Image: Operation Lifesaver

The Federal Railroad Administration doesn’t call people walking near railroad tracks “pedestrians.” It calls them “trespassers.”

True, a person walking on railroad tracks is often, by definition, breaking the law, since the tracks are private property. But the nomenclature gives the impression that the agency might be somewhat less sympathetic than they should be about the 427 people who lost their lives last year walking on or near railroad tracks. And last year was a good year – the FRA estimates the average to be about 500 deaths annually [PDF].

The FRA just issued Guidance on Pedestrian Crossing Safety At or Near Passenger Stations [PDF]. This document deals with “pedestrians,” not  “trespassers,” because it deals only with officially sanctioned crossings, and only those at or near stations. “It’s a guide to best practices in crossing engineering, warning devices, markings, signage, that kind of thing,” FRA spokesperson Rob Kulat told me.

The document was released in compliance with the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, which mandated that such guidance be issued within a year of enactment.

OK, so it’s two and a half years late. It’s still a useful resource for the municipalities and states that want to build or improve rail crossings at or near stations – after all, according to Kulat, the FRA isn’t the one responsible for these crossings.

What the document doesn’t do is give guidance about when and where crossings should be added to prevent injury and increase mobility. In a 2008 fact sheet [PDF], the agency explicitly says, “The FRA’s focus is on preventing rail trespassing, not enabling it by making the behavior safe.” The safety document released this month features a wide range of recommendations for enabling safe crossings, but only where they’re currently sanctioned. The people who cross the tracks to get to school or their aunt’s house or the post office are still just trespassers whose injuries are their own fault.

The FRA, along with several major rail companies and Amtrak, are partners of Operating Lifesaver, a 40-year-old nonprofit dedicated to rail safety education. On the Operation Lifesaver website, under the headline “Dumb Move,” is a video of two teenaged boys listening to iPods and walking along a train track, apparently unaware that “it takes a mile to stop a train.” And it features the story of Shawn Potter, a 15-year-old who died playing “chicken” on train tracks, “waiting for a train to come through so they could have the thrill of jumping off seconds before it roared past.”

Those stories castigate the dead for being “dumb” and playing with fire. But considering that rail tracks often bisect cities and even neighborhoods, dividing people from services and other community amenities, it’s not fair to treat all illegal crossings as irresponsible trespasses.

Last year, a Michigan man’s arm was severed as he tried — not just to cross train tracks — but to actually climb over a stopped train that was in his way. His two-year-old son was on his shoulders. One shudders to think what could have happened. But the police lieutenant didn’t call him dumb or reckless, even for doing something so dangerous with a toddler. “The only way you can get to anything in that area — the store, the post office, City Hall, the pharmacy — you have to cross those tracks,” the officer said.

It would make sense for rail entities to pay attention to where people are “trespassing” on railroad tracks and figure out how to accommodate them safely. Rather than blame the victims, planners could see these illegal crossings as a sort of “desire line,” like the dirt paths that get carved into grass over years of use because it’s the most direct way to walk, even if there’s no sanctioned path there.

That’s how it went in Encinitas, California, where beachgoers lugging surfboards regularly crossed train tracks to reach the Swamis surfing spot. More than 50 trains a day went by, making the crossing a dangerous undertaking, but the closest legal crosswalk was more than a mile away. Rather than reprimand the “trespassers,” however, the city did something far more productive: build a grade-separated walkway.

The FRA’s guidance is a good resource, but it risks missing the forest for the trees. Pedestrian injuries near train tracks are as much an urban design problem as they are a behavior issue. Maybe the next document can issue guidance to municipalities, helping them pinpoint where crossings should be located to improve mobility and access. Once they do that, it’ll be great to have this latest document, helping them design effective audible and visual signaling, bright yellow markings, swing gates, and eye-catching signs.

Former Transportation Secretaries Mary Peters, James Burnley, Rodney Slater, Samuel Skinner, and Norman Mineta participated in the conference that produced a report and communications strategy. Photo from Miller Center.

If 80 percent of the American people agree that federal infrastructure investment will create jobs, and two-thirds say better infrastructure is important, why is the call for a robust transportation bill being made in whispers? And why is Congress already two and a half years late in producing one?

There are many political reasons — from the earmark ban to wariness of “Bridge to Nowhere” projects to the anti-spending frenzy that’s taken over the House — that it’s been a tough time to pass a transportation bill. But five former U.S. Secretaries of Transportation have said that the voice for change has to be louder. They released a report yesterday, with the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, calling for a new communications strategy. (See “Is Transpo Funding Fundamentally a PR Problem? Five Ex-DOT Chiefs Discuss,” Dec. 2, 2011, for more on the conference the report is based on.)

The communications strategy is both visionary and tactical. Its more nuts-and-bolts elements include social networking campaigns and election-year news hooks to bring attention to the issue and make candidates talk about infrastructure.

The strategy is aimed at both leaders and the public. After all, both say they want better transportation infrastructure (and the jobs that will be created to build it), but no one wants to pay for it. The American people haven’t woken up to that contradiction. “Seventy-one percent of voters oppose an increase in the federal gas tax,” the Miller Center report says, “with majorities likewise opposing a tax on foreign oil, the replacement of the gas tax with a per-mile-traveled fee, and the imposition of new tolls to increase federal transportation funding.”

That’s a pretty comprehensive list of funding mechanisms, and the public has rejected them all. Part of a communications strategy, therefore, has to explain to the American people – not just about transportation but about all government services – that you can’t get something for nothing.

The political environment, characterized by a freshman class that feels it has a mandate to oppose any and all government spending, is a high hurdle. “How much transportation spending is needed and how that spending should be distributed has always been a subject of debate,” the report says. “But in recent years the transportation discussion has become part of a larger, higher-stakes disagreement over federal spending more broadly about the best way to address the nation’s mounting debt problem.” It’s unlikely that we can resolve the problem as it relates to transportation without addressing the underlying reluctance to raise revenues.

And the message that reformers are pushing is a little different. The country could spend a lot less on transportation if there were a less exclusive focus on automobile infrastructure. Everybody talks about performance measures and the need to “get more bang for the buck” but not everybody agrees on what that means. The secretaries in this report mention the need to restore public faith and accountability in the transportation funding system, but they don’t spell out how to do that. To reformers, the solution is to start funding projects that will reduce carbon emissions, improve safety, pass a cost-benefit analysis, increase mobility, and produce better public health outcomes. And a transportation funding paradigm that prizes those goals doesn’t need to be one that ignites a nationwide debate about big spending.

Nonetheless, the Miller Center report is right that a transportation reauthorization needs to become a “must-pass” piece of legislation, and that will take a “sea change in public awareness and engagement.” The four features of their plan are as follows:

1. A positive, forward-looking tone that frames the transportation debate around issues of economic growth, jobs, and U.S. competitiveness, combined with quality of life. “A message that focuses on the benefits of transportation investments and its potential to improve Americans’ lives is relatable, while negative tones and fear-based messages are not as compelling,” they say. Rather than focus on crumbling bridges, they want to play up “themes of economic development, job creation and quality of life.” The goal is to showcase transportation infrastructure as “the backbone of a strong U.S. economy” and push Congress to move beyond partisanship.
2. A well-defined but flexible campaign plan that is keyed to the rhythms of an election year and to important events in the transportation calendar. The report acknowledges the challenges of trying to compete with every other issue constituency vying for a bit of the election-year spotlight, but says it can happen with a flexible plan that builds support for local projects and draws the connection between those and the national bill that should make them a reality. They plan to exploit five key moments for news exposure: expiration of the current extension, the July 4 week when the media runs a lot of stories about driving, the Democratic and Republican presidential conventions, the elections, and the post-election transition period. (As part of the news media myself, I’d say the strongest of those news hooks is July 4 – and for that matter, Memorial Day and Labor Day – with their focus on travel, gas prices, and traffic congestion.)
3. A focus on building broader engagement through effective, targeted use of traditional media and social media. “The effort could be seen as turning the issue of transportation investment itself into a candidate,” the secretaries say. Rather than focus on transportation as a lightning rod for the heated debate over spending, they want to turn it into “an integral part of the ongoing national debate about how to accelerate and sustain the economic recovery.” Part of the solution, not part of the problem.
4. A concerted effort to link local transportation investment opportunities and benefits to national-level policy decisions. This is implicit in the other three elements. The Miller Center doesn’t spend much time on this, but it’s worth noting its importance. While no one wants to pay more into a federal gas tax that will spread money around the country, people time and time again show that they’re willing to spend more for infrastructure that they know will benefit them. Local tax initiatives have a remarkable success rate when they can point to concrete benefits the taxes will bring. Many essential transit projects around the country have gotten funded that way, especially in the absence of adequate federal funding for public transportation.

The Miller Center and the five secretaries don’t seem optimistic that that scenario will improve anytime soon. “It seems clear that no solution can be expected before the end of the current Congress,” they write. “Even if the House and Senate achieve agreement this year on pending legislation to reauthorize our surface transportation programs, that legislation is likely to be of relatively brief duration — expiring in less time than it has taken Congress to enact it. It will also leave wholly unaddressed the most important transportation policy issue facing the nation: the need to establish fresh, contemporary, and sustainable mechanisms for financing the maintenance and expansion of America’s vital transportation infrastructure.”

Chicago's GO TO 2040 plan to link transportation, land use, and economic development was awarded a $4.25 million regional planning grant from HUD last October. Image: CMAP

The three agencies have been working together for the last few years to help local communities coordinate transportation and land use policies, saving money and curbing carbon emissions in the process. But the collaboration was dealt a blow this year when Congress axed funding for the partnership’s Regional Planning grants and Community Challenge grants. Now HUD is urging anyone who’s ever gotten one of those grants, or might like to get one someday, or cares about sustainability in general, to pressure Congress to reinstate funding for next year.

Shelley Poticha, the director of HUD’s Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities, emphasized that they’re still working with their grantees, despite the devastating budget cut this year. But they can’t make any new grants. Considering this is a grant program where applications outnumber capacity ten to one, the demand is clear. Now HUD would like supporters of the program from around the country to let Congress know that they care about it.

“We just need members to understand the value of the project,” said Peter Kovar, HUD’s assistant secretary for Congressional and intergovernmental affairs. “Members of Congress like to know the impact on the ground, locally in cities and towns and communities and rural areas, in terms of job creation.”

Though House Budget Chair Paul Ryan’s 2013 budget proposal is a nightmare scenario for transportation programs in general, that’s not the focus of HUD’s attention at the moment, since it isn’t detailed enough about the Sustainable Communities program one way or another. Kovar said that right now, they’re looking toward the appropriations bill for 2013. They’d like the Sustainable Communities Office to be a line item again this time around. President Obama’s 2013 budget requests $100 million for the program — $46 million each for the Regional Planning and Community Challenge grants, plus $8 million for best practices and program evaluation.

That’s why HUD timed this outreach call to coincide with the beginning of the two-week Easter recess – or, “district work period,” as they like to call it now. Kovar said members often work harder when they’re home than when they’re in Washington. So HUD wants people to grab these lawmakers while they’re hanging around their home districts to let them know they want to revive the program.

They’re trying to combat the image of all federal discretionary programs as some kind of “top-down” machine run by “faceless Washington bureaucrats.” Poticha said the whole program is based on listening sessions officials held around the country, and each grantee project bubbles up from the local level. And she said that these grants don’t just fund regional plans that “sit on a shelf” – communities that are awarded a planning grant are then good candidates for another round of funding to implement those plans.

Although the grants are frozen for 2012, Poticha affirmed that collaboration among HUD, EPA, and U.S. DOT continues, and that the secretaries of all three agencies are committed to the partnership. Joint grantmaking “leads to more strategic and informed investments in each of our agencies,” she said. DOT particularly benefits, she said, because they have more confidence in awarding TIGER grants to a community that has already gone though a Sustainable Communities planning grant and has the support of the community behind it. She said that the linkage will be more explicitly laid out in the criteria of the fourth round of TIGER funding.

This is the city of New Haven's concept for Downtown Crossing, its plan for 11 acres of downtown land that will be cleared by the removal of the Route 34 Expressway. Photo: Downtowncrossingnewhaven.com

Earlier this week we ran a story about why local livable streets advocates with the New Haven Urban Design League are disappointed with the city’s decision to replace a section of grade-separated highway with a plan that remains, on balance, car-centric.

We soon heard from teardown proponents who remain supportive of the project. While acknowledging its shortcomings, Ryan Lynch of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign says the current project would be an important step forward for both New Haven and the state of Connecticut:

We agree that there is too much parking in the corridor, and the road remains too wide, but we have to disagree with the assertion that what is being proposed is only marginal improvement. This project, even in the first phase, will be implementing some of the most progressive transportation infrastructure in the state. Some of this infrastructure, to our knowledge, are firsts for the entire state of Connecticut, including the first ever bike boxes, separated cycle tracks, and raised intersections at particularly wide intersections.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Benton, a spokesperson for the city, took issue with some of the assertions from the Urban Design League, including the claim that the roadway replacing the highway will have no through streets. Phase I of the project — the phase that New Haven has collected about $30 million to build out — does not include side streets. Those are supposed to be built in Phase II, said Benton. Future phases are not yet funded, she allowed, but she said the city is committed to finishing them.

Benton said the city appreciates what advocates including the Urban Design League have proposed, but it’s the city’s responsibility to put forward something practical, as well as transformational. “I think it’s a testament to this project that they have been so engaged,” she said. “I don’t think their ideas are necessarily bad ideas. I think sometimes there a gap between feasible reality and what they would like to see.”

In other news about this project, Anstress Farwell, president of the Urban Design League, is traveling to Washington this week to speak with representatives of U.S. DOT about the organization’s concerns.

Ford's Sync system allows integration of many potentially distracting devices into the dashboard console. Image: U.S. DOT

The new guidelines would seem to be of special comfort to pedestrians, cyclists, and even motorcyclists who have long observed the trend of cars getting safer for their occupants but more dangerous for everyone else. “When automakers employ ‘Infotainment Systems Engineers,’ like Ford does,” says BikePortland’s Jonathan Maus, “that should raise a red flag.”

Automakers are scrambling to find newer and fancier ways for drivers to stay connected behind the wheel, ostensibly to meet consumer demand. At the most recent Consumer Electronics Expo, Mercedes-Benz debuted their in-dash system that supports some Facebook functions even while the car is in motion, in what Maus calls a “disturbing trend”:

Automakers, scared that their vehicles can’t compete with consumers’ growing adoration of smartphones and other devices, now offer all sorts of phone-like conveniences on-board. The result? More distraction, more crashes, more deaths and injuries.

The National Transportation Safety Board had already recommended a set of anti-distracted driving measures, including outlawing the use of any electronic device — hands-on or hands-free — while driving. But the new guidelines, which are voluntary and unenforceable, represent only a cautious next step in making it harder to drive distracted. Gone is the ban on hands-free devices, for example, and the new rules would only apply to built-in electronics, leading some to expect that drivers would find after-market ways to stay connected.

David Coursey, a contributor to Forbes, supports the guidelines but thinks they don’t get to the root of the problem:

We should concentrate on technology that notices when a driver is actually distracted and diverts their attention back to driving. We should also create better user interfaces for automobile electronics that improve driver attention rather than divert it.

For their part, manufacturers say that they have held themselves to “an evolving set of self-imposed electronics guidelines for a decade” according to The Washington Post. Robert Strassburger, vice president of vehicle safety for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, told the Post that “any task behind the wheel that takes more than two seconds to complete or can’t be completed in a couple of brief chunks would be locked out or would be prohibited,” what they call the “two-second rule.”

According to research, two seconds is still too long. NHTSA estimates that a driver whose attention is taken off the road for two seconds becomes twice as likely to be in a crash. Sending or receiving a text message takes 4.6 seconds.

A rendering of the Cincinnati Streetcar, a project that received funding in the last round of TIGER grants. Photo: Urban Cincy

DOT has renewed its commitment to this groundbreaking program, which awards money on a competitive basis to projects that have the potential to make a “significant impact on the nation, a metropolitan area, or region.”

This round of funding will include up to $100 million for rail projects, including inter-city projects. In addition, $120 million has been reserved for projects that serve rural communities, according to a statement from U.S. DOT.

Competition for TIGER funding has been fierce. U.S. DOT said in a press release:

The previous three rounds of the TIGER program provided $2.6 billion to 172 projects in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.  Demand for the program has been overwhelming, and during the previous three rounds, the Department of Transportation received more than 3,348 applications requesting more than $95 billion for transportation projects across the country.

The new transportation bill proposal introduced in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee yesterday in Congress would eliminate funding entirely not include funding for this popular program.

TIGER was launched by President Obama in 2009 as part of the stimulus bill.

Thanks to FHWA, Missouri (and 29 other states) is finally getting some relief from the devastating floods of last year. No thanks to Republicans in Congress, that relief is not coming at the expense of transportation programs that, one day, could prevent such climate events from happening. Photo: Paul Davis / AP

The House voted in July to transfer over a billion dollars of high-speed rail funds over to flood relief, but according to sources at U.S. DOT, “there has been no effort” to tie today’s emergency appropriation to a rescission of high-speed rail funding. Indeed, these dollars came from the omnibus funding bill that passed last month.

U.S. DOT had the chance to spend the money on rail projects quickly enough that by the time they could start on the emergency relief appropriation, the money would have already been spent out. That’s just what happened. So, instead of the $1.028 billion going to the Army Corps of Engineers for relief work, it went to rail projects as intended.

It’s good to see that these essential emergency relief funds were spent without cutting into HSR. Cloaking a partisan attack on a Democratic program in disaster relief was a cynical move by House Republicans.

These communities, from Maine to Montana, never should have had their recovery from 2011′s devastating storms made into a political football. Besides, increasingly extreme weather events are likely tied to the larger trend of climate change. It’s a little short-sighted to apply a band-aid to disaster relief while hobbling development of a transportation mode that could, potentially, reduce climate change and the disasters it causes.

It’s also worth noting that some Republican senators have proposed eliminating Transportation Enhancements to cover bridge repair. But even if Congress had zeroed out the Enhancements program to cover the disaster relief bill, it would have come up far short. The entire TE program – for bike/ped, historic preservation, billboard removal and a host of other programs – cost $928 million last year. Using that whole amount, we’d still come up far short of what the DOT was able to do today to promote recovery from natural disasters.

And even that is far below most expert estimates of what’s really needed. Whether you believe in the ASCE prognosis of a $2.2 trillion shortfall for infrastructure maintenance and repair, or your own wish list is a little more humble, it’s clear that pinching cash off other worthwhile programs is not the way to restore disaster-affected areas.

Plans for intercity rail that will travel as fast as 110 miles per hour are well underway between Chicago and St. Louis. Photo: Illinois Department of Transportation

Yesterday, U.S. DOT announced a $186 million grant to Illinois DOT to upgrade the line between Chicago and Joilet — about 40 miles southwest of Chicago — one of the final segments to be built in the 284-mile Chicago to St. Louis line.

The project will allow trains to travel up to 110 miles per hour and, when completed, will save travelers about an hour, U.S. DOT reports. That’s good news for the about 35 million people travel the corridor annually. According to the Illinois Department of Transportation, about 90 percent of those trips end at either terminal: St. Louis or Chicago.

Michigan, Minnesota and Indiana are all in the midst of upgrading intercity rail lines as well, although it might not be accurate to describe many of these projects as true high-speed rail. (True HSR runs at an average speed of 110 miles per hour, as opposed to a maximum of 110.)

Michigan has funds for line upgrades between Kalamazoo and Dearborn — just outside Detroit. Meanwhile, Amtrak will be completing the remainder of the Detroit-Chicago link west of Kalamazoo to Chicago. The line will top out at 110 mph, said Richard Harnish, Executive Director of Midwest High Speed Rail Alliance.

In addition, Minnesota has begun an environmental review process to upgrade and modernize rail connections between St. Paul and Chicago. The state is also beginning the environmental review process on a true HSR link between the Twin Cities and Rochester, Minnesota, where the Mayo Clinic is located.

Indiana, meanwhile, is taking responsibility for the portion of the St. Louis–Chicago line that lies between its borders.

Harnish said the country has slowly been moving toward modern rail transportation for decades — in fits and starts. Despite vested interests that seek to maintain the status quo, he is optimistic.

“I truly believe that there is a strong desire at the ground level to have better ways to travel and that there is a desire to have high-quality passenger trains,” he said. “If we can organize that base, we will get policies changed in DC.”

Boundary Street in Beaufort, South Carolina will be transformed from a suburban arterial to a walkable, bikeable main street, thanks to a $12.6 million TIGER III grant. This project was one of 22 awarded funding in this round that will benefit cyclists and pedestrians. Photo: WSAV

Of the 46 projects chosen for funding, 22 incorporate some aspect of bike and pedestrian accessibility, and nine of them make cyclists or pedestrians the primary beneficiary, said Kartik Sribarra of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.

Among the more important active transportation projects to win the nod from U.S. DOT in this round of funding is Chicago’s bike-share system. RTC also highlights Beaufort, South Carolina’s success in securing a $12.6 million grant to improve the walkability on a major thoroughfare.

Currently, the town’s main street, Boundary Street, is a visually unappealing, car-oriented suburban-style arterial. But TIGER III money will help convert the street into a landscaped, walkable, bikeable boulevard.

This project is the result of a great deal of planning and investment by the local community. According to U.S. DOT, the city of Beaufort has adopted a new land use plan and form-based codes, and they’ve approved a one-cent sales tax increase to pay for transportation projects.

TIGER III money will also provide for Main Street revitalization projects in Buffalo, New York; St. Albans, Vermont and American Falls, Idaho.

St. Albans is a second-time winner, having received funding for walkability projects in the second round of TIGER funding. This rural town in Vermont’s northwest corner won just over $2 million for a streetscape project in North Main Street. The project will include new sidewalks and bike infrastructure, linking downtown to a 19-mile pedestrian network and a 26-mile bicycle trail.

In addition, Stamford, Connecticut won funding to improve pedestrian access to its transit center. TIGER III funding will also help build sidewalks and a bike trail on Snake Road in Florida’s Big Cypress Reservation.

RTC’s Sribarra says U.S. DOT’s prioritization of active transportation projects is good for everyone, whether they travel by car or bike.

“A million dollars is a drop in the bucket of the price of a road,” he said. “But for this same million dollars, scores of people every day will benefit from a safer, healthier commute, which also has the benefit of getting cars off the road during peak periods.”

Deron Lovaas of the Natural Resources Defense Council said on the Switchboard blog that the environmental merits of the projects selected for funding under TIGER have turned him from a skeptic to a believer:

My initial concern about this program [was] that Federal Highways might dominate the competition and in spite of laudable criteria some ‘highways to nowhere’ might get funded. We don’t need more waste in the transportation program. I’m happy to eat my words in public now (I’ve already done so with friends at DOT), as the Transportation Department announces its third round of investments under this impressive program.

A deadly pile-up involving two school buses, a tractor-trailer, and a pickup truck was caused, in part, by texting by the pickup driver. Photo: Jeff Roberson/AP

The ensuing collision killed the texting driver as well as a 15-year-old student who was on a high-school band trip to the Six Flags amusement park in St. Louis. Thirty-eight others were injured.

An investigation into the crash led the National Transportation Safety Board this week to issue a call for all states to ban all cell phone use by drivers, except in emergencies. Currently, 35 states and the District of Columbia ban texting while driving, and 30 states ban all cell phone use for new drivers. Only nine states and DC have overall bans on hand-held cell phone use.

“Distraction-affected” crashes killed 3,092 people last year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The NTSB isn’t recommending a federal ban but rather identical state bans everywhere in the country. Some speculate that the Interstate Commerce Clause precludes a federal ban, but I haven’t heard any of the agencies explain the legal basis for pursuing only state laws.

It was widely (mis)reported last week that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood had gotten behind a federal ban on cell phone use. In fact, LaHood is supportive of state bans but hasn’t gotten behind a federal ban. He has talked about passing “good legislation in Congress” to do for texting what the .08 blood alcohol threshold did for drunk driving, but nothing that would amount to a ban.

The NTSB recommendations aren’t binding, but they’re raising the profile of the dangers of all cell phone use, not just texting or calling from a handset. The NTSB doesn’t distinguish between hands-free technology and other use of portable electronic devices. They consider it all distracting, as does Focus Driven, an organization devoted to ending distracted driving.

“Studies show hands-free devices provide no safety benefit,” says Focus Driven’s website. “The area of the brain responsible for processing moving visual information—a vital part of driving—has 37 percent less capacity to gather and process critical driving data and instead focuses on the cell phone conversation.” Carnegie Mellon researchers found that people talking on the phone drive the way people drive when they’re drunk.

Nine-year-old Erica Forney was hit by a distracted driver while riding her bike three years ago. She died Thanksgiving Day, 2008. Photo: Distraction.gov

All portable electronic devices except GPS units are recommended for bans by the NTSB.

NTSB Chair Deborah Hersman placed some of the blame for the high number of distraction-related crashes on all the bells and whistles on today’s electronic devices.

“Every year, new devices are being released,” she said. “People are tempted to update their Facebook page, they are tempted to tweet, as if sitting at a desk. But they are driving a car.”

The Alliance for Automobile Manufacturers defended onboard entertainment systems, saying people are used to unfettered access to communication and that at least now they can do it without taking their eyes off the road.

Cell phone makers were quick to agree that “manual texting while driving is clearly incompatible with safety,” but wouldn’t take a position on hands-free technology, saying they’d “defer to state and local lawmakers and their constituents” about what should be done.

The efficacy of cell phone bans is still an open question. Despite state bans, texting and driving is up 50 percent in the past year. Missouri’s texting ban for young people didn’t stop last year’s tragic crash from happening. But a commitment to enforce the laws can make a difference. Pilot programs in Syracuse and Hartford supported by U.S. DOT substantially reduced texting and cell phone use while driving.

Any successful effort to curb distracted driving will have to change widespread public attitudes. While many people feel nervous riding in a car where the driver is using a cell phone, they also believe they can do it safely themselves. The Washington Post reports that 88 percent of people surveyed said they knew it was dangerous to use cell phones while driving – but a third did it anyway.

LaHood is spending his birthday defending the administration's high-speed rail plan. Photo: Christian Science Monitor

It’s Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s birthday, and he’s spending it testifying before the House Transportation Committee. The hearing is on “Mistakes & Lessons Learned” from the high-speed rail program, but — no surprise here — LaHood and House Republicans have differing ideas about what “mistakes” have been made.

Here are some highlights.

Chair John Mica said he’s a “strong, committed advocate to high-speed rail service in the United States” but he’s been “very disappointed” in the progress so far. “We have hit an impasse,” he said.

Mica pointed to the ballooning cost estimates for HSR in California and reiterated his long-held position that it’s the wrong place to build high-speed rail. LaHood agreed that “this is an expensive project, but all of the money is going to American workers to build American infrastructure.” Mica stood firm that the Northeast Corridor, not California, is the place to build.

“We’re taking our cues from you,” LaHood said. “We’re investing in the Northeast Corridor.” Mica said they’re still waiting for the money to be awarded.

Rep. Bill Shuster, who chairs the rail subcommittee, said the president’s vision to bring high-speed rail access to 80 percent of the American people isn’t realistic. He said there’s no money for it — and no need. “I don’t hear people all around the country clamoring for high-speed rail,” he said.

When LaHood said that the HSR vision isn’t “Ray LaHood’s vision” — it comes from the states themselves — Shuster said yes, but his daughter wants a luxury SUV and he don’t have the money for it, so she’s not getting it. “I’m glad you didn’t think that about the Keystone Line,” LaHood shot back. He said Shuster asked for the money for that line and the DOT gave it. “Right,” Shuster said, I believe in rail investment “where it makes sense.” But, Shuster noted, he didn’t ask for help funding rail improvements between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh – and that line goes right through his district. But it’s not a strategic investment priority for the country.

Shuster suggested actually taking money from the California project and putting it toward the NEC — not likely to be a popular suggestion, when federal funding is already just $3.6 billion of California’s $98.5 billion total bill.

Mica mentioned that Congress has cut off funds to HSR for the coming fiscal year, and says the body is “certainly not going to give Amtrak $117 billion [for its plan to bring faster trains to the NEC] based on its current record, lack of plan, and lack of progress.”

LaHood made his usual speech about the incredible demand for high-speed rail funds: Yes, three governors have returned the money — but when Florida’s Rick Scott did so, 24 states (and DC and Amtrak) submitted requests for the money — “a testament to American enthusiasm for high-speed rail.”

LaHood also said that it was Republicans who initially laid out the first few HSR corridors and he lamented the end of bipartisan cooperation on transportation, and high-speed rail in particular.

He and Mica did battle over how fast these “fast” trains will go. Mica says “pseudo-high-speed rail projects” give HSR “a bad name” in the United States because “they will not operate at high speeds,” they’re just a “mirage.” Mica said the Chicago to St. Louis line will only go an average of 71 mph, a “snail-speed” train from Chicago to Detroit will just go an average of 64 mph, and the Portland-to-Vancouver line will go 65 mph. LaHood said those are current speeds, before the investment and the improvement. Mica said no, those numbers came from your department as the goal speeds for after the improvements. (LaHood’s estimates of 110 mph for Chicago to St. Louis and 200 mph for California are consistent with what’s been reported up until now.)

That’s the question that brought together five former U.S. Transportation Secretaries this week at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

Former DOT Chief James Burnley took a swipe at Transportation Enhancements and the stimulus.

James Burnley was deputy secretary and then secretary under President Reagan. He took the position that “75 percent” of the public “gives the thumbs down to paying more for transportation” because we’re giving them the wrong argument about why it matters. He took a jab at President Obama’s stimulus program:

We have to stop treating transportation infrastructure as a short-term jobs program. It didn’t work by any conventional definition of what “working” means. We all knew –those of us who have expertise in the field – it would not work in terms of short-term stimulus.

Because it takes time – it takes years for that money to actually be spent and people to be hired. We need to convince the American people that we need to invest in transportation infrastructure because we need to invest in transportation infrastructure. If we sell that idea – not as a jobs program, but because it affects the ability of our economy to grow over time, our international competitiveness and all the other things that we believe it affects, then we’ve got a fighting shot at convincing the American people that the resources that we believe ought to be devoted to transportation should be devoted to it.

That’s a legitimate point, and Streetsblog has made the same argument – that selling transportation as a jobs program undersells the true value of transportation. But there are a few problems with what Burnley is saying. First, when asked to tax themselves at the local or state level for transportation improvements, 75 percent of voters say yes. So maybe the case isn’t so hard to make after all.

And second, most Republicans – and many Democrats – fault the stimulus for not investing enough in infrastructure. Not quite seven percent of the package was devoted to infrastructure, and many critics say that’s why the stimulus didn’t do more to create jobs. Certainly, the president’s desire for “shovel-ready” projects may have been naïve, which Obama himself has publicly admitted. But Burnley may have been over-simplifying things with his statement.

Meanwhile, Sam Skinner, who served under President George H.W. Bush, argued that too many bridges to nowhere have eroded public confidence. And it’s not just transportation, he said – government mishandling of Medicare and pensions and everything else leads to overall distrust that the government can handle anything at all, despite the fact that the transportation department has proven that it “actually can complete projects under budget and on time.”

He said the reputation of the transportation program is “still suffering from the residue of a couple projects that got out of control” – most notably, Boston’s Big Dig, whose price tag grew from $3 billion to $19 billion. (The final price tag was actually $14.6 billion, or $22 billion if you account for interest.) Skinner said the government risks losing the public’s confidence again with high-speed rail: After all, the cost of California’s new rail line has gone from “$20 billion” (fact check: it was more like $43 billion) to “$90 billion” (actually $98.5 billion) – “without a single shovel being put in the ground.”

“You cannot have high-profile projects with runaway costs without undercutting American confidence in the ability of government to do it,” Skinner said.

Rodney Slater, DOT Chief under Clinton, said Enhancement projects are some of the most popular around.

Rodney Slater was President Clinton’s second-term transportation secretary. He said his job was made easier by the fact that he had “just wonderful legislation” to work with (ISTEA and TEA-21) “and the dollars as well.” But he also said it was a different time.

“I always had a wonderful time working with Republicans and Democrats,” Slater said. “I can’t think of a bad experience. Only recently that we’ve gotten to a point where that is not something that you can expect.” He did point out that the EPW committee did manage to turn around the recent trend of bitter, divided partisanship, “and you cannot have two more distinct titans than Barbara Boxer and Jim Inhofe.”

Still, he said, when he came in to office, “people were as skeptical about government as they are now.” He said getting the public sector to be a good partner to the private sector – and labor to be a good partner to management, as well as Republicans to be a good partner to Democrats – was key.

He also exhorted transportation officials to “hit the road” to explain to people in different localities how the federal transportation program can be a partner to them in realizing their projects. He said that although some people wanted to reverse some of ISTEA’s good policies when it came time to craft TEA-21, those policies had proven themselves. “Because of the good we could demonstrate, we were able to hold the line.”

And Slater put in a good word for an active transportation program the Republicans are currently determined to do away with:

During that period, not only did we raise the gasoline tax, but we also built upon ISTEA with TEA-21. We have some enhancements there – that’s a small amount of money. But I’ll tell you, if you go to see some of those projects dedicated, the crowd that’s there is the same as for those multibillion dollar projects. Those crowds are the same.

Burnley had taken a different line on these programs. “If you’re building trolley museums instead of repairing bridges, you should not be surprised if people become cynical over time,” he said.

Mary Peters, who served as USDOT chief for much of President George W. Bush’s second term, agreed with Burnley, not Slater.

What destroyed the confidence people had in the transportation system? If you ask Peters, it was a bunch of things like “bicycle trails and historic covered bridges” (read: Transportation Enhancements) that are “nice-to-do” things when you have the luxury. Right now, she said, during a time of tight budgets, we don’t have that luxury. “We have to now cut back to the very core highway and transit programs that these bills are supposed to fund,” she said. She added that she’d put high-speed passenger rail in the “nice-to-do” category.

She said there would have been no need for an urgent conversation about how to convince Americans of the need for transportation investment during the interstate era, “when there was a compelling national purpose.”

People didn’t mind “incremental raises in the gas tax” to pay for interstates, Peters said, “even though the money didn’t come from one state and go back to that state” – a common complaint among states that see themselves as “donor” states, paying more in gas taxes than they get back in federal funding.

Peters also noted the need to look at alternatives to the gas tax, which she said was being weakened more and more by improved fuel efficiency standards. “The gas tax is not sustainable, it is not reliable, and it is not going to get us into the future,” she said.

During her time in office, Peters was an advocate of privatizing transportation infrastructure, partly because of her prescient concern about the declining Highway Trust Fund.

Finally, Norm Mineta spoke. Mineta, like Ray LaHood, is a crossover, serving in an administration of the opposite party. (He was a Democrat serving in George W. Bush’s Cabinet.) His comment came less in the form of advice on how to frame the message, and more a lament about where things are.

“Transportation is something everyone takes for granted until it’s denied them,” Mineta said. “And when it’s denied them, it has a shelf life of 45 days.” He was referring to the tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis in 2007. Two days after the collapse, Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN), then-chair of the House Transportation Committee, urged the passage of a five-cent emergency bridge tax. “The bridge went down Wednesday,” Mineta said. “He talked about that Friday. And by Tuesday, Jim was already backpedaling from the five-cent emergency gas tax idea, and 45 days later, USA Today had a survey about the five-cent emergency gas tax idea and 57 percent said ‘No, we don’t need it.’ So I figure the shelf life is a tragedy is 45 days.”

And yet, he said, transportation is something everything is dependent on, to move around and to get goods on the shelves.

There are a few messaging points I’d like to add that none of the five secretaries mentioned.

First, a superficial one: Surveys show that people don’t know that the gas tax has stayed the same since 1993, not indexed to inflation or the price of gas. They think the gas tax is going up every time the price of gas does. So, it could just be a matter of wording. Instead of asking about “raising” the gas tax, you could ask simply about indexing it to inflation or the price of gas. Or you could ask about ways to stop the decline of transportation funding. You could mention that it is no longer a winnable proposition to count on gas-guzzling to fund our infrastructure needs.

Second, it’s true that more money for transportation isn’t always a good thing. Skinner talked about the Big Dig and bridges to nowhere, but to that I’d add endless highway expansions with no plans for maintenance and no accommodations for alternate modes. I’d add a highway system built on sprawl and disconnected from smart land use planning. None of the secretaries mentioned that a well-functioning transportation system won’t be built on formula funding but on a strategic process of setting national and regional goals and actually building transportation infrastructure that meets those goals. Will that cost more money than we spend today? Less money? The same? It remains to be seen. But however much it costs, it might be easier to gather public support for raising that amount if the transportation spending decisions are based on projected benefits, and not just asphalt for asphalt’s sake.

At the current rate of federal investment, it would take 30 years to fund the American transit projects currently in the construction or final engineering stages. Map of transit projects in the pipeline: Reconnecting America

UPDATE: Corrects the post to say that the map reflects all ongoing projects, not just those in the final engineering and construction stages.

How much is New York’s Second Avenue Subway estimated to cost? What transit lines really make up LA’s ambitious 30/10 initiative? Besides the silver line to Dulles Airport, which may or may not ever be completed, what other changes are projected for DC’s metro system? And what’s all this construction in Fort Worth?

The answers to all those questions — and in fact, just about any question you might have about ongoing transit projects — can now be answered in one handy map, brought to you by the chief cartographer of the livable streets movement, Jeff Wood of Reconnecting America.

Jeff is still inviting updates and corrections, so some crowdsourced factchecking is in order before we can officially declare this the authoritative encyclopedia of all U.S. transit projects. Still, it’s a useful compendium of all transit-related progress afoot in the country — and the limitations of the federal programs for putting transit plans into action.

Reconnecting America found strong demand for transit projects around the country but a dearth of federal support for such projects. “There is a huge backlog of federal funding through the New Starts program,” the organization says. If all of the transit projects in this map were funded through the federal New Starts Program at the current spending rate, it would take 73 years to fund them all.

The map shows all planned transit expansions. If we were to limit the list to just those projects in the construction or final engineering stages, the wait for federal funding is still 30 long years.

Reconnecting America notes that the projects in the late stages of engineering and construction alone would “connect 3.5 million more jobs to transit, an increase of 25 percent, and nearly 4 million households would gain enhanced transit access, with almost half of those being lower-income households.”

The takeaway, they say, is that the New Starts Program isn’t sufficient to meet demand and is not well suited to support the rapid build-out many regions are calling for.

The deadline to apply for TIGER III grants passed late last month, but not before 828 applications were received from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and US territories. Applications for this $527 million program totaled $14.1 billion, guaranteeing the selection process will be fiercely competitive.

The Atlanta streetcar was funded in an earlier round of TIGER. This photo shows an artist's rendering of the project.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the response demonstrates just how urgent the need is for investment in the nation’s transportation systems.

“The tremendous demand for these grants clearly shows that communities across the country can’t wait any longer for crucial upgrades to the roads, bridges, rail lines, and bus routes they rely on every day,” he said in his blog, The Fast Lane.

USDOT plans to award the grants before the end of the year, thanks to a directive from the President to expedite the process, according to LaHood. (That move prompted the Washington Post to call LaHood a grinch for keeping his staff in the office over the winter holidays.)

TIGER, which stands for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, represents an important innovation for US DOT, in that grants are awarded based on project merit rather than political and geographic considerations. Extra consideration is given to applications that have the potential to have a significant impact on the nation or the region where the grant is awarded. This third round of grants, however, relaxed this theme a little to include a geographic diversity component in the awards process.

USDOT has awarded a total of $2.1 billion in grants under TIGER I and II. TIGER funding is helping build a streetcar in downtown Atlanta. TIGER also provided $23 million to help realize the Philadelphia Area’s Bike and Pedestrian Network, which calls for 128 miles of facilities across an six-county region. Program funds have also advanced Los Angeles’ innovative 30/10 program, which will speed construction of the Crenshaw/LAX light rail line.

Last year, when TIGER II was overwhelmed with 32 times more requests than available funds, David Burwell, a co-founder of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, told Streetsblog, “It shows the enormous interest states have in discretionary money… With formula money, states will tell you, ‘That’s our money; we don’t have to do anything for formula money.’ Offer discretionary money and they’ll do backflips.”

Among the “backflips” the states will do: real reform work. If encouraged to innovate by programs like TIGER that are looking for effective, visionary proposals, Burwell said, states will get out of the rut of just funding pothole repair and start really imagining ways to revolutionize their transportation systems.

USDOT Undersecretary for Policy Roy Kienitz, left, and FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff, right, at Bike to Work Day this year. Photo: Washingtonian

Politico’s Morning Transportation reporters got the dish in Kienitz’s own words from an email he sent. Kienitz said he’ll be joining a consulting firm: “Specifically, I will be taking a position with the highly respected firm of Roy Kienitz LLC, which doesn’t technically exist yet but will soon! As you may have guessed, I will be this firm’s first employee, but I think the odds are strong I will win Employee of the Month as soon as December. I plan to do consulting (but not lobbying!) on any and all topics transportation.”

Kienitz has been a down-to-earth presence at USDOT, explaining policy decisions clearly and without pretense. He’s been a big proponent of the administration’s livability initiatives, and he has championed multimodalism by encouraging government agencies to leave silos behind and work together on big visions for sustainable communities that can’t be compartmentalized into just transit or just housing or just roads. And he’s always shown up for Bike to Work Day.

He came to USDOT after advising Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell on transportation and doing planning for the state of Maryland. He filled out his résumé serving as director of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, working for infrastructure champion Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and for the Senate EPW Committee.

A 76-year-old man in LA county was hit by a truck while riding his bike in 2008. Republicans want to keep current trucking laws in place that Democrats and others say lead to driver fatigue, causing accidents like this one. Photo: Aitken Aitken Cohn

October 28 was the original deadline by which the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration was supposed to announce new hours-of-service regulations for trucking, but in the end, they gave themselves another month to do it.

The pending change is the result of a lawsuit brought by Public Citizen, the Teamsters Union, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, and the Truck Safety Coalition against the FMCSA to tighten the standards. The suit resulted in an agreement that the FMCSA would change the current 11-hour driving day and the 34-hour rest period before starting a long workweek to a 10-hour driving day, keeping the 34-hour “restart” but with new restrictions.

The Bush-era rule has been struck down twice before by the courts, but the FMCSA kept reinstating it — first in late 2007 and then about a year later. This time, the agency appears ready to make a change.

The 11-hour rule was a “midnight regulation” made during President George W. Bush’s final days in office, according to the Teamsters. The Bush administration increased the workweek from 60 to 77 hours of driving and reduced the restart period from 50 hours to 34.

The Teamsters say truck crashes cost the nation $20 billion in 2009, and that truck driver fatigue is a major factor in truck crashes. Some statistics indicate fatigue is a factor in 30 to 40 percent of truck crashes, though the FMCSA itself puts the number at 5.5 percent.

“We will continue to push for a rule that protects truck drivers, instead of the greed of the trucking industry,” said Teamsters President Jim Hoffa when the court case was decided two years ago. “Longer hours behind the wheel are dangerous for our members and the driving public.”

The problem isn’t limited to highways. Six percent of pedestrian fatalities and nine percent of bicyclist fatalities in 2009 were caused by crashes with large trucks, according to the NHTSA. Between 1996 and 2005, crashes with large trucks accounted for almost a third of all cyclist fatalities in New York City, according to a joint report by NYC agencies [PDF].

Industry lobbying groups including the American Trucking Associations and Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association have mobilized against the changes. OOIDA says new safety rules would negatively impact not only “driver flexibility and the business operations of small-business truckers” but highway safety as well.

Some lawmakers have aligned with the trucking industry. Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) has claimed that reducing the hours of service is ”cost-prohibitive” and that the “impact on safety is unclear.” Republicans are uniformly against the changes, with everyone from House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor to Transportation Committee Chair John Mica working “aggressively” to block any alteration to the hours-of-service provisions.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has urged Congressional leaders to go along with the new safety rules, saying they apply ”the most comprehensive and up-to-date data and analysis to the issue of driver fatigue and allowable hours of service” while allowing carriers “new operational flexibility.”

The Staten Island Ferry has gotten some TIFIA funding. Some say an expanded TIFIA would do everything an infrastructure bank would do, but others say it wouldn't allow for large-scale community planning. Photo: SI Ferry

The TIFIA program has been around since 1998 but money pressures have led to a steep uptick in applications over the past few years. Some have criticized it for its lack of transparency in decision-making and suggested that it might be more effective housed outside of USDOT and functioning independently.

“Is TIFIA the first perfect federal program?”

Nevertheless, Congressional Republicans have thrown their full support behind the program, mainly as a counterweight to the president’s proposed infrastructure bank. Consistent with their desire to limit the growth of the federal bureaucracy, they resist the idea of creating an entirely new entity, even though the bank would be independent from the government, a la the Export-Import Bank.

There are two competing infrastructure bank bills in the Senate and a new one introduced earlier this week in the House. The Senate is planning to vote next week on a bill to spend $50 billion on infrastructure with another $10 billion in seed money for a bank – pieces of President Obama’s jobs bill, which has been dismembered for separate votes. Next week’s bill isn’t expected to pass. Indeed, many members think TIFIA is the way to go.

At a House Transportation Committee hearing earlier this month, nearly every Republican present spoke out in favor of expanding TIFIA instead of creating a new bank. Chair John Mica asked why a bank was needed when “we have a successful example” in TIFIA.

One of the things that the infrastructure bank can do is enter into long-term relationships with people who have decade-plus-long plans. They’re trying to finance a plan. What Washington knows how to do is finance a segment of a project. The current TIFIA process does not allow us to do that.

- Roy Kienitz

Highways and Transit Subcommittee Chair John Duncan (R-TN) went as far as to ask, “Is TIFIA the first perfect federal program?” He noted, “Everyone has had glowing comments about TIFIA, and it’s a program that I support as well.”

Geoffrey Yarema of Nossaman LLP (a law firm specializing in public-private partnerships for infrastructure projects) told Duncan TIFIA wasn’t perfect but that it did have 12 years of solid experience. He suggested it be “right-sized” by adding staff and he wants to “change it from a discretionary decision-making process that has the potential for being politicized – and some would say the reality of being politicized – to a first-come-first-served program.”

That change, however, would eliminate the part of TIFIA reformers like most: The fact that it has the power to encourage innovation and goal-oriented, performance-based strategic transportation planning.

Yarema also noted that the Treasury “has actually made money off the TIFIA program,” as opposed to many other federal programs that end up costing taxpayers. He’s all in favor of casting off the idea of an infrastructure bank. “We already have a national infrastructure bank for transportation,” he said. “It’s called TIFIA.”

One thing he and other transportation advocates like about TIFIA is that it’s only for transportation. While the Rockefeller-Lautenberg infrastructure bank proposal in the Senate is transportation-only (at least at first), the dominant I-bank proposal is the Kerry-Hutchison version, which would include other forms of infrastructure like energy and water treatment. Yarema admitted that some may see the breadth of scope as a strength of the bank concept, but he was concerned that “transportation would be in there competing for loans, not just with other transportation projects, but with dams and levees and ports and all kinds of infrastructure.”

Democrats support infrastructure bank — reluctantly

Democrats agreed that TIFIA should be expanded but said that it should be a complement, not a replacement, for the I-bank. Democratic support for the bank was sometimes tepid, though. Even Senate EPW Chair Barbara Boxer has been known to support expanding TIFIA instead of an infrastructure bank. At the hearing this month, Rep. Peter DeFazio, top Democrat on the Highways and Transit Subcommittee, confessed:

Before Wall Street destroyed the economy, I had said, well, I really don’t see why we need an infrastructure bank. Most of the states have good credit and they can go out and borrow on their own at very good rates.

But that isn’t the case anymore. The states need guarantees. They need help. Many are against their borrowing limits. And most of the banks, who were generously bailed out by Congress, aren’t lending. And credit bond markets are tight. So an infrastructure bank could be more useful for the states in that circumstance.

DeFazio did note, however, that an infrastructure bank is, in the end, a bank that “expects to be re-paid.” So he wasn’t optimistic that it would help with state of good repair or new investments for transit systems or for rail – some of his biggest priorities.

Sen. Mark Warner, an original (but often-unnamed) co-sponsor of what’s most commonly known as the Kerry-Hutchison infrastructure bank proposal, admits that’s a weakness of the infrastructure bank proposal. But he said at a recent event that even with a public funding source, an I-bank could be a helpful financing tool to drive interest rates down and lower the costs of a transit project.

Scott Thomasson of the Progressive Policy Institute testified at the transportation committee hearing that an infrastructure bank was needed, in part, because TIFIA is understaffed and outsources much of its work to people with greater expertise. The first step toward creating an effective infrastructure bank would be “hiring the financial professionals that TIFIA lacks,” he said.

That could help, but it’s not the strongest argument for creating a brand new entity. After all, if TIFIA just “beefed up” as many recommend, it could have that expertise in-house.

The clincher

A more persuasive argument for the necessity of an I-bank came this month from USDOT Under Secretary for Policy Roy Kienitz, who said at an infrastructure forum sponsored by the Washington Post that one problem with TIFIA funding – aside from the fact that it’s far too low – is that it’s released six weeks at a time, making it hard to do long-term planning.

But that’s not all. Kienitz’s answer to why TIFIA isn’t a substitute for an infrastructure bank was so dead-on and coherent it’s worth printing in its entirety.

One of the advantages of some more infrastructure-bank-like system is that some of the places that are innovating, at least some of them, are places like Denver, Salt Lake, LA, Seattle. In the transit world, what the federal government does is it says “show me the minimum operable segment for the transit line which you are currently considering.” And what communities want to do is say, “I have a future 25 years from now that looks very different than today and here’s all the pieces and parts. Here’s what I want to do with my freeways, here’s my HOT lanes, here’s my light rail, here’s my streetcar, here’s my traffic flow improvements. It all works together. I want to raise an amount of money to do this plan; who do I talk to in Washington?”

And the answer is, blecch, we don’t know how to do that. We’re sliced up into our own little slices.

One of the things that the infrastructure bank, or something like the infrastructure bank, can do is enter into long-term relationships with people who have decade-plus-long plans, about the pieces and the parts of that plan. They’re trying to finance a plan. What Washington knows how to do is finance a segment of a project. And that’s a conversation that needs to change.

The current TIFIA process does not allow us to do that. With more money, we could do more segments of more projects, and that would be a good thing. But I don’t think that’s the ultimate goal.

The debate over an infrastructure bank will continue. John Mica has declared the proposal “dead on arrival” but President Obama and Congressional Democrats aren’t letting up easy. Even if next week’s Senate vote fails to get majority support for an infrastructure bank, they’ll continue to push for it.

Two weeks ago, every option for reconstructing the Tappan Zee Bridge posted on the state's project website showed both a bus line and a rail line. Now, all the documents showing transit across the bridge have disappeared. Image: Tappan Zee Bridge website, captured by Streetsblog

Call it the mystery of the missing transit. One of New York state’s biggest transit projects, in the works for nearly a decade, was canceled overnight and no one will explain why, or even claim responsibility for the decision.

Two weeks ago, each of the four alternatives for replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge, which spans the Hudson River north of New York City, connecting the suburban counties of Rockland and Westchester, included a new Metro-North commuter rail line and some form of bus rapid transit. The project called for widening the highway but also included a major expansion of transit in both counties. It was the product of nine years of study and a whopping 280 public meetings. The whole process was thoroughly documented, with information about each alternative — along with hundreds of pages generated by the environmental review process and public commentary — easily found on the state’s Tappan Zee Bridge website.

On October 11, the Federal Highway Administration and Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office announced that the bridge project had been selected for expedited federal review. The project they promised to speed up, however, was vastly different from the one vetted over the course of nearly a decade. The new plan for the bridge promised to add space for car traffic but left the transit component to be completed at an unspecified future date. Transit advocates are skeptical that the commuter rail and BRT lines will ever see the light of day.

At the same time that transit was removed from the plan, the state expunged from the public record all information about the nine-year public process and the four design alternatives that included rail and bus lines. The Tappan Zee website no longer displays the documents it did two weeks ago, as blogger Cap’n Transit first noted. The endorsement of transit, the extensive environmental analysis, the history of public input — all of it gone, replaced by three short documents chronicling the brief history of the transit-free project.

So much for transparency. Kate Slevin, executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, said she couldn’t recall a single example of this kind of wholesale document scrubbing.

In addition to hiding the history of the Tappan Zee project, the state and federal agencies in charge won’t disclose how they reached the decision to build the bridge without transit.

When the Cuomo administration touted the selection of the Tappan Zee for expedited federal review, the announcement failed to mention that the project being expedited had also been utterly transformed. And it remains unclear who ultimately decided to abandon the transit component. Some media outlets reported that the federal government made the call; others implied it was the state. The New York Times reported that federal officials pushed for the transit elements to be postponed, while Transportation Nation noted that Cuomo hadn’t invited the MTA to his meetings on the Tappan Zee Bridge for months.

When Streetsblog asked the U.S. Department of Transportation which agency decided to remove transit from the bridge’s design and why, they directed us to the New York State DOT, which the feds said had “rescoped the project.” NYS DOT told us that the matter was being handled by the governor’s press office. Inquiries to Cuomo’s office were not answered.

A document jointly produced by the Federal Highway Administration, the New York State Department of Transportation and the New York State Thruway Authority provides the only public explanation for removing transit from the bridge design [PDF]. The joint explanation reads, in full:

In 2011, while advancing financial analysis, it was determined that funding for the corridor project (bridge replacement, highway improvements, and new transit service) was not possible at this time. The financing of the crossing alone, however, was considered affordable. Therefore, it was determined that the scope of the project should be limited, and efforts to replace the Hudson River crossing independent of the transit and highway elements should be advanced.

The aforementioned financial analysis, however, is not available on the Tappan Zee website. Why did the agencies consider it affordable and cost-effective to build a highway-only bridge — projected to cost $5.2 billion — while an estimated $1 billion more for bus rapid transit lines was too much? It’s impossible to tell.

Slevin called the statement “ten years of study and consensus erased by three sentences.”

One of the region’s most important transit projects was effectively canceled overnight, upending years of preparation for a high-quality transit option between Rockland and Westchester counties that could shape development, improve commutes, and decrease traffic congestion. New York residents deserve to know why the plans changed and who’s responsible, but so far the Cuomo and Obama administrations have denied them an explanation.

Rep. John Mica won't be specific about where additional transportation funding could come from. Photo: 13 News

Mica told an audience at a Washington Post-sponsored forum on transportation that passing yet another extension of the surface transportation reauthorization persuaded leadership that there would not be consensus on a long-term bill until the spending levels were raised. “There wont be a gas tax increase,” Mica said, “but our leadership has asked us to look for other sources of revenue, and we’re on that mission now.”

“Speaker Boehner has really opened the door to us to look for any responsible means” to fund the bill, Mica said, adding that a gas tax increase is still off the table. “There’s also the possibility of doing away with it; adopting something else.” He wouldn’t specify what the replacement fee could be.

Nor would he say what he thinks of a Republican proposal to fund the bill with revenues from new oil drilling except to say, “We’re looking at it. We have some scoring issues. And then we have to make sure we have the votes.”

Mica said he was confident that a long-term bill would pass in March. “Don’t let anybody talk about a two-year transportation bill; that’s criminal,” he said. His counterpart in the Senate, Barbara Boxer, has proposed a two-year bill, but could be willing to go along with a longer-term bill if funding levels were raised.

Mica also reiterated his support for state infrastructure banks, saying he prefers them to a national bank. He said the way Washington works is: “the biggest gorillas get the most bananas.” Instead of having big guys compete for big loans from a big national bank, he said, “the best way to prioritize projects is to have them evolve from local level, get local and state participation, and then assist them.”

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood also addressed the Washington Post gathering. He said he was confident that, despite current gridlock, there was enough pressure on Congress to create jobs that they’ll pass some form of transportation bill this year.

Still, he hinted that Republicans in Congress might be trying to sabotage Obama’s presidency at the expense of the unemployed. He said Congress was polling lower than it ever has among the public “because they haven’t done anything.”

“Maybe that’s deliberate,” LaHood said. “I hope it’s not.”

He said the most recent class in Congress came in, not with a mission to find solutions, but determined to obstruct movement.

Infrastructure bills used to be bipartisan and easy to pass, LaHood said, but “some people don’t want Obama to be successful.” The result? Aside from 9.1 percent official unemployment, “infrastructure is in terrible shape,” he said. “America is one big pothole right now.”

In comments to reporters after his remarks, LaHood said he believed that, despite recent attacks, transportation enhancements (the major way the federal government funds bicycle and pedestrian facilities) would remain.

“These enhancements have always been a part of the transportation program, and I anticipate that they will be in the future,” he said. As for assertions by Sens. Rand Paul and Tom Coburn that bike paths aren’t “real” transportation, he said, “That’s why we have debates in Congress,” but repeated, “I feel pretty confident that these programs will continue.”

LaHood let it slip yesterday that he was planning to leave after Obama’s first term, whether or not the president is re-elected. “My wife has plans for me to do something more monetarily pleasing to her,” he said in an attempt to answer what he might do next.

While some bicycling advocates might hope the president would nominate someone of similarly bike-friendly proclivities, LaHood made it clear that wasn’t why he was nominated. “I wouldn’t have this job if I wasn’t a Republican,” he said. “If I was anything else, I wouldn’t be here today.”

He did say he agreed with the president on transportation, including the importance of getting high-speed rail moving. He said the $10 billion the administration has invested in high-speed rail was “10 billion times more than has ever been invested before” and would make the U.S. the envy of the world again, as Asia and Europe’s rail systems are now.

He countered skepticism about the slow speed and reticence in Congress to fund the program by saying that when he was growing up in Peoria, and the interstate system was being built, “I remember seeing stretches of cement that went nowhere.” But what started as little, disconnected segments eventually came together into one nationwide network.

LaHood also put in a plug for the TIGER program, calling it was a good way to connect projects with the federal government without having to go through governors and that had very little red tape for a federal program. He also highlighted the importance of keeping roads, bridges and transit systems in a state of good repair.

LaHood's tabletop speech to cyclists, March 2010. Photo: J. Maus / Bike Portland

Now LaHood says that biking and walking is not only good transportation policy; it’s good health care policy.

Speaking at the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy’s 25th anniversary reception last weekend, LaHood said the rail-trail program “has done more for health care than anything we’ve ever done in America. Rail-trails have contributed so much to people’s good health over the last 25 years — also preventing heart disease, and providing the kinds of opportunities people have looked for, for a long, long time.”

City health departments are getting on board with active transportation, with many health officials promoting biking and walking as a path to good health. Perhaps the innovative partnership between USDOT, EPA, and HUD should make room for Health and Human Services too?

We’ll bring you more of the LaHood-bicycle-lovefest tomorrow, when the secretary publicly endorses the NACTO bike guide, the most bicycle-friendly street-planning guide out there for engineers.