In the first year of the Obama administration's economic stimulus law, 59 percent of its $27 billion in transportation formula funds went to projects that preserve existing roads, while 33 percent was used to build new pavement, according to an analysis by the advocacy group Smart Growth America (SGA).
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:
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.
When Minneapolis' I-35 bridge collapsed in 2007, lawmakers from both parties vowed to focus on shoring up the nation's aging infrastructure. But when the public spotlight faded from the issue of infrastructure repair, Congress showed little appetite for setting aside maintenance aid that did not hold the promise of ribbon-cutting ceremonies or campaign donations.
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)
Meanwhile, existing federal transportation formulas dole out bridge repair money based on the size of each state's maintenance backlog. But up to half of that repair funding can be redirected to other purposes, such as building new roads, with the assurance of continued largess -- as long as local bridges remain unfixed.
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:
The trade group representing private-sector transportation contractors is urging the Obama administration to change the way environmental reviews are conducted for infrastructure projects, proposing to favor "categorical exclusions" (CEs) from federal review rules over the lengthier process of measuring the environmental impact of construction work.
Environmental reviews added an estimated $1 million to the cost of San Francisco's recent bike lanes, seen above. (Photo: Streetsblog SF)
In a letter sent Friday to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which released new guidance on CEs [PDF] earlier this year, the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) lamented that the existing law governing federal environmental reviews -- the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA -- is too vague on the circumstances that would require infrastructure project planners to pursue a quicker CE as opposed to the costlier option of a full-scale review.
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.
The senior Republican on the Senate environment panel today criticized the House's six-yeartransportation bill, lamenting that the measure "focus[es] very heavily on transit, bike paths, and sidewalks" and carves out a strong federal role in "decisions historically left to the state level."
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).
The Senate today took its first steps towards voting on a new long-term federal transportation bill, with environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) vowing to take up a successor to the 2005 infrastructure law before 2011 and indicating she would use the House's already-introduced version as a framework.
Senate environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA), at right, with ranking Republican Jim Inhofe (OK). (Photo: Politico)
Boxer described today's hearing in her panel as "the kickoff" of the upper chamber's drafting of new legislation governing U.S. road, transit, bridge, port, and rail policy. "Our intention is to hold a series of hearings and write the bill while you are still here and while Senator [George] Voinovich [R-OH] is still here," she told Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO), who will retire at the end of the year.
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.
The Obama administration's awarding of $1.5 billion in competitive transportation stimulus grants on Wednesday sparked elation in cities such as Kansas City and New Orleans. But those celebrations were more than just anecdotal evidence of the so-called TIGER program's urban impact, according to a new analysis from the Brookings Institution's Rob Puentes.
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.
In today's New York Times, Bob Herbert celebrates the cause of infrastructure maintenance -- a less exciting proposition for politicians than cutting the ribbon at new transportation projects, but in many ways more vital to economic growth.
A crumbling bridge support in Colorado. (Photo: Pure Thinking)
After talking to Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D), an avowed booster of the National Infrastructure Bank concept, Herbert asks, "What's wrong with us?" and continues:
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.”
One might be tempted to respond that what's wrong with American infrastructure policy has much to do with pundits such as Randal O'Toole of the Cato Institute, who converts new acolytes in Washington by arguing that the biggest defect in national infrastructure policy is insufficient road spending. To O'Toole, the fact that one in four of U.S. bridges is rated obsolete or deficient is no big deal:
“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.
Senate Democrats huddled behind closed doors this afternoon to assess their options for a new job-creation bill, with one option of around $80 billion making headlines even second-ranked leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) warned that no details are set in stone.
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.
The White House is re-centering its message around economic and fiscal concerns ahead of tomorrow's State of the Union address, with a new package of job-creation measures expected to vault to the top of the agenda and a three-year "spending freeze" pitched to deficit-wary conservative Democrats.
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? Read more...
(Photo: DMI Blog)
