I asked the Cap’n what his questions would be. The reply:

Meanwhile, reader Ryan Richter sent in his revised list of questions too. They’re a little more specific, so I’ll start with Ryan’s. With any luck, the answers to Cap’n Transit’s questions will be woven into the answers below.

Thanks to both of you for keeping me focused on what really matters in this whole political hullabaloo.

Ryan’s first question:

1. How will public transportation fare after being practically decapitated in the last round?

Public transit came out a winner when members of the House GOP mounted their full-frontal assault against it. “The uprising was so immediate and so bipartisan [the Republicans] backed off,” said Deron Lovaas of NRDC. Democrats and some urban and suburban Republicans blew up at the idea that transit would no longer be eligible for its 20 percent of Highway Trust Fund dollars, which it’s gotten since the Fund’s Mass Transit Account was created under Ronald Reagan in 1983. Surviving an attempt against it makes transit that much stronger now – its opponents know that defunding transit is a losing issue for them.

The Senate bill keeps transit funding levels about the same as they’ve been but it makes some good changes to transit policy, like reducing delays in getting transit projects moving and prioritizing improvements to existing transit infrastructure. Perhaps most significantly, it allows transit agencies, under some limited circumstances, to use federal funds for operations instead of just capital. The restrictions on those funds have left some agencies with brand new buses and no way to pay drivers. Transit advocates have been asking for more flexibility in using these funds for years, and it’s reassuring to see that some relief could be coming.

The Senate’s MAP-21 also provides funding for TOD planning and would permanently restore parity between transit and parking commuter benefits.

Will all of these Senate provisions make it into whatever comes out of the conference? It’s impossible to know, but if I may turn back to inside-baseball Washington politics for a second, it’s worth remembering that the Senate is in a strong position to maintain many of its bill’s key elements. Technically, nothing should be introduced into a conference bill except for provisions in the two bills being conferenced, and there’s no real House bill to speak of. Plus, it’s very possible that the outcome of this conference will be no bill at all but another extension until the lame duck period after the election. But if there is a bill at the end of all this, Ryan also wants to know:

2. How do we handle the overwhelming state of good repair issues impacting all transportation infrastructure?

This is one place where the Senate bill shines. Transportation for America has a good write-up of the Senate bill’s State of Good Repair provisions, in which they applaud the new requirement that at least 60 percent of maintenance funds be used for actual maintenance, not new capacity. Allowing states to divert 40 percent of repair funds for new capacity still seems like too much, but they used to be allowed to squander up to 50 percent on non-maintenance projects.

Plus: “States are required to develop asset management plans,” wrote Steve Davis at T4America, “and as a part of these plans establish performance targets for the condition of roads and bridges and the performance of the system. In addition, the program includes provisions to hold states accountable for the repair of Interstate pavement and National Highway System bridges by requiring that they spend a certain amount of funding on the repair of those facilities if they fall below minimum standards established by USDOT.” And roads that fall under the National Highway System will go from about 160,000 to 220,000 miles. These maintenance requirements will help steer states away from building new highways that would only exacerbate sprawl.

The House bill (when there was a House bill) would have required better reporting and allowed for some penalties for deficient bridges but didn’t have the same restrictions on spending.

But Ryan, you asked about all transportation infrastructure, not just roads and bridges. As we referenced above, the Senate bill also includes the Core Capacity Improvement Project, which would expand funding eligibility to include improvements to the capacity and functionality of existing fixed guideway systems. And it directs U.S. DOT to “achieve a balance” between rail system development and improvement of the current system.

3. How does the bill recognize the long (and short) term societal trends towards transportation that does not include the automobile?

It doesn’t. Not really. It maintains the current four-to-one highway-to-transit funding ratio, it weakens programs to fund bicycling and pedestrian safety (even the Cardin-Cochran amendment is only a partial fix), and it doesn’t even contemplate land use. The Senate bill has some helpful provisions for rail (discussed more below) but nothing that will propel forward high-speed rail or even a substantially more robust and reliable non-bullet passenger rail network.

I hope you ask that question of elected officials, Ryan. It gets right to the heart of the problem. A future less dependent on cars (and road-building and oil) is where we’re headed. But even the Senate bill, which transportation reformers support (albeit not without reservations), only makes some thoughtful tweaks on the margins of the current system – it doesn’t substantially reform it.

Next question, Ryan?

4. What is the priority for high speed rail or any other long-term transportation infrastructure investments?

Strangely, the transportation bill isn’t the primary vehicle for rail issues – most of that is covered under the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act (PRIIA). There is some movement to fold passenger rail into the transportation bill, but neither the House nor the Senate bills do that.

That’s not to say that these bills don’t address rail, but they’re not the place where a true high-speed rail network will be born. The Senate bill requires U.S. DOT to develop a long-range national rail plan, as well as regional rail plans that address implementation. If states want federal intercity passenger rail grants, they’ll have to follow suit. There are provisions to get next-gen equipment to more states and to make life a little easier for Amtrak (as opposed to the House, which has shown an interest only in killing Amtrak). The Senate, on the other hand, would expand the kinds of grants Amtrak can apply for (currently, Amtrak can only apply directly for high-speed projects), allow Amtrak to match grants with ticket sales, and create a 100 percent federal grant program for Amtrak and the states to improve or preserve long-distance service. It also allows Amtrak to take over responsibility for environmental reviews. The Senate bill also encourages on-time service by penalizing Amtrak’s host railroads when they are to blame for consistently late train service.

The House’s H.R. 7, on the other hand, would have cut Amtrak’s operating subsidies, limit its use of federal funds, and deny federal funds to “low-speed” projects under 125 mph.

So what will the conference bill do? It will probably be a compromise, with Senate language that requires new spending especially vulnerable. Amtrak is a lightning rod in this Congress, though, and there could be big disagreements over any of it.

5. How will the bill address critical operational funding shortfalls (not to mention capital) that transit agencies are facing?

I’ve addressed some of this above, but the biggest help is the Senate’s allowance of flexible spending for operations during periods of high unemployment. As for capital, the changes to New Starts I mentioned are positive, but it all comes back to Ryan’s third question: Don’t expect this bill to radically shift the balance from car travel to anything else.

6. How will the bill address the structural financial problems facing the Highway Trust Fund? 

Along with the answer to #3, this is probably the most pathetic part of this whole pathetic process. The bill doesn’t address the structural funding issues at all. It doesn’t raise revenues or put in place a more sensible or sustainable system. It doesn’t create a National Infrastructure Bank to help leverage private investments. The House tried to tackle the problem by slashing spending, but that plan was soundly rejected by everyone involved. Then they said they could keep spending levels the same but raise revenues through oil drilling, which would be hilarious if it wasn’t so scary.

The complete paralysis around reforming the funding for transportation is exactly why this bill has been such a headache, and it’s why the Senate bill has to end in September of next year – that’s when the Highway Trust Fund is scheduled to go insolvent, and someone in Washington is going to have to show some real conviction of character to actually change something. But no one wants to do that yet. Which brings me to your last question, Ryan:

7. Will there be a push towards alternative user fees to fund transportation infrastructure?

Now you’re just depressing me. No. No, there won’t.

How can a country that is so wealthy be in such enormous debt? How can a country that can build such marvelous transportation systems not find the money to sustain them? How can a people that enjoyed decades of unrivaled economic hegemony — staggering levels of growth beyond anything seen in human history — be facing such economic turmoil after a couple years of, not even decline, but just slowing growth? The answer to these questions reveal some uncomfortable truths about who we are, how we got here and what options we have for our future prosperity.

—

I’m struck by how strongly our culture associates growth and prosperity with highway construction and expansion. Tom Friedman, a respected left-of-center columnist with the New York Times, had an entire chapter in his most recent book, That Used to Be Us: How America fell behind in the world it invented and how we can come back, devoted to the concept that “our winning equation” is, in part, to invest in infrastructure and then watch prosperity flourish, just like it did in the 1950?s and 1960?s.

Of course, this ignores that fact that our investments during the first generation of America’s Suburban Experiment (1950-1975) were higher return investments that generated a lot of positive cash flow. I like to point out that, when we built the 35W bridge here in Minnesota for the first time, it connected far flung areas of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan region in a way that had not been done before. Following that investment, new commercial real estate was developed, new residential housing went in and the resulting influx of tax receipts made us feel wealthy. When the bridge fell down and had to be rebuilt, we didn’t experience all that new growth, just the costs of construction and delay. Maintenance has an entirely different set of financial metrics than new construction.

Which is why our transportation spending is set up to favor new construction. It is just so much more fun. Maintenance is simply a pain, a local concern. That highway fix it project means nothing but congestion and delays and, when it’s all done, all you have is a little smoother ride. By contrast, new construction is so much better. Not only do the politicians get a ribbon cutting scene, but we can all (once again) “solve” congestion while getting a new WalMart, Taco Bell and Quiki Mart in the process. New growth just feels so much better.

How else can you explain what I experienced last week in Memphis? Here is a city with enormous infrastructure maintenance problems having spent untold sums running highways all over the region. Their local transportation board is proposing the region spend $10 billion more, almost all of it adding new capacity on the far flung (new growth) extremes of the network. Maintenance? That’s someone else’s problem.

How else can you explain a state (Minnesota) that would prefer to spend more on one bridge to aid exurban commuters from the neighboring state than on maintaining all of the state’s 1,149 bridges that are currently rated as structurally deficient? We culturally believe in the power of new growth to solve our problems, that investments in highway capacity and combating congestion pay dividends to us as a society.

Unfortunately, we base this belief on the illusion of wealth that was created in the early years of the Suburban Experiment, where the first life cycle of horizontal expansion had produced growth for our economy and that pesky overhang of maintenance was still a decade or more away. We should know better by now, but there are few in a position to change the system that don’t benefit, at least in the short term, from it being perpetuated.

The emperor has no clothes, indeed, but we’re still in the phase where we jeer and deride the one pointing it out. That will change soon.

What will speed up that change is an understanding of the fact that our transportation investments are not creating wealth, they are destroying it. Now I’m not talking about just the investments where the old Target store at the old interchange is induced to move into the new Target store at the new interchange four miles up the road. I mean almost all of our highway spending. It costs more to build and maintain than it generates in returns and, therefore, will only continue so long as we have the capacity and the desire to delude ourselves.

Let me provide an example. Pretend you were a local elected official and I came to you and said that I had a project that would reduce congestion, allow us to improve traffic safety, create local economic development opportunities and return 2,194% of the cost of the project to the local economy? Sounds good.

What if I then said that the federal government would pick up 90% of the cost, making the local share just $716,000? This is now a no-brainer, right?

Today let’s just look at the federal contribution. I did a Google search for a Diverging Diamond enhancement project with a cost benefit analysis and came up with this one from Kentucky. Yes, I have an obsession with the delusion that is the diverging diamond interchange, but the selection of Kentucky was just random. The report for the project contains an appendix that has a cost benefit analysis as follows:

You can see that by the time you get to 2030, for the diverging diamond without the added enhancements, the cost is $7.2 million but the benefit is nearly 22 times that at $157 million. That is an AWESOME rate of return. Graphically, it would be presented to public officials like this, which makes it easy to understand why it could be supported.

At this point, we’re not going to delve too deeply into what this benefit is. That will come later. Let’s give it the most optimistic spin. Nobody is suggesting that this is money that will pour back into the government. What is being suggested here is that transportation investments like these will reduce congestion, increase mobility, create jobs and that will all grow the economy. So the $157.1 figure could be thought of as the increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Still sound good? Consider that the federal government — through all means of taxation, including income tax, tariffs, business taxes, estate taxes and even including the gas tax — currently captures 15.8% of the economy. Put another way, for each dollar of GDP, about sixteen cents finds its way to the federal government. That means that our whopping $157.1 million in GDP growth only returns $24.2 million to the federal coffers. Graphically, it would look like this.

Okay, this still feels like a good project, doesn’t it? The Federal government spends 90% of $7.2 million and, over the subsequent 15 years, brings in $24.2 million. We should just do this over and over again because we’re just getting richer, right?

Not so fast. It is not like the $24.2 million is going to be spent on transportation, or even that $7.2 million of that is going to be spent on transportation. The Federal government does many things, has tremendous obligations and spends the vast majority of its funds on things that our society deems more worthy of our investment than transportation. In fact, in 2011, the Federal Highway Administration’s budget was 41.1 billion, just 1.07% of the Federal budget. If we are only going to spend 1.07% of what we bring in on transportation, that means this project yields just $259,000 in funds that actually pays for transportation investments.

If the problem here is not obvious to you at this point, let me elaborate. We spend money on transportation. We feel wealthy and experience this enormous “return” (more on that in a second). Only a fraction of that wealth is actually cycled back into the system, however, and an even smaller fraction of that will actually be captured to pay for the project. The amount recouped is ultimately nowhere near the amount invested.

The most obvious “solution” to this problem is to devote more of our Federal budget to transportation projects. That would be the solution of the American Society of Civil Engineers and their adherents in the Infrastructure Cult. Okay, let’s not bother calculating the time value of money (the fact that the costs are today but the benefits are spread out over many future years), but just evaluate what it would take in terms of an increase in our budget to go from $0.26 million returned to break even at $7.2 million. That increase — 27 times the current budget — would make the Federal Highway Administration’s budget $1.1 trillion, bigger than the national security budget ($895 billion), Social Security ($730 billion), Medicare ($491 billion) or Medicaid ($297 billion). That’s not going to happen.

So what if we just raised taxes and the federal government captured more of the wealth generated by this improvement? The calculations reveal that the Federal government would need to increase its take of GDP from 15.4% to 19.8% of the economy, a tax increase of $640 billion with all that extra money devoted just to roads. Only the true socialists and/or the true believers in the power of the Suburban Experiment will think that is a good idea.

Now let me drop the bomb I’ve been alluding too: Those “benefits” that we kind of think of as prosperity, wealth or GDP; they really aren’t. There are derived from a set of narrow correlations between time saved and prosperity that we witnessed in the early 1950?s when we built those initial highways. We connected these far flung places — places only served by railroads or poorly constructed roadways prior — and we saw all kinds of economic gains. We then used that knowledge to build equations to justify expansion of the system. Nobody ever questions those equations today (why would they) and nobody stops to consider the diminishing returns of the system.

So there is not actually any money here, just a few seconds of saved time here and there that economists and engineers equate with money when they are trying to justify a project. Do you take home more money, generate more wealth for the economy or spend more of your income when you can arrive at work 45 seconds more quickly? Not me either. These equations are a joke. (If you want to learn more, read our 2010 series on Costs and Benefits.)

So when I say we are going broke, that this system provides the illusion of wealth in the near term but ultimately destroys wealth, that the decay you see around you in our transportation system is not due to a lack of investment but to the lack of financial viability of the system, you can get a sense of how far gone we are. We are literally operating in a totally different paradigm from reality.

When someone like James Howard Kunstler says we need to rebuild our passenger rail system, that the highway era is a transitional phase that is going to come crashing down on us, we all smile and nod to his face and then giggle behind his back because “that guy is a little crazy“. Like I said earlier, the emperor has no clothes, but we’re still in the phase where we ridicule the guy pointing it out. We need to get past that. Quickly.

Yes, this is just one project, but I picked this project because it is a low cost, high return endeavor. That is the argument that the engineering profession is making and one of the reasons people got so mad at me when I did my earlier posts on the diverging diamond; the diverging diamond makes better use of existing infrastructure and pays a high return, especially when compared to things like adding another lane or building another interchange. Even so, the math on it is ridiculous. Imagine what the math on a project like the infamous St. Croix bridge would be.

In a follow up post I’m going to look at the original construction of our passenger rail system and show how important capturing value to pay for capital costs is to making transportation systems work as well as how such a system naturally resists excessively ridiculous spending, or at least creates systems that break early enough to avoid catastrophe. In the process, I’ll explain why funding the highway system with gas tax dollars was flawed but also why continuing to fund it with deficit spending is perilous. I’ll also, if needed, address any engineers (or those sympathetic to them) that want to argue that we shouldn’t look at the revenue for a single project because it’s the system, dude, that generates the prosperity. Yeah, how’s that working out?

The time to shift our focus to building Strong Towns is now.

The Tappan Zee bridge overhaul is supposed to include transit facilities, but some fear that those may get dropped later on. Photo: SamuelWantman / Wikimedia

Today the administration announced its list of 14 projects, and at first glance, it seems like most of the transportation-related projects take transit, bicycling, and walking into consideration. Some of them will induce sprawl nonetheless, because they expand traffic capacity.

These projects won’t get more federal funds, but they will get federal help in expediting the process. The president promised that this fast-tracking won’t shortchange environmental reviews. The projects were highlighted by officials in several agencies and final selection was done by the White House.

Here’s the list of surface transportation-related projects, most of them recommended by the Department of Transportation:

Tappan Zee Bridge, New York: The bridge is rated structurally deficient as well as functionally obsolete, meaning that in addition to carrying more traffic than it was designed for, the structure is unsafe to carry vehicles. Constant repairs have made the bridge into a money pit, and a significant overhaul could produce long-term savings on maintenance. Notably, this project is not close to “shovel-ready” status, so its selection seems to indicate that the administration had long-term goals in mind, in addition to short-term job creation. There are plans to include a Bus Rapid Transit lane and a commuter rail line on the bridge, as well, but some advocates worry that all that widening could happen without the transit components coming through in the end.

Crenshaw/LAX, California: LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has become a champion for federal loan programs because of his zeal to expand transit in his city. The Crenshaw/LAX project is a cornerstone of his efforts and will provide a critical transit connection to the airport. The city has done a good job attracting federal interest and assistance, and the FTA is already helping them shorten the approval time for the project.

Whittier Bridge, Massachusetts: A conventional bridge along I-95 will be replaced with a wider bridge that will add vehicle lanes as well as bicycle and pedestrian facilities. While the multi-modal treatment is encouraging, the project appears to be a typical highway-widener with a gloss of bicycle- and pedestrian-friendliness added on.

Provo Westside Connector, Utah: This is the only pure road capacity project on the list. It would build a new arterial roadway between the airport and I-15. Its proximity to wetlands has led to some controversy among residents. Some are also concerned that it would increase traffic and sprawl. The mayor has insisted that the dissent won’t change his mind about going forward with the project.

Baltimore Red Line, Maryland: An east-west transit line that’s been in the works for years but was delayed due to competing proposals for BRT or heavy rail. The 14-mile light rail line provides an alternative to driving on I-40, connecting the suburban areas west of Baltimore to downtown, the Inner Harbor, and the Johns Hopkins. There are several outstanding permitting issues, and federal intervention to smooth the process could be key. The White House estimates that administration support can save the project two years, where most of the projects are slated for about six months’ savings.

City Market at O Street, District of Columbia: Every city has big tracts of city land that are fenced off and lying idle, and most of the time you just hope that there’s some plan to do something great with it at some point. One of those big vacant spaces in DC is about to get a $260 million mixed-used development project. They’ll renovate the historic, 120-year-old O Street Market, rebuild a supermarket, and build 400 market-rate apartments, 145 high-end condominiums, a 180-room hotel and 86 units of affordable senior housing. As part of expediting the review process, the federal government will help the District navigate the historic preservation permitting process. This project was recommended by HUD.

There are also projects dealing with aviation, water treatment, subsidized housing, habitat restoration, wind generation, and oil and gas exploration on prairie and grasslands.

The administration says it’s also gathering best practices from all the agencies to develop recommendations to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability of federal permitting and environmental review, “without compromising our responsibility to protect safety, public health, and the environment.” They’re thinking about measures like sector-specific guidelines for timely reviews of permitting applications; encouraging early engagement with stakeholders; coordinating federal reviews with those of state, local and tribal regulatory agencies; and instituting greater oversight of the overall process.

What do you think of this list, Streetsblog readers? Can you share some insight into any of these projects listed above?

Obama announcing the American Jobs Act. Photo: SHRM

Specifically, they lay out the numbers:

• $27 billion for rebuilding roads and bridges
• $9 billion for repairing bus and rail transit systems
• $5 billion for projects selected through a competitive grant program
• $4 billion for construction of the high-speed rail network
• $2 billion to improve airport facilities
• $1 billion for a NextGen air traffic control system

It’s encouraging to see the words “upgrading” and “rebuilding” when it comes to roads, indicating that the administration might be adhering to a fix-it-first approach to transportation spending. But, as we mentioned last week, the bridge Obama highlighted recently as a prime target for jobs-bill money isn’t actually in need of repair — transportation officials just want to widen it to allow more traffic to go through faster.

Certainly, the administration has shown a desire to attack the maintenance backlog in the country, but that doesn’t guarantee that highway expansions and sprawl projects won’t get a slice of the “rebuilding” pie.

That said, it’s good to see the plan includes $5 billion for projects funded through a competitive grant program (think TIGER). And it also hits a somewhat more equitable balance between rail/transit and roads than Congressional transportation bills generally do.

The president’s plan also includes an infrastructure bank, funded with $10 billion seed money. The administration says projects will be evaluated on the basis of how badly they’re needed and how much they would help the economy.

Some have said over the last couple of weeks that the I-bank concept is in trouble after the GOP pounced on the Solyndra loan story, in which a solar company filed for bankruptcy soon after receiving half a billion dollars in government-backed loans. Experts say the infrastructure bank proposal would vet projects well and protect taxpayers from risk.

Building America's Future's words, not ours! Source: BAF, via USDOT.

Building America’s Future, led by former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, has added their voice to the chorus calling for greater investment in U.S. infrastructure, lest the country fall behind its global competitors. In a new report, Falling Apart and Falling Behind, BAF recommends more focus on mass transit, a switch away from formula funding without performance requirements, and more emphasis on metropolitan areas.

A couple weeks ago, we took some heat from some of you, dear readers, about our coverage of a somewhat similar report from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Indeed, that report called for more infrastructure spending, but without specific recommendations on how to build a bettertransportation system. Charles Marohn at Strong Towns wrote a scathing critique of the report, questioning the urgent need to “spend trillions to save seconds” of commute time – especially the assertion that the U.S. should spend $2.2 trillion in order to save $1.0 trillion. Marohn went on to say:

At Strong Towns, we want our infrastructure maintained. In fact, it’s the common denominator of a Strong Town. But the reason why we can’t maintain our infrastructure is not because we lack the money or are afraid to spend it. It is because the systems we have built and the decisions we’ve made on what is a good investment are based on the kind of ridiculous math you see reflected in this ASCE report. We spend a billion here and a billion there and we get nothing but a couple minutes shaved off of our commutes, which just means we can build more roads and live further away from where we work. (Or, as we call that here in America: growth.)

Well put. And we’re glad to see that today’s contribution to the infrastructure debate goes deeper than the ASCE report in recommending concrete ways to build smarter, not just more.

Building America’s Future urges more spending, but says that to do it right, funding priorities should adhere to national strategies. And they’re not shy about spelling out what those are: more economic growth and mobility, less congestion and pollution. “Largely run on gasoline, our transportation system is environmentally, politically, and economically unsustainable,” they write.

Source: BAF via World Economic Forum.

To achieve those goals, BAF urges the federal government to redirect spending toward the 100 metropolitan areas that generate 75 percent of U.S. GDP, especially investing in their mass transit systems. BAF wants to “re-focus highway investment on projects of national economic significance,” including a fix-it-first priority that Rendell says should be built into law. BAF would invest in high-speed rail, but they join Republicans in criticizing the Obama approach of spreading the dollars too thinly around the country. Building America’s Future would focus on three key corridors: Boston to Washington, L.A. to San Francisco, and a hub-and-spoke system around Chicago.

As for how to pay for it, they unabashedly call for raising the gas tax and indexing it to inflation, pointing out that U.S. consumers spend way too little on gasoline, compared with other developed countries, with far too low of a gas tax, which can’t even begin to pay for the negative externalities of fossil fuels. “As high as gas prices in the U.S. seem today, they do not even fully account for the true cost of driving in terms of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions,” the report says. “In the interest of our own environmental sustainability and national security, we should consider the ways in which other countries’ taxes discourage overreliance on gasoline.”

BAF also seeks a shift toward longer-term solutions like a VMT fee, congestion pricing, and increased tolling, as well as establishing a national infrastructure bank, making TIGER permanent and expanding TIFIA. They emphasize the need to foster, not suppress, local innovation in the way that those programs do. Their zeal for public-private partnerships appears more tempered than some, and they call for an examination of best practices for PPPs – a recent focus among some constituencies that fear that PPPs can privatize profits while socializing risk.

All of these moves would finally yank our transportation system out of the Eisenhower age, Building America’s Future asserts. While some road-gang types wouldn’t mind staying in the Eisenhower age forever, more and more unlikely allies are popping up all over, realizing that building roads can’t cure congestion.

The report focuses on the United States’ freefall in global rankings of infrastructure, with the World Economic Forum rating us first in the world for the competitiveness of our infrastructure in 2005 and 15th today. And in his remarks to reporters, Rendell gave a good amount of airtime to the need to move metallurgical coal to ports as fast as Australia does. But the real strength of the BAF report is that it goes beyond a mere cry for more spending, as the ASCE report did. It says that without spending that money strategically, to reduce pollution, increase connectivity, maintain a state of good repair, and strengthen metropolitan areas, more spending isn’t enough.

A fix-it-first policy could help prevent another distaster like the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Photo: Fox News

Maryland Senator Ben Cardin’s Preservation and Renewal of Federal-Aid Highways Act would require states to develop targets for road maintenance. It would also give USDOT authority to establish and hold states to standards for “state of good repair” on federal highways.

Smart growth advocates and transportation reformers applauded the announcement today, saying it would help put the country back on a sustainable, fiscally responsible path.

“Roads in many states are falling in to disrepair and these declining conditions cost taxpayers billions of dollars in preventable expenses,” said Geoff Anderson, president and CEO of Smart Growth America. “Investing in repair makes good fiscal sense, good safety sense, and good business sense for our country.”

In his statement on the proposal, Cardin emphasized the costs of neglecting road maintenance. He noted that poor road conditions are a “significant factor” in approximately one-third of fatal crashes, adding that poor roads add to the repair and operating costs for motorists to the tune of $67 billion a year, or approximately $333 per driver. Poor road conditions also contribute to 42 percent of America’s urban highway congestion, he said.

“Investing in our nation’s highways and infrastructure has been one the best federal investments we have ever made,” said Cardin, a member of the EPW’s Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee. “Our nation’s highways are critical to growing our economy, and repairing and maintaining their quality is required to ensure lasting efficiency and safety.”

Last week’s Smart Growth America report found that 57 percent of states’ highway funding is spent on new construction, meaning that a majority of our transportation dollars are being poured into just a fraction — 1.3 percent — of the total system. Meanwhile, roads are decaying fast. About half of the nation’s 1.9 million lane miles were judged to be in “fair” or “poor” condition by the Federal Highway Administration in 2008.

Representatives of Smart Growth America said they will be watching and supporting Senator Cardin’s legislation through the adoption process.

A new report from Smart Growth America [PDF] finds that states spent 57 percent of their highway funds building new roads between 2004 and 2008. As a result, 23,300 new lane miles were constructed — a 1.3 percent expansion. Meanwhile, the existing 1.9 million lane miles deteriorated under a regime that prioritizes expansion of the system over its maintenance.

New roads got more than their share of tax money between 2004 and 2008. Image: Smart Growth America

The Federal Highway Administration reports that half of all major state roads were in “fair” or “poor” condition in 2008.

“It’s imperative that states rethink how they invest their precious transportation dollars,” said Erich Zimmermann, a policy analyst with Taxpayers for Common Sense, a co-sponsor of the study. “Since 1956 federal taxpayers have invested in the neighborhood of $1 trillion the nation’s highways and therefore have an interest in making sure these investments are kept in a state of good repair.”

“Unfortunately nobody gets to cut a ribbon when a road is fixed,” Zimmermann continued.

The lack of attention to existing infrastructure is likely to have a long-term cost, well beyond the immediate “savings” of doing nothing. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials reports that every dollar spent to keep a road in good condition helps save $6 to $14 that would otherwise be required to rebuild a significantly deteriorated street.

“It just becomes incredibly expensive to fix these roads when they’ve passed a certain state of disrepair,” said Grace Crunican, former Director of the Oregon and Seattle DOTs. “We’re not doing a good job prioritizing what the needs are.”

Perhaps most significantly — and rather obviously — states’ fetish for new building means that road networks are actually expanding as they continue to fall into worse condition. Smart Growth America determined that states would collectively need to spend $43 billion every year for 20 years to bring “poor” roads into “good” condition and keep them that way. That’s more than the $38 billion all the states combined had to spend each year on both new construction and maintenance between 2004 and 2008.

The good news is, a few states are making adjustments to find a more sustainable path. Among the states praised by Smart Growth America is Michigan, which has adopted a “Preserve First” program. Between 2004 and 2008, the state dedicated 86 percent of its road funds to preservation. That investment helped raise the number of Michigan’s roads that are in “good” condition from 48 percent in 2004 to 60 percent in 2008, the report noted.

The report also credited Florida, New Jersey, New York and the District of Columbia for being the only states to spend enough money on maintenance and repair to keep good roads good and make bad roads better.

In response to the findings, Smart Growth America and Taxpayers for Common Sense are recommending that federal transportation dollars be conditioned on states doing an adequate job maintaining their current system. The report also recommended that states establish clear benchmarks for road conditions and prioritize the most heavily traveled roads for maintenance.

Across the country, Highway Bridge Program funds fail to meet states' needs.

Few people think that this could happen to their local bridge or highway overpass, but a snowballing epidemic of deferred maintenance could mean more and more bridge closings across the country. How we got here is the subject of Transportation for America’s new “Fix It“ campaign, which was launched yesterday with the release of a special report on the country’s aging bridges. “The Fix We’re In For: The State of Our Nation’s Bridges” [PDF] aims to motivate Congress to significantly increase “common sense” funding for the repair, reconstruction and upgrading of existing bridges and overpasses. It addresses the political and fiscal challenges that transportation officials face in maintaining the infrastructure we already have. The report marks a significant contribution of data to the national transportation debate and presents an interactive online map that people can use to check the safety of the bridges in their area, offering a new level of transparency on the status of our bridges.

Portland, Oregon used $1.3 million of their stimulus funds to repair damaged roads and install new bus stop pads in downtown. Photo: flickr / Thomas Le Ngo

Doing it right, SGA says, consists of the following recipe:

• Preserve existing roads and bridges
• Build public transportation

In its report, “Recent Lessons from the Stimulus: Transportation Funding and Job Creation,” released Friday, SGA found that on average, road repair produced 16 percent more jobs per dollar than new road construction. And public transportation beat that handily, creating 31 percent more jobs per dollar than new road construction.

SGA also suggests building connections between existing transportation hubs and regional centers. And it says that focusing on areas hard hit by unemployment will create a bigger bang for your buck.

Looking at how different states invested the $26.6 billion in stimulus money for transportation, SGA picked some winners and losers in the game to use stimulus dollars most effectively:

• Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Maine, New Jersey, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Vermont used 100 percent of their stimulus allocations for roads on repair and maintenance, rather than new capacity.
• Texas, Kentucky, Florida, Arkansas, and Kansas went for new capacity instead of maintenance.
• D.C., Oregon, Massachusetts, and New York dedicated more than 20 percent of the funds to public transit.
• Nebraska, Louisiana, Wyoming, Nevada, and Arkansas gave the least.

SGA found that every billion dollars spent on road capacity resulted in 2.4 million work-hours, while every billion spent on transit resulted in 4.2 million work-hours.

Recommendations to states, Congress, and the U.S. DOT suggest that in order to fight unemployment and lay the foundation for long-term economic growth, they should reconsider their preference for road-building when investing future infrastructure dollars.

Overall, of the $26.6 billion the stimulus invested in transportation, 58.9 percent went to road preservation projects. One-third went to new road capacity. Less than four percent went to non-motorized projects like pedestrian and bike facilities or streetscape improvements. And just 1.7 percent went to public transportation.

The Obama administration's report emphasizes how much Americans spend on transportation costs and ties the financial burden to car dependence. Graphic: U.S. Treasury/Council of Economic Advisers

When President Obama announced his push for a long-term transportation bill on Monday, he introduced a report by his Council of Economic Advisors and the Treasury Department analyzing the economic impact of infrastructure investment [PDF]. At face value, the numbers in the president’s plan might not look so impressive. It calls for rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads, laying and maintaining 4,000 miles of railways, and the restoration of 150 miles of airport runways.

If you’re hoping for an all-out push for sustainable transportation and livable streets, you may be wondering whether this signifies much of a change to the highway-centric status quo. Look at the underlying message, and it does.

The headline numbers sit on top of a broad strategy that groups including Transportation for America, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Transportation Equity Network, and U.S. PIRG have all applauded. There are still few specifics in the administration’s plan, but here’s a quick cheat sheet to the elements of the report that transportation reformers find so encouraging.

It emphasizes the need to provide American families with a range of transportation options, not just driving.

The report calls attention to the heavy burden that high transportation costs place on the middle class. “The average American family spends more than $8,600 a year on transportation, one-third more than they spend on food,” it states, pointing out that the wealthiest 10 percent spend only 9 percent of their income on transportation, while everyone else shells out 16 percent of our income to move from point A to point B.

The report links high transportation costs to car dependence and makes the case for increasing access to transit and other transportation options, asserting that “[t]his burden is due in large part to the lack of alternatives to expensive and often congested automobile travel. Multi-modal transportation investments are critical to get American families moving again without wasting their time and their money sitting in traffic.”

It makes the case for a “fix-it first” approach to highways — which should help put the brakes on sprawl.

The administration notes that the decrepit state of the nation’s roadways is exerting a toll on Americans’ household budgets through “car maintenance due to potholes and poor road conditions.” And it refers to the work of economist Edward Gramlich, who argued that “the greatest return on investment can be garnered from spending on maintenance of existing highways.” The nation’s highway spending should be targeted at keeping our existing roads in a state of good repair, not the over-expansion of the interstate system.

It advances the idea that America needs a new system of transportation investment that fund projects based on merit, not politics or formulas.

The report continues to make the administration’s case for a national infrastructure bank that would provide a mechanism for investing strategically in infrastructure. Instead of allocating transportation funds with a haphazard, often politically-driven system that ends up favoring highways-to-nowhere, the report notes that “a well designed infrastructure” bank would leverage private capital to “fill the gaps in our infrastructure funding system, which currently disadvantage investments in multi-modal” projects and projects that cross state lines.

It advocates for investments in “healthy, safe and walkable neighborhoods, whether rural, urban or suburban.”

The report cites the U.S. DOT’s six principles of livability and mentions the success of transit-oriented development as a path toward improving neighborhood economies.

The time is now.

The economic downturn represents an opportunity for smart spending right now, according to the report. With construction costs down, low bids have allowed stimulus funds to stretch 10 to 20 percent more than predicted. So if anyone was wondering: this is the perfect time to start building.

The administration is framing its infrastructure push as way to keep America globally competitive, echoing a theme which reform-minded lawmakers like Oregon Representative Earl Blumenauer have been sounding for years: that the U.S. is lagging behind other nations in infrastructure investment, as the two percent of GDP our country spends annually is dwarfed by Europe’s five percent and China’s nine percent.

The release of the report hasn’t changed the timing of the six-year transportation reauthorization, which is expected to move soon after the next Congress convenes in 2011. But administration officials have made clear that they will push for the “$50 billion down payment” when Congress comes back after the elections for its lame duck session. Lawmakers will need to address the December 31 expiration of the current extension of SAFETEA-LU, but they will likely just extend it again.

The question then will simply be, how long of an extension will they authorize? A short extension will signal a willingness to take up a real reauthorization soon.

(Photo: DMI Blog)

The new data, unveiled today by SGA state policy director Will Schroeer at a green jobs conference in Washington, brings a measure of good news to clean transport advocates who had viewed the stimulus as somewhat of a disappointment for its failure to fund roads and transit on a more equal footing.

The SGA analysis does not include the law's $8.4 billion in transit aid, looking solely at the formula funding that is often depicted as dedicated to highways and bridges.

In fact, states were allowed to redirect some of that larger pot to transit, though not all took advantage of that flexibility. "Some states were really, I have to say, dishonest with the public about what the money could be spent on," Schroeer said today.

Here's how SGA's one-year analysis of the $27 billion in stimulus money shook out:

59% spent on road system repair/preservation
33% spent on new road capacity
3.9% spent on non-motorized transport (e.g. bike-ped)
1.7% spent on transit and related projects
2% spent on other uses

Several other speakers at the green jobs conference emphasized rules that allowed only 10 percent of federal transit stimulus aid to go towards operating budgets that ensure trains and buses can keep running. The lion's share of the transit spending went to capital projects, such as extending rail lines or purchasing new equipment.

Brian Turner, director of the Transportation Learning Center, a transit-training group, lamented that federal spending is weighted towards "physical capital ... Any economist who went to class knows that there is another class [of investment] that's equally important: That's human capital."

The debate over how to free up more federal transit funds for operating has split the transit industry, with its biggest lobbying force viewing the change as a short-term response to the recession while unions and other transit agencies push for a permanent shift.

Nonetheless, SGA's past work on the job-creation performance of transit relative to roads has appeared to make some headway with Democratic lawmakers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told conference attendees today that her colleagues “have stood strong in the drive for good, green jobs. ... We’ve said all along that clean energy is about four things: jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs."

That is the thesis posited in a new investigation from the Center for Public Integrity, which sent a reporter to sprawl-saturated South Florida to examine how much of a return the transportation construction industry is getting on its multi-million-dollar contributions to congressional campaigns.

In a time of sluggish economic recovery, when federal dollars can make the difference between cash-strapped states cutting projects and the jobs they create, the Center observes:

[T]he road lobby is no longer the only one in the driver’s seat when it comes to setting transportation funding priorities. The Obama administration is determined to make its own mark on transportation policy by completing and repairing the current highway system while adopting an increasingly diverse menu of investments in mass transit, bike paths, and pedestrian walkways for neighborhood residents who don’t own a car.

Indeed, many lawmakers and advocates for all modes of transport are already feeling the effects of the White House's endorsement of a more balanced agenda, in which roads share space and attention with rails and bike-ped infrastructure. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), state DOTs' voice in Washington, has begun retooling its funding pitch to emphasize the "livability" of road projects, a branding campaign that tickles triumphant transit and bike-ped forces.

But what evidence does the Center marshal for its depiction of hemmorhaging power within the road lobby? AASHTO executive director John Horsley is quoted remarking that road-builders "don't think we're chopped liver," but the budgetary realities for federal highway and transit programs make clear that Congress has no intention of striking fear into the hearts of Horsley's members.

The Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) budget last year topped $40 billion. While about 10 percent of one funding category within the agency is set aside for bike-ped and related projects under the Transportation Enhancements aegis, and the Obama administration has requested $67 million more for the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) next year [PDF] while leaving highway funding flat, the FHWA's pot remains four times the size of the FTA's.

That highways-transit split would budge only slightly under the new six-year federal transport bill released last year by Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN), going from 80-20 to 75-18, according to early estimates.

In addition, the inter-agency sustainable communities office that has won kudos from clean transportation groups remains a fraction of the size of the overall road-funding pie. If Congress agrees to the White House's 2011 request for new livability grants, integrating the goals of the U.S. DOT and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the total amount of dedicated livability funding would still fall short of $1 billion.

So what's behind the worries of the "road gang" that their priorities are playing second fiddle? It's the same lack of direction and clarity that is plaguing the entire transportation world -- from highway planners to transit operators to the construction firms that work with both modes. From the Center's report (emphasis mine):

[U]ntil the road lobby figures out how to best leverage not just its web of connections in Washington — well over 300 lobbyists in all — but also its own grassroots supporters in local districts, it will struggle mightily to make progress on the Hill. So, too, for everyone else in transportation. ...

It is not so much a direct fight the transportation lobby has on its hands as it is a failure to agree to a common set of principles or priorities. ... While some of their leaders continue to quietly discuss it, their unresolved issues are among the reasons why the multiyear transportation bill remains stalled in Congress.

Despite the appeal of the Center's suggestion that roads are losing their sway in Washington, it's that message of overall confusion that transportation groups of all stripes might want to heed -- as hard as it may be to hear.

(ed. note. This post has been corrected to reflect an inaccurate statement about the source of Transportation Enhancements funding.)

The state of repair for America's urban roads, according to federal maintenance data. In rural areas, 61% are rated "good." (Chart: U.S. PIRG)

That little-known provision is one of many "perverse incentives" highlighted in a report on road and bridge maintenance released today by the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups' (PIRG) education fund.

The rules governing federal aid for interstate maintenance, according to the U.S. PIRG, are equally skewed to ensure older roads keep crumbling. Take the cases of New York, where 567 miles of road were rated in less than "good" condition by the U.S. DOT (see categories in the above pie chart), and Florida, where 13 miles were in the same aging state.

One might think that New York would receive more maintenance money from Washington. But as today's report points out:

[B]ecause of New York and Florida’s similar number of Interstate lane miles, both states received about the same amount of Interstate Maintenance Program funding over the last five years — $182 million for New York and $193 million for Florida, annually.

Transportation policymakers tend to be inundated by reports, but the U.S. PIRG hopes to aim its research beyond a simple call for extra repair funding in the next long-term federal infrastructure bill.

"We're hoping the report will be a call to look hard at the actual politics behind these problems," U.S. PIRG senior analyst Phineas Baxandall, one of the document's three primary co-authors, said in an interview. "This is not simply a problem [solved by] pouring more money into the system."

Baxandall and his colleagues also attempted to tally the real-world costs of inattention to road and bridge repair needs. Their report notes that car maintenance bills incurred by travelers on older roads is significantly higher in major cities: Drivers in Los Angeles, San Jose, and San Francisco all pay more than $700 extra per year, according to the most recent data released by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO).

And given that the political climate suggests Congress will be hard-pressed to pass a new six-year infrastructure bill before 2011 -- depriving pro-repair advocates of their principal vehicle for broad "fix-it-first" reform -- the U.S. PIRG report also maps the route to progress on the state level in the meantime.

The report's authors highlight laws on the books in Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland that "requir[e] state DOTs to focus on the rehabilitation of existing facilities before building new highways."

Baxandall said he was particularly heartened by Maryland officials' move to set up clear metrics for determining their progress on bringing the local built environment into a state of good repair. "If it can happen in the states," he said, "it will [happen on] the federal level."

Environmental reviews added an estimated $1 million to the cost of San Francisco's recent bike lanes, seen above. (Photo: Streetsblog SF)

As a result, ARTBA President T. Peter Ruane wrote, local planners often "opt for the more time consuming [environmental review] in order to avoid potential litigation at a later time." Legal challenges citing NEPA, filed by green advocates as well as their conservative critics, have delayed work on transportation projects of all stripes in recent years.

Ruane continued in his letter to the White House:

For this reason, ARTBA also strongly supports the creation of unambiguous environmental review criteria that would favor the CE process (over a far more time consuming EA or EIS) where environmental impacts are clearly minimal unless there is “compelling” evidence warranting a different course of action. Ensuring project planners know when it is appropriate to use a CE without fear of possible legal recourse would help reduce delay in the NEPA process.

In its guidance on exclusions from environmental review rules, the White House noted "an expansion of the number and range of activities" for which CEs were being chosen, adding that "inappropriate reliance on categorical exclusions may thwart the purposes of NEPA."

All projects using federal funding or on federal land are subject to NEPA rules, extending the law's reach past the U.S. DOT into most other government agencies. Congressional Republicans have frequently called for changes that would make NEPA more easily circumventable, whether by waiving it for stimulus projects or preventing climate change from becoming a factor in the rules.

Whether ARTBA's pitch for a standard "that would favor the CE process" over a full-scale environmental review catches on among GOP lawmakers remains to be seen.

Inhofe's concerns, raised at the latest in the environment committee's series of hearings aimed at marshaling consensus for a new long-term transport bill, suggest that the increased transit, bike-ped, and urban policy investments envisioned by the House measure could face resistance from rural senators who fear less of a federal emphasis on roads.

"We cannot grow the program in urban areas while ignoring the rural component," Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) said, describing rail and bike usage as "geographically and climatically prohibitive" in his state, currently the nation's least-populated.

Environment committee chief Barbara Boxer (D-CA) assured Barrasso that "I don't look at writing this bill as rural versus urban." Yet the House legislation offered by transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) would direct significant funding to urban infrastructure needs through a new metropolitan mobility program, a prospect that appeared to unsettle rural lawmakers.

"I don't feel like transit is a great option in our rural areas," said Oklahoma state senator Bryce Marlatt, an invited witness. After Inhofe questioned the Oberstar framework's emphasis on bike-ped and transit spending, Marlatt warned that the House plan could prevent rural areas from joining "the global economy" by boosting road spending.

Alternative perspectives were offered by John Robert Smith, president of the transit advocacy group Reconnecting America, and Scott Haggerty, a supervisor in California's Alameda County who appeared on behalf of the National Association of Counties (NACo).

Smith told senators that the green-transport and land-use grants offered by the Obama administration's multi-agency sustainability office should be open to cities with populations of 50,000 or below, giving rural areas more of an opportunity to compete for federal aid.

Haggerty, for his part, noted that the "overwhelming majority of congestion comes in metro areas" and advised that any project getting funding from Oberstar's proposed urban mobility program should be able to document its benefits for commuters.

Even as the rural-urban debate unfolded, senators sought to steer the hearing towards the fundamental issue stalling progress on a replacement for the 2005 federal transportation law: how to pay for it.

"In terms of infrastructure, our roads and bridges are not getting any better if we neglect them," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said. "We're going to have to address this problem one way or another; we might as well do it and create jobs."

Asked for their thoughts on transportation financing, Haggerty said NACo would back a gas-tax increase -- an option ruled out by the White House for the foreseeable future -- and Smith cited a poll commissioned by Transportation for America that found public support for more infrastructure spending, provided that it was approved in a transparent fashion.

Senate environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA), at right, with ranking Republican Jim Inhofe (OK). (Photo: Politico)

Such willingness to consider a new infrastructure bill before the Obama administration's preferred timeframe of next spring could help thaw the frosty relations between Boxer's panel and the House transportation committee, where chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) has raged against upper-chamber inaction for months.

But lawmakers and industry lobbies have a long way to go before they can sing from the same hymnal on the next transportation bill. Boxer asked representatives of the four lobbies appearing today -- the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA), the National Construction Alliance (NCA) and the Associated General Contractors (AGC) -- to parse Oberstar's bill "literally, with a pen" and let senators know which provisions they favored or disliked.

"We're going to take their bill and work from it," Boxer said of the House, which has proposed a $500 billion plan that streamlines 108 categories of formula-based federal transportation spending into four and includes dedicated funding for metropolitan area priorities.

Neither the transit industry nor transportation reform advocacy groups had a representative at the hearing. The four witnesses largely limited their comments to the economic need for a new long-term federal bill, with former AASHTO president Pete Rahn endorsing the price tag of the House bill but suggesting that he viewed it as overly solicitous to transit.

"We need a balanced bill that increases funding for both highways and transit," said Rahn, who leads the Missouri state DOT.

And though the biggest stumbling block facing the next federal transport bill -- namely, the lack of sufficient gas tax revenue to pay for it -- was lamented widely, few offered concrete solutions that would help Congress move forward more quickly.

"The problem we have in infrastructure is not ways to borrow more money," Rahn replied to a question about Build America Bonds, a successful if occasionally controversial infrastructure financing tool established in last year's stimulus law. "We need to find a way to pay for improvements ... We've now topped out the credit card."

Rahn urged lawmakers to address the declining utility of the gas tax, pointing to a "conflict" between its continued role as Washington's transportation revenue-raiser and the growing acknowledgment that oil consumption needs to decrease for environmental and national security reasons.

Griffith Company president Tom Foss, speaking for the AGC, said that industry groups are open to other options, such as increased tolling or an eventual transition to a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax. Still, he added, "the gas tax is still best way to fund" federal transportation law because "we can advertise [it] to the general population."

The hearing took place as the House prepares to vote as soon as tomorrow on a $15 billion jobs bill, already cleared by the Senate, that would extend the 2005 transport law until year's end. Boxer and fellow senators asked the witnesses to underscore the importance of that 10-month extension in conversations with the House, where some Democrats remain reluctant to embrace the upper chamber's jobs package.

(Chart: The Avenue)

Writing on The New Republic's Avenue blog, Puentes notes that the nation's top 100 metro areas -- which collectively generate three-quarters of U.S. GDP, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors -- got more than 70 percent of the total TIGER funding.

Meanwhile, the stimulus law's $48 billion in formula-based transportation spending continues to give disproportionately short shrift to major cities.

Puentes found that as of the end of 2009, the top 100 U.S. metro areas had received about 59 percent of total infrastructure stimulus spending. That number masks a greater urban-rural imbalance in highway stimulus money, just 50 percent of which went to America's biggest -- and often, most economically productive -- cities. (See the chart above for more details.)

A July analysis by Streetsblog Capitol Hill reached a similar conclusion, focusing on the top 20 U.S. cities and finding them getting 28 percent of the $787 billion stimulus law's highway money, compared with 61 percent of its transit funding.

So what can be done to help give major cities a share of infrastructure recovery aid that's commensurate with the scale of their economic needs? For Puentes, the answer is simple: Use TIGER as a model:

As Washington considers the additional steps needs to retain and create jobs, the TIGER’s recognition of the economic primacy of U.S. metropolitan area should be illustrative.

A crumbling bridge support in Colorado. (Photo: Pure Thinking)

We’re so far behind in some areas that ... Rendell has said that getting our infrastructure act together can feel like “sledding uphill.”

“When I took over as governor,” he said, “I was told that Pennsylvania led the nation in the number of structurally deficient or functionally obsolete bridges. We had more than 5,600 of them. So I put a ton of money into bridge repair. We more than tripled the amount in the capital budget, from $200 million a year to $700 million a year. And I got a special appropriation from the Legislature to do $200 million a year extra for the next four years.”

“Functionally obsolete” bridges are not in any danger of falling down; they merely have narrow lanes, inadequate overhead clearances, overly sharp on- and off-ramps, or other outdated design features. These bridges pose no risk to auto drivers unless the drivers themselves drive recklessly.

... "[S]tructurally deficient” bridges have suffered enough deterioration or damage that their load-carrying abilities are lower than when they were built. But that still doesn’t mean they are about to fall down; though they may be closed to heavy loads, the most serious problem is that they cost more to maintain than other bridges.

When the debate stumbles on the mere question of whether deficiency is worth fixing -- incidentally, the National Bridge Inventory states that deficient and obsolete bridges often contribute to congestion -- it's difficult to see a broad consensus emerging in favor of government spending to bring our built environment into good order. What Herbert didn't address in his column, unfortunately, was how to carve out that consensus by talking in new and different ways about the importance of infrastructure investment.

Transportation reformers have talked up "fix-it-first" rules for roads, bridges, and transit, but that ideal often shares space with messages emphasizing the environmental, job creation, and efficiency created by more merit-based transportation spending.

Meanwhile, during the crafting of last year's $787 billion stimulus law, no senator would offer an amendment to add "fix-it-first" to the bill. Lawmakers saw more to gain by passing the stimulus quickly than by creating a transportation section that could bring American infrastructure into a state of good repair. And until Washington senses a greater political imperative to create a safer, more modern transport system, what's wrong with the nation in Herbert's eyes is likely to stay wrong.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) (Photo: STLToday)

But as Democrats debate the wisdom of tax credits for new hiring and clean energy production, the bill's infrastructure spending provisions could be subject to less tweaking. So what do they look like?

A knowledgeable source tells Streetsblog Capitol Hill that the jobs bill outline currently under consideration in the Senate includes $14 billion for roads and $7.5 billion for transit.

Such spending levels would be a far cry from the transit industry's preferred investment of $15 billion (backed by Kirsten Gillibrand, New York's junior Democratic senator), but a more favorable ratio than the House approved in its jobs bill last month.

The Senate is also mulling $2.5 billion for rail in its jobs bill, which could provide yet another down payment on bullet train projects such as the one President Obama is expected to unveil in Florida this week.

Of course, Durbin's caveat remains firmly in place -- these numbers are an early projection, subject to change as Democratic leaders gauge support within their ranks. A final version of the jobs bill could hit the Senate floor before the President's Day recess next month, but it's likely to take longer for the measure to be reconciled with the House version.

Infrastructure: Democrats love it. But how will they fund it? (Photo: ShipDTS)

Yet despite data showing that transit stimulus spending's effect on employment was nearly twice as large as that of road projects, it's far from clear that the Obama administration's pivot to the economy will prove a boon to merit-based infrastructure investment.

One thing is clear: Democrats are finally catching on to broad public support for building more efficient and sustainable infrastructure.  As Robert Menendez (D-NJ), chief of the Senate majority's campaign committee, put it to CNN on Sunday (emphasis mine):

[The economy] is something that I expect the president to deal with in the State of the Union speech, and something we will deal with as we deal with the jobs package that talks about ... helping to look at some of the infrastructure of the country, so people can get to work right away ...

At the same time, White House adviser Valerie Jarrett was telling NBC:

We are investing in infrastructure, we are investing in public education so that our kids can compete going forth into the next generation. We are investing in renewable energy, to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. These are all connected to the economy.

Of course, talking about a better built environment for the nation is one thing; delivering is a messier and far lengthier endeavor. Infrastructure encompasses more than just transportation networks, to be sure -- but looking at the specific challenges of federal transport funding, there remains but a small window for the Democrats to align their fondness for the I-word with the White House's austere new message on spending.

Part of the problem with federal transportation spending is that, in budget-wonk parlance, it manages to be both mandatory (set aside in a special trust fund replenished by the gas tax, not Congress) and discretionary (distributed every year according to obligation ceilings set by Congress).

So will transportation funds be hit by the White House's proposed "spending freeze," thus limiting the amount of available money for the U.S. DOT's newly revamped transit funding plan? The freeze would take effect based on funding levels in the 2011 White House budget, which is set for release next week and could well provide more money for sustainability efforts at the U.S. DOT.

Even if the U.S. DOT budget gets a boost before a freeze kicks in, however, that tricky highway trust fund (which also funds much of Washington's transit spending) remains short of cash. If Congress and the administration can resolve their ongoing stalemate over financing the next six-year transport bill before October, when the fiscal year ends and the freeze kicks in, federal funding would be on a more certain footing.

But if the next federal transport bill is delayed into 2011 or beyond, which remains a very real possibility, money will likely have to be transferred from the government's general fund into highway and transit accounts.

The size of such a transfer is tough to predict -- Senate legislation offered in July would have spent $22 billion to keep transportation accounts solvent for 18 months -- but Democrats would face strong resistance to borrowing the money for a highway trust fund rescue after diverting $15 billion from the Treasury over the past two years.

So it's easy to envision a scenario where another highway trust fund rescue requires cuts to other transport programs, putting federal investments in infrastructure on an even less sure footing than they are now.

And given the negative consequences of waiting too long to solve the current transportation funding crisis, Democrats and the Obama administration could make the tough decisions on taxes now, while backing up their rhetoric on infrastructure with more merit-based grants, or kick the can down the road again.

The predicament brings to mind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) comments to Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein back in July: Washington, she said, is the "city of the perishable." Wait too long to act decisively on a difficult issue, and you risk losing the chance to address it at all.