Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Public interest journalist Stuart Silverstein at FairWarning.org has uncovered the fact that red states (defined as those that went for Mitt Romney in the last election) have higher traffic fatality rates than blue states (those that went for Barack Obama). The correlation is striking, Silverstein says, but he’s at a loss to explain it:

The 10 states with the highest fatality rates all were red, while all but one of the 10 lowest-fatality states were blue. What’s more, the place with the nation’s lowest fatality rate, while not a state, was the very blue District of Columbia.

Massachusetts was lowest among the states, with 4.79 road deaths per 100,000 people. By contrast, red Wyoming had a fatality rate of 27.46 per 100,000.

The numbers are based on 2010 fatality statistics from the NHTSA.

Silverstein asked a few sources to weigh in — including Thomas Frank, author of “What’s the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America,” and former federal auto safety researcher Louis V. Lombardo — but they couldn’t quite put their finger on what’s going on.

“It may be something we don’t have a definitive answer for,” Lombardo said.

“This is someplace where you would not expect to see a partisan divide,” Frank said.

I’m not nearly as smart as either of these guys, but I couldn’t help noticing that there are different travel patterns in the (mostly rural) red states and the (more urban) blue states. Perhaps that has something to do with it.

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Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) could be the next chair of the House Transportation Committee. Photo: Office of Rep. Bill Shuster.

This is the first of two posts examining Rep. Bill Shuster’s candidacy for the chairmanship of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. We’ll post the second one, focused on his positions on bike/ped programs and funding issues, tomorrow.

Over the next few weeks, we could see a shake-up on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the House. Current Chair John Mica (R-FL) has been the top Republican on the committee for six years, and according to GOP rules, that’s the limit. While Mica is asking leadership for a little wiggle room, his deputy is making the case for his own candidacy. Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) announced late last week that he would seek the chairmanship.

If that name rings a bell, it may be because his father was a legend on Capitol Hill. Evoke Bud Shuster’s name in Washington and you’ll hear story after story of the deal-making he pulled off when he chaired the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure from 1995 to 2001. He brought home more bacon to his district in rural Pennsylvania than it could even handle, according to a profile that ran in the National Journal as his Congressional career came to an end.

Bill Shuster took over his father’s seat in Congress in 2001, and soon joined the committee his father presided over. Now he could take over his dad’s gavel, too, when the new Congress is seated in January.

Mica is meeting with Republican leaders this week to discuss the possibility of getting a waiver to the six-year rule. Rep. Paul Ryan is expected to receive such a waiver, so that he can go on serving at the helm of the Budget Committee. But does Ryan’s exception mean Mica will get one too? Unlikely. Last spring, rumors circulated that Republican leaders were fed up with Mica’s inability to pass a transportation bill and were looking to Shuster to step in. Those rumors were somewhat overblown, but may indicate that leaders aren’t looking for two more years of John Mica at the gavel of T&I.

Shuster, meanwhile, has excellent relationships with House GOP honchos. And as chair of the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials, he put his own stamp on the reauthorization process. He, with Mica, inserted a highly contentious “red meat” provision (later dropped) to privatize Amtrak’s profitable Northeast Corridor service, and he supported the inclusion of automatic approval for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

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Of the pro-transit ballot initiatives that the Center For Transportation Excellence counts, 80 percent were victorious this year. Source: CFTE

In addition to some of the high-profile measures that we covered already, Election Day brought many successes on some smaller ballot initiatives. According to the Center For Transportation Excellence, pro-transit campaigns had an 80 percent success rate this year at the ballot box, with more ballot measures coming up for a vote than any previous year.

Arlington County, Virginia voted by a 4-to-1 margin to approve a $32 million bond, with about half the proceeds supporting Washington Metro capital projects and the rest paying for street repair, bike/ped infrastructure, and traffic calming. The path to victory is easy in Arlington – it’s the country’s third-wealthiest county, and no bond measure has failed there since 1979, according to the Washington Post.

Richland County, South Carolina, home to the city of Columbia and the University of South Carolina, passed a one-cent sales tax – one-quarter of which will pay for regional bus service, with the rest funding road improvements, greenways, and bike lanes.

In Lynden, Washington, outside of Bellingham, voters approved a 0.2-cent sales tax hike expected to bring in $300,000 over two years to pay for road maintenance and walking trails.

And Stephenson County, Illinois, approved an advisory measure voicing support for a countywide transit system funded by federal, state, and local sources.

Much of this information comes from the Center For Transportation Excellence, which tracks transit-related ballot measures. CFTE doesn’t track referendums for road projects, so don’t take the passage of these measures to mean that transit is uniquely successful at the ballot. The biggest bond measure to pass this year — for anything — was $1.3 billion for roads in Arkansas. Despite the fact that it levied a half-cent sales tax to pay for the bonding, voters approved it 58 to 42. Alaska also approved a $453 million bond measure to pay for ports, harbors, and roads. And Maine approved a $51.5 million bond for road repair [PDF].

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On the local level, the night’s biggest win for sustainable transportation was the victory of Kirk Caldwell over Ben Cayetano to be mayor of Honolulu. Caldwell had won just 29 percent of the vote in the three-way primary race, facing a steep uphill battle in the general election versus Cayetano, a popular former governor who had pulled in 44 percent of the primary vote.

Former Gov. Ben Cayetano failed to convince Honolulu to join him in killing a long-awaited transit project. Photo: KHON2/Facebook

Cayetano had come out of retirement and joined the race for the explicit purpose of stopping construction of a rail line that’s been decades in the making. Caldwell remains a staunch supporter of the transit line and promised to see the project through. He won 54 to 46 percent — handing Cayetano the first loss of his political career.

Meanwhile, Republican Carl DeMaio has just conceded the San Diego mayor’s race, which was still too close to call just a couple of hours ago. DeMaio held a slim lead through most of last night, but the balance flipped early this morning and U.S. Rep. Bob Filner pulled off a narrow victory.

As we mentioned in our story on the race, San Diego bike/walk groups did an impressive job getting the two candidates to fight over who could be the most supportive of active transportation. While DeMaio put together an admirable plan for making San Diego a top-50 bicycling city and creating an environment more conducive to walking, Filner has a decades-long record of supporting sustainability. His passion for active transportation and the need to reduce car dependency in San Diego came through in his at times acerbic debate with DeMaio on transportation issues.

It appears Filner’s offer to settle the mayor’s contest with a bicycle race won’t be necessary.

Yesterday’s election made history on many different fronts: gay marriage, immigration, consumer protection, and more. But America also voted to maintain essentially the same balance of power in Washington that has brought about so much gridlock. In the transportation arena, that gridlock meant three years of dithering on a national bill and, ultimately, a new law that failed to make many of the reforms needed to help the country build a greener, safer, 21st century transportation system.

Republicans hung on to their primacy in the House of Representatives and the Democrats maintained control of the Senate and the White House. This Congress, which closely resembles the last one but is tilted a little more toward the Democrats, has less than two years until the current transportation law expires.

With his newly-won second term, will President Obama be emboldened to fight for increased revenues for transportation and infrastructure in order to resolve the paralysis over spending? Will he take action on climate change, as environmentalists are urging him to do?

As Steve Kretzmann of Oil Change International wrote this morning, “The top candidate backed by the fossil fuel industry – big oil, gas and coal – just lost the election.” Mitt Romney raised more than six times as much money from these industries as Obama, and his loss is a sign their message failed to resonate with Americans.

Whether that verdict translates into bolder action in Obama’s second term remains to be seen. Other lingering questions: Will Ray LaHood really leave, as he said he would, or might he stick around at least for another year or two, as some insiders speculate? Will a somewhat chastened Republican Party be more willing to compromise on legislation in the next session? The current transportation bill, MAP-21, expires September 30, 2014. The people elected yesterday will negotiate the next one.

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It’s Election Day — finally! The top of the ticket has sucked most of the oxygen out of the room, but don’t forget that there are 19 transportation-related measures on ballots across the country. So far this year, pro-transit measures have an 86 percent success rate at the ballot, and there are more transportation amendments being voted on this year than any other in recent memory. Here’s Streetsblog’s overview of the big ones.

Yonah Freemark took a look at some of the most important local elections here, spotlighting 11 charter amendments and one mayoral race, in Honolulu, which we also profiled. And below, we crib from Jeff Wood’s fantastic roundup of where to find election results at his blog, The Overhead Wire. He’ll also be live-blogging and tweeting election results.

For a little historical perspective, here’s Jeff’s coverage of the 2008 results and the 2010 results and, of course, the fantastic wealth of information at the Center For Transportation Excellence’s website.

What follows is from The Overhead Wire.

California
Alameda County is looking for a half cent sales tax increase in order to help AC Transit operate better bus service and build a horrible BART extension to Livermore. Measure B1 results can be found here. 

Los Angeles County needs a 66.6% or higher vote to extend 2008′s Measure R so that projects can be fastracked. Measure J results can be found here.

Colorado
El Paso County is looking to pass a sales tax measure that would benefit rural transit capital projects. Results can be found here.

Hawaii 
The Mayors Race is likely to decide the direction of rail transit over the next decade. Ben Cayetano wants to halt the project and has his own plan for BRT. Honolulu election results here.

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In recent posts, we’ve explored the impact President Obama has had on transportation and land-use policy, and we’ve tried to square Candidate Mitt Romney’s oil-soaked rhetoric with Governor Mitt Romney’s smart growth record.

We don’t want anyone protesting outside our offices, so our coverage of the presidential election must include the third party candidates.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein

Green Party nominee Jill Stein takes her transportation agenda from the party platform — which is everything a sustainability promoter would love. Cheap or free mass transit, funded by “major public investment.” An end to automobile and fossil fuel subsidies. A moratorium on highway widening, using the money saved for mass transit and facilities for pedestrians and bicyclists. Free community bike fleets. High-speed rail. No free parking in non-residential areas well served by mass transit, preferential parking rates for HOVs. Higher gas taxes, with some compensation for low income drivers. Freight transport by rail.

The Green transportation platform is by far the most complete of the four minor parties on the ballot in the race for president.

Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson

Libertarian Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, doesn’t have anything to say about transportation at all. And his energy platform is simple: “The government should simply stay out of the business of trying to promote or ‘manage’ energy development. The marketplace will meet our energy needs.” That means no subsidies for fossil fuels. One would imagine he’s not a big proponent of subsidies for transit, either — though other libertarians, notably Ron Paul, have taken a more complex view.

Constitution Party candidate Virgil Goode

Former U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode, a former Democrat and Republican who is now running with the Constitution Party, is similarly silent on transportation and infrastructure. His energy platform centers around independence from foreign fossil fuels — not from all fossil fuels. It reads more like a national security policy than an energy policy. Drilling in Alaska and off shore? Let’s do it. The Constitution Party would abolish the Department of Energy.

For what it’s worth, during the re-election campaign that he eventually lost, one of the most damaging events for Goode was when supporters showed up to a July Fourth rally in a Hummer. It blew up when Jon Stewart lampooned the event on the Daily Show, saying Goode was too cozy with big oil and too disconnected from his constituents.

Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson

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Mitt Romney's well-reasoned views on energy and development morphed into a lovefest for fossil fuels as he set his sights on the White House. Photo courtesy of Romney for President

If Mitt Romney the President reverts back to the positions of Mitt Romney the Governor, transportation policy in America could see significant steps forward. Better-maintained roads. Smarter growth. Cleaner air.

But if Mitt Romney the President follows through on the rhetoric of Mitt Romney the Campaigner, it will be a different story.

Not that candidate Romney has talked much about transportation. But he’s made it clear he’s casting his lot with the fossil fuel industry. He’s brought billionaire oil man Harold Hamm into his inner circle as an energy advisor, pushing for more drilling. Romney has raised $11.4 million directly from the energy sector, and far more than that has been poured into anti-Obama, pro-drilling TV ads by oil companies.

What did the oil industry get for their generosity? For starters, Romney’s energy plan reads like a parody of desperate political pandering to Texas oil barons. Maximum drilling is paramount. Reducing oil consumption is a quaint little notion for liberals and sweater-wearers. To candidate Romney, the idea of reversing climate change and slowing the rise of the oceans is a laugh line – a joke that suddenly doesn’t seem so funny to people living by the New Jersey and New York coastline.

Romney is now the standard-bearer for a Republican Party whose platform accuses President Obama of engaging in “social engineering” in pursuit of “an exclusively urban vision of dense housing and government transit.” The GOP platform indulges in Agenda 21 paranoia and doesn’t talk much about renewable energy or fuel efficiency. It brags about the worst parts of the recently-passed transportation bill, revives old calls for the privatization of Amtrak services, and cheers on highway-builders.

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With the election just days away, it’s a good time to reflect on what the Obama administration has done with transportation policy – and what a Romney administration might have in store. Streetsblog does not endorse candidates. This is an overview of their respective records and a look back at what we know of these two men. We’ll start with President Obama in this post and move on to Mitt Romney in the next one.

High-speed rail could have been President Obama's signature achievement. Photo courtesy of Obama for America.

Perhaps the best thing President Obama did for transportation policy was to nominate Ray LaHood as U.S. DOT secretary. Sure, LaHood reportedly wanted to be Secretary of Agriculture, not transportation. And yes, Obama’s main motive for nominating the moderate Republican congressman was to make friends across the aisle, a goal that for the most part went woefully unmet. Nonetheless, LaHood has proven to be a genuine reformer.

We knew LaHood was a keeper when he stood on a tabletop and declared that bicycles were on an “equal footing” with cars, announcing “the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.”

The administration’s creation of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities has created valuable new links between federal transportation, housing, and environmental policies, demonstrating how government can eliminate barriers between agencies. It’s a model that some state transportation agencies have begun to take note of, as they approach local governments to craft land use and transportation decisions that make sense in tandem.

Even the Republican House of Representatives’ ire toward the Partnership can’t destroy the essential piece of it: that agencies are breaking down siloes and communicating more effectively with each other. The smart growth ethic that infuses the Partnership has permeated the three agencies involved – and many more.

Another signature achievement of this administration has been the TIGER program. TIGER has awarded more than $3 billion to more than 200 transportation projects based on their ability to meet strategic objectives, bucking longstanding policies (which continue in the current transportation bill) that fund transportation based on formulas and a singular focus on making sure every state gets their piece of the pie. While TIGER has some geographic criteria and a set-aside for rural areas, it has rewarded cities, regions, and towns that are innovating, and the program has prioritized bike/ped infrastructure, streetcars, freight rail, maintenance of existing roads, and other measures that advance sustainable transportation and smart growth. And by the way, that rural set-aside isn’t a bad thing: It’s helped jump-start transit access in a lot of small towns and tribal areas.

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The election is less than a week away. Americans have a choice between a) a president who has overseen notable transportation and land use innovations but failed to provide leadership when the national transportation bill could have been reformed, and b) a former governor who enacted a progressive, pro-smart-growth agenda but who has renounced those positions as a candidate.

City Council Member Carl DeMaio has a plan to make San Diego a more walkable, bikeable city.

So the San Diego mayoralty probably isn’t what’s keeping you up at night, glued to Nate Silver’s election forecasting. But it’s been a nasty and surprisingly close race between U.S. Rep. Bob Filner, a Democrat, and Republican City Council Member Carl DeMaio. According to some (admittedly confusing and poorly conducted) polls, it could go either way. So it may be reassuring to know that no matter who is elected mayor of San Diego, the victor says he will wholeheartedly support biking, walking, and sustainability.

Three San Diego active transportation organizations – Move San Diego, WalkSanDiego, and the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition – did an impressive job not only getting these candidates on the record, but getting them to spend an hour battling over who could be the walkingest, bikingest, livabilityest mayor San Diego had ever seen. (The debate they sponsored is available for your viewing pleasure here.)

U.S. Rep. Bob Filner wants to know where that plan was three years ago.

Remember that according to one of San Diego’s members of Congress, non-automobile modes of transportation are “not feasible” here. (Side note: Rep. Duncan Hunter, who told me nearly two years ago that bicycling isn’t real transportation and highway building is enshrined in the constitution, just switched districts as a result of redistricting, and he now represents a far more urban portion of San Diego County. Perhaps he’ll be educated on active transportation by the great folks who hosted the mayor’s debate.)

But in this city where, according to Rep. Hunter, no one could ever possibly get around without a car, both major candidates fell all over themselves to prove that they would build the most bike lanes and bulb-outs.

Before a mayoral debate sponsored by the walking and biking groups last month, DeMaio released his bike plan for the city [PDF]. Filner said he was willing to “stipulate” that it’s a great plan – but he countered that DeMaio is a new kid on the sustainability block, whereas he’s been doing the work for years. DeMaio’s plan includes everything from pedestrian master planning to making San Diego “the most bike-friendly city in the world.” (During the debate, the candidates only agreed that it should be among the top 50 in the country.)

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