Photo: AP

Today saw a massive mobilization of opposition to House Speaker John Boehner’s five-year disaster of a transportation bill, even as he defended it at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. Meanwhile, the Senate voted 85-11 to move forward with Senator Barbara Boxer’s two-year reauthorization proposal.

“This is a good vote,” Boxer said after the votes were tallied. “Tell the House we have a bipartisan bill worthy of their consideration.”

It was the first real test for Boxer’s bill, sometimes called MAP-21, before the entire Senate. The bill is far from perfect, with bike/ped programs falling victim to program consolidation. It does give a small boost to transit operations and it does not rely on drilling for new revenue.

The pursuit of bipartisan support has been a hallmark of Boxer’s reauthorization efforts, even more than any specific policy goals. Before today’s vote was held, she expressed her hope for more than the 60 votes necessary to move forward, and in the end she received broad support from across the aisle.

The vote invokes cloture, which means the bill cannot be filibustered. No further amendments may be proposed to it, though Boxer acknowledged that a good number had been proposed already. One of those amendments, sponsored by Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin and Mississippi Republican Thad Cochran, would give local governments greater access to transportation funds — good news for the transit, bike and pedestrian projects that cities and towns like to build.

Subsequent votes will formally attach the titles passed by the Commerce, Banking, and Finance committees. A full vote in the Senate is expected some time next week.

The 11 Senators — including two Democrats — who voted “no” are after the jump. 

Mark Begich (D-AK)
Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Jim DeMint (R-SC)
Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
Mike Johanns (R-NE)
Ron Johnson (R-WI)
Mike Lee (R-UT)
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Rand Paul (R-KY)
Jim Risch (R-ID)
Marco Rubio (R-FL)

Full yeas and nays are available here.

The Senate Finance Committee discusses how to fund their two-year transportation bill. Image: U.S. Senate

Today (very early in the morning, as his Republican colleagues pointed out), Baucus released an updated version of the bill, which incorporates several proposed amendments — including Senator Chuck Schumer’s transit benefits amendment, which would raise the maximum tax benefit for commuters who take transit so that it’s equal to the benefit for commuters who drive.

Baucus also revealed additional sources of funds and how they’d be used:

• $2.618 billion transferred from import tariff revenue (essentially a transfer from the general fund) would ensure the Highway Trust Fund would be fully-funded over the life of the bill
• $6.505 billion added to the general fund over ten years by closing various tax loopholes
• $0.710 billion in new spending over ten years, mostly in new tax breaks, including parity between the pre-tax commuter parking and transit benefits

The addition of transit commuter benefits is good but frustrating news for transit. While the Senate continues include a few forward thinking reforms on transit policy, the House bill’s extremist slant poses a threat to the entire reauthorization effort.

In remarks before the markup votes began, Republicans voiced their concerns about budget offsets that “do not have anything to do with transportation,” in the words of Richard Burr (R-NC). Tom Coburn (R-OK), Mike Enzi (R-WY) and Burr even expressed measured interest in indexing the federal gas tax to inflation.

On the Democrats’ side,  John Kerry (D-MA) reiterated his support for a national infrastructure bank capitalized by a $10 billion in federal investment. But Kerry indicated he would not attempt to insert the infrastructure bank into this bill.

The bill is expected to pass the Democrat-controlled committee; the big remaining question is whether it will pass with the same bipartisan support that the EPW and Banking segments of the transportation bill received.

A live webcast of the markup is available here.

Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Johnson (D-SD) has joined Barbara Boxer in passing a bipartisan transportation bill. Image: ABC News

The Senate has so far reached bipartisan agreement on two out of three portions of their two-year bill. The only remaining title to be approved, the Finance Committee’s portion, will be taken up shortly. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid intends to take the entire transportation package to the Senate floor on February 13.

The Senate bill’s progress draws a stark contrast with the legislative efforts underway in the House. The House bill has also moved forward at an aggressive pace, but it has looked worse and worse at every step. The most recent revelation, that the bill’s financing component would potentially eviscerate dedicated funding for transit, is only the latest in a long line of attacks on walking, biking, and transit. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood told Politico earlier today, “It’s the worst transportation bill I’ve ever seen during 35 years of public service.” LaHood also gave credit to the Senate Environment & Public Works committee for legislating in good faith:

They get it. They passed a bipartisan bill with no dissenting votes in their committee. Because they worked together, and they really tried to put together a bill that reflects the transportation values of the senators… That’s not what happened in the House. Look, this is obviously a one-man show in the House.

LaHood was singling out John Mica, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, but the real star of the show may be Speaker John Boehner. With each successive piece of legislation, Boehner has forced his party and his chamber farther and farther away from the long-standing precedent of bipartisan transportation bills. With a highway-centric, drilling-heavy, transit-averse, anti-bike/ped, Keystone-pipeline-linked bill all but doomed to fail in the Senate, Boehner has reduced the reauthorization debate to a crude political tool.

“I used to rail against the Senate,” said Rep. Corrine Brown at today’s House markup (which, at the time of this writing, has just entered its second recess of the day). “But now I thank God for the Senate.”

Banking Committee Chair Tim Johnson (D-SD) and Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-AL). Photo: LAT

Johnson and Shelby’s bill will serve as the transit component of the Senate’s two-year reauthorization bill, MAP-21, which passed the Environment and Public Works Committee with bipartisan support last month.

In one significant policy shift, the bill would enable transit authorities to use federal funds to pay for some of their operating expenses during “periods of high unemployment.” Generally, use of federal transit funds is restricted exclusively to system expansion and maintenance, but transit agencies across the country are slashing service, raising fares and laying off workers due to the effects of the economic downturn. This bill would offer them some much-needed relief.

The bill reauthorizes close to $21 billion in transit funding over two years, protecting many popular programs and expanding new ones. The reception so far has been generally positive. Jesse Prentice-Dunn of the Sierra Club told Streetsblog that he is “encouraged” and that “the Banking Committee title appears to be a step forward for transit.”

Among the more encouraging points listed in the summary, the new bill:

• Protects funding to the Job Access and Reverse Commute (JARC) program, which has been a priority since Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign.
• Creates a new pilot program to support transit-oriented development with planning grants.
• Streamlines the New Starts program, eliminating duplicative steps and allowing smaller projects ($100 million or less) to complete an expedited review process.
• Expands the Rail Modernization program to include “high-intensity bus” networks, renaming it the State of Good Repair Grant program.

One aspect of the State of Good Repair program would reduce the incentive for states to overbuild carpool lanes. When calculating the size of a high-intensity bus network, “the new proposal no longer recognizes highway high occupancy vehicle lanes as eligible… if they are not reserved for the sole use of public transportation vehicles.” This does not forbid SOGR grants from being used on HOV lanes, but it keeps HOV-heavy bus systems from looking larger on paper than they are in real life, and thereby grabbing a disproportionate share of transit funds for what is essentially a highway project.

The bill is also light on the program consolidation that had been so prevalent in the House and Senate’s highway bills. Two programs aimed at improving mobility for senior citizens and the disabled will be merged, but it does not appear that there will be a corresponding cut to the programs’ funding.

The bill will be marked up in committee on Thursday at 10 a.m.

John Mica and John Boehner didn't get a transportation bill moving last fall. They have until March 31 to try again. Photo: Zimbio

That sense of urgency has been seen on the hill for years now, however. The question for 2012 is: Will this session’s theme song be The Final Countdown or The Neverending Story?

Here’s a recap and preview of Congress’ pressing transportation-related business.

First Things First: Aviation

Aviation policy isn’t usually something that gets mentioned on Streetsblog. It isn’t included in the federal surface transportation authorization bill (for obvious reasons) and airplanes only rarely wind up having to share our streets. However, the FAA authorization law ran out over 4 years ago and has been extended 22 times… and it runs out again in 14 days. It is expected to be a priority for Congress, one which they will tackle before any other transportation legislation, even if all they decide to do is extend it for a 23rd time until after the election.

Once That’s Done: The 2011 Tax Extender Extender

The bill that extended the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance – but allowed a tax break for transit commuters to fall to half that of people parking their cars – expires at the end of February. Two committees could facilitate its reinstatement: the Republican-controlled House Ways & Means or the Democrat-controlled Senate Finance. Senator Charles Schumer has been very vocal in his support for restoration of the transit commuter benefit at its 2011 level, and there could be enough support to reinstate it for the rest of 2012. Sen. Schumer has called for the benefit to be extended retroactively to January and February, but the nature of a monthly benefit — as opposed to an annual one — likely makes a retroactive extension problematic to the point of being unworkable.

The Main Event: Surface Transportation Reauthorization

The current federal law authorizing highway and transit programs, SAFETEA-LU, expires in 73 days. As with aviation, the chance does exist that the surface transportation law will simply be extended until after the election (it would be the 9th such extension), but Politico reports that the House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica and Ranking Member Nick Rahall intend to avoid that. Larry Ehl at Transportation Issues Daily did a pretty good job yesterday of breaking down the three major decisions facing surface transportation reauthorization: length of bill (in years), size of bill (in dollars), and source of funds. Each depends a great deal on the other two, and so far there are only two seriously contending combinations:

• Six Years, $285 Billion, Drill Baby Drill – This is Mica’s proposal from last October, up from $230 billion in July. It represents a 33 percent decrease in funding compared to the previous long-term appropriation. Its lower annual value reflects Mica’s desire not to spend more than the Highway Trust Fund takes in from the federal gas tax. As planned, the bill faces a roughly $100 billion shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund, which Speaker John Boehner seems to think could be plugged with proceeds from drilling. (Boehner had supported a five-year transportation bill, but never unveiled it.) House Republican Aaron Schock – Secretary Ray LaHood’s successor in Congress — has been drumming up support for a long-term bill offset by drilling, and sent a letter to President Obama in December signed by 62 Democrats and 49 Republicans encouraging him to accept such a bill. Schock thinks a vote could come as soon as next month.
• Two Years, $109 Billion, ??? – This is Sen. Barbara Boxer’s Senate Environment & Public Works Committee bill, which has already been passed with unanimous bipartisan support by the committee. Like the House proposal, its streamlining of federal programs would end dedicated funding for things like Transportation Enhancements and Safe Routes to School. However, it is incomplete: The Senate Banking Committee still has not submitted a Transit title, and the Finance Committee is still looking for $12 billion in “pay-fors” to make the bill pencil out. Several Republican Senators have proposed a combination of redirections from other trust funds, plus drilling (naturally), to fill that gap.

Beyond the basic structure of the bill, the most controversial debates are expected to be over inclusion of a national infrastructure bank versus expansion of state infrastructure banks and dedicated funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs, which face opposition in both chambers.

Also controversial will be Obama’s ambitious intercity high-speed and passenger rail programs. As Joshua Schank, President of the Eno Transportation Foundation, told Streetsblog, the recent setbacks and shakeups at the California High-Speed Rail Authority  are “not going to help when it comes to funding Amtrak or upgrading railroads.”

No hearing or markup dates have been set by either house.

The Distant Future: Department of Transportation Authorization

While a long-term surface transportation authorization bill would fund U.S. DOT’s programs, the department itself is kept running by a separate law, which will expire on September 30. The way this Congress has flirted with government shutdowns, what should be a routine, ho-hum law could be sucked into the larger partisan debate over government spending.

We’ve spent the last couple days looking back at some of the bests and worsts of 2011. A brief recap: The hit to transit budgets was the low point of the year, with the high point being the willingness of voters to tax themselves to restore some funding. Capitol Hill’s paralysis in the face of urgent infrastructure needs was a double-edged sword, given some of the really bad proposals out there. We booed Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. James Inhofe, the lawmakers that killed President’s Obama’s high-speed rail plans, the city of Dallas, and the jury that convicted Raquel Nelson of “vehicular homicide” when she wasn’t even behind the wheel of a car. And we heaped praise on Minneapolis and Charleston for making good decisions to move their cities forward sustainably.

And before we sing Auld Lang Syne and ring in 2012, we’ve got just a little more kvetching and kvelling to do, starting with:

Most Annoying Distraction From the Real Transportation Funding Problem (and Solution): It’s no secret that the Highway Trust Fund is sputtering, and it’s taken $35 billion in general fund infusions just to keep it going this far. It’s a pretty basic equation: If you’re taking in less than you’re spending out, you’re going to come up short. So you can spend less or earn more. Most experts say it’s time to raise the federal gas tax.

What's so incompatible about bikes and bridges? Photo: Flickr / WSDOT

But this year saw some other brilliant ideas emerge – like eliminating the federal gas tax altogether and leaving all transportation taxing and spending to the states. Which is a punt if I’ve ever seen one, ignoring the fiscal crises and anti-tax atmospheres most states face, not to mention the fact that slicing transportation funding up exclusively by state doesn’t make sense for building national networks.

And it takes a few days off my life every time I give column inches to the argument, which found great support among congestion enthusiasts this year, that transit shouldn’t be funded through the Highway Trust Fund, that the Fund was just fine before all these “hangers-on” started detracting from the “core programs” – I just can’t even go on.

But I think we can all agree that the Streetsie for the Most Frustrating and Illogical Proposal for Raising Infrastructure Funds goes to the scheme to eliminate biking and walking from federal funding programs. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) framed it as a safety issue – that it’s more important to fix crumbling and unsafe bridges than to build bike trails. He was ignoring the obvious fact that it would take his home state of Kentucky 66 years to repair the bridges currently listed as deficient if they used the tiny sliver of funding devoted to bike/ped projects.

The numbers don’t crunch any better for Oklahoma, yet that state’s Sen. Tom Coburn has the same idea. It’s too bad too. It’s a state with a serious infrastructure maintenance backlog and some desperately unsafe bridges. Oklahomans could benefit from some honest proposals to make their state safer, not this political quackery.

House Republican Blooper Reel: How could we wrap up 2011 without a final lap around some of the ways the House of Representatives made a mess of transportation authorization and appropriations? We started the year with some hope that all the parties were on board to pass a transportation bill in 2011, but instead we got:

• 

  House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's plan would have slashed transportation spending and prioritized highways. Photo: Christian Science Monitor.

  Republicans changing House rules to allow transportation funds to be withheld from transportation projects

• GOP attacks on Amtrak’s funding and proposals to sell off Amtrak’s only profit-making asset – the Northeast Corridor – to private companies
• Rep. Paul Ryan’s slash-and-burn budget, which would have guaranteed that the little money available would be spent on costly highway projects that take the transportation system backward
• A final transportation budget that included deep cuts to livability programs like the interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities
• Transportation Committee Chair John Mica’s bill to reduce spending without ensuring that money is wisely spent and that would have put bike/ped and transit funding in jeopardy
• Then, hooray! House Republicans say they’ve discovered a way to raise funding levels. They’re secretive about the details for a while before announcing that really, they didn’t have an idea about infrastructure spending; they had an idea for creating more political gridlock
• Republicans pitting high-speed rail funding against flood relief in the Midwest
• An inordinate amount of time spent on the brink of a government shutdown (or at least a shutdown of the transportation system) (or, to spice things up a little bit this year, an economic default and global meltdown), and most of the time, the deals brokered to break the impasse have been bad news for transportation reformers

How to choose the worst? Republicans, the Streetsie goes to you for your myriad bad ideas and bad policies. May 2012 bring a change of heart.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed was part of the mayors' rebellion against wasteful highway spending. Photo courtesy of U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Good Stuff That Happened This Year: Enough bad news! Some good stuff happened this year too. The Department of Transportation doubled down on its Distracted Driving campaign (with some eleventh hour help from the NTSB) and distributed a third round of TIGER grants. An increased focus on performance measures by advocacy groups like Smart Growth America, Building America’s Future, and the Bipartisan Policy Center helped create a smart discussion around the next transportation reauthorization that wasn’t just a volley over numbers. Mass transit saved people time and money as more and more people filled trains and buses, leaving their money-guzzlers in the garage. And there are reasons to believe the transit trend will only keep growing. Indeed, more and more evidence built up that for once, people are beginning to drive a little less.

The demand for smart-growth style urbanism – albeit in suburban locations – has risen, and the real estate market is beginning to respond. Even better, smart growth could be our escape out of the slump the economy is in. And mayors are taking a stand against state DOTs that ignore the transportation needs of metro areas in favor of building more roads to nowhere that speed outward sprawl and don’t address congestion.

These are the things we’ll be looking to build on in 2012.

So that’s our list! Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments if there’s any more cheering and jeering left to do. New Year’s Resolutions also accepted!

We’ll be back to our regular publishing schedule Tuesday, January 3 — just in time for the Iowa caucuses.

On our walk down the memory lane of 2011 so far, we’ve talked about some downers, some inspirations, some triumphs, and some struggles. Check out our first two installments of year-end Streetsie award nostalgia. Here’s some more.

Best Obama Plan That Died a Slow and Horrible Death This Year: How to choose, when there were so many? The president laid out a big, bold, ambitious transportation plan for the next six years but then stayed mum on the all-important question of how to fund it, and so, predictably, it died. His American Jobs Act included $50 billion for infrastructure projects, including at least $13 billion for rail and transit. It, too, went nowhere fast.

Obama's high-speed rail plans took a fast train to nowhere. Photo: America 2050

That wasn’t Obama’s fault, but if you’re looking for a reason to be angry at him, look no further than the ozone pollution rules the EPA was going to strengthen. The president froze at the last minute and decided to hold off another couple years, to give the economy a chance to recover (or business interests a chance to vote for him). The new ozone standard would have saved an estimated 12,000 lives and made transportation reforms essential.

But who could blame the 47 percent of you who awarded the Streetsie for saddest death of an Obama program to high-speed rail? Congress takes every opportunity to yank money away from the program, three Republican governors have very publicly thumbed their noses at federal funds, and the only true high-speed rail line with the potential to be truly transformative is in deep doo-doo in California. So much for 80 percent access in 25 years.

Non-Presidential Vices: Yes, we had our share of letdowns from President Obama this year. But not all our disappointments were related to him. We were also bummed to see plans scrapped for the Woodward Light Rail line in Detroit, and the failure of the Seattle car tab fee, which would have gone to transit, bike/ped and road maintenance. And certainly we were disappointed that the Senate transportation bill, in the end, didn’t keep dedicated funding for bike/ped. But the Streetsie for the biggest letdown has to go to the bait-and-switch the House Republicans pulled about funding their transportation plan.

It was simple enough when they were threatening to cut spending by a third so as not to overspend Highway Trust Fund receipts. Just about everyone hated the idea. But then the GOP said they’d match current levels and it seemed the best of both worlds – reasonable spending levels and a longer-term bill than the Senate was offering.

Hallelujah! So what’s the catch?

Turns out the catch was that it would be funded with oil drilling revenues. Even if it passed, the revenues would be too low and come too late to really pay for the bill, experts agreed. And of course, it would never pass anyway. Republicans have been making absolutely everything an excuse to try to pass oil-expansion legislation lately, and they have to know that the Democrats aren’t biting.

After the hard-fought Senate bill passed unanimously out of committee, with both sides making significant concessions so that they could produce a bill with a chance of passage, it was absolutely insulting for the House to produce something so ludicrously partisan. It made it clear, once and for all, that they had no intention of actually bringing a bill to passage this year.

Sen. James Inhofe: Public Enemy Number One. Photo: AP

Walkers’ and Cyclists’ Public Enemy Number One: What a year it’s been for the whimsical dreamers among us who actually believe we can get around on our own two feet – or two wheels – instead of an automobile. All autumn, Republicans lined up to shoot down the tiny amount of federal funding we get to carve out a little bit of safe space on the roadway.

House leaders staged an a-ha moment in September, in which they realized the parties could find consensus on infrastructure spending if they would just eliminate the “set-aside” for Transportation Enhancements. Then a whole parade of senators got in on the act, starting with Tom Coburn’s attempt to block a clean extension of the transportation bill (jeopardizing 80,000 jobs) unless they went along with his diabolical plot to kill TE in its sleep. Then Sen. John McCain tried to cut back on the program.

And Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky took it to a whole new level of kook when he called TE a fund for “turtle tunnels and squirrel sanctuaries and all this craziness.” Ever hear of bicycle commuting, Mr. Paul? It grew by 137 percent between 2008 and 2009 in Lexington. And Louisville is building a 100-mile Louisville Loop for hiking and biking. Just ask your constituents how crazy active transportation funds are.

But you, dear readers, reserved your greatest ire – and the 2011 Streetsie award – for Sen. James Inhofe. He stayed above the fray as his misguided colleagues engaged in their petty little antics because he had the inside track on killing dedicated funding for bike/ped once and for all. After all, the Senate transportation bill wouldn’t go anywhere if he wasn’t on board, and he made it his solemn duty to strip out the hated “set-aside” for Transportation Enhancements. At least he got the numbers right and acknowledged that TE amounted to less than two percent of the transportation program, not 10 percent as his colleagues falsely claimed.

A.J. Nelson, age 4, was killed while crossing the street between a bus stop and his home with his mother and two sisters.

Most Outrageous Attack on Cyclists and Pedestrians: The attacks didn’t all come from Capitol Hill, of course. Parents in Tennessee and Michigan were threatened with child-endangerment charges for letting their kids ride bikes. And even bike-friendly Seattle showed its dark side in 2011 with the astonishing ignorance of its police department. Cops recently berated an injured jogger by calling him names and telling him, “That’s why you drive a car!” And they’re getting tough on pedestrians and cyclists while letting bad driver behavior slide. In 2010, the department issued just 197 tickets to drivers for failing to yield — and 1,570 citations to pedestrians.

But the incident we all have burned into our memories – the one that still haunts us as we walk and ride around our hometowns – is the grievous wrong done to Raquel Nelson, She had to suffer the anguish of losing her four-year-old son to an impaired driver and then the injustice of having the blame fall on her. Cobb County, Georgia, gave a slap on the wrist to the driver and, as far as we can tell, no blame at all to the planners of auto-centric street design that makes tragedies like these inevitable. But the county charged Nelson with vehicular homicide.

It still burns us up – and makes us cry – just to think about it. Seventy-seven percent of you agreed, giving a landslide Streetsie to the prosecutors who saw fit to charge her and the jury – all whites who had never gotten on public transportation in their lives – that convicted her.

Sweet, Sweet Victory: It’s hard to see a silver lining in the whole Raquel Nelson tragedy, but more than a third of you agreed that it gave birth to one of the year’s key victories. Streetsblog caught wind of the Nelson trial once the jury had convicted her, and our coverage sparked national media attention, which led to major petition drives and resulted in a barrage of letters and phone calls to the judge. And when it came time for the judge to give her sentence, she offered a light one – or a new trial. Nelson’s lawyer said “a judge, on her own motion, granting a new trial” was “one of the most shocking things” he’d even seen in a courtroom.

Nelson took the option of a new trial, which has seen a number of delays. We hope the county prosecutors will wise up and drop the charges already, but if not, we’re confident another jury will find a different outcome.

California's Highway 91 applied for a TIFIA loan. Will the T in TIFIA stand for "toll road?" Photo: Greater Riverside Chamber

TIFIA is a popular program, receiving $14 billion in loan requests despite only being able to loan about $1 billion in total this year. And under current law, the extent to which the project “helps maintain or protect the environment” makes up 20 percent of a project’s evaluation. In the EPW bill, the program is expanded by a factor of nine, but most evaluation criteria — including environmental protection — are omitted.

As Matt Sledge wrote in the Huffington Post:

Phineas Baxandall, a senior analyst at U.S. PIRG, said he thinks [EPW Chair Senator Barbara] Boxer may have cut a bad deal. He argues that doing away with TIFIA’s selection criteria means the U.S. Department of Transportation will be forced to give money to any transportation project that meets bare-bones financial eligibility requirements [...] Toll roads, backed by private investors looking to make a buck off of “public-private partnerships,” will be first in line, he argued, since they have plans that are “just ready to go off the shelf.” [...]

Los Angeles hopes it will get some of that TIFIA money. Not so fast, Baxandall said. “Places like Atlanta and L.A. are hoping that the new bounty of TIFIA will allow them to finance public transit expansions, but they are likely to find the money already claimed by private toll road projects in places like Florida and Texas.”

An LA Metro spokesperson told HuffPo he’s still “pretty confident” they’ll get TIFIA funds.

It’s hard not to see this as a step backwards, despite the funding increase. It wasn’t long ago that transit advocates were celebrating an end to the Bush-era’s “cost-effectiveness-above-all-else” rule in the Federal Transit Authority’s New Starts program. Now, Baxandall says, “at a time when the nation’s transportation system is starved for funds and there is a consensus that dollars need to be spent more wisely, it is outrageous that the one program that would be massively increased would no longer try to deliver the best bang for each buck.”

The good(-ish) news is that there’s still time to make changes to the bill. The Senate Banking Committee still has to work on a transit portion, the Senate Finance Committee still has to figure out how to come up with another $12 billion, the whole Senate still has to debate it all, and the House still has to do… anything.

The transit benefits train has left the station. Photo: i35south

With this inaction in both chambers of Congress, the federal government is sending a message loud and clear to commuters: they’d like you to start driving to work.

This is disappointing news to many of us, no doubt.

Many in Congress don’t seem to understand what it’s like to be a daily commuter trying to get from A to B each day without breaking the bank. Transportation is the second largest household expense for many households, eating up an even larger proportional share of income for the poorest Americans. The millions who depend on transit to get to work each day shouldn’t have to pay more, and certainly not for something that also saves us energy, reduces congestion and emissions, and uses less oil.

T4America does remind us that there is still hope that the benefits will be increased within the first few months of 2012. But, for now, it’s a disheartening moment for transit users. And those who need transit the most are sure to be the ones who suffer the most as a result.

The Senate bill also requires President Obama’s decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline within 60 days. The House will vote very soon on whether they’ll go along with the Senate’s version or drag this political theater out a little longer. (Our bets are on political theater.)

Without federal help, more buses could go out of service -- and the ones still circulating could charge more. Photo: Gothamist

Last week, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), along with Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) introduced a Senate companion to the bill [PDF]. Like the House version, it conditions the assistance on the size of a metro area and the robustness of its transit service. Smaller metros would be able to use half their federal funds for operating costs, but that proportion drops to 45 percent for communities of 500,000 to a million people, and 40 percent for populations over a million.

The bill also pegs the relief to the severity of the economic crisis in any given community. If the unemployment rate dips or the price of gas holds steady, it’s bye-bye federal operating help. At least one of these conditions need to be met for the assistance to be available: The metro area’s unemployment rate has to be at or above 7 percent or the national average price of gas has to have increased by more than 10 percent over the same quarter the previous year.

Conditioning the transit assistance on high gas prices isn’t just about helping drivers temporarily shift modes to save money (only to shift back when gas prices are back down). High gas prices present an enormous cost burden to transit agencies.

“The fuel price trigger was really the original rationale for this emergency assistance,” said Sarah Kline of Reconnecting America. “This concept of crisis assistance arose first in the 2007-2008 timeframe, before the economy collapsed. The reason is because fuel prices went crazy, and when fuel goes up, transit agencies’ costs go up.”

Indeed, if ordinary car commuters think a dollar or two jump in gas prices makes a difference in their household expenses, just imagine the burden for transit agencies burning thousands of gallons a day. Meanwhile, the American Public Transportation Association estimated earlier this year that $4-a-gallon gas translates into an additional 670 million passenger trips in a year [PDF], further straining underfunded systems struggling to absorb higher fuel costs.

Lawmakers have been under pressure from localities to allow for more flexibility at the local level about the use of the funding. Communities often find themselves with garages full of new, federally-funded buses and no ability to pay drivers, since the funding is only for capital expenses, not operations. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has gotten behind a temporary fix as well.

The House bill hasn’t gone far since being referred to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, but that may not be a bad sign. Sen. Brown is hoping his bill will get rolled into the broader transportation reauthorization bill, and is reportedly in conversations with the Banking Committee to make that happen. Remember, though, that even if the final transportation bill is a six-year bill, the operating assistance wouldn’t necessarily continue for six years, but only as long as the conditions above are met.

The House bill has gone through various contortions since being introduced in July, being re-imagined as a front for expanded oil drilling and having its funding levels bumped up to a level more acceptable to industry, but it hasn’t actually gone anywhere. Committee Chair John Mica recently told Politico his ideal scenario: ”If all goes well, hopefully we can finish FAA in January and begin thereafter the transportation bill,” he said. “But I don’t set the floor schedule.”

Banking, meanwhile, was hoping to move forward on the transit portion of the Senate bill last Friday but time got away from it. The most likely rain date will be in early February, as the Senate will only be in session one week in January.

Photo: Office of Senator Frank Lautenberg

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

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

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

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

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

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

The main argument that the Port Authority toll hikes are not “just and reasonable” centers around whether toll revenues are being spent on non-transportation projects. The Port Authority had said that the revenues would help pay for redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. Last week, after AAA filed a lawsuit challenging the the toll hike, Port Authority officials then changed their tune, saying all funds would be dedicated to transportation.

Lautenberg’s office says they’re looking for transparency. He and Grimm say the revenues may just be going to bail out a “debt-stricken and mismanaged” Port Authority. But public agencies become “debt-stricken” in part because political leaders lack the will to raise fees and tolls.

The tolling debate comes amid a serious infrastructure-funding crunch, in which state and city DOTs are searching high and low for money – sometimes just for basic maintenance. Some are protesting federal rules against tolling existing highways as they seek funds to maintain those roads – or, in some cases, fund transit projects that could reduce wear and tear on those roads to begin with.

Wanted a transit title and a commuter benefit for Christmas? All you get is a lump of coal.

Johnson said they’ll try for next week, but there’s no guarantee Congress will still be in session next week. The target adjournment date for the holiday recess had been last Thursday, with that date pushed back to this Friday so Congress could deal with a tangle of issues including the 2012 budget, the payroll tax holiday, and unemployment benefits. The Keystone oil pipeline and tax hikes for millionaires have been thrown into the mix for good measure, too. The McCaskill-Collins attempt to turn the conversation toward infrastructure hasn’t gained much traction.

So, it’s possible Congress will have to stay in session a bit longer to deal with the mess they’ve made, but does that mean they’ll take that opportunity to blaze forward on transportation? That would be impressive, but don’t expect Congress to impress.

Banking’s top Republican, Richard Shelby, told Politico the holdup wasn’t all about money — there are “a lot of issues.” And a staffer reportedly said the committee would like to pass a bipartisan bill, like EPW, instead of a party-line vote that can be easily toppled.

Meanwhile — speaking of important legislation being sidelined till next year — Politico also quoted Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) as saying that extension of the current transit tax benefit could also be off the table for the remainder of this session. Neal said he hasn’t gotten a response from key committee leaders about when the measure will be taken up, leading him to think January may be the best bet. An inside source tells Streetsblog the benefit’s extension is still a topic of much discussion in the Senate.

Without action, at the end of this year, transit riders will get only a $125 monthly pre-tax deduction for their daily commute, while drivers will get a fat $240 to park their cars. (As a reminder, you bicyclists get to deduct $20 if your employer can even figure out how to apply for that benefit.)

Think complete streets policies are just for urban areas? The complete streets movement's new hero is Sen. Mark Begich -- of Alaska. Photo courtesy of Sen. Begich's office.

Deron Lovaas of NRDC said in his blog post about the bill that certain improvements to the legislation made it a standard-bearer for how transportation bills should be written:

Senators Lautenberg, Cantwell and Begich played key roles in improving the title by including a version of the FREIGHT (an acronym sparing us the mouthful of “Focusing Resources, Economic Investment, and Guidance to Help Transportation”) Act as well as a “complete streets” policy to accommodate bicyclists and pedestrians. This means that the title now has actual performance objectives, allows for funding to be used for rail as well as highway investments to improve goods movement, and that there would be an office at DOT tasked with implementing an actual national plan for freight investments.

Jesse Prentice-Dunn of the Sierra Club adds that the freight provisions “treat our movement of freight as a multi-modal system, not just a web of highways.”

The street safety (or “complete streets”) amendment [PDF] introduced into the Commerce bill by Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) deserves attention for its special focus on non-motorized modes. The amendment says the Secretary of Transportation “shall establish standards to ensure that the design of Federal surface transportation projects provides for the safe and adequate accommodation, in all phases of project planning, development, and operation, of all users of the transportation network, including motorized and non-motorized users.”

States with their own complete streets policies would get a waiver from the federal policy, as long as their policies are in compliance.

A federal law — as opposed to individual city or state ordinances — is important because “streets don’t end at the borders of their jurisdictions,” according to Barbara McCann, director of the National Complete Streets Coalition. “We’ve had many jurisdictions that have complete streets policies say that they need and want that consistency.”

Some state DOTs have expressed a desire for more guidance on how to adopt complete streets policies. This amendment would provide that guidance straight from the top and allow USDOT to ensure compliance.

Though the overall bill was passed on a party-line vote of 13 to 11, the complete streets amendment passed unanimously — recognizing, according to McCann, “that every transportation project has to be a safety project.”

The performance objectives in this title provide a useful model for others in the bill, Lovaas said, and the EPW portion that passed a few weeks ago could have used some stronger language on that front. “The highway program desperately needs a national plan as well, and performance objectives to make sure federal taxpayer dollars aren’t wasted by state governments,” Lovaas said. “The era of unplanned, unaccountable federal spending needs to come to an end.”

Performance measures could potentially be added to the EPW highway title on the floor of the Senate, but it would be a hard sell: Democrats and Republicans have sharp disagreements over what kinds of performance should be measured — for example, whether reducing carbon emissions or reducing federal bureaucracy should be the standard. We’ll be watching the Banking Committee to see what kinds of performance metrics are included in its transit title.

Prentice-Dunn of the Sierra Club also cheered the inclusion of national transportation objectives and goals. By establishing the vision for what our transportation system should achieve, he said, those provisions represent a critical move away from ”an earmark-laden system” and toward a more strategic one.

“Key among those objectives is the goal of energy conservation and reducing transportation energy use,” he wrote. “Our transportation system drives our addiction to oil, guzzling roughly two-thirds of all the oil used nationwide. By reducing transportation energy use, we will cut our dependence on oil.”

The cards are about to be stacked against this transit rider. Photo: Metro Magazine

Unless some action is taken before Congress adjourns, the maximum federal transit commuter tax benefit — pre-tax income which employees can spend on transit fares — would be slashed to $125 per month effective January 1st, while the commuter parking tax benefit would actually increase from $230 to $240.

Neither of the two committees responsible for extending the benefit — House Ways and Means and Senate Banking — has shown a willingness to take up the provision. Several weeks ago, Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) wrote to his colleagues in the House, warning of the impending end to several popular programs, including transit benefits. Many other groups and individuals have echoed that call. Yesterday, they were joined by no fewer than 22 senators, from both sides of the aisle, in sending a letter to the Banking Committee leadership, urging them to take up the issue. Only two Republicans joined 20 Democrats in signing on to the letter: Mark Kirk of Illinois and Scott Brown of Massachusetts, the only two Republicans representing significantly urban states in the Senate. The letter read in part:

Commuter benefits are one of the core benefits offered by employers, after health, retirement, and disability benefits. Nationally, more than 2.5 million people now use the transit benefit, with over 250,000 of those users spending more than $125 per month. For these commuters with high monthly costs, the imminent drop in the benefit cap will result in an increase in the cost of commuting of up to 22 percent.

Transit agencies themselves would be also affected by the drop in transit benefits. The Examiner projects that if the benefits revert to a measly half of the parking benefit, Washington’s cash-strapped Metro would suffer a 2.8 percent drop in rail ridership, resulting in $16 million less in annual revenue. Compare that to Rep. Earl Blumenauer’s (D-OR) proposal from this past spring, whose “parking cash-out” provision has been tied to increases in transit and non-motorized mode share among commuters. What could be a powerful tool to level the playing field for modal subsidies is instead about to become an excise tax on transit providers.

What’s truly frustrating for advocates and supporters of the program is that “[f]ew, if any, lawmakers are outright opposed to extending the transit benefit, but several suggested it could simply lose out to more expensive, time-consuming extenders debates,” according to Politico. In the meantime, several advocacy groups are making a concerted push to be heard amid Congress’ cacophonous gridlock, with members already receiving over 50,000 letters.

A bill that would extend the transit benefits is waiting to be taken up in the House and Senate. According to the American Public Transportation Association, failure to act would create “a financial bias in the federal tax code against public transit use.”

Rather than trying to raise the transit benefit in a spending-averse Congress, would it make more sense to lower the parking benefit, as another way to achieve parity? Transportation For America says it wouldn’t work. Apparently cutting support for driving subsidies is even more politically toxic than raising spending.

Banking Committee Chair Tim Johnson (D-SD) and Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-AL). Photo: LAT

The committee website is still silent on the matter, but Politico reported this morning that the news came straight from the horse’s mouth — Chair Tim Johnson (D-SD).

So what can we expect from this bill? Definitely not a change in the highway/transit split, insiders say. The 80/20 split is a tradition, they say, not a matter of law, but it’s not going anywhere. When you actually crunch the numbers, transit ends up getting a bit less than its 20 percent of the Highway Trust Fund receipts, but that’s still the number that’s used and you can expect it to stay steady in this bill.

Streetsblog has also wondered whether support for transit operating expenses might make it into this bill, and from what we hear, there might be a compromise. Aides say top committee Republican Richard Shelby is amenable to the argument that some operating assistance — as opposed to capital expenditures, which is what is normally funded with federal dollars — might be appropriate during a time of economic downturns, in order to avoid an abrupt dropoff in service or fare increases. But the support would be a temporary crisis measure, not ongoing policy.

As for what programs might get “consolidated” out of existence in the name of streamlining the federal program — we’ll have to wait and see.

Senators Collins, left, and McCaskill at their press conference. Image: STLtoday

Last week, McCaskill and Collins introduced the ambitiously-named Bipartisan Jobs Creation Act. The bill begins with the payroll tax cut and wraps it in additional tax cuts, deregulation measures, and a $35.8 billion infrastructure investment program. The whole thing would be paid for by eliminating some subsidies for oil companies and by instituting a surtax on millionaires’ income—though exceptions will be made for small business owner-operator “job creators.”

The two senators are generally touting this bill as a tax relief bill first, and a pay-your-fair-share bill second—infrastructure gets third-stringed at best, but the provisions are still worth looking into.

The McCaskill-Collins infrastructure plan [PDF] includes $10 billion to capitalize state infrastructure banks and $25 billion for highways and bridges—just highways and bridges. Out of $25 billion—about half an average year’s transportation spending by the federal government—not a dime goes to transit.

By promoting state infrastructure banks, McCaskill and Collins are throwing their weight behind the Republican vision for infrastructure spending and against the President’s. The President and a number of other prominent figures have advocated to no avail for the creation of a National Infrastructure Bank, and Politico reports that they’ll try again next year—to the familiar tune of $10 billion. Meanwhile, House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica has included support for state infrastructure banks—not a national one—in his reauthorization bill. The senators opted for state I-banks in this case because they are an existing program that could be expanded, while “there is no consensus yet on how to address a National Infrastructure Bank,” according to Senator McCaskill’s press secretary, John LaBombard.

Furthermore, the bill summary states that the $25 billion for highways and bridges is for “rebuild and repair” projects, but LaBombard clarified that they can also be used for expansion of existing roads and new construction. They can’t, however, be used for transit.

McCaskill-Collins is the latest in a growing list of bills that attach infrastructure spending to various other issues, all in the name of job creation. First there was the “drilling-for-infrastructure” proposal, touted as the House Republicans’ major jobs bill. Then there was Rep. Nick Rahall’s Buy America bill (“regulation-for-protectionism”), and now the vote on Boehner’s Keystone XL bill.

With Congress staying in session until a deal is struck on the payroll tax cut, and the pressure high to get it done by Friday, McCaskill and Collins could be poised to present a true bipartisan alternative and break the deadlock. If their bill passes, and the infrastructure portion remained intact, we can only speculate as to the effect it would have on the Senate reauthorization bill come February.

Orrin Hatch, top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has some ideas about how to fund the transportation bill. Photo: Mediaite

Seven of the 11 GOP members of the Finance Committee sent a letter to Chair Max Baucus late last week with their suggestions. Here they are:

• $3.5 billion rescission from the Advanced Vehicle Technology Manufacturing Loan Program
• $3 billion transfer from the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund
• reclaiming $2.5 billion in transfers over the next 10 years from the Highway Trust Fund to the Land and Water Conservation Fund
• expanded oil and gas production in Alaska and the Outer Continental Shelf ($5.2 billion over 10 years)
• rescission of other unspent federal funds

The GOP members say the first three rescissions wouldn’t be felt much, especially for the programs that routinely bring in more than they spend out.

And then, of course, there’s the oil drilling. They’ve been trying to sneak Alaska oil drilling into just about everything these days, it seems — and here it is, showing up in this proposal to find $12 billion. Despite the fact that it could take years to earn a dime from oil drilling, the GOP acts like it’s the money spigot for everything the government wants to spend — if only the Democrats would stop being so sanctimonious about caribou babies.

So there you have it: spending cuts and oil drilling, the cure for all that ails the country (and, in this case, the solution for the transportation funding shortfall).

For good measure, the Republicans also suggest eliminating Davis-Bacon requirements that federally-funded projects pay at least a “prevailing wage.” So, just in case the ideological assault on environmental causes wasn’t enough to freak out the Democrats, here comes an ideological assault on labor rights.

As with everything else related to the reauthorization, it’s no use holding your breath for more action on these issues until late January or (more likely) February. Congress’s initial target adjournment date was yesterday, but they seem serious about next week being their last week in Washington before the holidays.

Meanwhile, Politico is reporting on a “brewing turf battle” in the House over spending levels — and, yes, how to fund them:

Rep. Steve LaTourette, at a private transportation meeting yesterday with stakeholders and staffers, said House leaders had approached Transportation & Infrastructure Chairman John Mica to suggest paring down the highway bill to two or three years, according to several sources at the meeting. Their plan: fund highway and transit programs at $65 billion to $70 billion a year, using current gas tax receipts, $7 billion from spending down the Highway Trust Fund’s balance and $50 billion from “a secret source.”

Mica is sticking to his guns on a five-year bill (down from the six years he was so insistent about just a few months back). But Politico says House Speaker John Boehner “wants to approve a highway bill that can be sold as a major Republican jobs initiative” more than he cares about a long-term bill that would provide more certainty to the transportation industry. Boehner has been pushing a bill funded by (what else?) oil drilling.

LaTourette acknowledged to Politico that “the energy link was not that strong because it doesn’t produce that much money, so the money is going to have to come from someplace else.”

Where would that be? It’s a secret.

The word on the street is that, at the same meeting, LaTourette also pledged to seek complete streets language for the transportation reauthorization bill.

These numbers, from the Office of Management and Budget, indicate that the Highway Account of the Highway Trust fund is in better fiscal shape than previously thought. So why are senators still chasing after $12 billion? Source: OMB

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and his Finance Committee have been looking high and low for a $12 billion patch to fund the transportation reauthorization bill that passed the Senate EPW Committee a few weeks ago. According to Politico’s transportation reporters, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, Sen. Orrin Hatch, has already rejected several of Baucus’s ideas.

But the question is not only, “How will we get the money?” It’s also, “How much money do we need?” The dollar amount the Senate is seeking could lavish more money than necessary on roads while leaving transit out in the cold.

The EPW Committee wants to hold transportation spending at current levels (plus inflation), which they estimate at $109 billion over two years. Receipts into the Highway Trust Fund (from gas taxes and other vehicle fees) aren’t expected to be sufficient to pay that bill. The Congressional Budget Office told the committee that the HTF is $12 billion short of the amount needed to fully fund the bill. That amount is destined just for highways, based on projections that the Mass Transit Account will be solvent through the end of 2013 – in fact, ending that year with a $1.5 billion balance.

But last month, the two top members of the Senate Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over transit, asked FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff for confirmation of those numbers [PDF]. Rogoff replied that he, in fact, found another set of numbers to be more accurate [PDF].

In August, the Office of Management and Budget completed a “Mid-Session Review” (MSR), using updated estimates. Rogoff explains the OMB’s findings:

Assuming baseline levels of FTA contract authority and obligation limitations, our latest MSR estimates are that the MTA will have a $2.4 billion cash balance (positive) at the end of fiscal year 2012, but a $1.9 billion cash shortfall (negative) at the end of fiscal year 2013. Larger cash shortfalls are also projected for fiscal years 2014 through 2017 assuming baseline funding levels…

The FTA recognizes that minimum levels of funding are needed in the MTA at any time of the year to avoid having insufficient funds to cover potential outlays. For the MTA this “prudent balance” level is $1 billion, so the MTA will need $2.9 billion ($1 billion prudent balance plus $1.9 billion cash shortfall) for fiscal year 2013 to maintain this level.

While it remains above this “prudent balance” level, it has sufficient cash to cover one month’s projected outlays. If the account balance were to drop below this level, the Department would begin its notification process to grantees because the account would be at risk of having insufficient funds to cover potential outlays.

The OMB also finds that the highway account will have a $3.9 billion shortfall at the end of 2013 [see above].

These numbers are a world away from the CBO estimates. The OMB shows more parity between highways’ needs and transit’s needs, while lowering the total funding hurdle by more than half.

I wondered if part of the enormous inflation of highway needs in the CBO report was the product of a larger need for a “prudent balance,” but an FHWA spokesperson told me they don’t have the discretion to control the balance the way FTA does. According to him, the FHWA doesn’t maintain a “prudent balance” at all.

So what’s the proper amount that the Senate needs to find to plug the hole in the bill? Neither estimate seeks to leave any money in the bank, but just to end the year 2013 at the break-even point. CBO says the magic number is $12 billion to end 2013 without bankrupting the HTF. OMB says it’s $1.9 billion for transit plus $3.9 billion for highways, equaling $5.8 billion, plus the $1 billion prudent balance the FTA wants to maintain, for a total of $6.8 billion.

But one Congressional aide told me the Banking Committee isn’t looking to lower the total, but rather add the $2.9 billion for transit on top of the $12 billion Finance is already looking for. After all, no one wants to appear to be taking anything away from highways.

That’s one way to do it. But using the most accurate set of numbers has to be the best policy, not to mention the one easiest for Finance to achieve — and for deficit hawks to approve.

The Highway Account has no divine right to $12 billion that may greatly exceed the actual deficit. There’s no need to overfund road-building at a time of extreme fiscal discipline. So why haven’t advocates of the Senate bill been trumpeting the results of the OMB report and its finding that the bill will cost far less than projected, giving the Finance Committee an easier job to do?

The new Ridesharing Institute would have liked to see more support for carpooling in the Senate transportation bill. Photo: Matt Duench's Blog

They call it “a missed opportunity.”

In a blog post for the Eno Foundation, where she serves on the Board of Advisors, Cynthia Burbank of Parsons Brinckerhoff (and vice chair of the new Ridesharing Institute) lamented the exclusion of ridesharing in the Senate bill (though, she acknowledges, “almost everyone” overlooks carpooling and vanpooling). She groups the two modes together to call it “C/V.”

C/V currently serves 10 percent of work trips – more than transit, biking, and walking combined. It saves money for households and increases options for commuters everywhere. It is a policy and modal option that could improve system performance and reduce congestion, could be planned and implemented in one to two years, does not require an EIS or streamlining angst, complements and reinforces transit, and works as well in rural and small/mid size metros as it does in the mega cities. But it has been in decline, in part because of lack of Federal emphasis and support. We need to reverse that trend.

SAFETEA-LU, the current transportation law, includes many mentions of encouraging C/V but no dollar amount to support it. Official transportation policy has encouraged carpooling since ISTEA passed in 1991. The law “hereby declared” that “special effort should be made to promote commuter modes of transportation which conserve energy, reduce pollution, and reduce traffic congestion” and directed the transportation secretary to “assist both public and private employers and employees who wish to establish carpooling and vanpooling programs” and so on. Still – no money.

Perhaps the most significant federal investment in ridesharing is the implementation of HOV lanes, and FHWA doesn’t quantify the amount it spends on that separately from the amount it spends on other road maintenance projects in the states.

Some transit agencies sponsor ride-share matching, or even subsidize van pools, with Federal Transit Administration dollars — but the FTA doesn’t have any data on how much federal money is spent for these activities.

Burbank says MAP-21 “has some helpful C/V provisions, including eligibility under the Transportation Mobility Program, non-degradation for HOV lane performance, and provision for EV charging at park-and-ride lots.” But she’d also like to see eligibility in the National Highway Performance Program. (Of course, eligibility is no guarantee of actual funding — bike/ped is technically eligible under that program, but no one’s expecting bike/ped projects to see a flood of funding come from that source.)

A sensible idea Burbank puts forward is to set performance requirements based on “person trips and passenger miles (as well as freight throughput) as opposed to the old vehicle throughput measures of the past.” She also wants more research dedicated to innovating and piloting carpooling options and a mandate to USDOT to develop and implement a strategic plan to “double carpooling and vanpooling within 10 years.”

All of that could be part of a meaningful national goal of reducing congestion and carbon emissions. The current bill includes performance measures, but none that would lead to such significant work incentivizing ridesharing and other means of bringing down vehicle-miles-traveled.

Meanwhile, Burbank, in her post, points to two seemingly contradictory trends. Ridesharing is down below ten percent, according to the American Community Survey – a big drop from its 12.2 percent share in 2000. This, Burbank blames on a lack of federal support. But she also says it’s a perfect time for a ridesharing comeback:

Today, new forms of C/V have tremendous potential, using modern information technology, iPhone apps, slugging, “flexible” or “casual” C/V, as well as expanded employer C/V programs.

If iPhone apps and other third-party interventions and informal innovations are the new frontier of ridesharing, is it really incumbent on the federal program to make these happen? Other options are available at the local level or even the employer level (not the federal level) like preferential parking for carpoolers, though it’s very hard to enforce.

Of course, one transportation expert suggested, the real solution is “just stop building so damn much parking.” Maybe the best ride-sharing incentive the feds could adopt is simply to stop paying employees to park their private vehicles at work.

The Cherry Creek trail running from downtown Denver 40 miles out to the suburbs was partially funded by TE grants. Photo: National Transportation Enhancements Clearinghouse

TE, which previously received a dedicated 10 percent cut of all Surface Transportation Program funds ($878 million in 2010), will now be competing with Safe Routes to School and the Recreational Trails Program (the other major pots of previously dedicated bike/ped funding) as part of CMAQ-AA, which will be funded at TE’s 2009 level of $833 million. (Note that although TE received 10 percent of all STP funds, it constituted less than two percent of the entire federal transportation program.)

In an even more dramatic shift, bike/ped-averse state governments will be able to opt out of CMAQ-AA altogether. The chart below, which distills a document published by America Bikes [PDF], illustrates the changes, project type by project type:

Running CMAQ Up the Flagpole…

Under the new system, most bicycle and pedestrian projects are still eligible for TE funds. What’s noteworthy are the other categories of projects that are now eligible, or not. Transportation museums are thrown out of the program, while eligibility is expanded for landscaping, environmental mitigation, and scenic and historic bridges. It’s some of those expansions that worry Jesse Prentice-Dunn of the Sierra Club, who told Streetsblog that projects like wetlands management—while obviously important as a matter of environmental stewardship—could squeeze out some bicycle and pedestrian projects. However, he applauds the last-minute decision to remove HOV lanes, another expensive category of projects, from eligibility under CMAQ.

“Overall, we really want this bill to construct a planning and funding process that enables projects to advance on their merit, particularly, in our opinion, [projects] that can reduce dependence on oil,” said Prentice-Dunn. “This bill can be a way to break that addiction.”

Still, he cautioned that any new transportation bill will need to be assessed on the basis of two things. First, funds should continue to be dedicated—or at least reliably disbursed—to non-motorized transportation projects, given the historical bias favoring automobiles. Second, project selection criteria should be altered in order to ensure that non-motorized projects have a shot even without dedicated funding from programs like TE. The changes in the Senate bill, then, signify a step backwards on dedicated funding. There’s no indication that other aspects of the bill would compensate for that setback by establishing criteria that reward investment in active transportation.

…But Who Will Salute?

What would these changes mean for bike/ped projects on the ground or in planning stages? Price Armstrong, program manager for MassBike in Boston, says he can’t overstate how important TE funding has been. Armstrong points out that Massachusetts, ranked ninth among states for bike-friendliness by the League of American Bicyclists, is one of the few states to have adopted a statewide Complete Streets policy. However, the progress in Massachusetts was not accomplished in a vacuum:

Massachusetts has made a lot of progress just over the past five years, partially on its own but significantly thanks to the federal contribution to its bike/ped projects through TE, CMAQ, and Recreational Trails Program dollars. In a cash-strapped environment, even in a bike-friendly state, active transportation projects are the first to get shelved. Since the [U.S.] Senate, which is controlled (barely) by more bike-friendly Democrats, proposed a 20-30 percent reduction in funding, an opt-out clause for states, and increased the competition for the funding, we are extremely concerned.

Armstrong specifically cited the Bay State Greenway as one project currently underway that could suffer substantial setbacks as a result of the changes to TE. Such difficulties are likely to beset the larger projects first, according to Dr. Joseph Hacker, the manager of Transit, Bicycle, and Pedestrian planning at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission in Philadelphia: “The scale of projects may shift from desire lines on maps [i.e. sweeping statewide visions] to more local initiatives… Advocacy is going to have to change to projects which are possible rather than big picture ‘bicycle highway’ planning.”

Hacker added that while some states may opt to flex all their funds to road projects (Montana or North Dakota), and some metropolitan areas with nascent bike movements could be drowned out by rural interests at the state level (Georgia or Pennsylvania), other states might devote their full share to bicycle funding (Colorado or California).

“A stronger local case is going to have to be made regarding the benefits of new bike/ped projects in order to garner funding,” Hacker said.

The Storm Before The Calm?

The aversion of many states to funding active transportation only makes the job of implementing bike/ped projects that much harder. As one possible immediate adjustment, the League of American Bicyclists’ Darren Flusche suggests, “Advocates should be getting DOTs to fund as many of these projects as possible, as soon as possible, because we still don’t know what the future holds.”

The “increased flexibility” touted by the authors of the Senate bill essentially gives states an easy way to “opt out” of the program. The new provision allows states to drag their feet on spending the money, only to be rewarded for their tardiness by not having to use those funds for their intended purposes. “This could really set the clock back on all of the progress towards a more bicycle-friendly America we’ve made in the past 20 years,” said Flusche.

Flusche says that his organization and others like it will keep the pressure on Congress in the meantime. Their aim will be to convince lawmakers of the value and importance of protecting active transportation projects before MAP-21 becomes the law of the land. Afterward, advocates will shift their focus from Congress to states and local governments, as Flusche and Dr. Hacker predict, with many implications yet unknown.