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.

According to research assembled by the American Public Transportation Association and Building America's Future, an increase of $1 per gallon in the price of gas creates roughly 500 million transit trips. Image: APTA/BAF

When gas prices go up, it can be a big motivator for people to start taking transit more frequently. But according to a study released by the American Public Transportation Association and Building America’s Future [PDF], even when gas prices start to go down, the newly converted keep riding transit.

The report, “Volatile Gas Prices Point to Increased Use of Public Transportation,” draws on independent research about “the elasticity of transit ridership” — economist-speak for how much a change in gas prices affects transit use. As APTA points out in their press release, the results indicate an unexpected relationship between gas prices and transit ridership:

 It showed that on average, nationwide public transportation systems will add nearly 200 million new trips this year even as gas prices fluctuate by as much as 50 cents per gallon.

The report carries significant implications for transportation policy as Congress continues its effort to pass a new transportation bill before the June 30 deadline. Early proposals out of the House forbade the use of Highway Trust Fund dollars to pay for transit, and while those proposals have disappeared for now, it still remains a popular viewpoint among many on the political right.

But with more Americans opting not to drive, this is precisely the wrong time to start shortchanging transit. As APTA and BAF note, “the nation’s public transportation infrastructure is not prepared to handle the long-term unpredictable nature of gas prices.”

“Americans view our transportation network as one system, which is why public transportation and our road network should continue to receive funding from the highway trust fund,” said Gary Thomas, chair of APTA and CEO of Dallas Area Rapid Transit, in a conference call with reporters yesterday. “We should fund, build, and plan it like one system, where our public transportation system makes our road network more efficient.”

Naturally, with greater reliance on transit comes greater funding needs. Many transit agencies have had to resort to fare hikes and service cuts, even as their ridership climbs. But the dwindling power of the federal gas tax to fund needed improvements to transit has been well-documented, and Congress has been slow (unwilling, really) to enact a long-term transportation strategy.

Speaking on the same call, BAF co-chair and former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell predicted that very little in the way of reform will come out of the current conference process, but when the process repeats itself in 2013, “Congress and the administration have to come to grips with problems facing not only transportation infrastructure, but all infrastructure,” including power, water, and broadband. Rendell said that something on the order of a 10-year comprehensive reauthorization effort was needed, as opposed to the 18-month measure which will likely result from the current conference.

The Atlanta Beltline, shown here in an artist's rendering, would be funded by a one-cent sales tax referendum to be considered by Atlanta area voters in July. But the local Sierra Club is urging its members to vote against the proposal. Photo: FHWA

This one-cent sales tax would raise more than $7 billion for local transportation projects — at least $3.14 billion of which would be dedicated to transit. This issue — up for vote in July — will determine whether Atlanta can move forward with the rail portion of its groundbreaking, ring-shaped “Beltline.” It would help bring relief to some of the country’s most harried commuters.

This plan would give a badly needed boost to transit funding. And that’s why a recent announcement by the local Sierra Club was so jarring.

Yesterday, the Sierra Club of Georgia announced it was urging its members to vote against the proposal in favor of what it calls “Plan-B.” The Sierra Club hopes that after the referendum is defeated, a new proposal funded by the gas tax with “a fix-it-first roads strategy” “that emphasizes transit expansion and improvement” will emerge, according to a statement from the group printed in the local alt-weekly, Creative Loafing.

The Sierra Club plan sounds like great transportation policy, but it currently lacks the political and organizational support underpinning TIA. And compared to the region’s current transportation, TIA is pretty good policy. If Atlanta lets the current moment slip by, there’s no telling when the region will have another good opportunity to raise billions in revenue for transit.

The Sierra Club is planning a joint press conference with — oddly enough — local Tea Party officials this week where they will discuss their concerns further.

Meanwhile, more mainstream groups were quick to criticize the Sierra Club’s position. Citizens for Transportation Mobility, a group of business interests that is pushing for TIA’s passage, responded with “dismay.”

“We find it highly unusual that an organization charged with preserving and protecting our environment would oppose a transportation investment that has the potential to do exactly that,” Che Watkins, campaign manager for CTM, told Creative Loafing. “The Regional Transportation Referendum holds more promise of relieving congestion and reducing air pollution than any plan in decades.”

“If the Sierra Club has its way,” he continued, “more harm will be done to the environment as the state continues to fund roads to the exclusion of transit.”

Ashley Robbins, president of Citizens for Progressive Transit, which is leading the campaign for TIA’s passage, said that her group “respectfully disagrees” with the Sierra Club on many points.

This Sierra Club diagram assumes the 15 percent of the TIA money allocated to local communities would all be spent on roads, something that Atlanta and the city of Decatur have disputed. Photo: Sierra Club

The money expected to be raised by the new sales tax is to be divided up into three pots. Fifteen percent of the money will go towards local communities to use at their discretion. The rest of the money will be divided among road and transit projects — with 52 percent supporting transit, and 48 percent supporting roads.

Robbins allowed that the road projects will lead to some sprawl but said “this is a step forward for the region.”

“This will be the first [transit] expansion we will have built in over a decade,” she said.

The Sierra Club asserts that all of the 15 percent for local communities will be spent on road projects. But Robbins says both Atlanta and the nearby suburb of Decatur have said that they will spend the money on bike, pedestrian and transit projects. As for the rest of the communities, it’s not yet clear.

“To me, that’s making assumptions that can’t be made right now,” she said.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution noted that the rest of the region’s environmental groups were either supportive of the referendum or were keeping mum. The Sierra Club has about 5,000 dues-paying members in the Atlanta metro area, according to the paper.

Singapore's massive transit expansion plans -- the dotted lines are all system expansions planned for the next ten years -- wouldn't be possible without congestion pricing. For a larger version, click here.

Singapore is doubling the size of its rail network in the next ten years, according to the Singapore Land Transport Authority’s Lew Yii Der. Using driverless technology, he added, Singapore will soon be running subway trains as little as 90 seconds apart.

London boosted bus ridership by 60 percent in a decade and recently hit an all-time high for Underground use, said Transport for London’s Elaine Seagriff. Projects in the pipeline will add an entire new rail line through the heart of the city and boost capacity in the existing Underground system by 20 percent.

Stockholm plans to spend 8 billion Euros on expansion projects through 2020 for a region of only 2 million people, reported Stockholm Public Transport Managing Director Anders Lindström. In the New York region, per capita spending on that level would come out to $115.5 billion.

It’s hard to imagine the U.S.’s cash-strapped transit agencies ever reaching such lofty levels. How did these other cities do it?

It’s foolish to call anything a silver bullet, but even so, it’s no coincidence that each of these cities do something no U.S. city has done: price the use of scarce road space.

London’s phenomenal growth in bus ridership, for example, can be significantly attributed to the fact that surface transit doesn’t have to sit in gridlocked traffic, thanks to the city’s congestion charge. Analyst Kenneth Small estimates that in the typical American city, bus ridership would jump 31 percent due to the introduction of congestion pricing, without bus service even receiving any of the revenues.

But the money certainly helps. London’s congestion charge generated approximately $240 million in 2009, all dedicated to transportation. Stockholm’s pricing scheme took in about $112 million in a much smaller region.

Stockholm, too, is pursuing major transit expansions (here, all the colored lines), thanks in part to congestion pricing. Image: SL

The most all-encompassing efforts to put a price on driving, by far, are practiced in Singapore. On that dense island city-state, drivers must pay not only to use the roads, but to own a car at all. Starting in 1990, the government began to ration out permits to own personal vehicles, allowing the total supply to rise by three percent a year, according to Der. Since then, the allowed growth in automobiles has been lowered twice, to its current level of 0.5 percent a year. As a result, there are only 608,958 passengers cars in the entire nation of 5.2 million people. “The going price for a car is almost 80,000 U.S. dollars, just for the certificate,” Der said.

Once Singaporeans have paid that much for the mere right to own a car, they also have to pay for the use of the roadway. Prices at 80 tolling stations across Singapore change every three months, based on congestion conditions.

Without competition from subsidized driving, the Singapore transit system is actually able to turn a sizable profit. Though the government helps pay the capital costs of the transit system, Singapore boasts a farebox recovery ratio of 126 percent.

The three systems had other shared characteristics — system-wide fare integration using smart-card technology chief among them — but congestion pricing stood out as integral to the success of the systems.

Is there political support in New York for any form of road pricing? It’s hard to say. “I really don’t want to talk about congestion pricing,” said Lhota, calling the question one for elected officials.

“It is a tough political row to hoe,” admitted former MTA chief Lee Sander, who moderated the panel. Still, Sander noted, of the three state senators who doomed bridge tolls in 2009, only one is still in office. One is headed to prison and the other may be following soon.

Recent history suggests other reasons to think some form of road pricing could be politically possible in New York. The City Council approved Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan by a vote of 30 to 20. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver endorsed East and Harlem River bridge tolls pegged to the price of a subway fare. And polls showed a sizable majority of New Yorkers in favor of congestion pricing, as long as the revenues were dedicated to the transit system.

The missing piece, these days, is Governor Andrew Cuomo, who seems content to opine about congestion pricing while letting the state’s transit system decay.

A Transit Score map of Seattle, the nation's 7th-most transit-friendly major city according to new rankings. The city is buoyed by its dense urban core, where many transit lines converge. Image: Walk Score

Today, Walk Score — developer of the popular method for evaluating neighborhood walkability (and filling out NCAA tournament brackets) — announced its first ranking of cities by Transit Score, a measure of the “usefulness” of a city’s transit system. On a 100-point scale, New York and San Francisco took the top two spots with scores of 81 and 80 respectively, while Boston (74), Washington D.C. (69), and Philadelphia (68) round out the top five (see the full rankings).

Walk Score CEO Josh Herst believes this is an important time to begin evaluating cities in terms of transit, and all the Americans who rode transit 10.4 billion times in 2011 would likely agree with him. “Heading to the gas pump this season is about as much fun as getting a root canal,” Herst said in the official release [PDF]. “With gas prices expected to hit new highs, more people are riding transit, walking and biking to save money. And being able to leave your car at home more often is great for your wallet, your waistline and the environment.”

The company generates Transit Scores using data provided by transit agencies, and takes into account the number of nearby transit routes (weighted differently by mode), how often those routes run, and how far away the stations are from any given point. A city’s score is based on a population-weighted average of all individual point scores. For an excellent discussion of the Transit Score methodology, check out this exchange between transit expert Jarrett Walker and Walk Score’s Matt Lerner from early 2011.

Overall, it’s fair to say that few American cities score well on the system. Of the 25 largest cities that make their transit data available to the public, only ten topped a Transit Score of 50, which is the lowest score qualifying as “good transit,” described as “many transit options nearby.” Most (14) fall into the “some transit” bracket, and the 25th-highest Transit Score among the cities evaluated — Raleigh, NC — is a 23, the upper end of “minimal transit.”

The scale is non-linear; that is, raising a city’s Transit Score from 70 to 80 would take much more work than raising it from 60 to 70. Because of the population weighting, the more people who live in a city, the harder it is to raise the score: As the Walk Score website explains, one additional bus route means a lot more for a small town than it would for a big city.

Furthermore, rail transit (including subways and light rail) is weighted at twice the value of a bus route, with ferries, cable cars, and other modes splitting the difference between the two. These numbers weren’t pulled out of thin air — they reflect research that shows a range of effects of different transit modes on the value of surrounding land.

Because of this, Transit Scores will tend to be higher in the center of cities where multiple rail lines converge, but where residential population may not be at its densest. It’s not hard to see how development near rail stations could make or break a city’s Transit Score.

No doubt, Transit Score is a useful way to compare different neighborhoods within a city, and now entire cities as a whole. However, it primarily reflects how easy it is to get to transit, rather than where you can go and what you can do with transit once you’re on it.

From the FTA's Earth Day website.

The Federal Transit Administration has launched a new website for Earth Day (this Sunday), showcasing the agency’s efforts for livability and clean energy. It’s all good Earth Day reading, but what stands out is this useful map of sustainable transportation projects.

Click here for the FTA's sustainable projects map.

They note that the map is just a “selection” of federally-funded projects, so don’t get worked up if there’s one missing from your area. Still, three things stand out for me:

1. The geographical breadth of the projects. Bill Shuster, Number Two on the House Transportation Committee, told Politico that opposition from “suburban/urban guys” in the House kept the committee from stripping transit funding out of the bill. But this is not a map of the biggest metropolises in the country. Example: Ackerman, Mississippi (population: 1,510) bought three transit buses to provide better transportation to nearby colleges for students living on the Choctaw reservation.
2. A lot of those rural projects are on Indian reservations. The FTA has a special pot of funding for federally-recognized tribes. It’s not much, but by the looks of this map, the agency makes $15 million go a long way.
3. The focus on cleaner fuels. The projects the FTA is highlighting in this map are generally electric or natural gas-fueled transit operations. Considering that mass transit is Earth-friendly by its very nature, the FTA’s focus on cleaner fuels is above and beyond the call of duty. Of course, some “clean fuels” aren’t so clean — coal-fired power plants make sure electricity is still dirty, and natural gas fracking poisons drinking water and makes animals sick.

Not to end on a downer: This is a great map! Hooray for green transit! Happy Earth Day!

Martin Kelly Jones sued the MBTA for providing Boston bus riders with real-time arrival information. Photo: MBTA

Lloyd Dobbler, John Cusack’s generation-defining character in Say Anything, notably said, “I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career.”

Martin Kelly Jones lives by a similar creed. He doesn’t make or sell anything. Instead he makes his living by attacking transit agencies for using real-time tracking technologies that he says he owns. It’s a practice known as “patent trolling.” Lloyd Dobbler probably wouldn’t want to be a patent troll either, but Jones has made it into his entire career.

Jones filed his first transit-related patent in 1993, securing rights to the idea of letting parents know when school buses were running late. More than 30 additional patents of similar ideas followed.

Jones doesn’t develop or sell any technology relating to real-time vehicle tracking, but that hasn’t stopped him (and his two offshore firms, ArrivalStar and Melvino Technologies) from punishing anyone who does. To date, he’s filed more than 100 lawsuits against anyone who uses such technology – everyone from Ford to Abercrombie & Fitch to American Airlines to FedEx. He’s one of the top 25 filers of patent infringement suits according to a database maintained by the patent tracking site PriorSmart.com.

Lately, Jones has focused his litigious impulse on transit agencies around the country. According to a brief by the Georgetown Climate Center, “ArrivalStar has brought suit against at least ten transit entities, and at least eight more have received demand letters.” GCC, which convenes the Transportation Climate Initiative, worries that the suits can create a chilling effect, discouraging agencies from employing vehicle tracking technologies. Providing real-time bus arrival information has been shown to increase ridership [PDF], taking cars off the road and reducing vehicle emissions.

Jones’ strategy is not to sue transit agencies for all they’re worth, but to offer them a relatively low-cost way to keep these cases out of court. In fact, not one of his lawsuits has gone all the way through trial. They always end up settling, usually for $50,000 to $75,000, though the demands can go as high as $200,000.

“That’s $75,000 of taxpayer money that’s going into ArrivalStar’s pockets without the validity of the patent ever being challenged,” said attorney Babak Siavoshy, who represents the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “If they make the settlement amount low enough, where the costs and benefits favor settling, then most municipalities are going to settle, and it costs them a lot of money, because the cost of litigation is a big stick.”

Siavoshy and EFF want the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to review Jones’ patents. EFF is looking for what’s known as “prior art”: examples of real-time vehicle tracking being discussed before Jones took out the patent, to show that he wasn’t the first one with the idea. Advocates also think they can prove that the systems Jones patented were too “obvious” or “non-novel” – that they were logical extensions of existing technology. Abstract ideas, with no technology or product attached, are not patentable.

ArrivalStar attorney Anthony Dowell contends that the patents are defensible and that Jones has the right to seek money from the agencies. “Just because an entity is funded with taxpayer dollars doesn’t give them the right to steal property,” said Dowell in a recent interview with ArsTechnica. “My client now owns 34 patents that are being infringed, and what else is he to do?”

The transit agencies I called couldn’t comment, since the case was pending. But the general counsel of the Monterey-Salinas Transit Corporation, David Laredo, said that they’re not challenging the validity of the patents. Their strategy is to assert that the vendor who sold the technology to the transit agency (Trapeze, a spinoff of Siemens) does hold a license from ArrivalStar, and if they don’t, that’s the vendor’s problem, not theirs.

To date, ArrivalStar has reached settlements with the city of Fairfax, Virginia; Boston’s MBTA; New York City’s MTA; Chicago’s Metra, and the Maryland Transit Authority. Suits are pending against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s PATH; King County, Washington; the Monterey-Salinas Transit Corporation; the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority; and Portland’s TriMet.

In the past, transit agencies may not have talked to each other about these lawsuits because Jones reportedly insists on a nondisclosure agreement as part of the settlement. He only brings a few suits at a time, using a divide-and-conquer strategy, taking care not to extract so much from these public entities that it would incentivize them to pursue litigation. The recent focus of Jones’ lawsuits on transit agencies has inspired Georgetown Climate Center and the American Public Transit Association to get these entities to communicate more and to develop a more cohesive strategy. So far, though, Jones’ strategy has been working.

But since Jones brought a suit against the U.S. Postal Service last November, the federal government is now affected. His suit charges the post office with violating his patents with its package tracking services.

Since U.S.P.S. is a federal agency, the Department of Justice is now involved, defending the post office against ArrivalStar’s claims by saying the patents are invalid and that no infringement occurred. Advocates and attorneys are trying to persuade the feds to broaden their interest in ArrivalStar from just U.S.P.S. to all the transit agencies that have been affected.

After all, the transit agencies, by and large, bought the GPS tracking devices with federal dollars, in pursuit of federal transportation goals. Publicly available real-time transit information — on smartphone apps, transit agency websites, or on screens in bus stops and train stations — makes transit a more attractive option, with the potential to reduce congestion and pollution. SAFETEA-LU, the transportation authorization the country is still (amazingly) working under, specifically requires states to identify ways to deliver real-time transit information to the public.

Georgetown Climate Center Director Vicki Arroyo told Streetsblog that she’s had some “early but hopeful discussions” with senior U.S. DOT officials.

“Earlier, some of the more junior people within the federal government were not keen to take this on, saying they didn’t have a dog in the fight — now they do,” she said, referring to the suit against the postal service. “We’re hoping they won’t just look at this as a one-off matter. There’s a much higher public stake here.”

A pro-transit rally in Honolulu last year. Photo: Rebuilding Place in Urban Space

That’s why local efforts to establish grassroots transit advocacy organizations are so important, said a panel of experts convened by the Center for Transportation Excellence this Wednesday. The presenters described successes and failures in engaging different segments of the transit universe, including riders, labor unions and students.

Greg LeRoy, head of economic development watchdog Good Jobs First, said that in many cities — even transit-rich ones — there’s not always a long history of rider groups organizing themselves, and of those, some have little capacity to advocate.

“Certainly large systems like SEPTA [in Philadelphia] have so many riders there is raw community-organizing capacity, but that doesn’t mean there is any sustained organizing,” said LeRoy.

Enter Americans for Transit, a partnership that combines the organizing power of the labor movement with the number-crunching expertise of economic development wonks. LeRoy said Americans for Transit aims to create a “four-legged stool” of transit riders, labor, manufacturers, and pro-transit employers who can craft and target an advocacy message that’s currently lacking in many cities.

Giving a sudden jolt to the movement is ATU president Larry Hanley, who LeRoy says is sending strong signals to his local presidents to take on a more vocal role.

Not that broad-based transit advocacy is unheard of. When the House looked like it was about to hang transit out to dry a few months ago, a coalition of organizations rose up to defend it. But while Congress’s plan to pull the plug on transit galvanized people around the country to help avert a high-profile national crisis, Americans for Transit aims to strengthen and sustain transit advocacy over the long term, starting at the local level.

One common obstacle to engaging people is that many of the public’s most frequent complaints about transit — timeliness, reliability — boil down to a shortage of operations and maintenance funds. But the riding public often doesn’t know why these problems exist, or who can actually do something about it. So Americans for Transit and similar groups would create and educate a nationwide network of advocates who could put pressure on any level of government – city, region, state, or federal – no matter how low down or high up the funding tree.

Of course, sometimes that tree will lead all the way back to Congress. And while there are plenty of advocacy groups — including the National Association of Public Transportation Advocates, the webinar’s co-host – who do talk fairly regularly to the politicos holding the purse strings, the consensus among the speakers was that members of Congress would rather hear it straight from their constituents. Constituents, meanwhile, just want their bus to show up on time.

“Funding is what we need, but it’s not a crowd-pleaser,” explained Jen Henry from the Natural Resources Defense Council, currently partnering with the Active Transportation Alliance to create a groundswell of public support for transit in greater Chicago. ”Sometimes people think transit agencies are wasting the money, and they don’t want to pay any more in taxes.”

In cases like that, it does come in handy to have a wildly ineffectual Congress for people to rally against. “We don’t like crises, but they do help build support,” Henry said.

The hope is that once a national advocacy network is in place, it won’t take another crisis to rally the troops.

Without ARC, these century-old tunnels will remain the only way for NJ Transit commuters to get to Manhattan. Photo: NJ Transit via Second Avenue Sagas

It was never about cost overruns. It was never about New Jersey’s share of the price tag. Chris Christie’s decision to kill the ARC tunnel under the Hudson River was always about two, and only two, things: the governor’s unwillingness to raise the state’s rock-bottom gas tax and his desire to make a name for himself among national Republicans.

A new report from the Government Accountability Office, the independent and non-partisan investigation agency of the federal government, lays bare what transit advocates knew all along: Christie wanted to break into the piggy bank of transit dollars put aside by previous administrations and use the money to bail out the state’s highways. He was willing to say anything to get his way.

Christie’s untrue statements about New Jersey’s most important transit project were catalogued by the New York Times, which broke the news of the GAO report this morning. The governor claimed, for example, that New Jersey would be paying 70 percent of the cost of building the first new rail tunnels under the Hudson in a century, which he argued was too high. The GAO found that the state would only shoulder 14.4 percent of the cost.

Christie repeatedly cited cost overruns, which he said would put the total price tag at up to $14 billion, as a reason to pull the plug on the project. But, reported the Times, “the range of estimates had in fact remained unchanged in the two years before he announced in 2010 that he was shutting down the project. And state transportation officials, the report says, had said the cost would be no more than $10 billion.”

Compare that to the value that ARC would have created for New Jersey. At the time, analysts predicted that the project would raise New Jersey property values by $18 billion and allow $50 billion in new wages to come back to the state from New York City. The GAO concluded that the ARC tunnel would have provided the region with economic, environmental and mobility benefits, though the report could not quantify to what extent.

So why did Governor Christie willfully deceive and beggar the citizens of his state? As Streetsblog reported at the time, it was all about New Jersey’s empty, debt-ridden transportation trust fund. New Jersey’s gas tax, the third-lowest in the country, hasn’t been raised for 23 years. The infrastructure funding woes that can be found across the country, therefore, are even more acute there. When Christie killed the ARC tunnel, the highway trust fund was expected to go bankrupt within a year.

The sustainable fix would have been increasing the gas tax, at least to the level of New Jersey’s neighbors, but Christie went for the fiscally irresponsible and politically explosive option of stealing from transit riders instead. By taking almost $3 billion from what the Regional Plan Association’s Ingrid Michaelson at the time called “the cookie jar of money that previous governors have set aside for ARC,” Christie bought himself two or three years of road-building and national attention from conservatives (including an impassioned movement to recruit him to run for president).

“In hindsight, it’s apparent that he had a highly important political objective,” said Martin Robins, a former director of the ARC project now at Rutgers, to the Times: “to cannibalize the project so he could find an alternate way of keeping the transportation trust fund program moving, and he went ahead and did it.”

General Contractors Association Managing Director Denise Richardson. Photo: GCA

Transportation infrastructure is big business. With tens of billions of dollars at stake, nobody tracks the financial health of the nation’s transit and road systems more closely than the construction industry. And right now, the future of transportation funding nationwide is hazy indeed.

To get some perspective on the state of transportation funding, we sat down with Denise Richardson, the managing director of the General Contractors Association. Representing the New York region’s heavy construction contractors, Richardson is a major voice for transportation investments. With experience in city and state government, she’s a leading authority on the ins and outs of infrastructure. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation. [Click here for a fuller version of the interview, with a greater focus on New York.]

“All this short-term thinking plays into what ultimately becomes a series of bad planning decisions, because everything is left until it’s a crisis.”

When asked if she was worried that some version of the House GOP transportation proposal “coming back to life,” Richardson said:

DR: I think that the House never expected the amount of pushback nationwide, and from cities that you would not think of as being heavily transit dependent.

NK: It was something to watch.

DR: It was. I enjoyed it for a couple of reasons. First of all, I enjoyed it because the GCA was among the first to jump on the issue and talk to congressmen around the country. A lot of our members are national and international firms.

And you saw other places around the country that have primarily bus networks look at this and say, “Wait a minute, if we want to build a new depot and we want to apply for federal funding, we’re not going to get it.” So you saw this real grassroots movement.

From a democracy perspective, the House leadership, wrapping themselves in their Tea Party flag, said, “This is not what we want the federal government to stand for.” To see another group of people from all around the country say, “Well wait a minute, yes we do,” was a really effective use of government, because you had two very different views of what government is. And in the end, the House was forced to withdraw their proposal.

The fact that they have not been able to put forward a new version of a transportation bill is a tremendous disservice to everybody. I don’t know if by the time November comes that’s going to be a big election issue. But I would certainly think that people around the country would sit back and say, “This House that we elected two years ago, because we wanted a different philosophy of government, what have they really accomplished?” And I think it will be interesting to see that assessment.

NK: Can you explain, in concrete terms, why the short-term extensions pose a challenge to getting projects going efficiently?

DR: On a series of short-term extensions, you’re always making short-term business decisions. Because we don’t know where we’re going to stand over the next three to five years in terms of a portfolio of work, we’re not going to make the decisions to invest in new equipment, buy a new building, to expand our space, hire 30 or 40 more people in anticipation of work coming down the road. We don’t know what’s going to be there. Short-term decisions aren’t good for the economy.

For an agency, look at DOT’s decision to stop the environmental review process for the cantilever section of the BQE. It’s an important project, but in the scheme of all the priorities, it wasn’t at the top of the list. So they had to make the very difficult decision to stop the work and basically say, “Let’s wait until the project becomes more critical.” Which is not the way you make infrastructure decisions. All this short-term thinking plays into what ultimately becomes a series of bad planning decisions, because everything is left until it’s a crisis.

U.S. DOT Inspector General Calvin L. Scovel III thinks the FTA needs greater authority as a safety regulator. Photo: Zimbio

This year, the Senate Banking Committee inserted a measure into the Senate’s two-year transportation bill that instructed states to “submit proposals for state safety oversight programs for rail fixed guideway public transportation systems,” which was touted as one of the bill’s selling points at the recent legislative conference of the American Public Transportation Association. The House bill also contained some provisions related to transit safety.

Some local transit advocates have warned against new federal safety requirements, arguing that they will impose excessive burdens on transit agencies, making it more difficult to provide a transportation service that already boasts a remarkable safety record.

Any new transportation bill is on hold for the moment, but transit safety is still on the feds’ agenda. Last Thursday, USDOT Inspector General Calvin Scovel defended expanded federal oversight at a hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development.

Subcommittee Chair Tom Latham (R-IA) asked Scovel whether the Federal Transit Administration had the wherewithal to establish a new safety program. (Latham’s subcommittee questioned FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff on the same topic last week.)

Scovel explained that his office had already issued recommendations to FTA — currently little more than a grant-maker – in January about how to go about setting up such a program. One of the program’s primary tasks will be to record transit safety hazards, including what Scovel called “near miss/close call elements,” similar to a safety metric already used by the Federal Aviation Administration. However, the FTA lacks the authority to follow through on all of DOT’s internal recommendations, he said.

Latham seemed skeptical that additional authority was warranted. Citing a lack of interstate commerce to be regulated, Latham asked, “Why the reason for a federal oversight alternative?”

“There aren’t many agencies that cross state lines,” Scovel admitted, “but there is a clear federal role” in ensuring transit safety standards. He added that deficiencies at local agencies, like the ones that emerged in the aftermath of the 2009 WMATA crash, underscored the need for closer federal oversight.

You can read the full testimony from Scovel and other witnesses here.

The House GOP wants states to have more say over how transportation funds are spent -- so they can spend more of it opening new stretches of highway. Photo: Sumter County, FL

The T&I Committee submits this document each year to help shape the Budget Committee’s spending priorities. On the positive side of the ledger this time around, the committee prominently mentions strategic planning and intermodalism (in addition to familiar favorites like consolidation and cost-cutting) as primary goals. Committee Republicans also assert that the government’s pledge to spend Highway Trust Fund receipts on their intended use has been upheld. That affirmation flies in the face of the argument, often made by conservatives and road-gangers — including members of the T&I Committee — that funding transit out of that fund constitutes a violation of that contract.

And the committee states its opposition to the underfunding of transportation programs “under the guise of ‘budget reform’” – something they threw their full weight behind last summer, when they introduced a bill that would have hacked deeply into all facets of the program, cutting 30 percent across the board.

Elsewhere in the document are countless signs that House Republicans are sticking to their more ill-conceived policy ideas, as laid out in their multi-year transportation bill, H.R. 7. That bill differs dramatically from President Obama’s FY 2013 budget proposal, and the Views and Estimates document carefully notes each of those differences. Of course, H.R. 7 is on life support right now, so the Views and Estimates are best seen as the GOP fantasy of how to shape transportation policy.

T&I members, for their part, say that the president is living in a fantasy world too, when he asserts that his budget proposal is paid for with war savings. “The reduction in overseas military operations is the result of policy decisions that have already been made,” they say in the document. “The administration’s surface transportation reauthorization proposal would not achieve any additional savings.”

Rather than support the president’s funding levels ($42.6 billion for the federal-aid highway program and $10.8 billion for the FTA in 2013), the committee says simply that it supports levels that would keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent. They don’t give a dollar figure, but the original House bill, which was dedicated to keeping funding levels even with receipts, projected spending $36 billion in 2013, only slightly below current projections for the year.

“Bureaucrats in Washington” get roundly slammed in the GOP plan, as T&I members urge giving as much decision-making authority as possible to the states. Just divide up the money by formula and let state DOTs figure out how to spend it, they say, giving them “maximum flexibility.” In most states, this translates as “maximum highway building.” And here they take their shot at programs to make streets safer for walking and biking, though they don’t admit it: “Under H.R.7, states… are not required to spend a specific amount of funding on specific types of projects, such as transportation museums or landscaping.” What they’re referring to is the elimination of the Transportation Enhancements program, which actually devotes most of its small pot of funds to bike and pedestrian projects.

And what’s the Republicans’ other favorite target? High-speed rail, of course! They remind the president, who requested (a paltry) $2.5 billion for HSR and Amtrak, that Republicans in Congress would prefer to defund those programs. To prove their point, they rattle off a list of HSR’s more embarrassing moments, from the rejection of HSR funds by three governors to the travails that have beset the California program.

The committee says it’s not good enough that Amtrak has requested less for operations this year, since it requested more for capital. The GOP would rather reduce both. And anything left over from the stimulus should go to the Northeast Corridor, the only rail corridor worthy of investment, if you ask committee chair John Mica.

Essential Air Service would be pared down, eliminating some money-pit services to save $16 million a year. As we’ve mentioned before, this is a service primarily to red-state rural areas, but, true to their commitment to cutting government waste, Republicans have fought to keep the spending for the program in check.

AASHTO notes

that the committee did not even consider any amendments to the Views and Estimates document when it was introduced, probably because of deep uncertainty about next year’s funding levels in the absence of a reauthorization.

Cleavon McClendon has been staying at a shelter in Youngstown, Ohio since he lost his job due to poor transportation options. Photo: Huffington Post

With a 50 percent poverty rate — the worst in the country — Youngstown makes a compelling a campaign speech backdrop, illustrating everything that is wrong with government, or maybe America. Mitt Romney appeared there this week on the eve of Super Tuesday.

The irony of the situation is, of course, that decades of promises have done little to improve the city’s lot. Since the decline of the steel industry that was its lifeblood 40 years ago, life has been very hard here for many people here. Despite recent promising efforts to rebuild the city around tech startups and downtown living, there’s definitely a class of people being left behind, with few options.

And transportation is at the heart of the problem.

Tom Zeller Jr., writing for the Huffington Post, summed up the problem facing Youngstown’s poor:

Exit the Madison Avenue Expressway onto Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, just beyond a road sign advertising the Museum of Industry and Labor, and an elegant, pre-war building, red brick and multi-gabled, rises on your right. Built in 1931 and the former home of the West Federal YMCA branch, it is now owned by the Rescue Mission of Mahoning Valley, which houses dozens of this town’s homeless residents.

Cleavon McClendon, who recently lost his job working at a Bob Evans restaurant, is among them.

“I lost Bob Evans due to Sundays,” says McClendon, 36. “Sundays are their best days, busiest days, and they needed me there on Sundays as much as possible, but I couldn’t be there because I don’t have transportation and the bus don’t run on Sundays. The bus don’t run on Sundays, period.”

Unable to pay his bills, he then lost his apartment and soon washed up at the side door of the mission. It was not his first time here, and his story is not unusual in a city, and a region, struggling to re-invent itself after the steel industry largely vanished.

Youngstown’s WRTA won a major victory four years ago when voters approved a county-wide quarter-cent sales tax, making the system regional. That allowed the system to restore night and Saturday service after a two-year lapse. But in order to make the levy appealing to suburbanites, WRTA had to increase door-to-door service in sparsely populated areas for seniors and those with special needs. But the city service, even greatly expanded, still leaves many urban residents stranded.

Meanwhile, few opportunities remain within the city. Youngstown has struggled even to retain a few grocery stores, let alone major employers. Employment — especially in the service industry jobs that have replaced manufacturing — is concentrated in the ever-more-distant suburbs.

The Youngstown-Warren-Boardman metropolitan area was listed as number 97 — third from the bottom — in the Brookings Institution’s analysis [PDF] last year for the percentage (14) of jobs accessible by transit.

Not all mobility improvements for seniors involve getting in a car. Photo by Dan Burden via Transportation for America.

The debate raged: Was transit expansion the answer to the mobility crisis? Or should seniors be moving to more walkable neighborhoods? Could resource-starved local transportation authorities support more paratransit services? Or would driverless cars save the day, as proposed by Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute?

Now, a transportation research group known as TRIP has teamed up with AASHTO to produce a new report on how to keep baby boomers mobile as they age [PDF]. Their solution: brighter signs and wider lanes.

TRIP and AASHTO also mention designing and operating roads to accommodate all users – “when appropriate.” They throw a few bones to pedestrians, like refuge islands and countdown signals. But they must not have been thinking about the safety of those pedestrians when they suggested widening lanes, adding left-turn lanes, and making roadway curves more gradual. As David Burwell of the Carnegie Endowment’s climate program says, those changes would just create “more pavement for those pesky walkers and bicyclists to cross.” TRIP also suggests adding rumble strips to alert drivers when they’re leaving the lane – and, of course, to leave cyclists riding on the shoulder miserably saddle-sore by the end of their ride.

And as for “clearer, brighter and simpler signage with larger lettering, including overhead indicators for turning lanes and overhead street signs” – the number one recommendation in the report? “Great idea,” said Burwell. “And how about the pedestrians, bicyclists and other road users — maybe we all should be required to carry bright signs in large letters saying ‘Please don’t hit me!’”

TRIP’s recommendations don’t end with street treatments. They’d also like to see training and monitoring for drivers as they get older, though they mention several times that older people “self-regulate” their driving, sticking to familiar routes during daytime, off-peak hours. (Expecting to solve the problem of unsafe senior driving through “self-regulation” is kind of like trying to solve the immigration crisis through “self-deportation.”)

And of course, since crashes are a fact of life when we’re talking about automobiles, TRIP wants to make sure the cars are “crashworthy” and that the drivers are wearing seat belts. They also suggest intelligent “crash avoidance technologies.” They don’t specify what technologies they mean, but it’s probably things like automatic braking and steering away from a potential collision – sort of like Randal O’Toole’s fabled self-driving cars.

Does transit factor into TRIP and AASHTO’s vision of a safer and more independent future for seniors at all? Barely. They promote accessible vehicles and stations and give only the briefest mention to expansion of “bus and transit routes,” ride-sharing and paratransit services – the items that T4America focused on in its report on the subject.

There is no one easy solution to the mobility problems of America’s aging population, but TRIP seems to assume that the main answer lies in keeping seniors in their cars. The report states that older people “may be physically unable to use other modes such as transit, walking or cycling.” According to the authors, 90 percent of travel by those 65 and over takes place in a private vehicle, though that rate falls to 80 percent for those 85 and up.

More attention to smart growth solutions would be a sensible first attempt to remedy the problem – making sure goods and services are within reach of older residents without requiring them to get into a car in the first place. And transit is still an important part of the answer. Just because seniors don’t currently use transit in large numbers doesn’t mean they wouldn’t if transit frequently and reliably went where they wanted to go.

Surely, there are countless more ways that we as a society could contribute to the quality of life of seniors. Let’s not end the conversation at oversize-type highway signs and left-turn lanes.

Northeastern Republicans, like New York's Nan Hayworth and Pennsylvania's Mike Fitzpatrick, have signed on to an amendment, sponsored by Manhattan Democrat Jerry Nadler, that would restore dedicated federal funding for transit.

The House GOP bill, drafted with significant input from Speaker John Boehner’s office, would eliminate mass transit’s dedicated funding stream, first signed into law by Ronald Reagan in 1982. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a former House Republican, has called it “the worst transportation bill I’ve ever seen during 35 years of public service.”

Some congressional Republicans, especially those who represent transit riders, agree that de-funding transit would be unacceptable. The Nadler amendment has bipartisan support from six Democrats and six Republicans. The GOP side includes New York’s Chris Gibson, Bob Turner, Michael Grimm and Nan Hayworth, as well as Ohio’s Steve LaTourette and Pennsylvania’s Mike Fitzpatrick.

Turner, who represents an urban district where almost half of all commuters take transit to work, will not vote for the transportation bill in its current form, nor will LaTourette. Though not a sponsor of Nadler’s amendment, Long Island GOP rep Peter King has also spoken out against the bill’s anti-transit provisions and is currently expected to vote against the bill.

For the other Republicans, though, it’s not clear whether the attack on transit is a dealbreaker. Hayworth, for example, made it clear in a statement to Streetsblog that her district needs a strong and well-funded transit system, but didn’t commit to a particular course of action on the transportation bill.

“I am concerned about the way in which the transportation bill that is developing within the House of Representatives may affect mass transit and infrastructure in New York. Adequately funding improvements to the Metro-North Railroad and replacing the aging Tappan Zee Bridge are critical priorities for the Hudson Valley,” she said. “As the bill advances, I will continue working with my colleagues both in Congress and the Hudson Valley to ensure that our mass transit and infrastructure needs are supported as fully as possible.”

Gibson and Grimm’s offices have not responded to Streetsblog inquiries about the transportation bill.

New York’s editorial boards have widely opposed the bill. The New York Times, the New York Daily News, and the Newark Star-Ledger have all editorialized against the House transportation bill. This weekend, Newsday joined the fray, calling the bill “catastrophic for our region.”

The Potomac & Rappahannock Transportation Commission, which operates bus and commuter rail lines in Virginia, would need to cut service and raise fares under the House's proposed changes to transit funding. Photo: PotomacLocal

While the House’s official stance is that their proposal still somehow guarantees funding for transit, it really does anything but. ”It’s not dedicated, it’s not stable, it’s not predictable… and it’s not clear where exactly that money is coming from,” said Francisca Porchas, lead coordinator for the advocacy organization Transit Riders for Public Transportation. “For regular bus riders, it’s going to mean completely pulling the rug out from under them.”

It’s not like mass transit has been flying high lately, either. Over the past three years, there’s been an onslaught of fare hikes, service cuts, and layoffs at American transit agencies, even as ridership hit record highs. Some 97,000 employees in the transit and ground transportation industry lost their jobs in 2009 alone.

Forcing transit to fight for funds from the general budget will also force transit agencies to make cuts immediately. Transit agencies like Virginia’s Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation Commission would likely need to cut service and raise fares just as a contingency, since federal funds make up some 15-20 percent of PRTC’s total budget, and state and local governments lack the wherewithal to step in if that money disappeared.

Furthermore, with their future funding in doubt, agencies will be forced to borrow money at higher interest rates, adding another level of costs to plans to add new capacity. That promises to bleed over into the basic services that agencies provide, making the trend of service cuts and fare hikes even worse.

“Where many transit agencies are trying to advance capital expansion, they are doing so instead of maintaining current service,” Porchas explained. “Transit agencies will be making some tough choices, and they’ll prioritize capacity expansion over operating and maintaining their system” if federal funding is suddenly threatened, she said.

Sen. Schumer had made restoring the pre-tax commuter transit benefit a priority in 2012. Photo: AP

• $3.7 billion transferred from the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund, already funded by a slice of the federal gas tax
• $2.8 billion from reducing a tax credit on certain biofuels
• $2.5 billion from taxes on imported cars, redirected from the general fund to the HTF
• $0.7 billion from the “gas guzzler tax,” also redirected from the general fund
• $0.7 in back taxes collected after revoking passports of serious offenders, assuming offenders would rather pay the feds than lose their passport

Furthermore, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) has sponsored an amendment that would restore parity between the pre-tax commuter benefits for transit and parking. There had been parity between transit and parking pre-tax benefits since the Stimulus Act was passed in 2009, but the transit benefit was slashed in half — from $230 a month to $125 — when the measure expired on January 1st. Schumer’s amendment would make the parity permanent.

Live updates will be available tomorrow on twitter (#TranspoMarkup).

Reps. Joe Crowley, Charlie Rangel, Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney joined MTA chief Joe Lhota to decry the House Republicans' attempt to end dedicated federal funding for transit. Photo: Noah Kazis

Under the House’s plan, instead of receiving a roughly 20 percent cut of the federal gas tax, transit would receive a one-time transfer from the general fund. In theory, at least. In practice, there would be no guarantees that transit would receive any funding.

Noah Kazis, from our sister blog in New York, has more from today’s presser:

Charlie Rangel, former chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, which passed the anti-transit provision, said he asked influential House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan where the money to pay for transit would come from in the general fund. “The answer was they did not know at that time,” said Rangel.

Other new rules that the speakers found objectionable would no longer require states to set aside an extra 1 percent of funds for transit in cities of over 200,000 residents, and would prohibit transit authorities that operate bus and rail services from receiving grants from the “bus and bus facilities fund.”

House Ways & Means' Dave Camp (R-MI) and Sander Levin (D-MI) do not see eye to eye on funding transit. Photo: Zimbio

The attack on transit has drawn opposition from an unprecedentedly broad coalition of over 600 groups, including many that do not often find themselves on the same side of an issue. Opponents of the bill include noted transit advocates APTA and T4America, and traditionally pro-highway groups such as AASHTO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The conservative Club for Growth has even gone so far as to make the entire House transportation package a key vote, meaning members will be rewarded for opposing the bill. Rep. John Campbell has already said he has changed his position on the package, and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) laughed at the prospect of getting a positive rating from Club for Growth for “the first time in a while.”

An amendment proposed by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, which would have removed the provision altering transit’s revenue source, was defeated along party lines during mark up this morning. However, two Republicans — Erik Paulsen of Minnesota and Vern Buchanan of Florida — broke ranks with their party and voted against the underlying bill. The bill passed anyway by a vote of 20-17.

Despite repeated attempts by Republicans to present the bill as placing transit funding on surer footing, the bill drew vocal opposition from Democrats such as ranking member Sander Levin, who said it “undermines the very structure of the Highway Trust Fund.” Blumenauer said the bill relied on “fantasy accounting” to justify a $40 billion transfer from the general fund to cover transit, and McDermott bemoaned the lack of long-term thinking behind the bill.

Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York even asked Chairman Dave Camp if there was a precedent for the Ways and Means committee to demand a complete restart of transportation authorization efforts. When informed that there was not, Rangel responded, “Well, you can be a leader, then.”

The letter from coalition members opposing the Ways and Means bill is after the jump.