Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx’s Senate hearing was, by all accounts, the one “oasis of calm” on an otherwise stormy Capitol Hill yesterday. There were no sharp exchanges, no tense moments, not even any particularly tough questions. Two weeks from today, we’ll probably be calling him “Mister Secretary.”

Foxx enjoyed smooth sailing through his confirmation hearing yesterday in the Senate and is expected to be confirmed at the beginning of June.

Cabinet nominees often spend all their time on the witness stand at these hearings dodging questions, saying they’ll “look into that and get back to you.” But Foxx gave some real answers. He was well-informed and confident, and when senators asked him how he would handle thorny issues like funding constraints and modal silos, Foxx reassured them that he had ably handled the same issues as mayor.

TIGER. Foxx spoke with authority about TIGER, having managed TIGER grants in Charlotte that he felt did a lot of good. The city got $18 million in 2011 for additional power substations and extended platforms at three stations on its expanded light rail Blue Line. Foxx said that constraints of formula funding had hindered them from building the platforms right the first time, and it was a testament to TIGER’s flexibility and multimodalism that it was able to step in and fill that gap.

Funding. Senators seemed determined to try to scare Foxx by reminding him of the funding emergency confronting the department, but he remained sanguine. He didn’t show his hand about what solutions he had in mind — and it’s Congress’s decision anyway — but he indicated that they’ll have to “think outside the box,” as his predecessor, Ray LaHood, liked to say. To his credit, Foxx did not follow Obama’s line and promise to pay for transportation with war savings.

He also had a very reasonable response to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) who asked him to make sure that the sequester and any future spending cuts be implemented with a minimal amount of pain to consumers, targeting only “waste, fraud and abuse.” Foxx refused to take the bait. He said that, certainly, they would seek to minimize pain, but there would be some. If lawmakers are going to continue to cut programs, they can’t fool themselves into thinking that there won’t be consequences.

Tolling. Foxx indicated he would continue the current policy of allowing tolling only on new federally-funded roads to pay for their construction — not on existing roads to pay for their maintenance. He said tolling “has a place” but “we’re not going to toll our way to prosperity.” Maybe not, but it sure could help. Allowing state DOT’s to toll existing interstates — something many agencies want to do — could result in wringing more efficiency out of the transportation network without building expensive new infrastructure.

Read more…

4:29: Hearing adjourned. Rockefeller: “I adjourn this hearing on the supposition that you will ride the fast rail right into the secretaryship.”

4:27: Thune: We also can’t continue to borrow from general fund to fund highways. Either we need to find a way to pay for it or we need to cut our appetites. Can’t just keep borrowing from our children and grandchildren.  I hope you and the president will lead and put specific ideas on the table. Infrastructure is important. Best way to avoid deficits and debt is to grow the economy.

4:23: Rockefeller: We’re going to have to spend money and no one wants to talk about it. Because as soon as you talk about it, your opponents will find someone to run against you. You have to goad us. If you can’t do something because you don’t have the money to do it, tell us. Express your frustration. Safety inspections, next-gen shouldn’t be sacrificed because we don’t have the money.

4:22: Rockefeller is on a roll, but I’m not sure what he’s talking about. Now talking about hospital bathrooms and the international space station (re: MRSA). He’s already ordered Foxx not to respond to what he’s saying. He’s very poetic but sort of rambly.

4:20 Rockefeller: “I want you to be a good secretary of transportation. And you can’t do that without revenue.” Your predecessor just went around saying whatever he wanted. Great to talk about infrastructure bank, but private sector will invest if federal government does.

4:16: Rockefeller: Fear of next primary is destroying the country. You’re being told to eliminate all rules and regulations, don’t do any tolls, raise no revenues — by simply avoiding waste, fraud and abuse. Hypocrisy. “You can’t minimize yourself into greatness.”

Read more…

The Highway Trust Fund is expected to slip into negative territory in 2015. Estimates are based on CBO's February 2013 baseline projections. Image: CBO

MAP-21 expires in a year and five months. When it does, if lawmakers haven’t already found a solution to the “transportation fiscal cliff,” they’ll have to do one of three things, according to a report issued last week by the Congressional Budget Office [PDF]:

• Transfer $14 billion more in general funds
• Raise the gas tax by 10 cents a gallon
• Cut the authority to obligate funds in 2015 from about $51 billion projected under current law to about $4 billion

“If lawmakers chose to wait until fiscal year 2015,” wrote CBO analyst Sarah Puro, “at the expiration of MAP-21, to reduce spending, those cuts in 2015 would need to total about 92 percent for the highway account and 100 percent for the transit account.”

It couldn’t be clearer. Congress has to stop dithering and start working on a revenue solution, stat. Oh, and the president and his new secretary of transportation have to get behind it, guns blazing.

Congress has three potential vehicles for a revenue solution: 1) a “grand bargain” on the deficit, the sequester and the fiscal cliff, 2) tax reform, and 3) the next surface transportation bill.

And what will that “revenue solution” be? The simplest, most easily implemented fix is a gas tax hike, but over the long term, taxing fossil fuels as a way to pay for transportation infrastructure just won’t cut it.

Read more…

Yesterday was a tough day to try to get attention for a Senate hearing on the future of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. After all, at least one senator had gotten a poisonous letter and everyone on Capitol Hill was on high alert. What’s more, the Amtrak hearing coincided with the vote on gun control, one of the most dramatic and high-stakes votes in the body so far this session.

The Northeast Corridor is already at capacity during peak periods. Major investment will be needed to handle the increase in ridership that's already happening. Photo: WIkimedia/Peter Van den Bossche

Even Commerce Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller, a passionate supporter of Amtrak, gave his opening statement and scooted out of the room to join the action on the Senate floor.

Before he left, Rockefeller lambasted Congress for creating Amtrak and then failing to establish a viable strategy for it to succeed. “Amtrak, and passenger rail in general, has limped along financially since it was created,” Rockefeller said. “Unpredictable federal financial support has been a detriment to Amtrak’s core responsibility to provide travel for millions of Americans and continues to hamper its long-term planning.”

The consequences, he said, are $22 billion in lost productivity each year due to congestion on the highways and in the airspace above the region. “Everyone in this room knows that simply maintaining what we have in the Northeast Corridor is not enough,” he said. “We need to provide expanded capacity to meet future needs of the region. Throwing $22 billion down the drain annually in this economy – all because we cannot agree that transportation infrastructure is a priority – is shameful.”

He put in a plug for his infrastructure bank bill and encouraged the transportation establishment to break down its modal siloes, which he compared to the intelligence community’s turf battles that were exposed after 9/11.

Frank Lautenberg’s absence at a hearing on his beloved Northeast Corridor was glaring. Health problems have kept Lautenberg away from the Hill for about a month, and though he did make it back yesterday – in a wheelchair – to vote for the gun control measure, he didn’t make an appearance at the hearing.

The Northeast Corridor carries twice as many trains today as in 1976, said Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman, making the corridor “among the most heavily-used rail lines in world.” About 150 Amtrak trains, 2,000 commuter trains (run by eight different agencies), and 70 freight trains run up and down that track daily.

Read more…

So, right now you’re thinking, “God save me, not another post about the budget!”

Sen. Patty Murray proposes $100 billion for transportation in her FY 2014 budget. Photo: Puget Sound Business Journal/Kent Hoover

And you’re to be forgiven. There are two versions of the FY 2013 budget out there right now (House and Senate), for a year that’s half over. There are the budget cuts from the sequester that everyone’s still waiting to feel the full impact of. Rep. Paul Ryan, chair of the Budget Committee, put out his FY 2014 blueprint Tuesday. And Wednesday, Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) rolled out her budget proposal. Considering how dysfunctional every single one of these budget processes is, it’s no wonder we plug our ears at more budget news.

But there is a silver lining: Murray’s budget, which her committee approved yesterday, contains a $100 billion “targeted jobs and infrastructure package” that would focus on transportation.

It includes $50 billion to create jobs repairing “our nation’s highest priority deteriorating
transportation infrastructure” — fixing roads, bridges, and airports, and also “updating”
mass transit systems, which could mean more than just state of good repair. She notes that a 21st century transportation system includes “road projects that make room for bicyclists and pedestrians, bridge projects that include transit as well as cars and trucks, and regional plans that require multiple jurisdictions to work together.” She also mentions that transit is essential, as “building more roads alone will not solve the nation’s congestion challenge.”

Murray’s proposal also creates an infrastructure bank to leverage private sector investment, seeded at $10 billion, as Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Jay Rockefeller recently proposed, and as former Sens. John Kerry and Kay Bailey Hutchison had also proposed.

Read more…

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…

These two men are serious about creating an infrastructure bank before they leave office.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller wants to create an infrastructure fund before he leaves office in 2015. Photo: Sen. Jay Rockefeller's flickr stream

Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) — both titans of the Commerce Committee, both retiring in 2015 — yesterday re-introduced legislation to create such a bank. Their previous bill died at the end of the last Congressional session.

That bill, introduced in May 2011, never went anywhere — but then again, it wasn’t really meant to. It was intended to be rolled into a surface transportation reauthorization, but MAP-21 left behind this and other infrastructure bank proposals. Instead, it expanded the TIFIA loan program, which fills many, but not all, of the same functions that a bank would.

The new American Infrastructure Investment Fund Act, like the old one, would create an infrastructure investment “fund” — they don’t call it a bank — within U.S. DOT, funded at $5 billion a year for two years. Six percent of that goes out in the form of grants, not loans — good news for transit and maintenance projects that have a harder time earning enough revenue to pay back loans quickly. While it leaves open the possibility of funding other forms of infrastructure, the initial focus is exclusively on transportation.

The bill’s introduction comes on the heels of President Obama’s announcement of a plan to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, a plan he says would cost $50 billion but hasn’t offered a way to pay for. The Lautenberg/Rockefeller bill is very similar to the president’s vision for an infrastructure bank.

Though Lautenberg and Rockefeller never signed on any other senators as co-sponsors to their 2011 bill, Rockefeller made it clear today that the idea has traction: “I know several other Senators are interested in this issue,” he said in a statement, “and I have every intention of working with my colleagues as we move forward to develop a robust approach to maximizing the return on our public and private investments.”

The bill could leverage two or three times its outlay in loans and loan guarantees the way it’s currently written.

Read more…

Sen. Jay Rockefeller is expected to announce later today that he won’t run for re-election in 2014. The West Virginia Democrat will have served 30 years in the Senate. He chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, one of the four Senate committees – though probably the least of the four – that crafts the surface transportation authorization, with a focus on rail.

Transportation reformers have two years to get used to the idea that Sen. Rockefeller won't be around anymore. Photo from the Office of Sen. Jay Rockefeller.

On Wednesday, Politico published a story asking who in the Senate would take up the mantle of the infrastructure bank if Sen. John Kerry becomes Secretary of State. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Republican co-sponsor of Kerry’s infrastructure bank bill, left the Senate to pursue an ultimately unsuccessful run for governor. The Politico story mentioned Sen. Frank Lautenberg as another champion for the bank, but he’s 88 years old and faces a potential primary challenge from the ridiculously popular Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

Rockefeller would have been a natural to step into the role of pushing the infrastructure bank. He co-sponsored Lautenberg’s bill, a somewhat different vision than the one put forth by Kerry and Hutchison. But with Rockefeller leaving the Senate, Politico’s question becomes ever more salient. Who’s left in the Senate to push for one of the main components of President Obama’s infrastructure plan?

That wasn’t the only way in which Rockefeller made a name for himself in transportation reform circles. He and Lautenberg also teamed up in 2009 to propose a set of principles for the next transportation authorization. Who could argue with the goals he put forward? Reducing annual miles driven, cutting traffic deaths in half, reducing emissions by 40 percent, cutting delays, improving state of good repair, and increasing transit, intercity rail, and non-motorized transport.

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…