute 30 percent and not have so many morbidly obese fourth graders,” he said.

Summit participants were already planning to spend the next day on Capitol Hill, talking to members of Congress and their staff about increasing federal support for cycling programs. But Blumenauer told them not to stop there — they should be lobbying even harder when the members are at home, and the district staff are trying to fill their schedules with events that will put them face-to-face with constituents. Inviting them out for a ride to try out a trail that was made possible by federal funds would be a good way of showing them the concrete (and asphalt!) benefits of programs like TIGER and Transportation Enhancements (now Transportation Alternatives).

Another member who made the trip up Pennsylvania Avenue to speak to the Bike Summit was Sen. Ben Cardin, who solidified his standing as Bike Hero when he fought for the Cardin-Cochran amendment, which preserved some local control over bike/ped funds, even as dedicated funding was stripped out of the federal bill.

Read more…

New House Transportation Committee Chair Bill Shuster (R-PA) clearly knows he’s got some devolutionist conservatives in his caucus (and on his committee). While many Republicans would like to see the federal government get out of the business of infrastructure and just let the states raise and spend their own money, Shuster has always been clear that he is in favor of a strong federal role.

Before the session gets underway, Transportation Committee Chair Bill Shuster wants to make one thing clear. Photo: PoliGu

He likes to remind conservatives that Adam Smith, the godfather of free-enterprise capitalism himself, argued that there were three essential functions of government–security, justice and transportation. He notes that many Republican presidents have overseen massive infrastructure expansion, and that the work continues.

So Shuster is devoting the first committee hearing of the session to clarifying his view that the work of the committee is not just to channel all decisions and funds down to the states. Before anything else — before anyone on the committee has a chance to undermine the very purpose of the committee — Shuster hopes to dispense with that entire line of argument.

So next Wednesday’s hearing, entitled “The Federal Role in America’s Infrastructure,” will give a platform to three of the most vocal advocates of increased federal infrastructure spending: U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue, Building America’s Future Co-Chair and former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, and Laborers’ International Union of North America President Terry O’Sullivan all have been invited to testify.

They’ll have a lot of minds to change. The lobby for devolution to the states is growing, and not just among conservatives. Rohit Aggarwala — former director of long-term panning and sustainability for New York City and now top advisor to the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group — made the same case a few weeks ago in a Bloomberg News op-ed.

“Every bipartisan commission that has studied the situation has advocated raising the [gas] tax, but a polarized Congress has been unable to do it,” Aggarwala wrote. “A strong, smart, well-funded federal program would be great. But if Congress can’t pass one now, it should just get itself out of the way, by eliminating the federal gas tax entirely and cutting Washington’s role in surface transportation. It would streamline government. And it would probably lead to more investment in infrastructure and greener transportation policies.”

Shuster and Aggarwala have flipped traditional roles, with the green sustainability leader now calling for Washington to get out of the transportation biz and the conservative rural Republican defending the importance of federal involvement.

Who will be looking out for the interests of transit riders in the 113th Congress? It’s easy to figure it out, said Cap’n Transit over the weekend: Just check whether they have an R or a D next to their names.

The photo on the main page of the website of Rep. Sam Graves -- the T&I Committee Republican with the most urban transportation profile -- shows him in a field of beans on a Missouri farm.

The Cap’n ranked House Transportation Committee members, from both parties, by the percentage of car-free households in their district and the percentage of people who primarily commute by transit, according to Census numbers. His results weren’t shocking, given what we know about the differences between urban and rural voting patterns. But they were eye-opening all the same.

The committee Republican with the highest proportion of car-free and transit-using constituents was Sam Graves of Missouri. His district comprises the entire northern section of the state, including some suburbs of Kansas City and then north and east into the hinterlands. That is the T&I Republican district with the most urban transportation profile.

Compare that with New York City Democrat Jerrold Nadler: 64 percent of his constituents are car-free, with 54 percent of them riding transit. My non-voting delegate here in DC, Eleanor Holmes Norton, presides over a city where 26 percent of residents don’t have a car and 38 percent ride transit.

Sure, there are plenty of rural and suburban Democrats, and those numbers aren’t a clear indicator of how someone will vote. Peter DeFazio of Oregon is a strong voice for transit, and 97 percent of his constituents have a car, with just 2 percent commuting primarily by transit.

The five T&I Committee Republicans with the most car-free and transit-using constituents.

Read more…

Perhaps Rep. John Mica’s most remarkable legacy as chair of the House Transportation Committee is the single-minded focus he gave to attacking Amtrak. Under the guise of wanting it to succeed, Mica has repeatedly excoriated it as a “Soviet-style monopoly” and a waste of taxpayer dollars. He’s tried to sell off its only profitable line, the Northeast Corridor, and made a mockery of every aspect of its operations, right down to food service. If there’s anything he got more glee out of criticizing, it was the Transportation Security Administration.

Last year, Mica took a field trip to McDonald's to berate Amtrak for losing money on food service. Photo: WUSA

Mica’s no longer chair of the Transportation Committee. But as of this morning, he’s got a new post from which he can take shots at these agencies.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where Mica was already a senior member, is consolidating two subcommittees into a new Subcommittee on Government Operations. That new subcommittee will oversee the TSA and Amtrak. And Mica will be the chair.

In other committee news, 10 new Republicans and 10 new Democrats are joining the T&I committee. Democrats gained one seat on the 60-member committee. New Chair Bill Shuster has a track record of taking new members under his wing to bring them up to speed on the intricacies of transportation policy. No doubt, many lobbyists will take it upon themselves to do the same.

In the Senate, Maryland Democrat Barbara Mikulski will take over the chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee. Media reports about her leadership of that committee center around her gender — she’ll be the first woman to chair it — but more notable to transportation reformers is the fact that she’s a vocal supporter of transit. She’s fought for federal funding of all the transit systems under her jurisdiction as well as Amtrak. After the red line Metro crash in 2009, she sponsored legislation to bring federal safety oversight to local systems, a provision that was included in MAP-21. She also favors parity between commuter tax benefits for drivers and transit riders, which was included in the fiscal cliff deal that was approved late on New Years Day.

Read more…

Happy New Year, transit riders! Thanks to some shrewd maneuvering on the part of some U.S. Senators, transit commuters will be able to claim as much in tax benefits as car commuters do in 2013.

Transit commuters could have a little extra change in their pockets in 2013, thanks to the fiscal cliff deal. Photo: Treehugger

Slipped into the fiscal cliff deal approved by the House of Representatives last night was a provision to boost the tax incentive to commute by transit. The commuting costs that straphangers could claim as tax-deductible had been reduced to a maximum of $125 per month last year, well below the $240 that car commuters could claim monthly to offset parking costs.

With transit and parking benefits again equal, there will be one less pernicious financial incentive to drive to work alone, as David Alpert at Greater Greater Washington noted:

In approving this extension, [Congress was] able to give many American workers a tax cut along with helping our cities function more effectively and ending one small example of the many ways government “picks winners and losers” among transportation modes.

The equalized tax incentive for transit was extended only though the end of the year, though, so electeds will again have to act to put transit on equal footing with driving.

Politico said the provision is expected to provide up to $190 million a year in incentives for transit riders. Good to see some smart policy came out of that messy, messy budget ordeal, which will continue to play out over the next few months, with plenty of implications for how Americans get around.

UPDATE: Transportation for America reports Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA) were the leading advocates of the transit tax benefit extension.

In June, the House of Representatives voted to ban U.S. DOT from even studying the viability of switching from the gas tax to a vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) fee. But the tide may be turning: The sponsor of the amendment, Rep. Chip Cravaack, has been ousted from Congress, the amendment itself is on the skids, and a new bill would actually require the government to study the VMT option.

A dashboard-mounted transponder like this can record mileage. Photo: ODOT

The ban had been attached to a 2013 budget bill which still hasn’t passed. As Congress seeks to re-open negotiations on the budget, it appears House leaders are scuttling it. Transportation Appropriations Subcommitee Chair Tom Latham – himself a big supporter of the ban on researching a VMT fee — told Politico last Friday that the language was “not an issue.”

Also on Friday, Rep. Earl Blumenauer introduced a bill [PDF] mandating that the Treasury Department — not U.S. DOT – study the option. The choice of Treasury is a reasonable one, since it’s a revenue issue — and it would circumvent Cravaack’s ban on a DOT study, even if it does survive.

President Obama has resisted switching to a VMT fee, specifically walking back a DOT idea to study the option last year. But incoming Transportation Committee Chair Bill Shuster has said a mileage-based user fee is a “fair” way to pay for transportation infrastructure. He may come up against vehement opposition from rural members of his own party if he tries to pursue it.

Read more…

The Government Accountability Office says key details are missing from the California High-Speed Rail Authority's cost estimate. Image: GAO

California Republicans from Fresno and Bakersfield put their foot down in a House hearing yesterday, rejecting the high-speed rail project whose initial segment would run between those two cities.

Rep. Jeff Denham, whose district includes Fresno, is the author of an amendment, passed in June, to ensure that no more federal money gets spent on the project. And Bakersfield Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Majority Whip in the House, suggested it may be time to “cut our losses” and stop spending money on the project.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, testifying before Congress on his 67th birthday, rushed to the defense of the proposed rail line. “Investing in rail is a priority for President Obama and this administration,” he said, “and most importantly, it’s a priority for the American people.”

The cost estimate has fluctuated between $33 billion and $98 billion, and is now set in the middle, at $68 billion.

The high-speed rail authority is seeking $38 billion in additional federal funds to fill in some of the gaping difference between the full cost and the $11.5 billion in state and federal funds already pledged.

As McCarthy pointed out, now is a difficult time to make the case for more federal spending on rail, when fiscal cliff negotiations will result in spending cuts and tax increases. Congress hasn’t appropriated a dime toward high-speed rail since the GOP gained control of the House in 2010. So far, the federal government has allocated just $3.5 billion to the project.

The state is trying to raise capital from pensions and sovereign wealth funds, but LaHood said Denham’s provision barring federal funding makes it harder to court investors. “As long as there’s language in bills that prohibit us from funding, we’re going nowhere,” LaHood asserted.

Read more…

UPDATE: An earlier version of this article included Robert Dold as the fifth potential aisle-crosser. I’ve since been informed that Dold lost his re-election bid this year. Charlie Bass and Judy Biggert, named briefly at the bottom for supporting the Senate transportation bill and Amtrak funding, also lost their elections, making this list even shorter.

First Rep. Tim Johnson of Illinois announced his retirement. Then Ohio’s Rep. Steve LaTourette said he couldn’t take the petty gridlock anymore and followed suit.

They belonged to a disappearing class: moderate Republicans in the House of Representatives. And they were both known for recognizing the value of investments in transit, biking, and walking.

Johnson, a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, split with his party in supporting dedicated bike/ped funding and funding flexibility for transit agencies. And LaTourette, who left T&I to be vice-chair on the Transportation and HUD Appropriations Subcommittee, was a loud voice against the GOP plan to eliminate federal transit funding.

They’ll be missed for many reasons, but chief among them is this: In a Republican-controlled body, legislation needs at least one Republican co-sponsor to go anywhere. Any bill that benefits transit, biking, or walking can usually count on some Democratic support, but if it’s not at least nominally bipartisan, it will be essentially dead on arrival. These two lawmakers were often brave enough to reach across the aisle and co-sponsor those bills.

Who will do that in the next Congress? Streetsblog set out to identify the moderate Republicans in the House who might forge some solid, bipartisan transportation legislation, or at least keep bad ideas from getting too much momentum. After all, it was Republicans who helped torpedo the worst parts of the House transportation bill this year. These representatives could still make an impact in a chamber where the leadership remains hostile to transportation reform.

Photo: Tom Petri poses with the Wisconsin Bike Federation's Hero Award. Photo: Wendy Soucie/Lodi Valley News

Tom Petri. The T&I member from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is one of the most outspoken bicycling supporters in the House from either party. He co-chairs Earl Blumenauer’s Congressional Bike Caucus. I once heard him tell a group of bike advocates, “We are engaged in a bipartisan war against couch potatoes here in the United States.” If that war really is bipartisan, it’s mostly because of Tom Petri.

Petri introduced an amendment [PDF] to protect funding for bicycling and walking in the trainwreck that was the House transportation bill, H.R. 7. The amendment failed and Petri ended up being the only Republican to vote against H.R. 7 in committee (which was as far as it got), though he says he voted against it “primarily because it slashed highway funding for Wisconsin.” Petri also ensured that metro areas with small transit systems would continue to have the flexibility to allocate federal transit funds to operating costs.

On the other hand, Petri hasn’t taken a strong stance against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s decision to send high-speed rail funds back to the federal government and, in fact, co-sponsored legislation that would have directed those returned funds toward deficit reduction, not other rail projects.

Read more…

UPDATED 9/24 with chart.

House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica continued his “holy jihad” against Amtrak yesterday, holding the third full-committee hearing in a series on “Reviewing Amtrak’s Operations.” He’s planning at least three more hearings during the lame duck session after the election.

House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica is on a "holy jihad" to curb Amtrak's subsidies. Image: C-SPAN

Mica went after subsidies in this one, and he clearly thinks this is a winning issue. After all, Amtrak has gotten nearly $1 billion a year in federal funds over its 41-year existence. The per-ticket subsidy over the past five years has averaged nearly $51. Mica compared that to other forms of transportation: Using 2008 data, he showed that the average per-ticket subsidy to aviation was $4.28, for mass transit was 95 cents, and for intercity commercial bus service 10 cents.

What’s missing? Highways, of course. Luckily, Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman was on hand to remind him. “In the past four years, the federal government has appropriated $53.3 billion from the general fund of the Treasury to bail out the Highway Trust Fund,” Boardman told the committee. “That’s almost 30 percent more than the total federal expenditure on Amtrak since 1971.”

Considering that about 20 percent of the Highway Trust Fund goes to transit, that’s still more for highways alone over the past four years than Amtrak has ever gotten.

Meanwhile, Amtrak affirmed this week that the rail line covers 85 percent of its operating costs with ticket sales and other revenues [PDF].

Mica did acknowledge in his opening remarks that “almost all forms of transportation are underwritten by subsidies” but didn’t mention roads, despite the massive subsidies road builders receive.

Read more…